Charles City intelligencer. [volume] (Charles City, Floyd County, Iowa) 1864-1866, 1864-06-23
Our Representative Men.

Abraham Lincoln, rising steadily
Ivy the elevating power of his abilities
and his political principles-from the
fat-boat to the Presidential Chair, is
a fit representative of the genius of
our free North. Labor, self culture,
great natural sagacity, an an infexi-
BILE integrity, personal and political,
combined with firm conviction of the
righteousness Of freedom and the
wrong of slavery, have placed him,
where he is. He knew them both.
Slavery, by depriving his youth of all
advantages, launched and left him on
fat-boat But that fat-boat bearing
him across the Ohio to free soil, free
dom supplied what slavery had deni-
ed, and bore him steadily mp to the
Presidency. At the South, he would
probably have belonged to the despis.
ed class Of "poor whites" The ener.
giving power Of freedom impels him
onward and upward till he succeeds
to the chair of Washington, jefferson,
Madison, Monroe and jackson, only the
first aud last Of whom, if any of them,
will occupy larger or more admira.
ble place in history than he. When
elected, as he certainly will be, he will
be the first President twice elected
from the. Northern States. 1t is emil
nently fit that he should he such a
representative of the genius of our
free and democratic North, which is
henceforth the country. Andrew
johnson, springing from the same
class of "poor whites /" at the South
has fought his way up against the
aristocratic slaveholding class, step
by step, tooth and nail, asking no ia
vors of the chivalry, and getting few.
er than he asked. He knows what
slavery is. for he has felt ats barb He
fcl: it when journeyman shoemaker
sustaining his mother by working
over his lapstone, he learned his ALPHA
bet by midnight toi!--nevcr having
the opportunity to attend school day
in his life. ~
Having arrived at manhood, and
married, he learned from his wife to
write and "cypher." Still he had no
books, aud with all this assiduity his
education at the South at thirty was
barely what child Of his talents at
the North would have acquired at ten
What had Andy johnson then t.
thank the boosted Southern institu.
tons" for, save for keeping him, up
to his manhood, in intense ignorance
and robbing him of all the light and
joy Of the most precious twenty years
Of his life. He felt the curse. He
knew why every free State had free
schools and every slave State had
none. Since that time he has been a
representative man of the poor whites
Of Tennessee. They recognize him as
ono of themselves, and so far as slav-
cry had left them brains enough to
stand in sympathy with him he led
them. Fighting secession tooth and
nail as he fought the slave aristocra.
cy, for it was but his old enemy in a
new form, the long start which the Sc
cessionists got of the Unionists under
Buchanan's administration enabled
them temporarily to triumph over hin
and drive him from his State. Wher
Fort Donelson opened the State to the
Union armies. he returned, and it was
not long before, fully emancipated
himself from the power and influence
of slavery, he struck the keynote o.
emancipation for all. The extirpatior
OF slavery has now few. if any, more
radical advocates than Andrew John
son, of Tennessee, who, except An.
drew Jackson, from the same Stale, ia
almost, or quite, the only person
sprung from the class of poor whites
whom "Southern institutions have
permitted to rise to prominent nation
al positions of usefulness or honor. q
Why has the Republican party Sc
lected these two men from our vast
population /? Not because of theil
abilities alone, however great they
may be, but because our contest il
one of liberty against slavery, of de
mocracy and equality against aristoc
racy and caste, Of brains agains
blood, of personal worth against frs
family favoritism, Of the laborine
man against the man owner, and we
want to show what freedom does fol
the poor man. We would show tho
world that our enemies build wrongly
and that we build rightly. Therefore
it is that these stones which the false
builders have rejected we have made
the head Of the corner Chiodgt
Tribune.