The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1872-03-23
stand on the hills of New Hampshire

as tOllng men; men VINO nave TO support
the wives of their bosoms and the children
of their love by manual labor. | call the
earnest attention of these men to this terri
BILE struggle through which we have pass
ed, and to what has been achieved for the
poor toiling men of this country during the
last twelve years. l feel that have the
right to speak for toiling men and to toll
ing men. l was born here in your county
of Strafford. was born in poverty; want
sat by my cradle. l know what it is to ask
mother for bread when she has none to
give 1 left my home at ten years of age
and served an apprenticeship of eleven
years, rece living a months schooling each
year, and at the end of eleven years of hard
work, yoke of oxen and six sheep, which
brought me eighty-four dollars. Eighty
four dollars for eleven years of hard toll
| never spent the amount of one dollar in
money, counting every penny, from the
| time ! was born until | was twenty-one
years of age. know what it is to travel
weary miles and ask my fellow-men to give
me leave to toll.
remember that in October, 1888, walk
ed into your village from my native town,
went through your mills, seeking employ
ment If anybody had offered me nine
dollars a month | should have accepted it
gladly. went to Salmon Falls, l went to
Dover, went to Newmarket, and tried to
get work, without success, and l returned
home footsore and weary, but not discour-
aged. | put my pack on my back and
walked to where I now live, in Massachu-
sets, and learned mechanics trade.
know the hard lot that toiling men have to
endure in this world, and every pulsation
of my heart every conviction of my judy
ment every aspiration of my soul, puts me
on the side of the toling men of my coun-
try--ah, of all countries. I became an
cause the poor bondman was the lowest,
most degraded, and helpless type of man.
hood. An anti-siavery man from convic-
ton is by logical necessity not only the
should own laborers, but the unyielding
friend of the rights Of the SONS and daush
tiers of toll.
Let us see what the Republican party has
done for the laboring men of this country
during the last twelve years. 1t struck the
letters from four and half million labor
ing men and women; converted them from
things into men and women. In making
them free, it struck down that proud,
naughty, and domineering aristocracy OF
the South that held the doctrine-and pro-
claimed it. too-that capital should own
labor:' that the men who toiled for wages
were "the mud slls of society,"" that the
slavery of workingmen produced "a class
of gentlemen, who were the substitutes for
an order of nobility" Those were the
doctrines proclaimed in our ears for forty
years by the Calhouns, the McDutfies, the
Hammonds, the Rhetts, the Ruffins, the
Fitzhughs, the Herschell V. Johnsons, and
men of that class, who laid down the doc
trine boldly everywhere that 50 slavery was
the normal condition of laboring men, black
and white" In emancipating these four
and a half million black men and women,
we struck down the power of the owners of
workingmen and workingwomen in this
country forever. They made labor dishon-
orable in eight hundred thousand square
miles of the United States, in the sunny
South, as they were wont to call it. La
boring men from abroad would not go there
to toll, northern laboring men would not
90 there to live; they would not stand by
the side of the fettered bondman where
labor was dishonored. But the steady,
persistent adherence to principle of the
men trained in the faith of opposition to
slavery, who now stand in the ranks of the
Republican party, all this has been chang
ed, so that to-day the laboring men of New
England can stand up in South Carolina
by the graves of Calhoun, of McDuffie, of
Pickens, of the leaders of the slave power,
who proclaimed free society a failure-that
free men and women when they emerged
from bondage into freedom were classed IN
four subdivisions "the hireling, the beg
gar, the thief, and the prostitute and
look up and be proud i'll the midst of
their TOLL We have made labor honora-
BILE, even in the rice swamps of the Carroll
mas and Georgia; we have taken the brand
of dishonor from the brow of labor through
out the country: and in doing that grand
work we have done more for labor, for the
honor and dignity of laborng men, than
was ever achieved by all the parties that
arose in this country from the time the Pill
grims put their feet upon Plymouth Rock
up to the year 1850. [Applause.l
And that grand and immortal achieve
ment is not all. We have opened that eight
hundred thousand square miles to free
laboring men; they can so there now, they
are going there now. The German, the
Englishman, the Irishman, the New Eng
land Yankee, the man of the middle States
of the Northwest, can go there now, en-
gage in the mechanic arts, cultivate the
soil, and, in all the pursuits of life, no lon
ger feel the degradation that rested upon
workingmen when labor was extorted only
by the lash. Let the man who tolls for
wages, whether in the mill, on the farm, or
in the mechanic 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 of the world. Let him remember with
grateful heart that he owes it all, under
Poyidence, to the Republican party.
The Republican party was brought espe-
cially into being and won the victory, when
it elected Abraham Lincoln to save the
magnificent territories of the United States
to the free laboring men Of our country,
their children, and their children's chill
dren, "while grass shall grow and water
run" II saved thai magnificent territory
to freedom. AuctiGn-blocks, hloodhounds
the lash, chains, manacles, cannot go there
now. They have sunk down to the place
from whence they came--to the bottomless
pit and the lower deep Of the bottomless
pit.