I I
A
SPEECH
OP THE
HON. WILLIAM B.
THE PRESIDENTIAL QUESTION.
0 ATIOA  J)DELIVERED BEFORE THIB  -
NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION.
Philadelphia, September 4, 1860.
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REED,
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THE PRESIDENTIAL QUESTION.
FELLOW-CITIZENS:     I'learn that one of the newspapers which favours the election of Mr. Lin  coin, has lately uttered a sort of challenge, or taunt, or conjecture, as to the
silence, thus far, of those whom it calls the " Breckinridge leaders" in this
city, and that I am, by name, appealed to as one of them. While I dis  claim any such distinction, I have no disposition to conceal my opinions;
and have come here to-night so far to repel the taunt as to try to show
in a few precise, and, I hope, inoffensive words, why I think, and wish
others to think, especially the citizens of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia,
that it will conduce to our social and political well-beingi and to our mate  rial interests-to which none are insensible-that Mr. Breckinridge should
be elected President.   I do not come to counsel, for I have no right to do
so; but I have some practical suggestions to make, which, I trust, may be
listened to.
In a political atmosphere, heated as ours is, it is difficult to speak without
offence; but I shall endeavour to do so. The danger just now don't seem to
be of talking unkindly of our legitimate adversaries. It is in another direc  tion; and in that direction, if possible, I do not mean to be led or driven.
I have no words of offence to utter, and I regret that others have, as to
Judge Douglas. My personal relations to him and his, though very slight,
have always been friendly and respectful. I was absent from the country,
too far away to be reached by the asperities of our politics when those
difficulties occurred which seem to have alienated Mr. Douglas from the
Democratic party.  I listened to his last and most elaborate speech in the
Senate in vindication of his opinions, if without conviction, certainly with
interest. But here in candour I am obliged to stop; for when I see the
course of his organ here, and of many of his friends,-when I read their
;,bitter vituperation (for the word is not too strong) of all who differ from
them, -when I see that they have imported speakers as if for the special
purpose of defaming Pennsylvania men,-when the President, in one speech,
is likened to Tiberius, and his approaching retirement compared with the
infamies of Capree;  and in another (I refer to a revised report of Mr.
Foote's late speech at Harrisburg), the Attorney-General of the United
States, a man against v hose private and public character no whisper of
<reproach was ever uttered, is denounced by name,-when  such men, our
i own fellow-citizens, are thus, in violation of common decency, defamed  by
->Judge Douglas's leading friends, I beg to be excused from the association,
: or for thinking any political end of value enough to be gained or sought by
such means.
Our other friends or adversaries-for I really hardly know which to call
them-across the street, the Bell and Everett men, are entitled to great
consideration. Theirs is the unquestioned merit that they claim to be, in
organization, in aim, and in policy, national. No more national men live
than Mr. Ingersoll, who is a recognized leader here, and Judge King, and
Mr..Fuller. I have been too long a reader of Whig newspapers not to do
justice to John Bell.  Mr. Everett's record is that of a thoroughly national
; man.  Years ago, in 1826, he said in a speech in Congress, that in the event
of a servile insurrection, though no soldier, he would shoulder his musket
and fight for the rights of the South; and for this sentiment he has been
the mark of Abolition ribaldry ever since.   Mr. Crittenden voted in the
Senate for Mr. Davis's resolutions on the territorial question, which is the
Breckinridge platform. Towards these gentlemen, and their principles, so
far as they have been made known, we all have a respectful feeling, which
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I should be sorry to have checked by foolish letters or foolish speeches,
imputing sectionalism to Mr. Breckinridge. They know better. Such defamation is not worthy the lips of gentlemen and men of sense.
We have no bids to make to the Bell and Everett party. We don't insult
them by threats. Had it not been for the division that has been created in the
Democratic ranks, we might have seen, before this, a great conservative combination, which would have wrested even New England from its thraldom,
and struck Abolition a triumphant blow, even in its heart of Massachusetts.
The "solid men of Boston," to whom Mr. Seward made his recent appeal, are
national men. They were Mr. Webster's friends when Mr. Seward opposed
him. They are Mr. Everett's friends now, when Mr. Seward comes, and
almost within earshot of Mr. Everett's house, defies him. I believe the national
sentiment of the country will yet awaken to the necessity of combined and
effective action. Hlow, or by what means, I do not pretend to say. It may
be at the last moment,-it may be on the very edge of the final contest.
No one ought to say a word to render it impossible. No one ought to be
restless and fidgety in promoting it.  If it does happen, depend on it, a
great element of its successful action will be the organized Democracy of
Pennsylvania,-the  friends in every county of Breckinridge and Lane.  Its
integrity must be respected.  It will be time enough when, by the spontaneous co-operation of patriotic men throughout the commonwealth, Mr.
Foster shall be elected Governor, as he easily can be.
So much for side issues, which I am sorry to have to talk about, but
which it would be mere affectation to ignore. Now, for the common enemy.
Of Mr. Lincoln, whose election I consider full of threatened evil to the
Union and to Pennsylvania, I have no reason to speak, but with due personal consideration. It is very much in his favour that he was nominated
at Chicago and is now recommended to the people, as a concession to the
moderation of the country, and that his nomination was effected by the
revolt of Pennsylvania against the dictation of New York. The New York
politicians pooh-poohed Pennsylvania candidates, and Pennsylvania plucked
up spirit      enough to pu nish New York by nominating Mr. Li ncoln,  and then
New York returned the compliment, by giving us a free-trade, free-soil
Vice- President in Mr. Hamlin. Whether Pennsylvania will be further
punished in the long run, for her independence, I do not pretend to say.
Time, in fact, can only determine, whether, for what she dared to do, Pennsylvania is to be so rewarded or so insulted, but I confess I like Mr.
Lincoln all the better, because at this risk, he was the nominee of Pennsylvania. I am quite aware that another solution has been given to this result,
and that high authority maybe cited to show that Mr. Seward was defeated
for other reasons than his unpopularity in Pennsylvania. In the "New
York Evening Post" of May 23, edited by Mr. Bryant, now a Republican
elector, I find this passage:
"But there was another cause of Mr. Seward's failure, which does not appear from any
part of the proceedings of the Convention, and which yet was more potent than any other.
It deserves to be plainly stated for the instruction of men in public life. Mr. Seward lost
the nomination through the misconduct of some of his warmest and oldest friends. Our
readers are not now to hear for the first time of the shamelessly corrupt conduct of the New
York Legislature, both during the past winter and the winter previous, with a Republican
majority in both branches.  Nothing could have happened more injurious to the prospects
of Mr. Seward than the almost open venality on one side and no less shameless subornation
of venality on the other among many of those who claimed to be the most zealous political
friends of Mr. Seward. Thousands of men who were friendly to Mr. Seward's nomination
a year since were thrown into the utmost consternation by these enormities, and asked
whether, in case of Mr. Seward's election to the Presidency, all this corruptiQn was to be
transferred to Washington.   His personal integrity they did not allow themselves to
question, but they felt the strongest distrust, to use the mildest term, of those who were
to go into office with him. To the strength of this feeling, and to its contagion, spreading 
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beyond the State, Mr. Seward's failure is owing. Had our legislature but conducted itself
with ordinary propriety during the two last winters, he would have been at this moment
the Republican candidate for the Presidency."
All this may be so, but I am content'with the other reason. Either is
quite enough.
But grave objections to Mr. Lincoln have been revealed since his nomi  nation, to which, without personal disparagement, I beg leave to call your
attention.  Since the Convention at Chicago, Mr. Lincoln, with one excep  tion, has maintained a resolute and prudent silence. The discussion with
Judge Douglas in their canvass was characterized on his part by frankness
and ability, and in the presence of a wary antagonist ready to take advan  tage of any indiscretion, by moderation. Little more than a year ago he
wrote a letter, in which he was betrayed into language, which, though not
very'precise, and a little ambitious, was ominous. It was this: "This is
a world of compensations, and he who would be no slave, must consent to
have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for them  selves, and under a just God, cannot long retain it." It is not easy to say
what this means, but it has an ugly look. Since his nomination, Mr.
Lincoln has spoken once, and once too often. I refer to his speech at
Springfield, about four weeks ago, which was the more significant, as he
appears to have been taken by surprise, and to have spoken out, under an
impulse, his inner thoughts. There is, I believe, a religious sect, called
"Progressive Friends,"-so, in politics, there are progressive Republicans,
and to this class it would seem Mr. Lincoln belongs. I infer this from his
speech, which either means this, or means nothing. His language was:
"My friends, you will fight for this cause, four years hence, as you now
fight for it, and even stronger than you now fight for it, though I may be
(lead and gone." Now, in all candour, I ask, what does this mean?-what
does Mr. Lincoln mean by an adjourned or continued conflict, by his
"stronger fight" hereafter.  Does it mean there is to be no repose, no
settlement, no finality, under his administration?  The "fight" is to go on nay, it is to be " stronger" then than now. Not content with the victory
of a compact North, over the stricken and insulted South, the arms are not
to be laid aside,-the array is not to be broken,' the entrenched camp is
not to be dismantled,-peace and conciliation are not even hinted at. Domestic slavery, driven by a triumphant executive and congressional majority,
from the territories, is to be beleaguered in the States.  It is to exist by
sufferance,-it is to be destroyed by compression, and the varnished, plausible, and deceptive Republicanism of 1860 is to become the aggressive Abolitionism of 1864. So says Mr. Lincoln, if his language has any meaning,
or be anything but the clumsiest rhetoric.
Such was the utterance- Dno doubt the unguarded and genuine utterance,
in the West, at Springfield, Mr. Lincoln's home, on the 9th of last month,
August.  This was, if I mistake not, on the Thursday of one week, on
which day, or thereabouts, Mr. Seward sets out to look after Judge Douglas,
in New England, and arrived in Boston, on Monday the 13th, and then and
there, as I have said, close to Edward Everett's home, as if in insult and
defiance, he reproduces his doctrine of " irrepressible conflict," ipsissimis
verbis, and adds with emphasis-speaking I fear by authority-(I quote his
very words), "Abraham Lincoln confesses his obligation to the higher law,
which the Sage of Quincy proclaimed, and avows himself for weal or for
woe, life or death, a soldier on the side of freedom, in the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery." This is plain language. This is not
careless or clumsy rhetoric, to which Mr. Seward is not addicted. He always
carefully elaborates. 
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Thus speaks Mr. Lincoln for himself at one end of the line, and thus speaks
Mr. Seward for him at the other; and I beg you to observe, so startling was
this development of the animating spirit, the true design of the Republican
party, that the leading organs of Mr. Lincoln in this city, who are busily engaged in seducing " the solid men" of Philadelphia into the belief that he
and his party are not agitators of this slavery question, have never ventured
to publish Mr. Seward's recent speeches. Not that they are very punctilious
either; for, about the time when Mr. Lincoln was making what looked very
much like an Abolition speech in Illinois, and Mr. Seward two or three in
New England, there appeared in the ablest and least radical of the Republican newspapers of this city, a translation, in the form of an editorial article, of Victor Hugo's pamphlet on Italy, in which John Brown is canonized
by name, as a proto-martyr, the action of the law in Virginia is denounced
as' infamous," America is stigmatized as "leaning to darkness," and "the
negro is bid to hope."  I am quite aware that the editor, who tries his best
to be a conservative man, was absent when the railing of this crazy Frenchman was reproduced-but it did appear; was read by thousands; was added
to the stock of wretched literature which has anti-slavery for its basis, and
gladdened the hearts of those who, with Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward and
Mr. Sumner, look forward to the good time of the " irrepressible conflict,"
" the stronger fight," when, to use Mr. Seward's words in another connection, " the banner will be unfurled with safety in the slave States." Lord
Brougham and Victor Hugo, an English and a French Abolitionist, insult
us at the same time. The New York Tribune thinks Lord Brougham did
what was right, and the Lincoln papers of Philadelphia reproduce the
ravings of the French enthusiast, with the faintest possible expression of
dissent.
When in 1855, Mr. Sumner made his anti-slavery harangue in the Senate,
the public mind revolted at it, and nothing but the act of violence which it
provoked saved it from universal condemnation. Now, in 1860, he makes
a much worse speech, more defamatory, more acrimonious, more grotesquely
malignant, and Republican senators listen with contentment, and Mr. Sumner has an ovation in the city of New York, where, amidst bright eyes,
dimmed only by tears of. sympathy, and tumultuous cheers, he makes a
speech for the Republican candidate, worse than any he ever uttered; and
Wendell Phillips preaches aggressive abolition in Philadelphia, and Mr.
Curtis, a leading delegate at Chicago, has to be protected by the strong hand
of the law, as he invokes sympathy for those who would have been glad to
make a new Cawnpore on the banks of the Potomac. Mr. Sumner's last
triumph is the nomination of a "Radical Republican"  as Governor of
Massachusetts.
Nay, further, I hold in my hand a book published in New York, and
called the "Republican Campaign Hand-Book," an authoritative exposition
of doctrines, north of a certain parallel, and I find its moral to be in so
many words, that Lincoln's election is but a step in the march of "progressive humanity," leading to the grand triumph of emancipation everywhere.  Its language is:-.
" The people of those States where liberty is not stifled by cowardly and brutal force,
have it in their power to insure political reform, and save the grand expanse of territory,
of over one thousand million of acres in the West, from the wreck and shame of slavery.
This they can do constitutionally, without infringing upon Southern privileges; and by so
restricting the evil, and saving further land from its devastations, they will lead the way
to yet higher achievements. Other nations beckon us on: England, her House of Lords
roused by the memorable logic and eloquence of a Brougham, struck the chains off all her
slaves, and each rising and setting sun does homage to the majesty of the achievement,
over the hills and vales of her happy islands. Russia, with twenty million serfs, is, at the
fiat of her best Emperor, about to touch them with the Ithuriel spear of emancipation, so 
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that their moral nature may reach the skies. Shall we, then, with such glorious examples
of the good, the generous, and the right, retroact, absolve ourselves from our gallant past,
cut off our brilliant future, and be stifled in essential barbarism? In this epoch, when
science flies on the wings of love, can we sanction the worship of hate and cruelty?  This,
and not less than this, is contained in the solution of the great questions before us. We
have either to succumb to, or to triumph over, the slave power. There is no middle course.
We must either have the black flag of slavery, or one scintillating with freedom, to symbolize our home and country. Our irreversible word, then, should be for Liberty-circling
our lakes and seas; traversing our mountains and prairies; covering our cities and villages;
going forth in many ships over many waters: liberty for the poor, the exiled, and the oppressed; liberty of sense and soul, of thought and speech, of aspiration and action."
And further still, a great element of the supposed Republican strength
in the Northwestern States, is that of the German Abolitionists.  They
were a recognized power at Chicago. They are a recognized power in the
canvass; and freed from the restraints which habits of early training and
education impose, speak out boldly.  Their leader is an individual named
Carl Shurz (who was a delegate I believe at Chicago), and in his speech
delivered a few days ago at St. Louis, and republished in the Republican
journals with high praise, I find the following, which I quote without comment, begging the moderate Republicans of this vicinage to meditate on it,
and see whither they are being led:
"Look around you and see how lonesome you are in this wide world of ours.  As far as
modern civilization throws its rays, what people, what class of society, is there like you?
Cry out into the world your wild and guilty fantasy of property in man, and every echo
responds with a cry of horror or contempt; every breeze, from whatever point of the com pass it may come, brings -you a verdict of condemnation. There is no human heart that
sympathizes with your cause, unless it sympathizes with the cause of despotism in every
form. There is no human voice to cheer you on in your struggle; there is no human eye
that has a tear for your reverses; no link of sympathy between the common cause of the
great human brotherhood and you. You hear of emancipation in Russia, and wish it should
fail. You hear of Italy rising, and fear the spirit of liberty should become contagious.
Where all mankind rejoices you tremble. Where all mankind love you hate. Where all
mankind curses you sympathize.
"And in this appalling solitude you stand alone against a powerful world, alone against
a great century, fighting, hopeless as the struggle of the Indians, against the onward march
of civilization. Use all the devices which the inventive genius of despotism may suggest,
and yet how can you resist? In every little village school-house, the little children who
learn to read and write are plotting against you; in every laboratory of science, in every
machine-shop, the human mind is working the destruction of your idol. You cannot make
an attempt to keep pace with the general progress of mankind without plotting against
yourselves. Every steam-whistle, every puffing locomotive, is sounding the shriek of liberty into your ears. From the noblest instincts of our hearts down to the sordid greediness
of gain, every impulse of human nature is engaged in this universal conspiracy. How can
you resist?  Where are your friends in the North?  Your ever-ready supporters are scattered to the winds, as by enchantment, never to unite again. Hear them, trying to save
their own fortunes, swear with treacherous eagerness that they have nothing in common
with youll, And your opponents? Your boasts have lost their charm, your threats have
lost their terrors upon them. The attempt is idle to cloak the sores of Lazarus with the
lion skin of Hercules. We know you. Every one of your boasts is understood as a disguised moan of weakness-every shout of defiance as a disguised cry for mercy. That game
is played out. Do not deceive yourselves. This means not only the destruction of a party
-this means the defeat of a cause. Be shrewder than the shrewdest, braver than the
bravest-it is all in vain; your cause is doomed.
"And in the face of all this, you insist upon hugging, with dogged stubbornness, your
fatal infatuation.   Why  zot, with manly boldness, swing round into the grand maIch of
progressive humnanity?  You say it cannot be done to-day.  Can it be done to-morrow?
Will it be easier twenty, fifty years hence, when the fearful increase of the negro population will have aggravated the evils of slavery an hundredfold, and with it the difficulties
of extinction?  Did you ever think of this?  The final crisis will come, with the inexorable certainty of fate, the more terrible the longer it is delayed. Will you content yourselves with the criminal words,' After me the deluge?' Is that the inheritance you mean
to leave to coming generations? an inheritance of disgrace, crime, blood, destruction?
Hear me, slaveholders of America!  If you have no sense of right, no appreciation of your
own interests, I entreat, I implore you, have at least pity for your children!
"I hear the silly objection, that your sense of honour forbids you to desert your cause:
Sense of honour! Imagine a future generation standing round the tombstone of the bravest
of you, and reading the inscription:' Here lies a gallant man, who lived and died true to
the cause-of human slavery.'  What will the verdict be?  His very progeny will disown 
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him, and exclaim,' He must have been either a knave or a fool!'  There is not one of
yo'l who, if he could rise from the dead a cegntnry hence, wosuld not gladly exchange his
epitaph fJor that of the meanest of those who were hung at Chiarlestowa."
Surely, my fellow-citizens, in all. this there is startling progress.  When,
in 1856, Mr. Seward made his Rochester speech, he soon felt he had gone
too far at that date, and, if my memory does not deceive me, tried to explain it away. In his speech last winter in the Senate his offensive doctrines
were clothed in the rhetorical dress of  capital" and "labour;" but now
this thin disguise is thrown away.  He revives his ancient " irrepressible
theory boldly and defiantly, as if he were proud of his phrases. He goes
to Bangor, and in compliment to his Vice-President, talks to the Maine
fishermen of their superiority to cotton-planters and sugar-growers, and their
not being governed by the "slave-owner's lash,"-and thence to Boston,
and, in the midst of its national men, the Everetts, and Winthrops, and
Appletons, and Hlillards, and Curtis's, and Lunts, insults the South by a
new war-cry of defiance.  There is, I say, progress in this; and Mr. Lincolni, with the certainty, as his friends claim, of triumph swelling in his
heart, starts from his seclusion, and tells us that all this is nothing to what
is to be by-and-by-" the prologue to the swelling act" of the great theme
hereafter-as Wendell Phillips honestly said, " the entering wedge, to be
driven home," the skirmish before the " stronger fight;" in short, but the
beginning of the end of slavery as an institution anywhere.
It was in the same speech Mr. Seward intimated, that one of the great
results of a tRepublican triumph would be that the President should send
abroad, as the diplomatic representatives of the country, individuals who,
unlike those who for many years have filled these posts, would concur in
the general sentiment of reprobation of slavery all over the civilized world;
in other words, those who would relish Lord Brougham's sneers, and Victor Hugo's insults, and take into close communion, on terms of social
equality, any negro who might have the advantage of such sponsors. Now,
with some opportunities of observation, I must be permitted to say that no
such state of feeling or action exists as the Republican leader supposes. It
seems to me that our representatives abroad, so far as I met them, found
other things to do, or think, or talk about, than slavery, or anti-slavery. As
a general rule, they are silent on the subject; and it will be an evil day
when this silence is broken, and the traveller from South Carolina or Georgia
finds his ambassador an Abolition propagandist. Such, we are told, they
are to be. But, gentlemen, in this connection I have one other experience
which was most painful. Coming from the extreme East, where it was my
misfortune to find too few of my countrymen, and approaching those lines
of travel where the rich and the idle, and the cultivated Americans are
found in great numbers, I looked to meet that sympathy with the spirit
of our institutions which nothing more intensifies than a long exile such as
mine. Instead of which, the sentiment I encountered among my countrymen-many of the most intelligent and accomplished (generally, I admit,
from one section of the United States)-was one I can only describe as disloyalty, the perverse sentimentalism which is the living spirit of this antislavery excitement-a sublimated sort of morality-an aesthetic communion with the unreal and morbid incongruity with the real. Americans,
who should have loved their country, and revered its Constitution, and
resented insults to its constituted authorities, I found hostile, and disloyal,
and defamatory; and the one cry was, sympathy with virtue-proud England,-virtue-proud on this subject mainly, and antagonism to home, so
long as slavery was a recognized institution among us.  Of course there
were exceptions-numerous exceptions-and among them I recall one, the
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most brilliant of American writers, from whose lips or whose pen no word
of disloyalty, that I am aware of, ever fell,-who loves his country as
it is, with or without slavery,-and who, unlike Abolition agitators, in his
last wonderful work of genius, has spoken of his own dear native land as
one where "no gloomy wrong exists."  But most else was sad disloyalty
and disaffection, to be increased a thousand.fold when Governor Seward's
day of promise dawns, and we are to have abroad diplomatic detractors of
our domestic institutions,-panegyrists of that great scheme of hypocritical
philanthropy which emanates from Exeter Hall,-sympathizers of Lord
Brougham and Victor Hugo.
I am not, I think, overstating this. I have -no disposition to misconstrue
either what Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward, or Mr. Sumner, or any one else has
said, but I ask any candid friend of either, to take the aggregate speechmaking of a fortnight ago at Boston and Springfield,-to take one as a gloss
on the other,-Seward's Coke on Lincoln's Littleton,-and explain to me
its other and truer meaning; and if there be one, or if, as sometimes happens,
but not often, with an expert rhetorician like Mr. Seward, or a rough, plainspoken man like Mr. Lincoln, there be no meaning at all in these phrases,
I shall be most happy to admit I have done injustice.
The sad conviction presses on me, that the animating spirit of the Republican party, however individuals may honestly disclaim it, is anti-slavery
fanaticism, enthusiastic sentimentalism, founded on the false ethical principle
that slavery, as it exists in this country is wrong, per se, and that under
the obligation of the higher law, to which Mr. Seward has pledged Mr.
Lincoln, there can be no covenant or constitution, which binds us to protect
it. Take away from the Republican organization the anti-slavery element,
the sentiment which sways New England and the extreme Northwest, and
it would be the merest shell that ever dignified itself with the name of party.
Keep within it that spirit, active, energetic, honest, if you please; for, most
fanaticism, from the days of John of Leyden, is honest, and you have it, as
it is-a terrible, dangerous, aggressive antagonist, in whose grasp, such
conventionalities as laws and constitutions, are crushed without a scruple.
I am quite aware that this progress-this increasing indifference to the
obligation to conventional duty on this point-to which I have referred, is
claimed to be a proof of the triumph of a great moral process or principle.
I question much if the intelligence of our countrymen is yet sublimated to
this point; mine certainly is not; I still revere the authority of those who
have gone before me; I still swear by the Constitution, as it is judicially
construed, and I dread that social and political revolution, now so imminent,
which is to inaugurate the new school of political obedience to a higher
law than the Constitution, to which Mr. Seward has pledged Mr. Lincoln
and his administration.
I have said, gentlemen, that the aggressive spirit of Abolitionism, is not
confined to New England and New York, but that it exists in its most acrid
form, in the region where Mr. Lincoln lives, and which now, so unanimously
sustains him. We are so much in the habit of worrying ourselves and
occupying our minds with this vexed and prospective question of territorial
sovereignty or subjection, that we forget other more dangerous anomaliesmore pestilent difficulties.   One occurs to me, which a recent outrage on the
laws makes painfully impressive, though it, like the abolition burnings in
Texas hardly yet suppressed, is lost sight of; so busy are we, with Douglas
or Anti-Douglas, Lecompton or Anti-Lecompton. I refer to the resistance
-the successful resistance-to the fugitive slave law in the Northwest.
This is not the place (though the topic is full of interest) to trace the
course of lawlessness and defiance, which has characterized the conceded
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Republican States, as to the law for the recapture of runaway negroes
The trouble began eighteen years ago, when a New England judge, by a
dexterous device (for which his biographer claims credit) annulled all local
auxiliary legislation on the subject. Before that, as I well remember, the
recapture and surrender of fugitives as property was as simple and easy
and tranquil a judicial act as the surrender of a fugitive from justice. The
notion had not even germinated then that slaves could not be "property."
They had been so considered from the beginning. As early as 1791, Washington described them in so many words as "property," and exerted his
whole official influence for their recapture as such, and this before any
fugitive slave act was passed. Still earlier, in 1786, Washington lent his
personal aid to recover for a friend a runaway; and in a letter now in existence in this city, deplored the existence of combinations to defeat this
very right of property which the sentimentalism of to-day considers such
an abomination. "I have sent the negro boy," writes Washington to Mr.
Drayton, " under the care of a trusty overseer, to be shipped to you (at
Charleston). When he arrived at Baltimore it was necessary to commit
him to jail for security. He has since escaped to Philadelphia." And
then he adds: " The gentleman  to whose care I sent him  has promised
every endeavour to apprehend him, but it is not easy to do this when there
are numbers who would rather facilitate the escape of slaves than apprehend
them when runaways." Washington, unlike Carl Shurz, did not think
property in a slave "a wild and guilty phantasy."  Since 1822 this notion
of progressive humanity has grown till the wrong culminates in the Personal
Liberty Bill of Massachusetts, an existing statute, of which every Republican
approves, and in the successful defiance of the acts of Congress and the
federal judiciary in Wisconsin, one of Mr. Lincoln's surest States.  For
this, I don't mean to say or intimate that Mr. Lincoln is responsible, but
when I remember that, at the Chicago Convention, Judge McLean  whs
almost contemptuously thrust aside, as he had been in 1856, because he had
vigorously sustained the Fugitive Slave Act, and Mr. Bates, in spite of Mr.
Greeley's indorsement, because he lived in a slave State; and Mr. Lincoln
was nominated, as beyond these reproaches, we may be excused for fears
and suspicions and distrust.
The Wisconsin case, to which I have referred, is familiar to every lawyer,
but perhaps not so generally known as it ought to be, and illustrates the
revolutionary character of northwestern abolitionism. Without going into
detail, it may be thus stated: A fugitive slave, one whose relation had
been proved, and who had been, under the law, ordered to be given up
to his master, was rescued from the marshal by violence, and, I presume,
fled to that region of safe refuge, Canada. The chief agent in this violence was tried in the District Couin of the United States, before a jury,
convicted and sentenced, just as three negroes were a few months ago in
this city. No sooner was this done, than the Supreme Court of Wisconsin
issued a habeas corpus, brought up the prisoner, and set him at liberty.
Nay, further, the court ordered the clerk not to make a record or exemplification of the judgment, so as to defeat, as they thought, the revisory
power of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was by mere accident
that a record was obtained, and when the action of the State court was
reversed at Washington, and the criminal put back in jail, we learn from
the newspapers, that a mob lately rescued him and set him at liberty. He
now defies the law. Now, my fellow-citizens, if this had been done in South
Carolina, it would have been called Southern insolence and nullification,
and perhaps treason, and yet, when it is done, boldly and defiantly done, by
a free-soil court, our friends of the Republican party see no wrong in it, but
: -: I..,
4 
11
applaud it, as a righteous act of judicial independence-a recognition of
what Governor Seward says is Mr. Lincoln's law, higher than a mere Constitution. The slave who was rescued, was as much his owner's property,
as anything else he owned. So said the Supreme Court of the United States
years and years ago. The man who, by violence, tried to get that slave
away from his master's control, was accessory, if not principal, in a welldefined crime. The judgment of the court which sentenced him, was as
valid as that which hangs a mail-robber or a pirate, or confiscates a bale
of smuggled goods, or affirms a patent right. But according to the Republican code of morality, the end justifies the means, where slavery is
concerned. Had the rescue been attended with-murder, if the victim were
the owner or marshal, it would have been justifiable in their eyes, and thus,
by the fanaticism which is instilled into the Northern mind, at least that
part of it which has reasoned itself into concurrence with these anti-slavery
principles, all law is overthrown, property is wrested from its owner, and
a plain provision of the Constitution is defied. And this, say what you
please, is Republicanism.   Judge Spalding, of Ohio, said truly: "No man
is recognized as a Republican here, who will, for a moment, sustain this
miserable law." And the history of the Wisconsin case of revolutionary
resistance forms just now the staple of Republican literature, for it was but
last week that through the post-office I received (as I dare say thousands
like me did) one of what are called the Tribune Tracts, containing Mr.
Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Institute, in which the Fugitive Slave Act
is alluded to only in disparagement, and Senator Doolittle's defence of the
Wisconsin outrage.
How, after all this, any man in his senses can talk of Southern aggression, is a mystery. How any man, with the consciousness that there is a
great, well-organized combination, ramified over every Northern State, East
and West, having for its object to facilitate the escape of slaves, can talk
of the balance of practical wrong being against us, passes my limited comprehension. Accumulate, if need be, all that the most extreme men of the
South have ever said, or threatened, or demanded, and it bears no compari.
son with this great practical, substantial, and increasing wrong. Ask the
most or the leapt declamatory railer against the South, who is now marshalling the forces of Mr. Lincoln, to tell you what he means by Southern
aggression, and he won't know what to say short of offensive generalities.
