Year: 1860

that we repel you by some wrong principle


or practice. FIVE do repel you by any
wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours;
but this brings you TO where you ought to
have started-to discussion of the right or


wrong of our principle. If our principle, put


in practice, would wrong your section for the


benefit of ours, or for any other object, then


our principle, and we with it. are sectional,


and are justly opposed and denounced as


such. Meet US, then, on the question of


whether our principle, put in practice, would


wrong your section; and so meet ii as if it
were possible that something may be said on


our side. Do you accept the challenge? No !?
! Then you really believe that the principle


which our fathers who framed the Gov


ernment undet which we live. thought 80
clearly right as to ADOPT il, and indorse it
! again and again, upon their official oathS,
, is, in fact, so clearly wrong as to demand
/ your condemnation without moments con-
| sideration,


wAsTISGTON's FAREWELL ADDRESS.


| Some of you delight to flauHt in our faces
the warning against sectional parties given
/ by Washington in his farewell Address Less


than eight years before Washington gave
, that warning, he had, as President of the
/ United States, approved and signed an act of
Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery
! in the North Western Territory, which act


embodied the policy of the Government up


on that. subject, up to and at the very mo-


ment h penned that warning; and about
me year after he penned it he wrote La Fay


cite that he considered that prohibition a
vice measure, expressing in the same con-
nccton his hope that we should sometime


have a confederacy of free States. Bearing
this in mind and seeing that sectionalism has
since arisen upon this same subject, is that


warning weapon in your hands against us.


or in our hands against you? Could Wash
ington himself speak, would he cast the blame
! of that Sectionalism upon Us, who sustain his
policy, or upon You, who repudiate it? We
respect that warning of Washington, and we
! commend it to YOU, together with his exam.
pie pointing to the right application of it.


WHO ARE THE CoNsERvAT ATIvES?


Bat you SAY you are conservative
eminently conservative-while we are rcvo-
/ lutionarv, destructive or something of the
sort. What is conservatism? Is it not ad-
| herenca to the Old and tried against the new
and uaited? We stick to, contend for the
identical old policy on the point in controversy


which was adopted by our fathers who franz
cI the Government under which we live {;
( while you with one accord reject, and scout
and spit upon that old policy, and insist un-
on substituting something new. Trna, Won
! disagree among yourselves as to what that
| substitute shall be- You have considerable
variety Of new propositions and plans, but
/ YOU are manimous in rejecting and denounc-
/ inT the old policy of the fathers Some of
! you are for reviving the foreign slave trade
| some for Congressional slave code for the
/ Territories some for Congress forbidding
/ the Territories to prohibit slavery within
their limits; some for maintaining slavery
in the Territories through the Judiciary
some for thr "gur-reat pur-rincipe' that "if


ono man would enSlave another, no third


man should object" fantastically called
popular Sovereignty but never a man
among you in favor of Federal prohibition of
I slavery in Federal Territories. according to
| the practice of our fathers who framed the
I Government under which we live Not one
of all your various plans can show prece-
| dent or an advocate in the century within
/ which our government originated. Consid-
| er, then, whether your claim of conserva-
! tism for yourselves, and your charge of dcs-
! tructivenesS against us, are based on the
most clear and stable foundations.


/ WHO MAKES THE SLAVERY QUESTION PROMINENT
! Again, you say we have made the slavery
! question more prominent than it formerly


was. We deny It, We admit that it is


more prominent, but we deny that we made


it so. 1t was not we, but you, who discard


ell the old poticy of the fathers. We resisted


and still resist, your innovation; and thence
comes the greater prominece of the question.
/ Would you have that question reduced to its
former proportions Go back to that old
policy. What has been will be again. un-


der the same conditions. you would have


the peace of the old times, re-adopt the pre-


cepts and policy ofthe old times.


| ABOUT INSTRUCTIONS AND JOHN BROWN.


| You charge that we stir up insurrectionS
among your slaves. We deny it; AMI what


is your proof? Harper's Ferry John


Brown!l John Brown was no Republican /;


and you have failed to implicate a single Re-


publican in his lIarper's Ferry enterprise. IL


any member of our party is guilty in that


matter, you know it or yo,s do not know it.


If you do know it, you are inexcusable to not


designate the man and prove the fact. If
! You do not know it, you are ineycuSable to


assert it, and especially to persist in the as


sertion after YOU have tried and failed to


make the proof You need not be told thai


persisting in charge which one does rnt


know to be true, is simply malicious Sian


Some of You admit that no Republican de-


signedly aided or encouraged the Harper


Ferry affair; but still insists that our doc