Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1860-03-15
Fhe RepuBlIean Party in N1issOurt,

| Republican State ComnIittee of Missouri
10 order. on Saturday, made the following
speech: i
call to order, this morning, the first Re
publican Convention which has assembled
in any Slave State. In doing so permit
me to say that party which has inscribed
upon its banner. freedom-Diviuc Freedom
thus taking to itself organization, is
viudicated in advance; for wide must be
the departure from the accredited mission
| of our Federal Government, and great The
peril to those liberties which illuminate
| citizenship, when millions of men all over
the land deem it necessary to make the
re-assertion of that Freedom the initial
roiut of their combination, and the en-
crossing theme of their thought. Let US,
then, in all honor, and with pure patriot
ism, approach that work.
You who come together from remote
sections of this Commonwealth, have at
least one attribute that must make notice
able your action here; which is, that you
dwell in the very presence of the ills you
! deprecate, and have it at heart to work
out practical, and not merely theoreti-
| cal reform. Limitations upon settlement,
migration labor, that assumes national
Importance when affecting only remote
territories with you, cripple the industries
| that constitute support. Questions, Pestilent
questions, that have been vainly banished
4 from the halls of Congress, nestle at your
| frcsides. In education, in social life, in
religious worship, in the toll of the field
and the shop, you have experience of that
discrimination, against the yoeman and
in favor OF the serf, which it is now widely
1 endeavored to establish as the denomina-
ting policy of the United States. You
know that the conflict between free and
slave labor is an "irrepressiblc conflict"
that no citizen who has to compete with
the s.chattel" at the plow, the loom, or the
anvil, but feels its truth, and that they
only deny it and gloss the lie who are of
or belong to the slave system. l have
faith, therefore, that when you come TO
deliberate on matters of national concern
ment, and to form an integral portion of
that great party which has assumed the
the task of withdrawing the general gov
ernment from its cOmmittals and active
agency in behalf of the spread of slavery,
you will he animated by sympathy wide
as the common country, and yet control
led by forbearGnce due to the rightful
separation of State and Federal Sover-
eighty.
In these times which have perplexed
good men with so many threats levelled at
the Union of the States, it will be well,
furthermore to reflect that it is the same
sinister and unnatural policy in behalf of
the geographical limitation of free men,
and the indefinite expansion CT slave SOIL
! which breathes the spirit of revolt. 1t is
in one Interest, and that an aggressive in
terest, that disunioun finds favor. 1t is
with one party only-and that the party
in power-that such ideas have been en-
couraged for party purposes. Predicated
upon dovition to the slave system, both
for States and Territories, such policy
10 chi hiafl,
who are in that interest or persuasion;
and while the large body of the people of
the United States arc hostile to all such
projects, vet it will devolve more immedi-
atcly upon the free laboring men of the
slave States to encounter the heresy Mt
home, strip it of the Importance that would
attach to it when coupled with State en-
dorsemcnt, and to unmask in every town.
ship treason that owes its federation
solely to a cunning duplicity as to its own
ends, comb ned with exaggerated false
hoods as to the purposes of others. 1t is
primarily the work of the Republicans of
the slave States to save this Union, by
Ovidencing the falsehOod of those cnlum-
MICS used TO excite sectional discord, and
by firmness in indicating their own citizen
rights as the essential of any Democratic
Government. These sentiments know to
TIC prevalent with you in this, the inccp-
ton of State ard national canvass, and
! trust your practical association may COM
Npass their full realization.
They who affirm that the party, which
Won here to-day organize i'll Missouri, has
only its vitality in the sO.cAllcd NEGRO
question" better know, or else blindly ig-
more the more perilOus aspects of the sup
preston of free principle, now going on in
the Republic. We have seen so much leg
islation affecting the slave race borne with
indifference by the nation, that it may be
we'll doubted whether any direct action on
that behalf, even TO the revival of the
slave trade, would produce crisis in our
history and politics. But when the con-
| fict becomes palpnble, as in the occupa-
ton Of new fields of labor, there is touch
ed that sensitive pulse which warns to re-
| dress. Still more when tue attendant issues
| provoked by a militant slave PopaGanda,
| involve the rights offree citizenship in one
| hulf Of the free states, then does the peril
arise of a serious conflict inSolvinG, the in
tegrity of the nation. That Federal gov
ernment which cannot, or will not, protect
its citizens in the rights of speech, of DOM
| icil, and of intercourse, as efectually IN
| Charleston as in Vienna-its citizens of
one ancestry or nativity as fully as of an
other that government say, is imbecile
or corrupt, and offers a premium for its
! own dissolution. 1t is to cover the broad
ground of protection to American citizens,
in all the gifts guaranteed them by the con-
stitution in all the states of the Union,
that the Republican party has been called
into being. The present. peril of this hour
consists chiefly, ms believe, in. the in
sensibility of the Federal Government, de-
bauched as it has been by the party in
power, to the rights ofcitizens in the sew
eral sections. If this be not remedied it
will lead to State intervention, ;reprisal,
and non-intercourse, the fruitful fountains
! of civil feud.