Be more precise with him, if you please, and ask him what, in the seventy
years of the Union, or the seven years of the war, or the ninety years of
colonial relation, what wrong South Carolina ever did to Pennsylvania?
The South has never stolen any of our property from us. It generally befriends us. When the North or the Northwest tries to take away our poor
little Mint or Naval Asylum, Southern men vote with us. In former days,
Southern men, Cheves, and Lowndes, and Calhoun, and McDuffie, and
Preston (all Carolinians), defended us and our interests.   The earliest
recollections of my life are of the praises of William Lowudes, of South
Carolina, the most conservative, and temperate, and philosophical of statesmen, who uttered that memorable precept, well worthy to be repeated,
"that the Presidency was a post too high to be sought or to be refused;"
and of William Drayton, also of South Carolina, who lived the end of his
honoured life among us, and who, moderate Union man as he was, once said
in the House of Representatives, that if it ever were seriously discussed
whether the master has a right of property in his slave, no members could
remain who represented the people of the States in which these are possessed. Passing beyond mere local considerations, I ask the men of peaceful industry to remember that more than once Southern statesmen have 
12
saved us from war with one or the other of the great powers of Europe, that the great Southern staple holds the world in tribute, and more than
anything keeps the peace,-that assured peace is worth all the protection
which legislative commercial restrictions promise; and remembering all
this, and bearing in mind what Northern fanaticism is doing-a vexatious,
irritating, agitating fanaticism-all the time; that Mr. LiJncoln is shaking
his fist at the South, and telling them that no man is fit to be free, or
shall be permitted to be free, who owns slaves; that Mr. Seward is vent ing his personal disappointment in blasts of fierce defiance, and Mr.
Sumner is denouncing the usurpations of the Supreme Court; I ask again,
of the candid and fair-minded Northern man, what is meant by the wrongs
the South has ever done to us. If it be said that the opposition of the
South to a protective tariff, to internal improvements by the General Go vernmbnt, is a wrong to us, I have only to say, in reply, that the South
has a right to its opinions on these questions of national economy, and
does not enforce them by corruption, as Republican New England did in
1857, but by reason and by votes, by persuasion and conviction. As to
internal improvements, and especially a railway to the Pacific, I would rather
see it deferred till the intervening States shall attain a growth to make it
for themselves, than to have it made now by that great Northwestern route,
the adoption of which is to galvanize the insolvent corporations which concentre at Chicago, and to turn the commerce of the West exclusively into
the lap of our commercial rival. Pennsylvania's true interests, if she only
knew them, do not lie in that direction, but in the South and Southwest,
from which Republicanism, and Lincolnism, and Abolitionism, if triumphant, will forever divide us.
What, then, in this crisis, when the North, the compact, fanatical North
-for such in its anti-slavery organization it is from the northern boundary
of this Commonwealth, eastward and westward-is thus advancing in its
conscious and aggressive power, and the South suspicious-I do not like to
say timorous, though the feeling may well be excused, with the danger
before them and around them-but almost desperate; what, then, I ask, is
the duty, what the interest, what should be the attitude of Pennsylvaniathis great State, that has never yet cast her controlling vote in favour of
Abolitionism, or anything tainted with Abolitionism, but always with national and Union men, and on the side of the Constitution? Her vote now,
if she will be true to her history and her great traditions, can save the nation
and the Union. If she vote with the Northern candidate, Pennsylvania
becomes, as one of your resolutions the other night said, the fag-end, or in
more dignified phrase, the rear-guard of the great Abolition party, and is
separated forever-for it is a step that cannot be retraced-from her natural
allies of the South and Southwest. Yes, fellow-citizens, her natural allies
of the South and Southwest; for I undertake to say that it can be demon.
strated, aside from our vast and controlling interest in the prosperity of the
Union as it is, that the bulk of the manufactured products of which we are
so justly proud, and about which we are so properly solicitous, finds its
market in the South, and especially the Southwest, or south of a parallel
running due west. The best trade for our railways is of course the local
trade, and next to it is that which comes from the southward and westward.
In the "'North American," of last week, I find this statement, which, I
doubt not, is true, quoted from a Western paper:  " Even with the advantage of your manufactures, New York sells to the West more of the
Wind of goods, if not of the very goods manufactured in Philadelphia, than does Philadelphia itself. The whole teeming valley of the Mississippi is within the commercial grasp of
Philadelphia, to take as much of its trade as it thinks fit, and yet how very little of it does 
13
Ihiladelphia control.  How few merchants are there in this valley, north of St. Louis, who
buy their goods at Philadelphia, or who regard it as a place where there is any prospect
of being able to d6 any business."
And all this, and more than this, is to be put in jeopardy for what?
What substantial end is to be obtained-what material interest is to be promoted by casting the vote of Pennsylvania for Mr. Lincoln, and harnessing
her to the car of New York, the Northeast, and West. To this question,
put without offence, we have a right to have a candid and explicit answernot declamation about Southern aggression and freedom in the territories,
free homes for free men, and such claptrap, but a precise answer.
What Pennsylvania or Philadelphia material interest will be promoted by
Mr. Lincoln's election?-a candidate thus "' fathered and thus husbanded,"
I can understand perfectly well why rival commercial interests may be.
New England and the Northwest are quite content with things as they are.
The fishing bounties will have a new lease of life, to which I do not at all
object, and which I only refer to now as showing the snug, direct protection,
which our friends down East have had so long.  That great job of New
York, the Collins line of steamers, with its dark and bloody memories, its
unexpiated sacrifices of human life-its Arctic and Pacific, and the hundreds
of human beings engulphed and forgotten, and its stupendous subsidy, will
be revived. Mr. O. B. Matteson will resume his influence in Congress, but
what, I again ask, will Pennsylvania or Philadelphia gain?
Our friends will perhaps reply, a tariff,-a protective tariff,-such a
stringent tariff as my excellent friend Mr. Carey desires; or a specific duty
on Pennsylvania iron, and a little care for Pennsylvania coal. Now without
in any way questioning or admitting the necessity or the expediency of a
change in the tariff, I may be permitted to express some doubt as to the
certainty of any change for the better under Mr. Lincoln's rule, and to hint
the clear conviction, that so far as a change in the character of the duties
affecting our interests is concerned, Pennsylvania making, by her vote. a
Kentucky statesman President, will have a better chance than if she surrenders to Lincoln and Sewardism. I have watched the game-the progress
of the contest with great attention, and in all the array of States, which are
claimed for Mr. Lincoln, not one hearty wqrd, not a word of any kind, is ever
said in favour of a tariff, except in Pennsylvania, or, to limit it more precisely,
in one part of Pennsylvania (for my impression is that in all that part of
our State, north and west, which in 1856 gave heavy votes to Mr. Fremont,
there is an ominous silence about a tariff). The New York Republican
Hand-Book, though edited by a Pennsylvanian translated to New  York,
while full of poisonous nonsense about slavery, has no word for a tariff.
Perhaps the Republicans of New Jersey are in favour of a new tariff, but
New England and New York, and the Northwest, are cold, and indifferent,
and silent.
No one who bestows attention to this topic can avoid being struck by the
persistent indifference, if not hostility, to Pennsylvania interests.   A  remarkable illustration of it occurred last week. Mr. Charles F. Adams,
Chairman of the Committee of Manufactures in the Republican House of
Representatives was brought here to address our citizens without distinction
of party. He was expected to discuss questions relating to Pennsylvania, and
in order to clinch this a great protectionist leader and controversialist (Mr.
