Year: 1860

all the districts and States We represent Tho


people ofthe North are not enemies but frisnds


and brethren Of the South, faithful and true as


IN the days when death deaf his arrows pr :


mlscuously among them ON common battle-


fields of freedom. r.. ...s..s ,.i-,.sfh


we Will not suffer ourselves here TO dwell on


any evidence of a different temper in tne South;


but We shall be content with expressing our


belief that hostility that is not designedly pro-


Yoked, aud that cannot provoke retaliation.y ID


an anomaly that must be traced to casual el-


citements, which cannot perpetuate alienation


A canvass for presidential election, in saIa, 3,


respects more important, perhaps, than a,v


since 1900, has recently begun. The House Of


Representatives was to be organized by q ma


jority, while no party could cast more than,


plurality of votes, The gloom of the late


tragedy in Virginia rested, on the Capitol from


the day when Congress assembled. While the
two great political parties were peacefully, law
] fully and consttutionally, though zealous,y
! conducting the great national issue between
free labor and capital labor for the Tcrritories


to its proper solution, through the trials of the
ballot, operating directly or indirectly on the
various departments Of the Government, band
| of exceptional men, contemptuous equally Of
that great question aud of the parties to tha
controversy, and impatient Of the constitution
: al system which confines the citizens of every


State to political action by suffrage in organ


lied parties within their own borders, inspired
by an enthusiasm peculiar to themselves, aud


exasperated by grievances and wrongs that


some Of them had suffered by inroads of armG,I
propagandists Of Slavery in Kansas, unlawisl


as their own retaliation was, attempted to subj
vert Slavery in Virginia by conspiracy, am
bush, invasion and force. The method We
have adopted, OF appealing to the reason aid
| Judgment Of the people, to be pronounced by
suffrage, is the only one by which free govern
mcnt can be maintained anywhere, and the
only one yet devised which is in harmony
with the spirit Of the Christian religion
While generous and charitable natures will
! probably concede that John Brown and his as-
sociates acted on earnest though fatally erro-
neous convictions, yet all good citizens. will
| nevertheless agree that this attempt to execute
an unlawful purpose in Virginia by invasion,
involving serviIe war, was an act Of sedtioa
and treason, and criminal TO Just the extent
that it affected the public peace, and was deg
tructive Of human happiness and human life. =.
1t is painful reflection that, after so long nu.
experience Of the bcnefcent working OF our sys-
tenn as we have enjoyed, we have had these new
illustrations in Kansas and Virginia OF the ex-f
lstence among US OF class OF men so msguid-
cd and so desperate as to seek to enforce their
peculiar principles by the sword, drawing after
it need for the further illustration by thcir
punishment of that great moral truth, espe-
| cialIy applicable in Republic that they who
take up the sword as weapon of controversy
siall perish by the sword. In the latter ca %,
the lament d deaths of so many citizens slain
from an ambush and by surprise-all the mora
lamentable because they were innocent victims
of frenzy kindled without their agency, in far
distant fires-the deaths even of the offenders
themselves, pitiable, although necessary ard
just, because they acted under delirium, which
blinded their judgements to the real nature of
their criminal enterprise the alarm and con-
sternation naturally awakened throughout the
country, exciting for the moment the fear that
our whole system, with all its securities for life
and liberty, coming to an end-a fear noue
the more endurable because continually aggra-
waited by new chimeras, to which the great
leading event lent an air ofprobabilty surely
all these constituted a sum of public misery
which ought to have satisfied the most morbid
appetite for social horrors, But, as in the case
of the gunpowder plot, and the Salem witch
craft. and the New York colonial negro plot,
SO now. The original actors were swiftly fol-
lowed 10y another and kindred class, who sought
to proong and widen the public distress by at
tempting to direct the Indignation which it had
excited against parties guiltless equally of com
plicity and of sympathy with the offenders.


Posterity will decide in all the recent cases
where political responsibility for public disas-
tiers must fall and posterity will give little
heed to our instructions. 1t was not until the
gloomy reign of Domitian had ended, and lib
erty and virtue had found assured refuge under
the sway of the milder Nerva that the histo-
rian arose whose narrative of that period of ly-
ranny and terror has been accepted by man
kind.


The Republican party being thus vindicated
against the charge of hostility to the South,
which has been offered in excuse for the meu-
aces of unconstitutional resistance in the event
of its success. feel well assured that it will
sustain me in meeting them in the spirit of the
defender of the English commonwealth:


Surely they that shall boast as we do to be
free nation, and having the power, shall not
also have the courage, to remove constitution
ally every Governor, whether he be the supreme
or subordinate, may please their fancy with
ridiculous and painted freedom, fit to cozen
babies, but are indeed, under tyranny and ser
vitude, as wanting that power, which is the
root and source of all liberty, to dispose ofand
economics in the land which God bath given
them, as members of a family in their own home
and free inheritance. Without which mutual
and essential power of free nation, though
bearing high their heads, they can in due es-
teen, he thought no better than slaves and
vassas born in the tenure and occupation oF
another inheriting lord whose government
though not illegal or intolerable, hangs on
them as Il lordly scourge, not as free govern
ment."


The Republican party knows, as the whole
country will ultimately come to understand
that the noblest objects of national life must
perish if that life itself shall be lost and there
fore it will accept the issue rendered. 1t will
take up the word Union, which others are SO
willing to rcnounce, and, combining it with
that other glorious thought, Liberty, which haa
been its inspiration so long, it will move firmly
onward, with the motto inscribed on its bap-
ner, "UNIoN and LIBERTY, come what may, in
victory, as in defeat, in power as out of power,
now and forever"


Ifthe Republican party maintain the Union,
who and what party is to assail il? Only the
Democratic party, for there is no other. win
the Democratic party take up the ASSAULT
The menaces of disunion are made, though not
in its name, get in its behalf 1t must avow
or disavow them. It's silence, thus far, is por-
tentous, but is not alarming. The effect ofthe
intimidation if successful, would be TO continue
the rule of the Democratic party, though mi.
nortv by terror IL certainly ought to