28 man of that party ever opposed more strenuously the extension of slavery to the Territories, than did the gallant “Harry of the West?” If so, I confess it has escaped my observation. And yet the gentleman from Ohio would make the people believe, that the Republican party is responsible for this slaveholders rebellion, because they have faithfully adhered to the principles that Mr. Clay declared in 1850, had been settled by every department of the Government for a period of more than fifty years. And now, men are denounced as abolitionists in obedience to the orders of Gen. Beauregard, for sustaining the dobtrines asserted by Washingtoh, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Clay, and for fighting rebels seeking to destroy the best Government in the world-the only free Government on earth. And what is still worse, the men who thus stigmatise the soldiers and the statesmen of our country, call themselves Democrats! I have heard of men “stealing the livery of heaven to serve the devil in,” but I believe the prince of darkness himself, would be ashamed of the men, who are now attempting to aid their friends, the rebels of the South in arms against their country, murdering our best men, sending mourning and lamentation into ev6ry neighborhood in the loyal States, by so mean a pretense as that adopted by the sympathisers of the North. Sir, the gentleman from Ohio says, “a sectional anti-slavery party had just succeeded through the forms of the Constitution,” and he seems to attribute the cause of the great calamity of civil war to this fact. What constitutes a party sectional and anti slavery^? If the fact of believing with Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Clay, and the entire old Democratic party of the .free States,, up to. 1854, that slavery should be prohibited from the free Territories, makes a party antbslavery, then indeed, the Republican party may be justly styled anti-slavery. But why call the Republican party sectional? Is it because Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Hamlin both resided in the free States, that the party must be denounced as sectional ? Sir, this is no uncommon occurrence in the history of our country. In 1812, Dewitt Clinton, of New York, was nominated in opposition to Mr. Madison, and on the ticket with him for Vice President was Jared Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania. In 1824, General Jackson and John C. Calhoun, both from the slaveholding States, and slaveholders, were on the same ticket, for President and Vice President of the United States. In 1828 they were also on th® same ticket, and were elected. . In 1828, John Quinby Adams and Richard Rush were.on the same ticket for President and Vice President of the United States. They were both from the free States. In 1836, General Harrison and Frank Granger were nominated on the same ticket for President and Vice President of the United States. They were both from the free States. Now, all these cases have occurred in our short history, and yet no one at that time thought that these facts were of sufficient moment to justify a rebellion ; and no one believes now that the election of Mr. Lincoln was the cause of the present rebellion—the gentleman from Ohio does not believe it. Sir, there has not been a moment of time for fifty years, when disunion was not, to a greater or less extent, the ruling thought of many qf the leading southern politicians; ana all southern clainor about violate,d rights is nothing but the basest hypocrisy.
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