Carey) presided, and introduced him. For hours did Mr. Adams discourse
in the temper, I am glad to say, of a scholar and a gentleman, stringing as
has been well said, brilliant rhetoric on the black thread of anti-slavery,
and attributing all evil and abuse to the predominance of what it is the
fashion to call the slave power.  BUT NOT ONE SINGLE WORD-LITERALLY 
14
NOT ONE AS TO A TARIFF, OR PROTECTION, —OR SPECIFIC DUTIES, OR PENN SYLVANIA INTERESTS,-and the next day when the speech was reported,
the leading organ of the tariff party here could not conceal its chagrin, saying, both in sorrow and in anger, that it was expected Mr. Adams would
have said a great deal about protection, but that he had touched it very
gently! Very gently indeed. Mr. Adams did not ruffle the most acute
sensibility of the most extreme free trader.  He was true to Massachusetts
and the "New York Evening Post," and he was honestly silent, for he
could not conscientiously say a word of encouragement to Pennsylvania.
Nay, further, when a few days ago the Republican Convention met at
Syracuse, to nominate a governor and electoral ticket, the name of William
C. Bryant, the free-soil, free-trade editor and poet, he, who so resolutely
refused to discuss a tariff with Mr. Carey, was received as an elector at
large, with vociferous and enthusiastic cheering, and the resolutions adopted
began with one of ominous significance, considering the cold comfort given
at Chicago to the Pennsylvania protectionists.   You all remember the
doubtful phrase, which the "Evening Post" said did not mean a tariff at
all, which was adopted at Chicago. Out of sixteen propositions constituting what was there determined to be the Republican platform, ten have
direct reference to slavery, one to the homestead law, which is thought to
have a kindred relation, one to internal improvements, one (known as the
Dutch plank) to naturalization, one to a Pacific Railroad, which of course
means the Platte River route, in which Pennsylvania has no interest and
our rival States a great deal, and the following ambiguous, oracular one, as
to protection, which was all poor Pennsylvania, though she had nominated
Mr. Lincoln and defeated Mr. Seward, could obtain:
"12th. That while providing revenue for the support of the National Government by
duties upon imports [imposts?], sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts,
as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country, and we
commend [the word is a very gentle one] that policy of national exchanges (?) which
secures to the working-man liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to manufacturers and mechanics an adequate reward for their skill, labour, and enterprise, and to
the nation commercial prosperity and independence."
Now I aver, taking into view that the idea of protection to domestic industry is a clear and precise one, requiring few words and plain words, it never
before was so enveloped in obscure generalities; and, so apparent was thisso palpably inadequate was this wordy rhetoric to the just demands of our
Pennsylvania protectionists-that, when the Lincoln ratification meeting
was held in this city, if my memory serves me, it was deemed absolutely
necessary to invigorate this emasculation of tariff doctrine; to put a gloss
on it, which would make it suit Schuylkill and Centre and Alleghany counties; and accordingly, Mr. Henry C. Carey, the champion of protection, a
gentleman to whose patriotic and conscientious convictions on this topic, I
do willing justice, offered an amended series of resolutions, to put this matter right. This, if I mistake not, was about the time he was defying Mr.
Bryant,-the craven knight of free trade,-to mortal conflict in the newspapers. This being the state of the record, the great New York Convention
meets, as I have said, at Syracuse, with enthusiasm, puts this same Mr.
Bryant at the head of the Lincoln electoral ticket, and coolly and contemptuously tells the Pennsylvania protectionists, that they shall have no influence, and must let the Chicago platform alone, and take it with all its
obscurities. The Report reads thus:
"Hon. Benjamin Welsh, Jr., announced with pleasure, that the Committee on Resolutions had found no difficulty in agreeing, and had directed him unanimously to report the
following:
"Resolved, That this Convention, representing the Republican electors of the State of 
15
New York, heartily accepts and adopts the Resolutions of the National Republican Convention held at Chicago, and that it has no disposition to alter one line or word of that
masterly and patriotic declaration of principles."
Who but Pennsylvania had asked to alter a line or word, and what
does this mean but what I have already hinted at, that the Lincoln communities; the whole array, which I can but describe as the free railroad
iron States, New England, and New York, and Illinois, and Michigan, and
Wisconsin, and Iowa, and Minnesota, and the New York counties of Pennsylvania, through which is now secretly running a foreign railroad, to steal
the Ohio trade from us, means to use this great commonwealth as a beast of
burden, harnessed to the abolition, free-trade wagon of Abraham Lincoln and
Hannibal Hamlin, and then to cheat her afterwards.  Depend on it, if Pennsylvania, vigilant of her interests, has to choose between two schools of
free trade, that which is candidly and manfully and honestly professed by
the South, and that which is in masquerade in the North and East, her
chance will be better with the first, for all the tariff she needs (especially if
she earns confidence and gratitude by fidelity to the Constitution, the Union,
and the adjudicated rights of the South), than if led away from the path
in which she has always walked; turned from the safe Democratic groove
in which she has always moved; she trusts herself to that vast conglomeration of fanatical and mercenary communities, and bankrupt railroad corporations-for such, almost without exception, are the Northern and Northwestern railroad companies-which at this moment constitute the great
Lincoln army of the North.
And now comes the question, what shall she do? What shall the honest
yeomanry of Pennsylvania-what shall the business men of this great commonwealth do in October and November next? Shall they vote for the
anti-slavery candidate,-for such, without offence or dispute, Mr. Lincoln
may be said to be,-or for John C. Breckinridge, whom his enemies describe,
and we are content to take, as the Southern or Southwestern candidate;
for Andrew G. Curtin, Mr. Lincoln's deputy, of Centre County, or Henry
D. Foster, a modest, able, patriotic man, against whom, to this time, no
whisper of reproach has been levelled?
John C. Breckinridge-waiving for the present all objection, arising out
of the pending canvass, which shall be hereafter fairly considered-stands
before the people of this country as a man with singular qualities of personal popularity, especially in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
There is, between thlem and Kentucky, a close sympathy, which, if it be but
a sentiment, is one that has always existed. Henry Clay, and James Guthrie,
and John C. Breckinridge, have always had their most earnest friends here.
It would seem as if there was a congeniality of temper. There is something, too, in historical and geographical relations. The great river which
washes the borders and receives the tributaries of Kentucky, virtually has
its source in Pennsylvania.  From Western Pennsylvania, the farmer, the
manufacturer, even the lumberman, as he goes with his products to market,
is at home in Kentucky, and its trade is almost a localtrade for us. Judging from commercial results, Kentucky seems to cling more closely and affectionately to Pennsylvania, than she does to her own mother Virginia;
and what man in Pennsylvania looks with alien eye on Kentucky, even
though she be a Southern and slave-owning State? Mr. Breckenridge's familiar relations are interwoven with us and with New Jersey. The names of
those to whom he owes his being, of John Witherspoon and' Samuel Stanhope Smith, and whose great example he has never dishonoured, are household words in our sister State, and adorn especially her great institution of
learning, of which she is justly proud, and which sometimes seems to belong 
16
in a measure to us,-so many Pennsylvanians having there been nurtured, where were educated Madison, and Sergeant, and Gaston, and Dallas, and
Frelinghuysen, and Ingersoll.
