Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1867-08-15
OPENING OF THE CAMPAIGN.
Speech of Gen r B. Hayes. at Leba-
non, August 9th, 1867.

non, august Otn, l6o1.
LINCC In AND THE FATHERS or NATION
AL UNITY AND EQUAL RIGHTS.
President Lincoln began his memoir
able address mt the dedication of the Get
tysburg National Cemetery with these
words:
brought forth on this continent n new nation,
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the pro-
position that all men are created equal.
This was Abraham Lincoln's opinion
Of what was accomplished and what was
meant by the Declaration of Independ-
ence. His idea was that it gave birth
to nation and that it dedicated that
nation to equal rights
Now, so far as the performance of duty
in the present condition of our country
is concerned, "this is the whole law and
the prophets.n The United States are
not a confcderacy of Independent and
sovereign States, bound together by q
mere treaty or compact, but the people
of the United States constitute nation,
having one flag, one history, zone eoun-
try, one constitution, one destiny."-
Whoever seeks to divide this nation into
two sections--into North and South,
or into four sections, according to the
cardinal points of the compass or into
thirty or forty independent sovereignties
is opposed to the nation, and the ma
TONS friends should he opposed to him.
Washington, in his Farewell Address,
says:
The unity of government which constitutes
you one people is also now dear to you. 1t Is
justly so for II is main pillar in the edfice of
your real indepence, the support of your tran
guilty at home, your peace abroad; of your
GSps pSze Of very a Osr sne Of y%H so
which belongs to ou in your national capacity,
must always exalt the Just pride Of patriotism
determinations. With slight shades of differ
ence YOU have the same religion, manners, hab-
its and political principles. You have in COM
mon cause fought an,i-triumphed together; the
independence and liberty, you possess are the
work of Joint counsels and joint efforts-of COM
mon dangers. suflerings and successes.
The sentiment of nationality is the
sentiment of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence; it is the sentiment of the
fathers; it is the sentiment which car
ried us through the war of the Revolu-
ton and through the war of the late re-
bellion, and it is a sentiment which the
people of the United States ought for
ever to cultivate and cherish.
The great idea to which the nation, ac-
cording to Mr.. Lincoln, was dedicated
by the fathers is expressed in the Declara-
tion in these familiar phrases: "We hold
these truths to he self-evident, that all
men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights governments
are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the gov
erned."
An intelligent audience will not wish
to hear discussion as TO the import of
these sentences. Theirlanguage issimple,
their meaning plain and their truth un-
doubted. The equality declared by the
fathers was not an equality OF beauty, of
physical strength, or of intellect, but an
eyUolHyof rights. Foolish attempts have
been made by those who hate the prin-
ciples of the fathers to destroy the great
fundamental truth of the Declaration by
limiting the application of the phrase
sail men, to the men of Il single race.
But Jeftersons original draft Of the
Declaration leaves no room to doubt what
he meant by these words. The gravest
charge he made against the Kingof Great
Britain in the original draft of the Decla-
ration of independence, was the follow
ing:
He has waged cruel war against human nature
itself, violating its most sacled rights of life and
liberty in the persons of n distant people who
never offended him, capturing and carrying
them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to
incur miserable death in their transportation
thither. This piratcal warfare, the opprobrium
of ilfdeL Powers IL the warfare of the Christian
/ King of Great Britain, dctcrmincd to keep open
market where MEN should be bought and sold.
In this sentence the word 'men" is
written by Jefferson in capital letters,
showing with what emphasis he wished
to declare that the King of Great Britain
was making slaves of people to whom
belonged the rights of men. ..,
SLAVERY HOSTILE TO UNION.
Unfortunately for our country that
King and others who 'waged cruel war
against human nature itself" had al
ready succeeded in planting in the bosom
of American society an element i'm
placably hostile to human rights, and
destined to become the enemy of the
Union whenever the American people in
their national capacity should refuse as
sent to any measures which the holders
of slaves should deem necessary, or even
important for the security or prosperity
of their "peculia
need not, upon this occasion, repeat
what is now familiar history, how, by
the invention of the cotton gin, and the
consequent enormous increase of the
cotton crop, slave labor in the cotton
States, and slave breeding in the North
ern slave States, became so profitable
that the Shareholders were able, for many
years, largely 10 lllliueuce, III llOI cOnlTOl,
every department of the National Gov
ernment. The slave power became some-
thing more than phrase-it was a de-
finite, established, appalling fact. The
Missouri controversy, South Carolina
notification, the Texas controversy, the
adoption of the compromise measures of
1850, and the repeal of the Missouri COM
promise in 1854, were all occasions when
the country was compelled to see the
magnitude, the energy, the recklessness,
and the arrogance of the slave power.
Precisely when the men who welded
that power determined to destroy the
Union 1t is not now necessary to inquire.
Threats of disunion were made in the
first Congress that assembled under the
Constitution. Upon various preteXts
they were repeated from time to time,
and no one doubts that slavery was at
the bottom of them. In 1888 General
jackson wrote to Rev. A. ]. Crawford |:
"Take care of your nullifiers; you have
them among you; let them meet with
the indignant frown of every man who
loves his country. The tariff, it is now
known, was mere preteXt, \
and disunion and Southern Confeder-
aey the real object. The next pretext
will he the negro or slavery question: