or succeeding which, that pestilent and execrable sectional controversy, Respublica portentum ac pæne funus, was developed and nurtured to its present perilous magnitude.

At

Here, gentlemen, a new epoch begins in our political history. A new order of issues, and new party mechanism are introduced. this point, therefore, let us turn back and trace briefly the origin and history of those grievous departures from the ancient landmarks, which, filling the whole country with confusion and perplexity, have impaired, more or less seriously, the strength and discipline of the Democratic party.

In the State of Massachusetts-not barren of inventions-in the year 1811, at a meeting of an ecclesiastical council, a committee was appointed, whereof a reverend doctor, of Salem, was chairman, to draught a constitution for the first "Temperance Society" in the United States. The committee reported in 1813, and the society was established. It languished till 1826; and, "languishing did live." Nathan Dane was among its first presidents. In that year of grace, sir, at Boston, died this association, and from its ashes sprang the "American Society for the promotion of Temperance"-the parent of a numerous offspring. This association was, in its turn, supplanted by the Washingtonian Societies of 1841, and they, again, by the Sons of Temperance. The eldest of these organizations taught only temperance in the use of ardent spirits; their successors forbade, wholly, all spirituous, but allowed vinous and fermented liquors. The Washingtonians enjoined total abstinence from every beverage which, by possibility, might intoxicate, and so, also, did the Sons of Temperance. But all these organizations, gentlemen-in the outset, at least-professed reliance solely upon "moral suasion," and denied all political purpose or design in their action. They were voluntary associations, formed to persuade men to be temperate. This was right, was reasonable; was great, and noble; and immense results for good rewarded their labors. The public was interested, everywhere. The cause became popular-became powerful. signing men, not honest, were not slow to discover that it might be turned into a potent political engine for the advancement of personal or party interests. Weak men, very honest, were dazzled and deluded by the bright dream of intemperance expelled, and man restored to his original purity, by the power of human legislation. And lo, in 1855, in this, the freest country upon the globe, fourteen States, by statute-bristling all over with fines, the jail, and the penitentiary-have prescribed that neither strong drink nor the fruit of the vine shall be the subject of contract, traffic, or use within their limits. Temperance, which Paul preached, and the Bible teaches as a religious duty, and leaves to the Church, or the voluntary associalion, is now become a controlling element at the polls and in legislation. Political parties are perverted into great temperance societies; and the fitness of the citizen for office gauged now by his capacity to remain dry. His palm may itch; his whole head may be weak, and his whole heart corrupt; but if his tongue be but parched, he is competent.

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And now, sir, along with good, came evil; and when the good turned to evil, the plague abounded exceedingly. I pass by that numerous host of lesser isms of the day, full-all of them-of folly, or fanaticism, and fit only to "uproar the universal peace, confound all unity on earth," which, nevertheless, have excited much public interest, numbered many followers, and, flowing speedily into the stream of party politics, aided largely to pollute its already turbid and frothy waters. I come to that most recent fungus development of those departures from original and wholesome political principle, KNOW-NOTHINGISM- -as barbarous in name, as, in my judgment, it is dangerous in essence.

The extraordinary success, gentlemen, which had attended political temperance and abolition, revealed a mine of wealth, richer than California placer, to the office-hunting demagogue. Ordinary political topics were become stale-certainly unprofitable. But he, it now appeared, who could call in the aid of moral or religious truths, touched an answering chord in the heart of this very pious and upright people-a people so keenly sensitive, too, each one, to the moral or religious status of his neighbor.

Not ignorant, sir, of the corroding bitterness of religious strife, and mindful of the desolating persecutions, for conscience' sake, of which governments, in times past, had been the willing instruments, the founders of our Federal Constitution forbade, in clear and positive language, all religious tests and establishments: and every State, in terms more or less emphatic, has ordained a similar prohibition. The Constitution of Ohio, declaring that all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience, provides that "no preference shall be given, by law, to any religious society, nor shall any interference with the rights of conscience be permitted; and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for office."

