Thibodaux minerva. [volume] (Thibodaux, La.) 18??-1858, 1855-12-15
Dr. r. J. Breckenridge and Senator Seward.

DR.. Breckenridge, of Danville, Ky, has writ
ten a pungent and telling letter to Senator
Seward. We have not space for the whole
letter as VIC find in the New York Daily Times,
but VIC clip few paragraphs which will be read
with interest:
DANyILLR Ky, Nov. 6, 1855.
The DESTINATIONS titles with which you have
hcralded your speech, are not entitled to re-
mark, except as they are thoroughly charac-
teristic, and except as they attempt to enooay
the essence of your thought 90 The Contest and
the Cyisis-YAe Politics Of Justice, Equality and
Freelom-.Speech Of Hon. WM. II. SEWARD, at
tie Greet Republican Neetiay, in Butalo, Oct.
10, 1855" confused struggle for power
between six or seven factions, on the arena OF
New York politics, scarcely deserves to be called
The cri.ts even of Politics, much less of Justice,
Equality and Freedom. Why, Sir, "Eqnaiuy
-Fratern;ty,"-th legend of your friends the
old Jacobns, was briefer, more intense, and less
turgid than yours: and no one, after reading
YOUR speech, can be sure that its being, thus
far. more bloody, makes it less to your liking.
Rhetoric has it's decencies as we'll as statesman
ship: and he who processes his inability to
speak otherwise than "thoughtfully, sincerely,
earnestly" ought to be the last to violate them
all. W
The nature of that e Great Republican Party,"
whose great meeting you addressed, obliges it,
as you declare, to incucate perpetual jealousy
of the increase and extension Of Slavery" and
this instinct, as you point out, has worked al
ways, till now, at length, all its members, under
the pressure of events, disengaged and released
from all other parties, and powerfully organized
in thirteen States, have come together on one
body by their natural affinity, for this specific
object And so there must remain, as you
argue, in the bosom of this Great Republican
Party, "an undying jealousy of the aggrandise-
ment Of Slavery;" Jealousy which you say it
is the very end of the party to ''foster and
direct" in manner "durable, perpetual"
And, pushing this exposition all through the
body of your speech, you arrive at length clear
ly at the conclusion that the dissolution of the
Union is to be braved, and that all appeals
against that catastrophe are to be resented as
insulting threats, which the interests, the
principles, the impulses, the duty, the manhood
of your party oblige it to despise. This, Sir,
is the staple of your "Justice, Equality and
Freedom )" this is your New York Contest and
Crisis: this is your condensed creed-fltrated
of much and various rigmarOle-of your Great
Republican Purity"
will deal with you, Mr.. Seward, more truly
than you have dealt with me, or ever with your
own party. So dealing, demand of you, in
the name Of our common country, was not the
question which you say put to the North, and
which you attempt to evade, q pregnant, a
timely, an honest question? Will you, Sir,-I
repeat the question in your own form of stating
twill you leopard the interests of twenty
five millions Of free, white Americans, bound
together Us we are, for the sake of three or four
millions of African slaves, situated as the slaves
in this country are? So far from stunning the
question or shrinking from it, would to God
that | could 80 utter it that it would fall like
fire into the heart Of every man in this vast
empire, and re-echo through the whole CONT
nent, till the latest posterity should hear the
sound and bless our memory. 1 put the ques
ton to you, not as if were a defender of
Slavery and you its mortal enemy, but put it
as one patriot to another, as one freeman to
another, as one philanthropist to another, as
one philosopher to another, as one American to
another,-above all, as one Christian to another.
And Sir, it is question which nothing but
desperate fanaticism on your side, or desperate
necessity on ours, will ever permit to be ans
wered except in one way. A question which
every American citizen is obliged now, and has
been obliged many times before, and will be
obliged many times hereafter, to answer on the
peril Of his country's glory: question which,
30 put and so answered, has saved the country,
from the commencement of our National ex-
lstence until now, and which trust in God will
save it now.
The exposition of the ethics of Government
ought not to be wholly strange to you; and
there take issue with you-if you mean what
you institute, but shrink from uttering Is it
80, that any conceivable end of government,
much less the grand and immediate ends of it
rs truly held by the American people, demand
that Slavery as it exists amongst us, shall be |
abolished in defiance of the ",celfare," and in
utter disregard of the "safety" of the nation ?
Do you mean that? l SO understand you. |
80 understood Mr.. Summer. That understand |
to be treason against if not under the Constitu-
ton; and, what is worse, treason against the |
country And the end of it must be that the |
North must sweep your "great Republican
Party" into the bosom Of destruction, or we
must settle your ethics of government with the
sword. And, Sir, will add this much more to
what I said to Mr.. Sumner, namely: That if
your party holds your doctrines, the North is
far more deeply interested in abolishing it than
in abolishing Slavery. For no free people on
the face of the earth could endure its permanent
dominion; and no form of government could |
fail to become an intolerable despotism under |
its rule, and no condition of society could escape
hopeless shipwreck in its hands. The safety of
society is the very first condition on which |
society exists. Its soelfare is the second. Your
principles subvert both conditions, by denying
both place in the ethics of Government. # |
you do not mean all this, you have either falsely
stated the principles and aims of your party,
or yon ore ignorant Of the force of the terms
you use, and your personal taunts degenerate |
into mere impertinence.
Why, Sir, do you suppose that it is consistent
with what you are pleased to call the ethics of
or the ethics Of Christianity, or
my conceivable sort Of ethics, which any up
right man can net upon, much less distinctly |
lay down as the basis of his moral character, |
that he should violate the most sacred obliga-
lions as soon as his interest, his convenience, or
his ambition appeared to him to suggest some
as likely to result from such afro
cious villainy! Do you suppose that it consists
with any ethics in the world, except the ethics
Oh tyrants and savages, that the sixteen North
ern states should conspire to degrade and
Cypress the fifteen Southern States, because,
III the hffeen Southern States, a portion of the
population is in a condition of seryitude. which
your great Republican PartyAlocs not like as
we'll as it does the condition Of serv;tnde in
which portion of the population Of the sixteen
Northern States exists!
Why, Sir, would you have us believe that
there is no difference between reneal;ng an ..+