could hold, and I wondered how it would have been had I come here in 1850, or even at any later day before the abrogation of the Missouri compromise.

But let by-gones be by-gones. I have seen the time when I had as little courage and as little resolution on this subject as most of you. I was born into the demoralization-I was born a slaveholder, and have some excuse, which you have not. All these things were done, not because you loved slavery, but because you loved the Union.

When slavery became identical in the public mind with the Union, how natural it was, even for patriotic men, to approve of, or to at least excuse and tolerate slavery. How odious did it become for men to be freesoilers, and be regarded as abolitionists, when to be an abolitionist was, in the estimation of mankind, to be a traitor to one's country, and to such a country as this is. How natural was it then to believe that slavery after all might not be so very bad, and to believe that it might be necessary and might be right at some times, or on some occasions, which times and occasions were always a good way off from themselves; especially, how natural was it, when the whole Christian church, with all its sects, bent itself to the support of the Union, mistaking the claim of slavery for the cause of the Union.

How extensive this proscription for the sake and in the name of Union, has been and is to this day, you will see at once when I tell you that there is not in this whole republic, from one end of it to the other, a man who maintains that slavery shall not be extended, who can secure, at the hands of his country, any part in the administration of its government from a tide-waiter in the custom house, or a postmaster in a rural district, to a secretary of state, a minister in a foreign court, or a president of the United States. How could you expect that a people, every one of whom is born with a possible chance and a fair expectation of being something-perhaps president of the United States-would resist the demoralization prosecuted by such means? And when it becomes a heresy, for which a man is deprived of position in an ecclesiastical sect to which he belongs, how could you expect that the members of the Christian churches would be bold enough to provoke the censure of the Christian world? Above all, our constitution, as we have always supposed, was so framed that it gave us a judiciary which cannot err,

which must be infallible, and must not be disputed; and when the judicial authority, which has the army and the navy, through the direction of the executive power, to execute its judgments and decrees, pronounces that every appeal made for freedom is seditious, that every syllable in defense of liberty is treason, and the natural sympathy we feel for the oppressed is to be punished as a crime; while that authority is unwilling, or at least unable to bring to punishment one single culprit out of the thousand of pirates who bring away slaves from Africa to sell in foreign lands-how could you expect a simple agricultural people, such as we are, to be so much wiser and better than our presidents and vice-presidents, senators and representatives in congress, and even our judges?

I have brought you down to the time when this demoralization was almost complete. How assured its ultimate success seemed, after the compromise of 1850, you will learn from a fact which I have never before mentioned, but which I will now: Horace Mann, one of the noblest champions of freedom on this continent, confessed to me, after the passage of the slavery laws of that year, that he despaired of the cause of humanity. In 1854, after the repeal of the Missouri compromise, without producing so much alarm as a considerable thunder storm would do in the nation, there was only one man left who hoped against the prevailing demoralization, and who cheered and sustained me through it; and that man, in his zeal to make his prediction just, was afterwards betrayed so far by his zeal that he became ultimately a monomaniac, and suffered on the gallows. That was John Brown. The first and only time I ever saw him was when he called upon me after the abrogation of the Missouri compromise, and asked me what I thought of the future. I said I was disappointed and saddened-I would persevere, but it was against hope. He said, "Cheer up, governor; the people of Kansas will not accept slavery; Kansas will never be a slave state." I took then a deliberate survey of the broad field; I considered all; I examined and considered all the political forces which were revealed to my observation. I saw that freedom in the future states of this continent was the necessity of this age, and of this country. I saw that the establishment of this as a republic, conservative of the rights of human nature, was the cause of the whole world; and I saw that the time had come when men, and women, and children were departing from their homes in the eastern states, and were fol

lowed or attended by men, women and children from the European nations—all of them crowded out by the pressure of population upon subsistence in the older parts of the world, and all making their way up the Hudson river, through the Erie canal, along the railroads, by the way of the lakes, spreading themselves in a mighty flood over Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Illinois, and even to the banks of the Mississippi. I knew that these emigrants were planting a town every day, and a state every three years, heedless and unconcerned as they were, thinking only of provision for their immediate wants, shelter and lands to till in the west-I knew an interest yet unknown to themselves, which they would have when they should get here, and that was, that they should own the land themselves that slaves should not come into competition with them here.

So, as they passed by me, steamboat load after steamboat load, and railroad train after railroad train, though they were the humblest and perhaps the least educated and least trained portion of the communities from which they had come, I knew that they had the instinct of interest, and below, and deeper than that, the better instinct of justice. And I said, I will trust these men; I will trust these exiles; my faith and reliance henceforth is on the poor, not on the rich; on the humble, not on the great. Aye, and sad it was to confess, but it was so. I said, henceforth I put my trust, in this case, not in my native countrymen, but I put it in the exile from foreign lands. He has an abhorrence for, and he has never been accustomed to slavery by habit. Here he will stay and retain these territories free.

