Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1876-10-13
BLAINE ON ADAMS.
A Discreditable Chapter in the Record
of Sam Bowle's Idol.

BLAINE ON ADAMS.
A Discreditable Chapter in the Record
of Sam Bowle's Idol.
Mr.. Blaine recently made speech
at Cincinnati, in the course of which
he took the hide off Charles Francis
Adams, the Democratic candidate
for Governor of Massachusetts, in the
following manner:
| observe that some political letters
of the Hon. Charles Francis Adams,
the Democratic candidate for Cover
nor of Massachusetts,, are being dis
semlnated through the Associated
Press, and circulated as campaign
tracts by his brother Democrats of
the west In these letters, Mr.. Adj
ans goes out of his way quite gratu-
itously to speak of myself in a tone
that is personally offensive. | have
neither the time nor desire to ex-
change personalities with anyone in
this campaign, but there is avery i'm
portant chapter in the life of Mr..
Adams, which at this time should be
recalled. l commend the facts which
l am about to set forth to those voters
who may be led by the sound of Mr..
Adams name to give heed to his
counsel. l shall speak from the rec
ords and by the records. After the
Republican victory of 1860, which
resulted in the election of Abraham
Lincoln to the Presidency, Mr..
Adams, then a member OF Congress
from Massachusetts,, sought with all
his influence to
DEPRIVE THE COUNTRY OF EVERY
THING THAT HAD BEEN GAINED IN
THE STRUGGLE.
If anything had been settled by
that election, it was that slavery
should be put in the course of ex-
tinction by prohibiting its introduce
tion on free territory, and yetas soon
as the Southern Democrats in Con
gress began their threats of disunion,
Mr.. Adams knees smote with fear,
and his tongue became palsied forany
utterance, except in support of slave
ry His whole course during the
closing session Of the Thirty sixth
Congress intervening between Mr..
Lincoln's election and his Inaugural
ton was one of treason to the cause
of liberty and desertion from the
cause of the Union. He offered every
humllating concession to the South,
agreed to abandon the prohibition
of slavery in the Territories, and, as
a climax of the degrading and dis
honorlng conditions, he offered to
amend the Constitution of the Unit
ed States so as to
RENDER THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
IMPOSSIBLE
so long as single slave State should
object. The amendment so warmly
urged by Mr.. Adams declared in eff
feet that no amendment to the Con-
stitution in any way interfering with
slavery in the States should ever be
even SO much as opposed except by
one of the slave States, and should
not be adopted, except with the con-
sent of every slave State. When
Arkansas applied for admission into
the Union, with constitution which
forever prohibited the Legislature
from touching slavery, except with
the consent of shareholders,
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS DECLARED SUCH
PROVISION TO BE INFAMOUS
beyond the power Of expression, and
yet Charles Francis Adams in 1861,
offered, argued, and entreated, and
pleaded for an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States
which applied to the whole country,
a far more infamous principle than
was contained in the Arkansas con-
stltution of 1886. Every franchise
you enjoy under the Constitution of
the United States-your right tovote,
your freedom of religious opinion,
your trial by jury, your right even to
representation were left open to
change by the ordinary process of
amending the Constitution, but Mr..
Adams proposed to give slavery
a far more sacred guarantee than had
ever been given to liberty, and to
enshrine it as something Of superior
right, placing it beyond the power
of nincty-nine hundredths Of the
people of the United States to abol-
ish it unless a slave State should pro.
pose it and every other slave State
vote for it. There is no parallel to
this in history. No ukase Of Russian
despotism in the darkest days Of
Romanoff tyranny ever so bound its
own hands and placed it beyond its
own power to do mercy and work
righteousness in the future, as Mr..
Adams proposed to bind the hands
of the United States, and deprive our
own government, for all time of the
power to emancipate single slave
so long as one slave State should OBJ
iect.
MIR. ADAMS HAS NEVER FOHGlNEN ABRA-
HAM LINCOLN FOR DEFEATING THIS
ATRoCIoUs MEASURE.
Fortunately by Mr.. Lincoln's silent
influence, exerted from his Illinois
home through Owen Lovejoy, Elihu
Washberne, and other representative
friends in Congress, the odious prop
osition was strangled without even
coming to direct vote, but not un-
til Mr.. Adams had made an elaborate
plea for 1t; and years after Mr.. Lin.
coin had gone to a martyrs grave
grave bedewed with the tears of
millions, including those emancipat-
ed negroes whom Mr.. Adams had
sought to keep in eternal bondage
Mr.. Adams took occasion, in a eulogy
of Mr.. Seward, to depreciate and be-
little and dishonor the grandest man
that has sat in the Presidential chair
since George Washington. Mr..
Adams, in this petty and paltry
course, was seeking an ignoble re-
vehge over the dead patriot who
when living, could never refer to the
constitutional amendment which Mr.
Adams advocated, without chill OF
horror. Mr.. Lincoln indeed often de-