Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1860-03-08


nothing back speak just as freely and as loud
ly there It's you do here you will have hospi-
table welcomes and approaching audiences,
with ballot boxes open for all the votes you
can win. Are you Jess sectional than this p
Extend to lis the same privileges, and will en-
gage that you will very soon have in the South
as many Republicans as we have Democrats at
the North. There is, however, a better test of
n ationality than the accidental location of par
ties. Our policy of labor in the Territories
was not sectional in the first forty years Of the
Republic Its nature inheres. 1t will be ma
tlonal again during the third forty years, and
forever afterwards. 1t is not wise and benif-
cent for us alone, or injurious to you alone
It's effects are equal, and tue same for us all.
You accuse the Republican party of Interior
and secret designs. How can party that
counts it's votes in this land of free speech and
free press by the hundreds of thousands, have
any secret designs? Who is the conjuror and
where are the hidden springs by which he can
control its uncongregated and widely-dispersed
masses, and direct them to objects unseen and
purposes unavowed. But what are these hid
den purposes You name only one. Tint one
is to introduce negro equality among you
Suppose we had the power to change your So
cial system what warrant have you for sup
posing that we should carry negro equality
among you? We know, and we will show
you, if you will only give heed, that what our
system of labor works out, wherever it works
out anything, is the equality of white men,
The laborer in the free States, no matter how
humble his occupation, is a white man, and he
is politically the equal of his employer
Eighteen out of thirty-three States are free la
Dor States. There they are Maine, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio Michigan, Illinois, Indi-
ana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California
and Oregon. do not array them in contrast
with tie capital States. am no assailant of
States. All of the States are parcels of our
own countryside best of them not 80 wise and
great as am sure it will hereafter be; the
State least developed and perfected among them
all is wiser and better than any foreign State
know. Is it then in any, and in which, OF the
States have named, that negro equality ofends
the white mans pride? Throughout the wide
world, where is the State where class and caste
are so utterly extinguished as they are in each
and every one of them? Let the European
immigrant, who avoids the African as If his
skin exhaled contagion, answer. You find him
always in the State where labor is ever free
Did Washington. Jefferson and Henry, when
they implored you to relinquish your system
and accept the one we have adopted, propose to
sink you down to the level of the African, or
was it their desire to exalt all white men to
common political elevation?
But we do not seek to force, or even to in
trude, our system on you. We are excluded
Justly, wisely, and contentedly, from all poltl-
cal power and responsibility in your capital
States. You are sovereign on the subject of
Slavery within your own borders. 1t is well
and wisely 50 arranged. Use your authority
to maintain what system you please. We are
not distrustful of the result. We have wisely,
as we think, exercised ours to protect and per-
feet the manhood Ct the members of the State.
The whole sovereignty upon domestic concerns
within the Union is divided between us by UNI
mistakable boundaries. You have your fifteen
distinct parts; we eighteen parts, equally dis
tinct. Each must be maintained in order that
the whole may be preserved. If ours shall be
assailed, within or without, by any enemy, or
for any cause. and we shall have need we shall
expect you to defend 1t. II yours shall be so
assailed, in the emergency, no matter what the
cause or the pretcxt, OF who the fOe' we shall
defend your sovereignty as the equivalent OF
our own. We cannot, indeed, accept your Sys-
thin of capital or it's ethics. That would be to
surrender and subyert our own, which we En-
teen to be better. Besides, if we could, what
need for any division into States at all? You
are equally ut liberty to reject our system and
its ethics and to maintain the superiority of
your own by all the forces of persuasion and ar
gument. We must, indeed, mutually discuss
both systems. All the world discusses all sys-
TENS. Especially must we discuss them since
we have to decide as nation which of the tive
we ought to inglatt on the new and future
States growing upin the great public domain.
Discussion then being unavoidable, what could
be more wise than to conduct it with mutual
liberation and in IL fraternal spirit?
You complain that Republicans discourse too
boldly and directly, when they express with
confidence their belief that the system of labor
will, in the end be universally accepted by the
capital States, acting for themselves, and in
conformity with their constitutions, w1lle they
sanction too unreservedly books designed to ad-
vocate emancipation. But surely you can hard
ly expect the Federal Government or the politl-
cal parties of the nation to maintain censor,
ship of the press or of debate. The theory of
our system is, that error of opinion may In all
cases safely be tolerated where reason is left free
to combat it. Will it DO claimed that more OF
moderation and tenderness in debate are exhib-
tied on your side of the great argument than
our own? We all learned our polemics, as
we'll as our principles, from common master
We are sure that we do not, on our side, ex-
coed his lessons and example. Thomas Jeter'
son addressed DIR. Price, an Englishman, con-
corning his treatise on emancipation in Amerl-
Ca, in this fashion:
Southwark of the Chesapeake, your book
| will find hut fa,r rnadnra concnrrino with 1t in