I was even painfully disappointed at first, in seeing that the emigrants to the west had no more consciousness of their interest in this question when they arrived here than they had in their native countries. The Irishman who had struggled against oppression in his own country, failed me; the German seemed at first-but, thank God, not long-dull and unconscious of the duty that had devolved upon him. This is true; but nevertheless I said that the interest and instincts of these people would ultimately bring them out, and when the states which they found and rear and fortify, shall apply for admission into the Federal Union, they will come, not as slave states, but as free states.

I looked one step further.

I saw how we could redeem all that had been lost; and redeem it, too, by appealing to the very passions and interests that had lost all.

the

The process was easy. The slave states of the south had demoralized the free states of the north by giving them presidencies, secretaryships, foreign missions and post offices. And now, here in the northwest, we will build up more free states than there are slave states. Those free states having a common interest in favor of freedom, equal to that of the southern slave states in favor of slavery, will offer to Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey, objects worthy their ambition. And to-day I see very realization of it all. I can give you advocates for freedom in the northern states, as bold, as outspoken, as brave and as confident of the durability of the Union, as you can find for slavery in the southern states. Aye, and when the southern states try to demoralize the free states by saying they will give their trade and traffic, will buy silks and linens and other trumpery, provided they can buy their principles in the sale, and the bargain must be struck, I said there shall be, in those new free states in the northwest, men who will say, we will buy your silks and linens and your trumpery of every sort; we will even buy more, and pay you quite as well, provided you do not betray your principles.

All this was simply restoring the balance of the republican system, bringing in a proper force in favor of freedom to counteract the established political agencies of slavery. You have heard that I have said that the last democrat is born in this nation. I say so, however, with the qualification before used, that by democrat I mean. one who will maintain the democratic principles which constitute the present creed of the democratic party; and for the reason, a very simple one, that slavery cannot pay any longer, and the democrat does not work for anybody who does not pay. I propose to pay all kinds of patriots hereafter, just as they come. I propose to pay them fair consideration if they will only be true to freedom. I propose to gratify all their aspirations for wealth and power, as much as the slave states can.

But, fellow citizens, we had no party for this principle. There was the trouble. Democracy was the natural ally of slavery in the south. We were either whigs, or, if you please, Americans, some of us, and thank God I never was one, in the limited sense of the term. But the whig party or the American party, if not equally an ally of the slave party in the south, was, at least, a treacherous and unreliable party for the interests of freedom. Only one thing was

wanting, that was to dislodge from the democratic party, the whig party and the native American party, men enough to constitute a republican party-a party of freedom.

And for that we are indebted to the kindness, unintentional, no doubt, of your distinguished senator, now a candidate for the presidency, Mr. Douglas, who, in procuring the abrogation of the Missouri compromise, so shattered the columns of these parties as to disintegrate them, and instantly there was the material, the preparation for the onslaught.

Still there was wanted an occasion, and that occasion was given when, in an hour of madness, the democratic party and administration, with the sympathy, or at least the acquiescence, of the old line whigs and the native Americans, refused to allow the state of Kansas to exercise the perfect freedom in choosing between liberty and slavery, which they had promised to her, except she should exercise it in favor of slavery. Then came the hour. We had then the cause for a party, the material for a party, and we had the occasion for a party, and the republican party sprang into existence at once, full armed. I will never knowingly do evil that good may come of it; I will never even wish that others may do evil that good may come of it; and for the same reason that I know the evil to be certain, and the good only possible or problematical. But no man ever rejoiced more heartily over the birth of his first born than I did when I saw the folly and madness of the repeal of the Missouri compromise and the rejection of Kansas. This act, I said to myself, is the doing of presidents, of senators, of judges, of priests and of deacons; and when the republican party organized itself, I said now is the preparation for the work complete.

How much I have been cheered in this long contest by seeing that only stolen, surreptitious advantages were gained by slavery in the form of rescripts and edicts and laws on the statute book; while the cause of freedom brought in first California; next, New Mexico, with her constitution claiming freedom; next, Kansas; next, Minnesota, and next, Oregon. You may all know, if possibly you remember, the song of joy, not so poetic, but as full of truth and exultation as the song of Miriam, which I then uttered, declaring that the battle was ended and the victory was won. The battle is ended and the victory is ours. Why, then, say they, why not withdraw from the field? For the simple reason that if the victor retire