Plain Truths for the People

7 forever; but no other department of the Government, no other right, wag touched. Talk about their deciding that Slavery exists in Kansas as much as in South Carolina ! Talk about the highest tribunal in the land deciding that Slavery is in your Territories; that every inch of ground outside of the free States is slave territory ! I pity the weakness of the man who yields to any such ideas as that. That court has no such transcendent power. It could bind nobody but the suitors in the court. It would be unfortunate if it could. I know with what avidity your facile President seized upon the idea, and stultified himself by saying that it was a mystery to him that any man should ever doubt it. The Senator from Michigan [Mr. Chandler] yesterday disposed of him in that particular. He disposed of him forever, and showed a hypocrisy, I am compelled to say, disgraceful to a man, e^en in a private station. He who had deliberately put forth the doctrines of the Missouri Compromise; he who had sought, over and over again, in the ripeness of his judgment, after full deliberation, to procure its extension and recognition by Congress, now turns coldly around, and tells us it is a mystery that any man should ever have doubted it! Well, sir, if Mr. Buchanan is a mystery to himself, he is no mystery to me. HEAR THE SLAVE POWER. There is one other consideration that I wish to bring before the Senate. Why is it, and how is it, that the Southern States, with one- third, or lees than one-third, of the free population of this nation, have been enabled for sixty years to rule the destinies of the country ? It has been done, in the first place, (and that is one reason why I contest every inch of ground,) because in a close oligarchy you have a power that a democracy of the same numbers can never have politically. The power of the Government seems to be in inverse ratio to the number of people that participate in the Government. And this is obvious enough. You have a class of not more than three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders in the United States. They have governed this Union (so says the Senator from South Carolina, and he says truly) for sixty long years ; not the people of the South, mind you ; he says the slaveholders have ruled the nation. That is true. First of all, they placed their feet on the necks of all those who do not hold slaves. The poor men of the South he utterly ignores, as having any political power, and I suppose they have none. They have votes, no doubt; but those votes are given in accordance with the will of this aristocracy, who are all-powerful; for it has been observed, and truly observed, that he who has the power over the subsistence of another has the power over his will. You, the wealthy slaveholders of the South, wield absolute dominion over your poorer white neighbors; therefore it was that the Senator from South Carolina said the slaveholders have ruled the nation. You three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders have ruled your six million whites, (I go according to the census of 1850,) you have not only ruled your six million, but you have also ruled the fourteen million free people of the North. How have you done it? You have done it because you had a general bond of interest uniting you, tying you together as if animated by one soul. What was the interest of one, was the interest of another. You are forced all on the same platform, all acting to one end. You found the Democracy of the North divided in various pursuits, laboring in their various avocations, with very little time to study this problem of politics: and you have always been able to seduce enough of us over to you, to enable you to carry your Government along. I know that gentlemen smile at this; but I am compelled by truth to state facts here that I wish I could hide from the world. It is a rottenness at the North that you do not have. It is disreputable to us, but I am compelled to admit it. A DAGUERREOTYPE FOR THE BENEFIT OF FUTURE AGES. Your allies, the doughfaces of the North, in my judgment, are the most despicable of men. The modern doughface is not a character peculiar to the age in which we live, but you find traces of him at every period of the worlds history. He is void of pride; he is void of self- respect ; he is actuated by a mean, grovelling selfishness, that would sell his Maker for a price. Why, sir, when old Moses, under the immediate inspiration of God Almighty, enticed a whole nation of slaves, and ran away, not to Canada, but to old Canaan, I suppose that Pharaoh and all the chivalry of old Egypt denounced him as a most furious Abolitionist. [Laughter.] I do not know but that they blasphemed their God, who had assisted the fugitives from labor to escape. I have no doubt at all, that when some Southern gentlemen of the Gcspel come up to preach to the North, they will say that the Almighty acted a very fanatical part in this business. I am afraid they will say so; for He was aiding and abetting in the escape. But amidst the glories of that great deliverance, even feeding upon miracles of the Almighty as they went along, there were not wanting those who loved Egypt better than they loved liberty; whose souls longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt; and who could turn from the visible glories of the Almighty God to worship an Egyptian calf. These were the doughfaces of that day. They were national men. [Laughter.] They were not exactly Northern men with Southern principles; but they were Israelites with Egyptian principles. [Laughter.] Again: when the Saviour of the world went forth on his great mission to proclaim glad tidings of joy to all the people of the earth, to break every yoke, and to preach deliverance to the captive, He met with the same class of men

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