The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1857-02-05

and the spotted leopard INTO tne Sneep-Ioiu
They certainly will not die of hunger there, MOI
retire from disgust with safety. They will re-
main there so long as renewed appetite shall find
| multiplied prey Be not self-deceived. When
ever property class of any kind is invited by
| society to Cypress, it will continue to Cypress
| Whenever a slaveholding class finds the non-
slaveholding classes yielding, it will continue its
work of subjugation.
| People of Michigan, know full well that il
seems ungracious in me to dwell on this painful
theme. 1t is not such an acknowledgment Of
your manifold Inequalities as you expected. II
is hard for the weary mariner to look steadily
on the newlv-revealed rocks towards which be
has too long been carelessly drifting 1t is not
easy for the prodigal to look with contentment
on the rags and husks which meet him as he
retres from the house of his harlotry. Never
theless, there is no way Of escaping any immi-
nent danger, without first calmly and steadily
looking it fully in the face, and ascertaining its
real nature and magnitude.
Here again you will deny the justice of my
parallels-you will claim to be merely innocent
and unfortunate, and will upbraid the slave
holding class as the builders of this impending
ruin. But you cannot escape so. The fault is
not at all with that class, but with yourselves.
The shareholders only act according to their
constitutions, education, and training 1t is the
non-slaveholding classes in the free States who
to their own instincts and impulses, and even
to their own true interests. Who taught the
| slaveholding class that Freedom, which could not
be wholly conquered at once, could be yielded
in successive halves by successive compromises
Who taught the slavehoding class the specious
theories of Non-intervention and Popular Sove-
| reignty, and the absolute obligation of tyran-
| nical laws enacted by armed usurpaton? Your
own Cass, and Douglas, and Pierce, and Blu
81, H. I'D
and Buchanan, at Washington, and gave them
the power to march their slaveholding armies
into Kansas? The non-slaveholding society in
the free States, and portion of that society
more willingly and more recklessly than you,
| the People of Michigan.
You admit all this, and you ask how are
these great evils, now apparent, to be cor
rected-these great dangers, now so manifest, to
be avoided L answer, it is to be done, not as
some of you have supposed, by heated debates
sustained by rifles or revolvers at Washington,
nor yet by sending armies with supplies and
Sharpes rifles into Kansas. / condemn no neces-
sary exercise Of the right Of self defence, any
where. Public safety is necessary to the practice
of the real duties of champions of Freedom.
But this is contest in which the race is not to
the physically swift nor the battle to those who
have most muscular strength Least of all is it
to be won by retaliation and revenge. The VIC
tory will be to those who shall practice the high
est moral courage, with simple fidelity to the
principles of humanity and justice. Notwith-
standing all the herosm of your champions in
Washington and Kansas, the contest will be
fearfully endangered, if the slaveholding class
shall win the President and the Congress in this
great National Canvass. Even although every
one Of these champions should perish in his
proper field, yet the Rights of Man will be saved,
and the tide of oppression will be rolled back
from our Northern plains, if President and a
Congress shall be chosen who are true to Freedom.
The People, and the People only, are sovereign
and irresistible, whether they will the ascendency
of Slavery or the triumph of Liberty.
Harsh as my words may have seemed, do
my kinnsmen and brethren of the free States no
such injustice AS to deny that great allowances
to be made for the decentralization have de-
scribed. We inherited completely with the
slaveholding class, and with it prejudices of
caste. We inherited confidence and affection
towards our Southern beforehand with these
our political organizations, and profound rever-
ence for political authorities all adverse to the
needful discussion of Slavery. Above all, we
inherited fear of the dissolution of the Union,
which can only be unwholesome when it ceases
equally to affect the conduct Of all the great par
ties to that sacred compact. All these inherit
ances have created influences upon our political
conduct, which rather to be depored than
condemned. trust that at last these influences
are about to cease. trust so, because, five have
inherited the Generalization of Slavery, we have
also attained the virtue required for emancipa-
ton. If we have inherited prejudiccs of caste,
we have also risen to the knowledge that polit-
cal safety is dependent On the rendering of equal
and exact justice to all men. And if we have
suffered our love for the Union to be abused so
as to make us tolerate the evils that more than
all others endanger it, we have discerned that
great error at last If we should see a citizen
who had erected noble edice, sit down inact-
lively in its hall, avoiding all duty and enter
prise, lest he might provoke enemies to pull it
down over his head or one who had built ma
jestic vessel, moor it to the wharf, through fear
that he might peradventure run it upon the
rocks, we should condemn his faulty any folly.
We have learned at last that the American peo-
pie labor not only under the responsibility of
preserving this Union, but also under the re-
sponsibility OF making it subserve the advance
ment of Justice and Humanity, and that neglect
of this last responsibility involves the chief peril
to which the Union itself is exposed.
shall waste little time on the newly-invented
apologies for continued decentralization The
question now to be decided is, whether a slave
holding class exclusively shall govern Amer-
ca, or whether it shall Only bear divided sway
with on-slaveholding citizens. IL concerns all
persons equally, whether they are Protestants or
Catholics, native-born or exotic citizens And
therefore it seems to me that this is no time for
trials of strength between the native-born and
the adopted freemen, or between any two
branches of one common Christian brother
hood.
AS little shall dwell on merely personal par
tialties or prejudices affecting the candidates
for public trusts. Each fifty personates the
cause he represents Beyond q doubt, Mr. Bu-
chanan is faithful to the slaveholding class. as
Mr.. Fillmore vacillates between it and its on
ponents. | know Mr.. Fremont well and when
say that ] know that he combines extraordi-
nary genius and unquestionable sincerity of
purpose with unusual modesty am sure that
you will admit that he is true representative
of the Cause of Freedom.
Discarding sectionalism, and loving nv conn
try and all its parts, and bearing an affection
even to the slaveholding class none the less
sincere because it repels me, | cordially adopt
the motto which it too often hangs out to delude
us. l know no North, no South no East, and
no West; for ] know that he who wouId offer
an acceptable sacrifice in the present crisis must
conform himself to the divine instructions, that
neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem.
shall we worship the Father; but the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true wOrshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
Last of all, | stop not to argue with those
who decry agitation and extol conservatism, not
knowing that conservatism is of two kinds-that
one which, yielding to cowardly fear of present
Inconvenience or danger, covers even political
ieprosy with protecting folds and that other
and better conservatism, that heals, in order that
the body of the Commonwealth may be health
full and immortal
fellow-ctizens, am aware that have spo-
zen with seriousness amounting to solemnity
Do not infer from thence that am Respondent
or distrustful OF present triumph and ultimate
regeneration. 1t has required strong pressure
upon the handspring of the public virtue to
awaken its elasticit,r S.,aL .,-.A...A l. - Il.