"After battling bravely with two Democratic administrations, after being subject to ever contumely which desperation could invent the Republican party succeeded in rescuing Kansas from slavery. It was one of the daring purposes of Frank Pierce's administration to conciliate and flatter every interest of labor or capital. He succeeded in nothing, because he went into power with no particular object in view. During his sway, the first really great movement was made towards reducing the powers and resources of the government to the exclusive benefit and uses of slavery. It was during the administration of Frank Pierce, too, that the great battle of freedom commenced, which has since resulted in such glorious triumphs for religion, humanity, and the rights and interests of labor throughout the entire country. Southern emigration, the emigration which is composed of a few white men owning and controlling hosts of slaves, entered the territories, little dreaming that there would be a contest between free white man and black slave labor. They entered the territories under the mistaken idea that their fruitfulness was to be theirs without an effort, and the verdure of their mountains and plains were to be eternally devoted to slavery. A new spirit prevailing in the North, with the mighty genius of its free labor expanding and seeking fresh fields of triumph, induced an immense emigration to these territories - and it was then that the wants of slave labor became sadly apparent to the advocates of slavery; and then, only was it discovered that it had so many Constitutional rights and privileges. As long as the arrogance of a slaveholder sufficed for any sensible persuasion or argument, slavery was not presumed or claimed to have any Constitutional right. It existed alone by force. Force was its rule of action - argument and reasons the exceptions to this rule, But when slavery was brought fairly into competition with free labor, and it was discovered that it could not progress with it sturdy strides, or compete with it in useful toil or productive industry, then only was it discovered that slavery possessed such superior Constitutional rights. It had impoverished Maryland and blighted Virginia - cast a pall of ignorance and darkness over the Carolinas - made Georgia and Alabama marts in which to barter for human flesh - driven free labor from Mississippi and Louisiana - but it was not Constitutional slavery that accomplished all this. It was the genius of the South portrayed in their chivalry, before which, forty years ago, the homespun integrity and honest industry of the North were compelled to quail and give way. This homespun integrity has assumed a strange dignity in the eyes of the Southern people. Linked to the steam engine, the steam plow, the seed-drill and the reaper, it has organized a new order of chivalry - not of stars and garters, or of a renown in the duello - but of that glorious industry which covers the brown of man with a coronet formed by labor's sweat, more brilliant than the sparkling jewels in the brightest diadem on earth. out of the triumphs of this labor, and being convinced that the men who constitute and form the action of these classes of pioneers to the new territories, are opposed to the recognition of slave labor, the Southern people have made up their Constitutional rights for slavery. no longer able to compete with the developments and improvement of free labor - prostrated by the ignorance which they cultivated to strengthen and perpetuate their institution, they begin to prate of rights, Constitutional rights, and southern equality of property inhuman flesh with that of property in a horse, a dog or a cat.
WHAT THE SOUTH WANT? They want the full, entire and imperative recognition of slavery. They want a salve-code for the territories. They want Congressional legislation for, and judicial interference in behalf of slave labor. If a proposition is made in Congress to establish a line of steamships, it must first be proved that such a line will not infringe on, or that it will uphold the Constitutional rights of slavery before it receives Southern support. If an administration asks for an appropriation to defray the expenses of government, a concession must be made to slavery, before a Southern representative will vote the money. - If land is to be devoted to railroads in order to open new territories, or to school purposes, to educate the youth of the country as good citizens for new Commonwealths, slavery must be appeased by a bounty of millions of acres, or its Constitutional rights are at once menaced and in danger. If protection is proposed for the free white labor of the country, a war of nullification is sounded in the South, with free trade for its battle cry. These wants compose the Constitutional rights of the South - nor are these all the demands that are made on the people and legislature of the country. If a vacancy occurs in the supreme court of the nation no man not known to be committed to what may be enumerated as the Constitutional rights of the South - can receive a confirmation to fill such a vacancy, from a Democratic United States SEnate - Wherever the south has the power, they make all interests subserve those of slavery. Wherever they rule, they cultivate its enormities, and encourage its excesses. But wherever the divine influence of freedom is exercised to elevate and improve mankind, southern slavery arrogantly assumes the dignity of a Constitutional right, an infringement of which is to endanger the peace of the country, the perpetuity of the Union, as well as the prosperity and progress of the white race on this continent.