By prohibitions, positive and stringent as these are, gentlemen, our fathers, in their weakness, thought to stay the flood of religious intolerance. Vain hope! The high road to honor and emolument lay through the "higher law" reforms of the day. Moral and religious issues alone were found available. The roll of the "drum ecclesiastic" could stir a fever in the public blood, when the thunders of the rostrum fell dull and droning upon the ears of the people. It needed but small sagacity, therefore, to foresee that the prejudices of race and sect must prove a still more powerful and wieldy engine. The Pope of Pilgrims Progress grinned still at the mouth of the cave full of dead men's bones; and Fox's Book of Martyrs lay shuddering yet, with its hideous engravings, under every Protestant roof. How easy, then, to revive, or, rather, to fan into a flame, this secret but worse than goblin dread of Papacy and the Inquisition. Add to this, that a majority of Catholics are foreigners-obnoxious, therefore, to the bigotry of race and birth also; add, further, that silence, secrecy, and circumspection are weapons potent in any hands: add, still, that to be over-curious is a controlling element in the American character. Compound, now, all these with a travesty upon the signs,

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grips, and machinery of already existing organizations, and you have the elements and mechanism of a great and powerful, but assuredly not enduring party.

In the month of January, 1854, the telegraph, on lightning wing, speeds through its magic meshes the astounding intelligence that, at the municipal election of the town of Salem, (not unknown in history,) in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, men not known to be candidates were, by an invisible and unknown agency, said to be a secret, oath-bound society, without even so much as a name, elected by heavy majorities over candidates openly proclaimed. In March, and in April, similar announcements appear from other quarters. The mystery is perplexing-the country is on fire-and lo, in October, nine months after this Salem epiphany, from Maine to California, the mythic "SAM" has established his secret conclaves in every city, village, county, and State in the Union.

And here, again, sir, the Protestant clergy, forgetting, many of them, their divine warrant and holy mission-I speak it with profoundest sorrow and humiliation-have run headlong into this dangerous and demoralizing organization. They have even sought, in many places, to control it, and through it, the political affairs of the country: and, sad spectacle! are found but too often foremost and loudest and most clamorous among political brawlers and hunters of place. I rejoice, sir, that there are many noble and holy exceptions-ministers mindful of their true province, and preaching only the pure precepts and doctrines of that Sacred Volume, without which there is no religion, and no stability or virtue worth the name, in either Church or State. Nevertheless, covertly or openly, the Protestant clergy and Church have but too much lent countenance and encouragement to the order. And the truth must and shall be spoken both of Church and of Party.

In seizing upon the Temperance and other moral and religious movements, party invaded the territory of the Church. The Church has now avenged the aggression, and gone into party-not with the might and majesty of holiness-not to purify and elevate-but with distorted feature, breath polluted, and wing dripping and droiling in mire and stench and rottenness, to destroy and pollute, in the foul embrace, whatever of purity remained yet to either Church or the hustings. The Church has disorganized and perverted party; and, in its turn, party has become to the Church as "dead flies in the ointment of the apothecary." Church and State, each abandoning its peculiar province, and meeting upon the common ground of fanaticism and proscription, have joined hands in polluting and incestuous wedlock. The Constitution remains, indeed, unchanged in letter; but this unholy union has rendered nugatory one among its wisest and most salutary enactments.

But, gentlemen, all these are, in their nature and from circumstances, essentially ephemeral. No powerful and controlling interests exist to cement and harden them into strength and durability. They are among the epidemic diseases which for a season infect every body politic-leaving it, if sound in constitution and not distempered otherwise, purified and strengthened. In all these, too, the Democ

racy, as a party, has stood firm and uncontaminate; although, indeed, individual members have, in every State and county, been beguiled and led astray, and thereby the aggregate power and influence of the party greatly impaired.

Especially, sir, is the present order of "Know-Nothings" evanescent. Even now it totters to the earth. In the beginning, indeed, it was, perhaps, the purpose of its founders to hold it aloof from the great sectional controversy between the North and the South, and to mold it into a permanent national party. But circumstances are stronger than men and already throughout the North it has become thoroughly abolitionized. Hence, it must speedily dissolve and pass away, or remain but a yet more hateful adjunct of that one stronger and more durable organization, in which every element of opposition to the Democratic party must, sooner or later, inevitably terminate— THE ABOLITION HORDE OF THE NORTH; for, however tortuous may be its channel, or remote its fountain, into this turbid and devouring flood will every brook and rivulet find its way at last.

The consideration of this great question, Mr. President, I have naturally and appropriately reserved to the last. It is the gravest and most momentous, full of embarrassment and of danger to the country; and, in cowering before, or tampering with it, the Democratic party of Ohio has given itself a disabling, though I trust not yet mortal, wound.