These are what, of themselves, would make the Democratic candidate
popular in the Middle States, but-individualizing the subject more closely
-let any man study the career of Mr. Breckinridge himself, yet a young
man, and the secret of his popularity is plainly revealed. Until called by
the popular voice to the second office of the nation, his career was that of
the legislator merely, so far as political duties are involved, and it was dis tinguished, from first to last, by the high-spirited, high-toned bearing, which,
in a parliamentary body more than anywhere, makes its mark. There was,
no reserve in his opinions-no equivocation in his course. All was manly
and straightforward, and patriotic.  During the Mexican war, when a call
was made for volunteers, John C. Breckinridge was among those who an swered that appeal. He followed the flag of his country in its march of
triumph, and when the war was over, returned to the pursuits of civil life,
without restlessness or repining.
And this is the man-this is the Kentucky statesman-he who for four
years past has been the presiding officer of the great representative body of
the sovereign States of the Union, of that body which especially represents
the equality of the States; this is the man whom it suits an unscrupulous
partisan press to denounce as a sectionalist and a disunionist.   I regret to
be made to believe that this unjust accusation comes from a fragment of
the Democratic party-not, I hope, from Judge Douglas, but from Judge
Douglas's emissaries and organs. It may, from motives of policy, find a
faint echo from, the friends of Mr. Bell; but they know it is unjust. Republicans do not venture to hint it. Mr. Adams, the other night, expressly
disavowed it. Now I ask, in all candour, what, ini Mr. Breckinridge's
antecedents, remote or immediate, is there to countenance such a suspicion?
Has he ever said a word, or done a deed, that looks like it? If he has, I
ask for its production.  Surely, his thinking that Congress cannot prohibit
slavery in a territory, does not make him sectional. Judge Douglas and
his school proclaim this, and Mr. Bell and Mr. Crittenden agree to it. Believing the Missouri Compromise line to be unconstitutional or unwise, does
not imply sectionalism; for so thought John M. Clayton, a Whig Secretary
of State, and it was a Whig Senator from Kentucky who moved its repeal.
To hold that, until a State government is organized, slavery, and all kindred
subjects are beyond the interference of local legislation, is no crime, for
the Supreme Court has so decided it; and it is only the wild radical or
fanatic who does not recognize its authority. What, then, is it that gives
colour to this, the only and the desperate charge made against Mr. Breckinridge?   It is that the delegates who nominated  him  were from the
Southern States mainly (not alone, for Pennsylvania then, as now, was
with him), and that, in the calculation of chances, Southern electoral votes
are counted on to elect him.
It is no fault of Mr. Breckinridge or his friends that it is so. It would
suit the Abolition leaders in the North very well indeed, to see a divided
and distracted South, if they could manage, by the substantial agency of
Mr. Douglas, or the mythical influence of another party, to divide the
compact array of those States, whose property and very existence are threatened from without.  I do not believe they can-but if they do-if the
South is not true now to its friends in the North, it must depend on itself
hereafter. If this could be accomplished, all would be well, and there
would be no need of further defamation or disparagement. But when the
South, baited and besieged, retires within itself, proclaims its defensive 
17
principles, and then, instead of taking one of its own men-I mean taking
a man from what is called the extreme South-advances to the Northern
frontier, and selects as its Presidential candidate a Kentucky statesman
(Kentucky being in point of fact a Middle State), is it not the rankest injustice to say, that a candidate so chosen and so sustained, is sectional?
I wonder at the shameless effrontery which can say it, or the stupid credulity which adopts it. It is conceded that Mr. Breckinridge cannot be elected
without the vote of Pennsylvania or New York and New Jersey, and it is
as clear an assumption, that neither State can be carried for any man who
threatens or doubts the stability of the Union. I, and thousands like me,
claiming to act with and under the Democratic organization of the Middle
States, support and ask you to support Mr. Breckinridge, because we know
him to be national, and believing he will carry every Southern and Southwestern State, we think every social, political, and material interest that
Pennsylvania has at stake, will be incalculably promoted by his success.
One thing more and I have done, for I am quite aware I have trespassed
too much on you, but I desire to do an act of justice. I have heard another
objection to Mr. Breckinridge. It is in the mouths of factious and disappointed men, and in the torrent of bitter injustice which is foaming
around us it is sometimes assumed to be true, and its justice is conceded by
those who should know better. It is said Mr. Breckinridge. is the administration-the President's candidate, and as it is the fashion always to defame and abuse an outgoing administration-a President whose patronage
is exhausted, this of course is thought a grievous stigma. In the first place
the fact is not so. He is no more the candidate of this administration than
he was of the last-no more Mr. Buchanan's than General Pierce's.
Before the nomination, or the Convention at Charleston and Baltimore,
neither the President, nor any member of his cabinet, that I am aware
of, ever uttered one word in favour of Mr. Breckinridge. Nor did his
office-holders, who  are supposed, whether rightly or wrongly  I don't
care to inquire, to take their colour from the tree on which they feed.  I
incline very much to think they were the other way. This I well know,
that there never was a more fatal mistake committed than by the Reading
Convention in failing to nominate (as it could have done), and to instruct
our delegates to support as a unit Mr. Breckinridge.  Had this been done,
as some of us desired, there would have been no division in the Democratic
ranks, and John C. Breckinridge would have been the nominee of a united
and triumphant party. Why it was not done, I do not care to inquire.
When, however, the action of the Convention was determined, and the
two candidates, Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Douglas, were placed before the
nation, the President-like any other citizen-the President's friends, like
all others in or out of office, had a right to make a choice, and to express a
preference. They have done so, and they do so now, and they rest that
preference on a principle. They predicate of Mr. Breckinridge's administration a faithful adherence to a great constitutional principle of equality of
rights to citizens of all the States in the common territories, to be divested
neither by Congress nor the creation of a Congress-a territorial legislature-and so thinking, they sustain him.   To this extent only is Mr.
Breckinridge connected with or supported by the President.
But I do not choose-it would be rank injustice if I did-to put this
on so narrow a ground. The confidence and support of a statesman so
well-trained, of so large experience, and thorough familiarity with the
working of the great machine of our constitutional system, are not to be
disclaimed; and Mr. Breckinridge may well be proud of possessing
them. No one better knows the executive responsibility, and the tax 
18
ca physical and intellectual energy which the chief magistracy of the
country imposes. No one can have been at Washington, and had a chance
of watching the load of care and labour resting on one man, and how
it is borne, without feeling the gross injustice of the disparagement of
which the President has been and is the object. I have had some oppor tunities of observation, having been to a certain extent connected with
the Government; and I should think myself faithless to every obligation of
gratitude and justice, if I did not bear my testimony, be it worth much or
little, in his support. He has been my friend; and if any one present or
absent thinks what I say of no value, merely because I have received honours
and confidence at Mr. Buchanan's hands, I am very sure that no one will
think the worse of me as a gentleman and man of honour for choosing to be
grateful. Let me refer for an instant to what has been done in our foreign
policy, which accidentally has most attracted my attention, and seems to be
entirely lost sight of by the scavengers who are engaged in raking up in all
the alleys and byways materials of defamation. So busy are we in devour ing with morbid greediness Covode reports, and such wretched trash, that
we hardly pause to reflect that, through his temperate and most circumspect
policy, Mr. Buchanan has given to this country four years of absolute and
assured peace with foreign nations.   Among  the prejudices invoked to
defeat his election in 1856 was the Ostend manifesto, which, his enemies
-said, pledged him to a restless and aggressive policy all over the world.
When General Cass was chosen Secretary of State, a war or some sort of
difficulty with Great Britain was foretold as certain. Instead of which, there
has been absolute repose. Each of the three preceding administrations had
its irritations: Mr. Clayton quarrelled with a French Minister; Mr. Marcy
dismissed an English one; Mr. Webster had sharp controversy with Austria;
and Mr. Everett had somthing like a squabble with a Central American one.
