The Burlington weekly hawk-eye. [volume] (Burlington [Iowa]) 1860-1876, 1863-03-28
= Pc g HI
Hon. GEORGE w. JULIAN,
OF INDIANA, ass
IN the House of Representatives., Feb. l6, 1868.

The triumph Of the Republican party in 1860
VAS the triumph Of freedom over slavery. do
not say that ell who supported Abraham Lin.
colu we're abolitionists, or even anti slavery
men. or thstiall who opposed him were the ad-
locates of slavery. This would be very far from
tbe exact truth. What affirm is, that hos
fifty to slavery was the animating sentiment
Of the men whose deeply rooted convictions
and unauenchable zeal made the formation Of
The Republican party necessity, and nerved
Il with all its real strength chile, on the other
hand, the espousal of slavery was the grand
and darling purpose of those whose shaping
hand and inspiring ambition gave life and law
TO the Democratic organization. 500
Igo further still. The contest Of 1860 was
not simply struggle between slavery and
freedom, but struggle Of life and death. Sla-
very as q system OF unskilled labor, demands
the right of unrestricted extension over fresh
soil as condition of its life This is law of
nature, attested by the Seminole and Florida
war, the seizure Of Texas, the war with Mex,
leo, the repeal OF the Missouri restriction. the
raid Into Kansas, and by its entire history in
this country. Confne it by impossible boun-
dsries, aud it will turn upon and devour its
own life, and destroy both master and slave.
Shareholders understand this perfectly, and
do not marvel that their hostility was not as
suaged IN the smallest degree by the Republic
can dogma of non-interference with it in the
States. They knew that the exclusion of it
from all Federal territory would not only put
the nation s brand upon it in the States which
it scourges, and condemn it as public enemy,
but virtually sentence it to death. They be-
lieved, with our Republican fathers, that re-
sriction means destruction. They knew that
as the first dose Of medicine given to q sick
man forms par: of the whole process of cure,
90 the policy of Limitation, as an incipient
remedy for our great national malady, would
be followed by other measures, moral, econom-
ical, and political, which would ultimately but
surely e1pel it from the country. Hence they
fought Republicanism with all the zeal and
desperation which could be inspired by great
social and moneyed power, threatened with
suffocation and death. They were simply
obeying the law of self preservstion; and l
think it due to frankness to confess that the
charge of "sbolitionism," which they inces-
sanity hurled at the Republican party, was by
no means totally wanting in essential truth. -
When they were vanquished in the election OF
Mr.. Lincoln, their appeal from the ballot to
the bullet, was the logical consequence Of their
insane devotion to slavery, and their conviction
that nothing could save it but the ruin of the
Republic.
Such was the issue decided by the people in
the last Presidential canvass. 1t was the long
postponed battle between slavery and anti
slavery, fairly encountering each other at the
ballot-box. 1t was struggle between two in.
tensely hostile ideas, wrestling for the final
mastery of the Republic. Freedom, through
the Republican party as its instrument, tri-
umphed over slavery, with both wings Of the
Democratic party as its servants and tools; for
the distinction between Breckenridge Democ-
racy and Douglas Democracy was purely meta
physical, and eluded, entirely, the plain COM
mon sense of honest men. -.f. s.s.
Now, sir, l hold that the people of the United
States, who earned and fairly achieved this
great victory, had vested right to its fruits.
They had right to expect the domination of
slavery over the national Government to cease.
They had o right to demand that all its De-
partmenis should be committed to the hands
OF those who believed in the grand idea on
which the Administration assembled to power
Aud the intervention Of the rebellion ia no
degree whatever released the Government from
its duty in this respect. The rebellion did not
retute, but confirmed, the truth of Republican
ism. 1t was simply q final chapter in the his.
tory Of the slave power, an advanced stage of
slavehoiding rapacity, naturally born of Dem.
ocratlc misrule aud instead Of tempting us to
cover before it and surrender our principles,
furnished an overwhelming argument in favor
Of standing by them to the death. u .s4s 3sg3s
do not say that no man who had been iden-
titled with the Democratic party should have
been appointed to Office, but that no man who
regarded with indifference the great principle
which had triumphed in the canvass; no man,
certainly, who was known to be hostile to that
principle, should have been allowed to hold
any Federal Office, high or low, civil or mill
tsry. at home or abroad. This was the duty
of the Administration; for the simple reason
that it could not decline it with fidelity to the
people who had installed it in power. The
Republican principle was as true after the
election as during the CANVASS; as true in the
midst Of war as in seasons of peace; and jDst
so far as We have lost sight of this truth, just
go far have We ssrayed from the path of safety.
Indeed, instead Of putting our principles in
allegiance when the storms Of war came, We
should have chung to them with redoubled
energy and dedicated zeal. Instead of ma
king terms with our vanquished opponents by
conferring upon them Office and power, We
should have taught them that these we're ne
cessarily forfeited in our triumph. And We
should have remembered that even our enc.
mics would brand US as hypocrites and COW
ards, if the Administration should be less dis.
tinctively Republican in principle and policy
than had been the party which created il.
Very nearly allied to the policy OF concilia-
ting our opponents. and thus building up their
power, was the project of Union party, en-.
Outraged by Republican polit clans simulta-
neously with the beginning of this Admins
tration Such a movement, started soon after
heated political canvass involving the issue
OF slavery and anti-slavery, was utterly pre-
posterous. The war grew out Of the very
question which had organized our parties and
narshalled them against each other in time of
peace; and hence, instead of melting and fu.
sing them into one, their lines of division
would be brought out all the more palpably,
and their antagonisms all the more intensified.
1t was incredible that pro.slavery Democracy,
after having been SO thoroughly drugged and
surfeited with the heresies of southern rebels.
should, in the twinkling of an eye, enter into
cordial union with the men it had so long ira
duced. What is now palpable to all men. /
thought obvious in the beginning; that union
of Republicans and Democrats, on the single
question of putting down the rebellion ;gnor.