under no circumstances would he ever approve a bill for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia. From 1838 to 1844,-the subject of abolishing Slavery in the District of Columbia and in the national dock-yards and arsenals was brought before Congress by repeated popular appeals. The Democratic party thereupon promptly denied the right of petition, and effectually suppressed the freedom of speech in Congress, so far as the institution of Slavery was concerned. From 1840 to 1843, good and wise men .counselled that Texas should remain outside of the Union until she should consent to relinquish her self-instituted Slavery; but the Democratic party precipitated her admission into the Union, not only without that condition, but even with a covenant that the State might be divided and reorganized so as to constitute four slave States instead of one. In 1846, when the United States became involved in a war with Mexico, and it was apparent that the struggle would end in the dismemberment of that republic, which was a non-slaveholding power, the Democratic party .rejected a declaration that Slavery should not be established within the territory to be acquired. When, in 1850, governments were to be instituted in the Territories of California and New Mexico, the fruits of that war, the Democratic party refused to admit New Mexico as a free State, and only consented to admit California as a free State on the condition, .as it has since explained the transaction, of leaving all of New Mexico and Utah open to Slavery, to which was also added the concession of perpetual Slavery in the District of Columbia, and the passage of an unconstitutional, cruel, and humiliating law, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, with a further stipulation that the subject of Slavery should never again be agitated in either chamber of •Congress. When, in 1854, the slaveholders were contentedly reposing on these great advantages, then so recently won, the Democratic party unnecessarily, officiously, and with superserviceable liberality, awakened them from their slumber, to offer and force on their acceptance the abrogation of the law which declared that neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist within that part of the ancient territory of Louisiana which lay outside of the State of Missouri, and north of the parallel of 36° 30' of north latitude—a law which, with the exception of one other, was the only statute of Freedom then remaining in the Federal code. In 1856, when the people of Kansas had organized a new State within the region thus abandoned to Slavery, and applied to be admitted as a free State into the Union, the Democratic party contemptuously rejected their petition, and drove them, with menaces and intimidations, from the Halls of Congress, and armed the President with military power to enforce their submission to a slave code, established over them by fraud and usurpation. At every subsequent stage of the long contest which has since raged in Kansas, the Democratic party has lent its sympathies, its aid, and all the powers of the Government which it controlled, to enforce Slavery upon that unwilling and injured people. And now, even at this day, while it mocks us with the assurance that Kansas is free, the Democratic party keeps the State excluded from her just and proper place in the Union, under the hope that she may be dragooned into the acceptance of Slavery. The Democratic party, finally, has procured from a Supreme Judiciary, fixed in its interest, a decree that Slavery exists by force of the Constitution in every Territory of the United States, paramount to all legislative authority, either within the Territory, or residing in Congress. Such is the Democratic party. It has no policy, State or Federal, for finance, or trade, or manufacture, or commerce, or education, or internal improvements, or for the protection or even the security of civil or religious liberty. It is positive and uncompromising in the interest of Slavery—negative, compromising, and vacillating, in regard to everything else. It boasts its love of equality, and wastes its strength, and even its life, in fortifying the only aristocracy known in the land. It professes fraternity, and, so often as Slavery requires, allies itself with proscription. It magnifies itself for conquests in foreign lands, but it sends the national eagle forth always with chains, and not the olive branch, in his fangs. This dark record shows you, fellow-citizens, what I was unwilling to announce at an earlier stage of this argument, that of the whole nefarious schedule of slaveholding designs which I have submitted to you, the Democratic party has left only one yet to be consummated—the abrogation of the law which forbids the African slave trade. Now, I know very well that the Democratic party has, at every stage of these proceedings, disavowed the motive and the policy of fortifying and extending Slavery, and has excused them on entirely different and more plausible grounds. But the inconsistency and frivolity of these pleas prove still more conclusively the guilt I charge upon that party. It must, indeed, try to excuse such guilt before mankind, and even to the consciences of its own adherents. There is an instinctive abhorrence of Slavery, and an inborn and inhering love of Freedom in the human heart, which render palliation of such gross misconduct indispensable. It disfranchised the free African
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