1. Looking to the men who formed it, and who lead it, the platform on
which it stands, and the end which it contemplates, I regard the
organization headed by Breckinridge and Lane as essentially a sectional
slavery extension party, bound through the Federal judiciary, backed by
the Federal government, to extend slavery into all the territories of
the United States, with or without the assent of the people, and if need
be to accomplish this end, bound to legalize slavery under the Federal
Constitution in every State of the Union, and to open the floodgates of
the African slave trade under the protection of the national banner.
This is the logical end of the Breckinridge and Lane platform. Its
practical end will be the destruction of the American Union, for no man
in his senses can believe that the Federal government, either through
its President, or its Congress, or its Supreme Court, can ever make
negro slavery lawful for one hour, where the free white people of any
State will that it shall not be. If slaveholders are ever to reach the
throne of national power on this continent, which the Breckinridge party
are aiming to erect for them, they will wade to that throne through
battle fields flowing with human blood.
This Breckinridge and Lane party holds within its bosom the rankest
disunionists and most ultra advocates of the African slave trade. Its
true watch cry, whatever it may pretend in the North, is "_National
Slavery or Disunion_."
With this view of the Breckinridge party, I cannot therefore say that I
admired the good taste or consistency of my Republican friends, when in
this city a few nights ago, they encouraged by loud applause, the
virulent harangue of Jesse D. Bright, the Indiana leader of the
Breckinridge faction, not I presume because they approved his
sentiments, but because he abused Stephen A. Douglas.
2. Looking to the men who formed it, and who now represent it as its
leading oracles, Seward, Hale, Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Giddings, Wade,
Lovejoy, not forgetting John A. Andrews of Massachusetts, with his negro
guard of wide-awakes, nor excepting John Brown, the martyr, nor
excepting the comparatively unknown Abraham Lincoln, whom the crisis of
the divided house has made famous--and looking also to the Philadelphia
and Chicago platforms on which the party stands, with their logical
inconsistencies, and the end which those platforms, as well as the
public addresses and working machinery of their advocates contemplate--I
regard the so-called Republican party, whose candidates are Lincoln and
Hamlin, as essentially a sectional, slavery prohibition and slavery
abolition party, bound by political action, through the power of the
Federal government; _first_, to prohibit slavery in all the territories
of the United States; _second_, to admit no more Slave States, and
ultimately by State action and Federal action too, when the Free States
have become three-fourths of the whole, and sufficiently powerful to
make the Federal Constitution what they please, to abolish slavery in
all the States, so that, to use the language of William H. Seward at
Chicago, on 2d October instant, "_Civilization may be maintained and
carried on, on this continent by Federal States, based on the principles
of free soil, free labor, free speech, equal rights and universal
suffrage_." This is _the creed_ of the Republican party as declared by
Mr. Seward, and he affirms that it is _a positive party_ that will take
no more compromises in geographical lines or squatter sovereignties.
This is the logical end of the platforms of the Republican party; the
practical end, following the attempt to realize the other, will be
disunion, with all the dire results portrayed by Daniel Webster, when in
that great effort of his majestic intellect, his defence of the American
Union, he prayed that when "his eyes should be turned to behold for the
last time the sun in heaven, he might not see him shining on the broken
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered,
discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched,
it may be, in fraternal blood!"
I am conscious that many Republicans, whom I esteem and respect, may
object to this opinion of their party and platforms. Be that as it may,
the opinion is a sincere one, and I believe can be sustained by a fair
analysis of the records of Republican leaders and of the proceedings of
the party.
