The weekly Ottumwa courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1857-1872, 1860-03-15

hofd your conventions, nominate your candi.
dates, address the people, submit to them.
fully, earnestly, eloquently, all your COM
plants and grievances of northern disloyalty,
oppression, perfidv; keep nothing back,
speak Just as freely and loudly there as you
do here; You will have hospitable welcomes,
and appFeeiating audiences, with ballot-box. :.
es open for all the votes you can win. Arc
you less sectional than this9 Extend to u,
the same privileges, and will engage that
you will very soon have in the South a.
many Republicans as we have Democrats in
the North There is, however. better test
of nationality than the accidental location Of
parties. Our policy sflabor in the terrific
ries was not sectional in the first forty years
of the Republic. Its nature inheres. It
will be national again, during the third forty
years, and forever afterwards It is not
wise and benefcent for us alone or injurious
toyou alone. It's effects are equal, and the
same for us all.
You accuse the Republican party ofulteri-
or and secret designs. How Gun a party that
conats its votes in this land of free specie
aud free press by the hundreds ofthousands,
have any secret designs +? Who is the con-
Jurer, 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 p
But what are these hidden purposes ? You
name only one. That one is to introduce
negro equality among You. Suppose we had
the power to ch,nge your social system, what
warrant have you for supposing that We
should carry negro equality among you p
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 ofwhite men. The laborer
in the Free States, no matter how humble his
occupation, is white man, and he is politi-
cally the equal of his employer. Eighteen Of
of our thirty-three States are Free-Labor.
States. There they are Maine, New Hamp-
shire, Massachusetts,, Vermont, Rhode Island
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn
sylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California and
Oregon. do not array them in contrast
with the capital States I am no assailant Of
States. All of the States are parcels of my
own coantry-the best of them not so wise
and great as am sure it will hereafter be;
the State least developed and perfect 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 offends the whith mans pride p
Throughout the wide world, where is the
State where class and caste are so utterly ex-
tinguished as they are in each and every one
of thems Let the European immigrant, who
avoids the African as if his skin exhaled con.
tagion, 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
intrude, our system on you. We are exclu-
ded justly, wisely and contentedly from ali
political power and responsibility in your
capital States. You are sovereigns on the
subject Of Slavery within your own borders,
as we are on the same subject within our
borders. 1t is we'll and wisely arranged
Use your authority to maintain what system
you please. We are not distrustful of the
result. We have wisely, as we think, excr-
cised ours to protect and perfect the manhood
of the members of the State. The whole
sovereignty upon domestic concerns within
the Union is divided between us by unmis-
taxable boundaries. You have your fifteen
distinct parts; we eighteen parts, equally
distinct. 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 it. If
yours shall be so assailed, in the emergency,
no matter what the cause or the pretext, or
who the foe, we shall defend your sovereign
ty as the eqrivolent of our own. We cannot,
indeed, accept your system of capital
afh hot ho 10
render and subvert our own, which we esteem
to be better. Besides, If we could, what
need for any division into States at all? You
are equally at liberty to reject our system
and its ethics, and to maintain the superiori-
ty ofyour own by all forces of persuasion
and argument. We must, indeed, mutually
discuss both systems All the world discuss
es all systems. Especially must we discuss
them since we haveto decide as nation which
of the two we ought to engraft on the new
and future States growing up in the great
public domain. Discussion, then, being un-
avoidable, what could be more wise than to
conduct it with mutual liberation and in Q
fraternal spirit.
You complain that Republicans discuss
too boldly and directly, when they express
with confidence their belief that the system
oflabor will, in the end, be universally &C
cepted by the capital States acting for them
selves, and In conformity with their own
Constitutions, while they sanction too unre-
servedly books designed to advocate eman,