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THE STATE OF POLITICAL PARTIES THE

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

DELIVERED AT THE FREE SOIL STATE CONVENTION, INDIANAPOLIS. MAY 25, 1853.

[When this speech was delivered the cause of freedom seemed to have reached its darkest days. General Pierce, elected by an overwhelming majority on the Baltimore Finality Platform, had been inaugurated in March previous, and his administration defiantly launched in the interest of the South. The champions of slavery everywhere regarded their cause as finally triumphant, and this was the general feeling of men of all parties who looked only to the surface of events. The directly opposite view of the situation, however, which is here presented and so variously illustrated, has been fully justified by time.]

MR. PRESIDENT, There are many persons who believe that the anti-slavery movement of this country has perished and passed away. They think it has spent its force, lived out its time, and finally been gathered to its place among the defunct humbugs of the world. And whilst they rejoice that the fierce lion of abolitionism has been tamed into subjection, they welcome to their loving embrace the meek lamb of slavery, and thank God that the millennial day of peace, so long and so devoutly prayed for by hunker politicians and doctors of divinity, has at last been ushered in.

Well, my friends, this view of our cause is certainly full of consolation to those who entertain it, and would be full of sorrow to us did we believe it to be true. Let us, during a brief hour, consider it. Let us cast our eye backward over the past and forward into the future, and determine if we may, our present drifting. And allow me to say in the outset, that our judgment in this matter must greatly depend upon the stand-point from which we view it. A genuine, whole-hearted anti-slavery man always believes his cause to be onward. He no more doubts its progress and its triumph than he doubts his own existence, or that of his Maker. He has faith in rectitude, and in the government of the world by a Providence. He believes that justice is omnipotent, and that oppression and crime must perish, because they are opposed to the beneficent ordainments of the universe. He is not blinded or disheartened by the irregular ebb and flow of political currents, or by facts which drift about upon their surface, but he penetrates beneath

it to those great moral tides which underlie, and heave onward, the politics, the religion, and the whole frame-work of society. Abolitionists have often been branded as infidels; but I am acquainted with no body of men since the introduction of Christianity into the earth, who have evinced so strong, so steadfast, and so vital a faith in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

But how different the case of the hardened and unbelieving doughface. He has lost the capacity to discern the truth. His light has been so long hid under the bushel of his party that he can scarcely distinguish it from darkness. He calls evil good, and good evil. His intellect is surfeited with sophistry, and his conscience drugged with compromises. Expediency is the law of his life. Right, with him, is an unmeaning abstraction. He has no faith in the omnipotence of truth. He "hath said in his heart there is no God;" or if he believes in a God, he is not a God of justice, of mercy, of universal love, who is no respecter of persons, but a Being who in his main attributes is less a God than a devil. To him Christianity is a riddle, whatever his professions may be; for he brands as fanatics and infidels those who would reduce its first and plainest teachings to practice, and would crucify the Saviour should He come upon the earth in bodily form. Is such a man fit to judge our movement? Of course he believes it to be constantly declining. No chord of his heart vibrates in harmony with it, no aspiration of his soul after goodness awakens within him a faith in its triumphs. He cannot believe. His mind is so hopelessly fastened in the meshes of error, and so twisted and braided with evil that no ray of moral light can penetrate its dark labyrinths.

We must, then, in prosecuting the inquiry before us, rely upon our own judgment, and prefer our own point of vision. We may err in many particulars; we certainly set up no claim to infallibility; but we believe there is no class of persons outside of our ranks whose minds are freer from blinding influences, and from every weight that can encumber the honest action of the judgment.

In regard to the political phases of our cause two facts are frequently referred to in proof of its rapid decline. The first is, the small vote for Hale last year as compared with the vote for Van Buren four years previous; the second is, the overwhelming majority by which General Pierce was elected to the Presidency. Let . us briefly examine these supposed crumbs of pro-slavery comfort, and see what there is in them. In the year 1848, in the State of New York alone, about one hundred thousand men voted the Free Democratic ticket for President, who before that time never had

been identified with the anti-slavery movement, and never have been identified with it since. They were not Free Soil men, but Van Buren men. They were not actuated by hatred of slavery, but hatred of General Cass, who had been his successful rival. It is obvious that this feeling was not confined to New York, but operated pretty decidedly in all the non-slaveholding States. It seems perfectly fair to suppose that could we eliminate this Van Buren element from the struggle of 1848, and estimate truly the reliable anti-slavery force of that year, the vote of 1852 would show an encouraging increase instead of a rapid decline in our strength. The proper test of truth would be a comparison of the anti-slavery vote of 1844 with that of last year, leaving entirely out of view the deceptive epoch of 1848, and this shows an increase of nearly threefold in the intervening space of eight years.

