classes early rallied, and has at length made a stand, not merely to retain its original defensive position, but to extend its sway throughout the whole Union. It is certain that the slave-holding class of American citizens indulge this high ambition, and that they derive encour- 5 agement for it from the rapid and effective political successes which they have already obtained. The plan of operation is this: By continued appliances of patronage and threats of disunion, they will keep a majority favorable to these designs in the Senate, where each State has 10 equal representation. Through that majority they will defeat, as they best can, the admission of free States and secure the admission of slave States. Under the protection of the judiciary, they will, on the principle of the Dred Scott case, carry slavery into all the territories of 15 the United States now existing and hereafter to be organized. By the action of the President and the Senate, using the treaty-making power, they will annex foreign slaveholding States. In a favorable conjuncture they will induce Congress to repeal the act of 1808, which prohibits 20 the foreign slave-trade, and so they will import from Africa, at the cost of only twenty dollars a head, slaves enough to fill up the interior of the continent. relatively increasing the number of slave States, they will allow no amendment to the Constitution prejudicial 25 to their interest; and so, having permanently established their power, they expect the federal judiciary to nullify all State laws which shall interfere with internal or 1 foreign commerce in slaves. When the free States shall be sufficiently demoralized to tolerate these designs, they 30 reasonably conclude that slavery will be accepted by those States themselves. I shall not stop to show how speedy or how complete would be the ruin which the accomplishment of these slave-holding schemes would X bring upon the country. For one, I should not remain 35 Thus in the country to test the sad experiment. . . . . . When that evil day shall come, and all further effort at resistance shall be impossible, then, if there be no better hope of redemption than I can now foresee, I shall say with 5 Franklin, while looking abroad over the whole earth for a new and more congenial home, "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." You will tell me that these fears are extravagant and chimerical. I answer, they are so; but they are so only 10 because the designs of the slave-holders must and can be defeated. But it is only the possibility of defeat that renders them so. They cannot be defeated by inactivity. There is no escape from them compatible with nonresistance. How, then, and in what way, shall the 15 necessary resistance be made? There is only one way. The Democratic party must be permanently dislodged from the government. The reason is, that the Democratic party is inextricably committed to the designs of the slave-holders, which I have described. Let me be 20 well understood. I do not charge that the Democratic candidates for public office now before the people are pledged to much less that the Democratic masses who support them really adopt those atrocious and dangerous designs. Candidates may, and generally do, mean 25 to act justly, wisely, and patriotically when they shall be elected; but they become the ministers and servants, not the dictators, of the power which elects them. . . It is not more true that "hell is paved with good intentions," than it is that earth is covered with wrecks 30 resulting from innocent and amiable motives. - The very constitution of the Democratic party commits it to execute all the designs of the slave-holders, whatever they may be. It is not a party of the whole Union — of all the free States and of all the slave States; nor yet is 35 it a party of the free States in the North and in the North-West; but it is a sectional and local party, having practically its seat within the slave States, and counting its constituency.chiefly and almost exclusively there. Of all its representatives in Congress and in the electoral colleges, two-thirds uniformly come from these States. 5 Its great element of strength lies in the vote of the slave-holders, augmented by the representation of threefifths of the slaves. Deprive the Democratic party of this strength, and it would be a helpless and hopeless minority, incapable of continued organization. The Dem- 10 ocratic party, being thus local and sectional, acquires new strength from the admission of every new slave State, and loses relatively by the admission of every new free State into the Union. A party is in one sense a joint stock association, in 15 which those who contribute most direct the action and management of the concern. The slave-holders contributing in an overwhelming proportion to the capital strength of the Democratic party, they necessarily dictate and prescribe its policy. The inevitable caucus system enables 20 them to do so with a show of fairness and justice. If it were possible to conceive for a moment that the Democratic party should disobey the behests of the slave-holders, we should then see a withdrawal of the slave-holders, which would leave the party to perish. The portion of the 25 party which is found in the free States is a mere appendage, convenient to modify its sectional character without impairing its sectional constitution, and is less effective in regulating its movement than the nebulous tail of the comet is in determining the appointed, though apparently 30 eccentric, course of the fiery sphere from which it emanates. To expect the Democratic party to resist slavery and favor freedom, is as unreasonable as to look for Protestant missionaries to the Catholic Propaganda of Rome. 35 The history of the Democratic party commits it to the policy of slavery. It has been the Democratic party and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its present alarming culmination. Without stopping to 5 ascertain critically the origin of the present Democratic party, we may concede its claim to date from the era of good feeling which occurred under the administration of President Monroe. At that time, in this State, and about that time in many others of the free States, the 10 Democratic party deliberately disfranchised the free colored or African citizen, and it has pertinaciously continued this disfranchisement ever since. This was an effective aid to slavery; for, while the slave-holder votes for his slaves against freedom, the freed slave in the free States 15 is prohibited from voting against slavery. . . . [Here follows a review of measures carried or attempted by the Democratic party, from 1824 up to the date of this speech, to show the singleness of the devotion of that party to the support of slavery. The passage closes as follows: -] 20 The Democratic party, finally, has procured from a supreme judiciary, fixed in its interest, a decree that slavery exists by force of the Constitution in every territory of the United States, paramount to all legislative authority either within the territory or residing in 25 Congress. Such is the Democratic party. It has no policy, state or federal, for finance, or trade, or manufacture, or commerce, or education, or internal improvements, or for the protection or even the security of civil or religious lib30 erty. It is positive and uncompromising in the interest of slavery, negative, compromising, and vacillating, in regard to everything else. It boasts its love of equality; and wastes its strength, and even its life, in fortifying the only aristocracy known in the land. It professes fraternity; and, so often as slavery requires, allies itself with proscription. It magnifies itself for conquests in foreign lands; but it sends the national eagle forth always with chains, and not the olive branch, in his fangs. This dark record shows you, fellow citizens, what I 5 was unwilling to announce at an earlier stage of this argument, that of the whole nefarious schedule of slaveholding designs which I have submitted to you, the Democratic party has left only one yet to be consummated the abrogation of the law which forbids the African slave- 10 trade. I think, fellow citizens, that I have shown you that it is high time for the friends of freedom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution, and that their very first duty is to dismiss the Democratic party from the administra- 15 tion of government. Why shall it not be done? I know- few, I think, know better than Ithe resources and energies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the slave power. I do ample justice to its traditional popularity. I know, further 20 few, I think, know better than I—the difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a new political force, like the Republican party, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestige and without patronage. But, understanding all this, I know that the 25 Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise into its place. The Democratic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practised this principle faithfully, it was in- 30 vulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has maintained itself, not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as yet had арpeared in the political field no other party that had 35 |