I propose, then, sir, to trace fully the origin, development, and progress of this movement, and to explore, and lay open at length, its relations, present and prospective, to the Democratic party and to the Union.

SLAVERY, gentlemen-older in other countries also than the records of human society-existed in America at the date of its discovery. The first slaves of the European were natives of the soil; and a Puritan governor of Massachusetts-founder of the family of Winthrop bequeathed his soul to God, and his Indian slaves to the lawful heirs of his body. Negro slavery was introduced into Hispaniola in 1501, more than a century before the colonization of America by the English. Massachusetts, by express enactment, in 1641, punishing "man-stealing" with death-and it is so punished to this day under the laws of the United States-legalized yet the enslaving of captives taken in war, and of such "strangers," foreigners, as should be acquired by purchase; while confederate New England, two years later, providing for the equitable division of lands, goods, and "persons," as equally a part of the "spoils" of war, enacted also the first fugitive slave law in America. White

*SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS.-"There shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, or captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves, or are sold to us."-Massachusetts Body of Liberties, 1641: 91.

"It is, also, by these confederates agreed, that, etc. . . and that according to the different charge of each jurisdiction and plantation, the whole advantage of the war, (if it please God so to bless their endeavors,) whether it be in lands, goods, or persons, shall be proportionably divided among said

slaves-convicts and paupers some of them; others, at a later day, prisoners taken at the battles of Dunbar, and Worcester, and of Sedgemoor-were, at the first, employed in Virginia and the British West Indies. Bought in England by English dealers, among whom was the queen of James II, with many of his nobles and courtierssome of them, perhaps, of the house of Sutherland-they were imported and sold at auction to the highest bidder. In 1620, a Dutch man-of-war first landed a cargo of slaves upon the banks of James river. But the earliest slave-ship belonging to the English colonists was fitted out, in 1645, by a member of the Puritan Church, of Boston. Fostered still by English princes and nobles, confirmed and cherished by British legislation and judicial decisions, even against the wishes, and in spite of the remonstrances, of the Colonies, the traffic increased; slaves multiplied, and, on the Fourth of July, 1776, every Colony was now become a slave State; and the sun went down that day upon four hundred and fifty thousand of those who, in the cant of eighty years later, are styled "human chattels," but who were not, by the act of that day, emancipated.

Eleven years afterward, delegates, assembling at Philadelphia, from every State except Rhode Island, ignoring the question of the sinfulness and immorality of slavery as a subject with which they, as the representatives of separate and independent States, had no concern, founded a Union and framed a Constitution, which, leaving with each State the exclusive control and regulation of its own domestic institutions, and providing for the taxation and representation of slaves, gave no right to Congress to debate or to legislate concerning slavery in the States or Territories, except for the interdiction of the slave-trade and the extradition of fugitive slaves. The Plan of Union proposed by Franklin, in 1754, had contained no allusion, even, to slavery; and the Articles of Confederation of 1778, but a simple recognition of its existence-so wholly was it regarded then a domestic and local concern. In 1787, every State, except, perhaps, Massachusetts, tolerated slavery either absolutely or conditionally. But the number of slaves north of Maryland, never great, was even yet comparatively small-not exceeding forty thousand in a total slave population of six hundred thousand. In the North, chief carrier of slaves to others, even as late as 1807, slavery never took firm root.* Nature warred against it in that

confederates."-Articles of Confederation, etc., May 19, 1643; % 4; and Bancroft's United States, vol. 1, p. 168.

THE NEW ENGLAND FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.-"It is also agreed that if any servant run away from his master into any of these confederate jurisdictions, that, in such case, upon certificate of one magistrate in the jurisdiction out of which the said servant fled, or upon due proof, the said servant shall be delivered up either to his master or any other that pursues and brings such certificate or proof."-Ibid, 2.8.

*THE NORTH AND THE SLAVE TRADE.-The number of African slaves imported into the port of Charleston, S. C., alone, in the years 1804, 1805, 1806, and 1807-the last year of the slave-trade-was 39,075. These were consigned to ninety-one British subjects, eighty-eight citizens of New England, ten French subjects, and only thirteen citizens of Charleston.- Compend. of U. S. Census, p. 83.