Since Mr. Cass has had charge of the Department there has been trouble nowhere.
Surely, for this some credit is due to the President and his administration.
Be it remembered, too, that, at the beginning, the state of things, especially
between the United States and Great Britain, could not be said to be propitious. That parent of perplexity, the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty-the compact by which two clever men thought each had overreached the other, and
which no two men, representing each party, have been able to construe alike
since-was in the path; Central America was more perplexed than ever.
A new treaty with reference to it had been made in London, which the President did not approve, but which, in justice to the negotiators, and especially to Great Britain, which might have misunderstood his action, he submitted to the Senate. The Senate amended, and the British Ministry
rejected it, and it lay in its obstructive fragments on top of the ClaytonBulwer bargain. This was still unpropitious. The courteous and friendly
temper of the President, aided perhaps by a change of Ministry in England, was keeping the atmosphere tranquil, when the public was startled by
the news that the English cruisers had renewed in a most offensive form the
belligerent right of search. It was an anxious moment. It was, I think,
in the recess of Congress. The President sent all the available naval force
into the West India seas, with orders to resist. The danger, thanks to the
good sense prevalent all round, passed away. Again, Great Britain and France
solicited the Government to unite in their quasi war with China. Mr. Buchanan refused; and, without dwelling on it here, I need only remind you
of the rich reward we have had, in continuing peace in the East as well as
the West. When the San Juan affair occurred, what could have been more
considerate and statesmanlike than the conduct of the President? He
thought the military officer wrong, and disavowed him, with as little hesi 
19
tancy as when, with different objects, he had sent the navy to the Gulf, when
he knew we were right. The employment of General Scott was an act which
commanded approval everywhere. In all things Mr. Buchanan's foreign
policy has been that of peace and conciliation. He has repressed filibusterism with a strong hand. Hie has done more to suppress the foreign slavetrade than all who have gone before him; and if his negotiations with Mexico and Spain have failed, it has been through no fault of his. Had the
Republican minority in the Senate consented to the Mexican Treaty, we
should at least have had a better chance of pacification in that afflicted
nation than now, when Old Spain seems to be clutching at her colonies
again, and everything in our close neighbourhood is confusion and bloodshed.
The Spanish Treaty was rejected under a false pretext, that it absolutely
recognized a claim for the Amlistad negroes, when in fact there was no such
recognition, but a reference of it, with other questions, to a tribunal for adjudication.  It was the President's treaty, and therefore it was rejected
Throughout, Mr. Buchanan's policy-and to this I challenge contradictionhas been that of dignity, of judicions energy and peace.
I am quite aware that I expose myself to a sneer, in passing by, as I am.
compelled to do, his domestic policy. When I left America, in the summer
of 1857, the Kansas excitement was in full fury, and a civil war, as seemed
to be conceded on all sides, imminent. I returned after an absence of less
than two years, and I found that excitement existing merely on the page
of history, and kept in recollection only to gratify party animosity. The
fall of the year which witnessed Mr. Buchanan's inauguration was memorable from a great financial and commercial crisis, for which  he certainly
was not responsible.  In that crisis the credit of the Government stood firm.
There are those who can remember other and less severe commercial convulsions, when the credit of the Government fell with private credit. As lately
as 1841, the public loans, which never for a moment within three years
have been damaged, were spurned by every great and every petty bankinghouse in Europe. And now, these four years of alleged misrule over-now,
when the scars of private distress and shattered individual credit, though
fresh, are healing, no honest man who looks over the wide expanse of our
country, its universal contentment, its recuperating energies, which are sufficient to neutralize the false economy of States and the ruinous working of a
system of inflated credit, will venture to say that all this is in spite of misgovernment, or be unwilling, unless blinded by excess of party animosity,
to give some share of praise to the Chief Magistrate, the closing days of
whose trust are thus prosperous. So much I have felt bound to say. The
time is not distant when, all the irritations of the hour past, history will
do its work of justice.
I have detained you too long.  Mine are the first words from  Pennsylvania lips that have been spoken for John C. Breckinridge. They have not
been inconsiderately uttered. They are probably my last; for I must leave
to others the active conduct of this campaign, willing to be a private soldier
in the ranks. I shall have my full reward, if what I have uttered to-night
shall not be in vain. They are meant to embody the latent and real feeling
of this community-to inspire energy-to repress discord-to conciliateto give form and substance to that national sentiment which nowhere has
more force than in Pennsylvania. What I have said has been earnestly
said. I hope it has given pain to no one. 
APPENDIX.
THE case of rescue of a prisoner convicted by the United States authorities, is that of Booth, reported in 21 Howard. The "National Intelli gencer," of to-day contains the following intelligence, extracted from a
Wisconsin paper:   "The Milwaukee' News of the West,' of the 29th ultimo, gives an account
of the second attempt of the United States Marshal to arrest Sherman M.
Booth, who recently escaped from confinement inflicted for aiding in the
rescue of a fugitive slave. Mr. McCarty, the United States Marshal, with
six men, went to the house of Mr. Pickett, where he supposed Booth had
been secreted. Pickett's house was surrounded by the officers, and Pickett,
as soon as he saw the officer, attempted to strike him. Mr. McCarty then
asked him if Booth was secreted in his house, and informed him that he
had a warrant for his arrest. Pickett replied that he had been there, but
had gone away. At this time Pickett shouted'Help, for God's sake!'
when a terrible commotion began to be heard in the house, and thirteen
other men, armed with guns, pistols, and pitchforks, came from the interior
of the duelling, and surrounded the officers, threatening their lives if they
did n-cleave the premises.  These demonstrations aroused the suspicions of
the officers, who now began to doubt the truth of Pickett's assertion, that
Booth had left the house.
"They were proceeding to search the house, when Pickett desired that he
might be permitted to put on some more clothing; and, upon being released,
seized a horn hanging near, and gave one blast upon it. It was immediately
taken from him, but was answered in a dozen different directions, and men
were seen coming from all quarters, armed with guns and pitchforks. They
immediately added themselves to the force already collected, and commenced
threatening the lives of the officers, and aiming their guns at their breasts.
Very soon after, armed men began to arrive in wagons; ana, in the short
space of one hour and a half, sixty-two men had gathered together, thus outnumbering the officers nearly twelve to one. Some twenty-five men ranged
themselves in order, and, pointing their guns at McCarty and his men, ordered
them to leave. One of them had his gun cocked, and became so much excited
that he discharged it, the ball entering a barn near.
"The mob then demanded of McCarty what he intended to do?  He boldly
-and emphatically replied, that'he came there to take Booth, and that if he
could get sight of him, he should accomplish his purpose, or die in the attempt.
That the men who were with him were determined men, and if violence was
offered, it must be done at their peril.' Mr. McCarty then asked them their
purpose.  They replied that Booth should never be taken, except over their
bodies; that they defied the Government, and that no power on earth could
get him from them. Again they demanded that the Marshal should depart,
but he coolly informed them that he was not yet ready, and asked their names.
A large number immediately stepped up and gave them, together with their
places of residence, coupled with the assertions that they would' lynch, shoot,
and quarter' every Government officer who attempted to accomplish Booth's
arrest.
"McCarty did not deem it advisable to risk the lives of six, against twelve
times that number, and, not knowing that Booth was in the house, did not
desire to peril their lives against such fearful odds, or render himself liable
if the fugitive was not there secreted. He sent to Ripon for reinforcements,
but informed the crowd that if Booth was seen or they would admit his
whereabouts, he would take him or perish. He waited until eleven o'clock,
having been there in the face of loaded rifles and desperate men, some seven
hours, when, assistance not arriving, himself and men quietly departed."
PHIILADELPHIA, September 4th.
0