Nor is the other fact to which I have referred more solacing to the enemies of our movement. Let me ask you how the large majority for General Pierce was occasioned? That he is eminently proslavery, no man doubts. A more abject tool of the peculiar institution probably could not have been selected among all the white slaves that infest our Northern States. This circumstance, too, doubtless gave him many votes. many votes. But it presents one aspect only of the fact I am considering. The other is, that General Scott stood upon a platform which, in all essential particulars, was as objectionable as that of his opponent, and the Whig strength therefore could not be rallied. To their honor be it remembered that thousands of Whigs, notwithstanding their dislike of General Pierce, and their admiration of General Scott, as a man, and notwithstanding the attempted drill of their leaders and the influence of such men as Seward and Greeley, could not be driven into the support of the Finality Platform. The enormous majority of General Pierce therefore, and the dispersion and ruin of the Whig party, are facts which not only admit, but require, an anti-slavery solution. And they are facts which to us are full of encouragement. We should rejoice in the hopeless prostration of one of these parties, and the morbid growth and dropsical condition of the other. And if, as I fully believe, the bolt which has felled whiggery to the earth has penetrated to the "vital parts" of the "cutaneous democracy," we have peculiar reasons to thank God for his mercies. Everybody knows that we have always regarded these organizations as the bulwarks of slavery. The Southern wing of each of them, in every instance, has given law to the whole body, thus rendering it the wicked instrument for the perpetration of every outrage which the

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slave interest has seen fit to demand. To wage unceasing war against them has been considered the clear duty of every friend of the slave. Our cause could never hope to triumph without their overthrow, and our great desire for years past has been to devise some method by which this could be accomplished.

I will not say that their formation, more than twenty years ago, was not an honest work in the main on both sides. Those who believed in a national bank, in high protective duties, in large schemes of internal improvement by the Federal Government, and in the distribution of the proceeds of our public lands, naturally rallied under a common banner, and formed themselves into a party. Those who opposed these measures, and espoused the doctrines to which that opposition gave birth, as naturally formed themselves into another party. Each plead its own existence as a necessity, resulting from the formation of the other. Each held the other in its orbit, whilst both revolved round a common centre of antagonism, which was their spirit and their life. Neither of them therefore was self-subsisting, but each committed its internal dissensions to the guidance of this all-absorbing partisan animosity, which lost sight of everything but the common foe, and nerved it with a vigorous life. It was, however, an animosity founded on principle. There were, as I have said, well-defined issues between them, and each labored earnestly for the success of its cherished doctrines. It was perhaps impossible that these parties should not have been called into being, because they were divided upon the living issues of the time. It is quite as obvious that they could last no longer than the causes which made them necessary continued operative; for party formations must always adapt themselves to the shifting phases of public questions. This we may set down as an axiom. The Whigs, disregarding it, have attempted to lengthen out their life beyond its appointed time. They have tried to live after the original source of their life was withdrawn. As a party, they are unmistakably dead. Horace Greeley affirms it, and the central organ of whiggery at Washington virtually occupies the same position. It is true, there are persons still surviving who style themselves Whigs, and who seem to believe they are such, but their political capital is obviously a mere party cognomen, which now has no other meaning than a certain traditionary reverence which it inspires. Orthodox whiggery, as expounded by its great prophets in its better days, is no more. It belongs to the past; it can only be examined as the fossil remains of a vitality that has become extinct. If any remnant of it survived till the last Baltimore Whig Convention, it was

then and there formally surrendered to the democracy, whilst the spoils alone divided those who were really brethren in principle, and who longed to embrace each other upon the common altar of slavery. Under these circumstances, the rout of the Whig party last year was as natural as had been its original formation. It had fulfilled its mission, surrendered its doctrines, outlived its honor, and for these reasons was consigned by the fates to an ignominious grave.

We have, I repeat, abundant reason to rejoice at this, because if it be a fact, the Democratic party must follow in its footsteps. It has been held together, as I have already shown, far less by any internal principle of cohesion than by an overmastering hatred of the Whigs. This has been the great artery of its life, as its leading politicians well know. And could we extort from them to-day the honest truth, they would tell us they did not intend to beat the Whigs so badly, and make them sick unto death; that they are sorry they have done so; that their own family broils can only be quieted by a concentrated animosity against such a foe as the Whig party; and that they pray for its reorganization, and dread nothing so much as a new party, built upon its ruins, which shall stand unswervingly by the principles of real democracy, and invite, from all quarters, the intelligence and worth of the land. They understand this perfectly. See how the "Washington Union" shudders at the idea that the Whig party is dissolved, and its mission ended; see how it spurns the fraternal words and repels the friendly advances of the Republic! To Free Democrats this is most encouragingly significant. Why, just look at the present attitude of the so-called national democracy, and tell me if there is any bond of union within itself that can atone for the loss of that external pressure which has hitherto hooped it together? There is, I admit, a general harmony in its ranks respecting certain negative and obsolete doctrines, such as opposition to a bank, to land distribution, etc., but is there any real agreement as to more vital questions? Is the party agreed upon the question of tariff or free trade? Is it agreed on the question of internal improvements? Is it agreed upon the question of land reform? Is it agreed as to the doctrine of non-intervention? Are the Democrats of the North and South really agreed on the slavery question? Is there no strife between Old America and Young America, both being prominent members of the same political family? Is there no difference between national democracy and nullifying democracy? Since the old party ear-marks will no longer serve their purpose, what is a Democrat? what is a Democrat? How shall we

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