Cedar Falls gazette. [volume] (Cedar Falls, Iowa) 1860-1895, 1860-10-05
once more become the disgraceful trade of the

once more become the disgraceful trade of the
| American flag
Now, all these evils would have happened,
| all this abandonment of the Continent of
North America to slavery, would have hap
pened, and would have been inevitable, had
resistance to it depended alone ON the people
of the original thirteen States. We were al
ready overpowered there. From one end of
the Atlantic States to the other, there were
in 1850, scarcely three States which did not
declare that henceforth they gave up the con-
tract, and that they were willing that the
people of the new territories might have
slavery or freedom, and might come into the
Union as Slave States or as Free States, lust
exactly as they pleased.
When that had happened, what would
have followed? Why, that the people who
had the right to slavery if they pleased, had
the right to get slaves if they pleased. How
then were we saved? 1t seems almost prov
idential, and that these new States of the
Northwest, the State of Michigan, the State
of Wisconsin, the State of Illinois, the State
of Indiana, the State of Ohio, founded on this
reservation for freedom that had been made
in the year 1877, matured just in the critical
moment to interpose, to rally the free States
OF the Atlantic cost, to call them back to their
ancient principles, to nerve them, to sustain
them in the contest at the capital, and to send
their noble and true sons and daughters to
the plains of Kansas, to defend, at the peril
OF their homes, and even of their lives, if
need be, the precious soil which had been
abandoned by the Government to Slavery
from the intrusion of that the greatest evil
that has ever befallen our land. [Applause. I
You matured in the right time. And how
came you to mature? How came you to be
better, wiser than we of the Atlantic States I?
The reason is simple one, perfectly plain
Your soil had never been polluted by the
footsteps of slave. Every foot of ours had
been redeemed from Slavery. You are a
people educated in the love of Freedom, and
to whom the practic, of freedom and Democ-
racy belongs, for every one of you own the
land you cultivate, and no human being that
has ever trodden it has worn the manacles of
slave. Loud applause. And you came
from other regions too. You come from the
South where you know the evils of slavery
You come from Germany and from Ireland,
and from Holland, and from France, and
from Italy, and from all over the face of the
globe, where you have learned by experience
the sufferings which result from aristocracy
and oppression. Applause. And you brought
away from your homes the sentiments, the
education of freemen. You came then lust
at the right moment You came prepared.
You came qualified. You came sent by the
Almighty to rescue this land and the whole
continent from slavery. Did ever man have
a more glorious duty to perform, or more
beneficent destiny before them than the peo-
pie of the Northwestern angle that lies be-
tween the Ohio river, the great Lakes and the
Mississippi? am glad to see that you are
worthy of it, that you appreciate it.
1t does not need that | should stimulate
you by an appeal to your patriotism, to your
love of justice, or to your honor, to perfect
this great work, to persevere in it until you
shall bring the Government of the United
States to stand hereafter as it stood forty
years ago, a tower of freedom, and refuge
for the oppressed of all lands, instead of a
bulwark of slavery. [Applause.] l prefer
rather to deal in what may perhaps be not
less pleasing to you, and that is, to tell you
that the whole of the responsibility rests
henceforth directly or indirectly on the peo-
pie of the northwest. Abandon that respon-
sibility, and slavery extends from the Gulf
of Mexico to the Gulf of st. Lawrence on the
Atlantic coast. There can be no virtue in
commercial and manufacturing communities
to MAINTAIN Democracy, when the Democra-
cy themselves do not want Democracy.-
Laughter. There is no virtue in Pearl
street, in Wall street, in Court street, in
Chestnut street, in any other street of great
commercial cities, that can save the great
Democratic government of ours, when you
cease to uphold it with your intelligent votes
your strong and mighty hands. You must
therefore lead us, as we heretofore reserved
and prepared the way for you. We resign
to you the banner of human rights and hui
man liberty, on this continent, and we bid
you be firm, bold, onward, and then you may
hope that we will be able to follow you-
Loud applause
| have said that you are to have the re-
sponsibility alone. | have shown that we in
the Atlantic Northern States, we are depend
ant ON you. need not tell you that at pres
ent you can expect no effective support or
sympathy in the Atlantic Southern States.
You must demonstrate the wisdom of our
cause by argument, by reason, by the firm
exercise of suffrage in every way in which
the human Judgment can be convinced of
truth and right; you must demonstrate it,
giving line upon line and precept upon pre-
cept, overcoming passion and prejudice and
enmity, with gentleness, with patience, with
loving kindness to your brethren of the Slave
States, until they shall see that the way of
wisdom which you have chosen, is also the
path of peace. [Applause.l The Southwest
are sharers with you of the Northwest in this
great inheritance of Empire. 1t belongs
equally to them and to you. They have
plains as beautiful. They have rivers as no.
BILE. They have all the clements of wealth,
prosperity and power that you have. Still
from them, from Kentucky and Tennessee,
from Missouri and Arkansas, from Alabama
and Mississippi, and Louisiana, you will, for
the present receive no aid OF support but
you will have to maintain your principles in
opposition, although, trust, not in defiance
of them-and that, for the simple reason that
in the great year, 1877, when Mr.. jefferson
proposed that slavery should be excluded in
all the public domain of the United States,
lying southwest, as well as lying northwest,
of the Ohio river, those States had not the
forecast, had not the Judgment, to surrender
the temporary conveniences and advantages
of slavery, and to elect as your ancestors
chose for you, the great system of free labor
They chose slavery, and they have to drag
out, for some years yet, not long, not so long
as some of you will live, but still so long that
they will be drag and weight upon your