The strangest feature in the history of the `wants' is the fact that they have their advocates and defenders in the North. We hear men who exist by the profits of northern labor reasoning for the rights of slavery. We see politicians surrendering dignity and respectability at home, that they may gain applause and credit abroad. Not a single northern interest is upheld, - not a principle in which our welfare is involved, vindicated - nor even the progress we are making in industry and improvement, recognized. All are abandoned to serve slavery - all are deserted to assist in the strengthening of that system of vassalage in the South, that has created more jealousy, more confusion, and more petty spite int eh administration of this government, than all the interests involved in our prosperity combined. It is time for the Northern people to consider well how far the south have a right to infringe on the prosperity of free labor. The question is not `shall slavery exist?' but whether free labor shall be permitted to go on in its triumphs, pushing civilization into new territories, enlarging and strengthening the bonds of Union, and spreading the blessings of religion and civil liberty. There are really, Constitutional rights - and these are what the whole country demands.
There are four candidates in the field for the Presidential succession. Each of these four claims to be national in his views and tendencies. Each claims to be the exclusive supporter and advocate of Constitutional policies for the government of the country. But it is singular that the supporters of three of these candidates differ in localities, differ in matters of fact, and differ in general principles.
The friends of John C. Breckinridge in the North support him to preserve the organization and unity of the so-called Democratic party. In the South he is sustained because he is pledged to the protection of slavery, to the opening of the slave trade, and to the introduction of slavery into all the territories of the country. In the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama, mr. Breckinridge is presented to the people as being ultra on these subjects - as being opposed to all Tariffs for the protection of free labor, to the homestead law, and in favor of all the monstrous claims of the advocates of slavery. In the North he is presented as the conservative candidate, as `the regular Democratic candidates' and in this regularity, without any profession of devotion of pledges to support a single interest vested in northern labor or enterprise, his peculiar supporters, the administration officers, ask the people of the North to assist in making his President of the United States. They ask the people of the North to do what is even worse, by aiding to throw the election into the House of Representatives, increase the chances of Joe Lane becoming President, through the failure of the House to elect, and Lane's consequent election by the Senate.
In the South, Stephen A. Douglas is opposed because he is a `traitor' to Democracy - in the North, his supporters are imbued in their zeal for him, because he is the advocate of `popular sovereignty.' The friends of Douglas in the South declare that popular sovereignty will ensure the introduction of slavery in the territories, while his own assertions at the North sanction the expectation that it will exclude the institution from the public domain. He voted for the homestead bill to please his friends in the North and the West, but failed to advocate its principles in order to quiet the fears of his advocates in the South. This is the nationality of Douglas: A flattering speech for the South - pledges at clam-bakes for the North, bravado for the West, seasoned with his great principle of non-intervention for the mercantile interests of the whole community.
John Bell is the negative candidate, in this grand squabble of nationality. If not unconscious, he pretends to be insensible to the progress of the country, by maintaining a neutrality on all subjects of questions at issue between the people or parties of the nation. He is pledged to support the constitution as it is construed in all sections - and would, if elected, do more to dissolve the Union, by this very recognition of sectional feeling, than the most ultra men in any of the sections of the country. The conservatism of the Bell party is what the country must avoid if we desire a peaceable and permanent settlement of all difficulties now dividing and distracting the different sections of the Union. It is a conservatism not in harmony with the spirit of our progress, at variance with the useful and elevating principles that animate the masses of the American people.
In this contest the Republicans maintain the only really national and soundly conservative position. They are the same in Maine as in California, in the Atlantic as in the Pacific States. The position they have taken is national because it is just, seeking the improvement of business by the elevation of labor - the perpetuation of society by the recognition of civil and religious liberty, as the only true basis on which to preserve the unity of the States with the full and free force of the Constitution. It is conservative, because it does not seek the compromise of a principle to satisfy the vindictiveness and passion engendered by a prejudice. It is a national party because it does not fear deliberation on or discussions of any of the principles set forth in its national or local platforms. The policy that it seeks to pursue toward labor is applicable in Georgia as in Ohio - as elevating in the South as in the North. The principles of universal suffrage proclaimed by the statesmen in its ranks are those which imbued the framers of the Constitution, when they sought to fix a basis for the regulation of labor and capital - principles recognizing the natural right of every man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In no single instance have the Republicans, as a party, advocated any measure with a tendency to deprive any section of the Union of a single right. The Democracy of the South have done so, time and again, in their assaults on the industry of the country. The Republican party has never excited a jealousy in any particular section of the country, while it has been the aim and the end of modern Democracy to carry on a sectional warfare at the expense of national peace and advancement. With laws for the general good, with a policy to extend and harmonize the power and resources of the country, the Republican party labors, not for the benefit of a State or a county, but for the full realization of a nation's greatness in the prosperity of a free people. This exemplifies its own nationality, as well as the nationality of the principles it seeks to establish."