The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1872-03-28

men and women; converted them
from things into men and women.
In making them free, it struck down
that proud, naughty, and domineer-
ing aristocracy of the South that
held the doctrine--and proclaimed
it, too--that "capital should own
labor" that the men who toiled for
wages were "the mud.sills of socie-
ty;' that the slavery of workingmen
produced "a class of gentlemen,
who were the substitutes for an order
of nobility" Those were the doc
trines proclaimed in our ears for
forty years by the Calhouns, the Nc
Duties, the Hammonds, the Rhetts,
the Rufins, the Fitzhughs, the Her
schell v. Johnsons, and men of that
class, who laid down the doctrine
boldly everywhere that "slavery
was the normal condition of labor
ing men, black and white" In
emancipating these four and a half
million black men and women we
struck down the power of the own
ers of workingmen and workingwo-
men in this country forever. They
made labor dishonorable in eight
hundred thousand square miles of
the United States, in the sunny
South, as they were wont to call it.
Laboring men from abroad would
not go there to toll; northern labor
ing men would not go there to live;
they would not stand by the side of
the fettered bondmen where labor
was dishonored. But by the steady,
persistent adherence to principle of
the men trained in the faith of or-
position to slavery, who now stand
in the ranks of the Republican par
ty, all this has been changed, so
that to-day the laboring men of
New England can stand up in South
Carolina by the graves of Calhoun,
of McDufie, of Pickens, of the lead
ers of the slave power, who pro-
claimed free society failure--that
free men and women when they
emerged from bondage into freedom
were classed into four subdivisions,
"the hireling, the beggar, the thief,
and the prostitute and "look up
and be proud in the midst of their
toll" We have made labor honor
able, even in the rice swamps of the
Carolinas and Georgia; we have
taken the brand of dishonor from
the brow of labor throughout the
country; and in doing that grand
work we have done more for labor,
for the honor and dignity of labor
ing men, than was ever achieved
by all the parties that arose in this
country from the time the Pilgrims
put their feet upon Plymouth Rock
up to the year 1860. [Applause.l
And that grand and immortal
achievement is not all. We have
opened that eight hundred thousand
square miles to free laboring men;
they can 60 there now, they are 60
ing there now. The German, the
Englishman, the Irishman, the New
England Yankee, the man of the
middle States, of the Northwest,
can go there now, engage in the
mechanic arts, cultivate the soil, and,
in all the pursuits of life, no longer
feel the degradation that rested upon
workingmen when labor was ex-
torted only by the lash. Let the
man who tolls for wages, whether
in the mill, on the farm, or in the
mechanics shop, realize what has
been done during these last dozen
years to lift from toll the badge of
dishonor, and to open the great
South to the free laboring men oil
the world. Let him remember
with grateful heart that he owes II
all, under Providence, to the Repub-
lican party.
The Republican party was brought
especially into being, and won the
victory, when it elected Abraham
Lincoln, to save the magnificent ter.
ritories of the United States to the
free laboring men of our country
their children, and their children'f
children, "while grass shall grow
and water run" 1t saved thai
magnificent territory to freedom
Auction-blocks, bloodhounds, the
lash, chains, manacles, cannot &c
there now. They have sunk dowr
to the place from whence they came
to the bottomless pit, and the
lower deep of the bottomless pit.
The Republican party maintains
the policy of the small farms
against the great plantations. The
Democratic party joined with tht
South on that issue, as it did il
everything and on every issue. W.
passed the homestead bill, ant
James Buchanan vetoed it, and th'
Democratic party supported him il
that veto. The object of that bill
was to save the vast public domain
to landless men, that they nigh
have small farms, rather than tina
a few men might have great planta
tions. We were defeated; but th'
first year the Republican party CAM
into power, in the midst of the strug
gle for national existence, it passed
the homestead bill, and saved tn
public lands to the free laborinI
men of this country forever and for
ever.