of strict construction. It violated the express provisions of the Constitution in suppressing petition and debate on the subject of slavery, through fear of disturbance of the public harmony; although it claims that the electors have a right to instruct their representatives, and even demand their resignation in cases of contumacy. It extended slavery over Texas, and connived at the attempt to spread it across the Mexican territories, even to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, under a plea of enlarging the area of freedom. It abrogated the Mexican slave law and the Missouri Compromise prohibition of slavery in Kansas, not to open the new Territories to slavery, but to try therein the new and fascinating theories of non-intervention and popular sovereignty; and, finally, it overthrew both these new elegant systems by the English-Lecompton bill and the Dred Scott decision, on the ground that the free States ought not to enter the union without a population equal to the representative basis of one member of Congress, although slave States might come in without inspection as to their numbers.

Will any member of the Democratic party now here claim that the authorities chosen by the suffrages of the party transcended their partisan platforms, and so misrepresented the party in the various transactions I have recited? Then I ask him to name one Democratic statesman or legislator, from Van Buren to Walker, who, either timidly or cautiously like them, or boldly and defiantly like Douglas, ever refused to execute a behest of the slaveholders and was not therefor, and for no other cause, immediately denounced, and deposed from his trust, and repudiated by the Democratic party for that contumacy.

I think, fellow citizens, that I have shown you that it is high time for the friends of freedom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution, and that their very first duty is to dismiss the Democratic party from the administration of the government.

Why shall it not be done? All agree that it ought to be done. What, then, shall prevent its being done? Nothing

but timidity or division of the opponents of the Democratic party.

Some of these opponents start one objection, and some another. Let us notice these objections briefly. One class say that they can not trust the Republican party; that it has not avowed its hostility to slavery boldly enough, or its affection for freedom earnestly enough.

I ask in reply, Is there any other party which can be more safely trusted? Every one knows that it is the Republican party, or none, that shall displace the Democratic party. But I answer, further, that the character and fidelity of any party are determined, necessarily, not by its pledges, programmes, and platforms, but by the public exigencies, and the temper of the people when they call it into activity. Subserviency to slavery is a law written not only on the forehead of the Democratic party, but also in its very soul, -so resistance to slavery, and devotion to freedom, the popular elements now actively working for the Republican party among the people, must and will be resources for its ever-renewing strength and constant invigoration.

Others can not support the Republican party, because it has not sufficiently exposed its platform, and determined what it will do, and what it will not do, when triumphant. It may prove too progressive for some, and too conservative for others. As if any party ever foresaw so clearly the course of future events as to plan a universal scheme of future action, adapted to all possible emergencies. Who would ever have joined even the Whig party of the Revolution, if it had been obliged to answer, in 1775, whether it would declare for independence in 1776, and for this noble Federal Constitution of ours in 1787, and not a year earlier or later? The people will be as wise next year, and even ten years hence, as we are now. They will oblige the Republican party to act as the public welfare and the interests of justice and humanity shall require, through all the stages of its career, whether of trial or triumph.

Others will not venture an effort, because they fear that

the Union would not endure the change. Will such objectors tell me how long a constitution can bear a strain directly along the fibers of which it is composed? This is a Constitution of freedom. It is being converted into a Constitution of slavery. It is a republican Constitution. It is being made an aristocratic one. Others wish to wait until some collateral questions concerning temperance, or the exercise of the elective franchise, are properly settled. Let me ask all such persons, whether time enough has not been wasted on these points already, without gaining any other than this single advantage, namely, the discovery that only one thing can be effectually done at one time, and that the one thing which must and will be done at any one time is just that thing which is most urgent, and will no longer admit of postponement or delay? Finally, we are told by faint-hearted men that they despond; the Democratic party, they say, is unconquerable, and the dominion of slavery is consequently inevitable. I reply that the complete and universal dominion of slavery would be intolerable enough, when it should have come, after the last possible effort to escape should have been made. There would then be left to us the consoling reflection of fidelity to duty.

But I reply further, that I know-few, I think, know better than I-the resources and energies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the slave power. I do ample prestige to its traditional popularity. I know, furtherfew, I think, know better than I-the difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a new political force, like the Republican party, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestige and without patronage. But, understanding all this, I know that the Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise into its place. The Democratic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practiced this principle faithfully, it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has main

tained itself, not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the political field no other party that had the conscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and practice the lifeinspiring principle which the Democratic party had surrendered. At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows, now, as the Republican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works, "Equal and exact justice to all men." Even when it first entered the field, only half organized, it struck a blow which only just failed to secure complete and triumphant victory. In this, its second campaign, it has already won advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain.

The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of one idea; but that idea is a noble one,—an idea that fills and expands all generous souls; the idea of equality, the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the Divine tribunal and Divine laws.

I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty Senators and a hundred Representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery, the people of the United States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forces with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the Constitution and freedom forever.

V

Civil War and Reconstruction

INTO the multitude of speeches dealing with military matters and the conduct of the war it does not seem expedient, in this book, to enter. One exception to this rule, perhaps, may be noted-the inclusion of Lincoln's Gettysburg address: but this speech, though ostensibly a dedication of a military cemetery for those who fell in the most critical battle of the war, is so transformed by Lincoln's elevation of thought and noble simplicity of language as to become a pæan of patriotism, and an exposition of the ideals which animated the North in its struggle for national existence.

The first of the speeches in the order of time, and also the logical opening of this subdivision, is that of Jefferson Davis, the future President of the Confederacy, on taking leave of the Senate (January 21, 1861). Here are briefly set forth the doctrines of Secession-doctrines which, more fully uttered, were the theme of countless earlier speeches of Davis and his Southern colleagues. In Lincoln's First Inaugural (March 4, 1861) we find the answer which that "patient, far-seeing" master of men—“dreading praise, not blame" gave to the accomplished fact of Secession.

The speech of Alexander H. Stephens on the Confederate Constitution-the so-called "corner-stone speech"(March 21, 1861), shows the frank acceptance by the South of slavery as the moral and economic basis of the new Confederacy. The speech is also interesting for its