It is vain to deny that with the masses of that party, Seward is their
representative man, and that without the abolition strength, which he
and Sumner, Hale, Greeley, Wade, Lovejoy, Giddings, and all that class
of politicians bring to the Republican ranks, they would not have a hope
of success in the North. The cohorts of abolition are the Zouaves of
the Republican camp. It is their enthusiasm, their fiery zeal, and
intolerant hate of all southern institutions, that give the Republican
party no small amount of its power. The nomination of Lincoln over
Seward was a trick of expediency, like the nomination of Fremont. The
real leaders of the Republican organization have points too sharply
defined to be trusted as candidates before the nation. Obscure men are
sought, who from their very want of being known, fail to concentrate the
deadly fire that would pour upon the real leaders if shown in the open
field. The Republicans are shrewd enough to know that candidates
sometimes win where principles would fail; hence if you would know their
principles and real leaders, look _behind_, not _on_ their candidates.
3. Looking to the men who formed it, and who lead it, and to the
platform on which it stands, I regard the Bell and Everett or Union
party as it is called, as a very respectable and honorable party, mostly
composed of men of the old Whig faith, who truly love the Union and the
Constitution, and will do all they can to preserve both, and who would
manage the ship of state admirably well, so long as the sky was bright,
the sea was calm, and nought but fair and gentle breezes filled the
flowing sails; but who would be scarcely competent to guide that noble
and richly laden ship in unknown seas, amid tropic or arctic storms, or
when surrounded by the pirate crafts of the African slave trade, or the
wildly drifting fire ships of political abolition. In such seas, amid
such storms, and surrounded by such assailants, the ship of state wants
men upon the quarter deck of far reaching thought, of iron wills, of
hearts that know not fear; men whom storms cannot frighten and foes
cannot conquer--such men as will nail "the Union" to the mast and die
ere it comes down.
Lastly, my friends--Looking to the men who now compose and sustain it,
and to the platform on which it stands, I regard the National Democratic
party, lead by Stephen A. Douglas--I mean the party of the people, not
of the politicians--as the truly democratic and national--not
sectional--party of this country; a party that in the august presence
of the nation and its Federal Constitution, knows no North and no South,
but the Union, the whole Union and nothing but the Union, and whose
motto is not "_Liberty first and Union afterwards_," but that glorious
motto, "LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE."
Firmly convinced of the correctness of my opinions on the question
dividing the nation, I appeal in all kindness to the Whigs and
Democrats, now ranging under Republican banners, and perhaps under the
uniform of Republican wide-awakes, and I ask them, Whigs and Democrats,
who alike in 1852 and in 1856 sustained the compromise principle of
Congressional non-intervention with slavery: why have they changed their
ground? Why do they now support a party whose real motto is "No more
slave territory--no more Slave States," and whose candidates are
northern sectional men only? Is that the motto, or are these the
candidates for a Union in which there are North States and South States,
Free States and Slave States, all equal in the house of the nation, and
in the nation's fundamental law?
A fearful responsibility rests on every citizen who, by his vote or his
acts, aids in the first triumph of a party whose creed and whose men are
sectional. On that rock will the Union, if ever, be wrecked, and towards
that rock it is rapidly drifting now.
I ask again, where does the real National Democratic party of the
people, headed by Douglas, now stand on the question of slavery? I
answer, and no man can truthfully gainsay it, it stands where it stood
in 1840-44-48, and 1852-56. It stands where it stood in 1850, when it
aided to pass the great national compromise. It stands where it stood in
1854, when to carry out that compromise to its logical results, it
erased the Missouri compromise line of 1820, because _that_ was not a
constitutional line of national brotherhood and peace, but a legislative
line of division and sectional strife. It stands where it stood in 1856,
when the sectional platform and the feeble candidate of the Philadelphia
Convention fell before it. It stands where it will stand, with its
banner of Union and national peace waving over it, until patriotic Whigs
and patriotic Democrats, North and South, who in 1852 made up the
2,987,000 votes that endorsed the compromise of 1850, awaking from the
delusion and misunderstanding which have gathered over that great
measure of national peace, shall affirm it again as a permanent and
enduring law that shall bind together the now divided house of the
American Union. Then, indeed, will "the crisis" of Abraham Lincoln and
"the irrepressible conflict" of William H. Seward be passed in safety,
and the Union again arise and shine in the full sunlight of permanent
peace.