the same free condition that existed in similar organizations on the 30th of April, 1789. This is a work in which all patriots can harmoniously unite. It is one which the imminence of the present crisis (when the slave-power demands an absolute reversal of the revolutionary precedent, and that all territory shall be slave, not free) forces upon the country as paramount to all other issues. And if any one fails to recognize that it is the overshadowing question of the day, which must be settled before and above all other questions, in one way or another, in favor of liberty or of slavery, by the policy of Washington or of Douglas-the fact that in its presence the bands of old party organizations snap like brittle threads, and are consumed like flax, ought to be sufficient to convince him that the great mass of the people recognize it as the issue of the times, and are already preparing for its final settlement at that court of last resort with American freemen-the ballot-box.

"You have not failed to notice that the opening of the present Congress was signalized by the preliminary struggle of this conflict. I will not weary you by alluding to the fact that your representatives here exhibited their realizing sense of the magnitude of the contest by standing firm through a prolonged parliamentary struggle, unexampled in history, and which could be vindicated only by an overpowering conviction of duty and of right. I need only say, that, at last, after a faithful persistence of months, with ranks as full to the end as when they entered on the contest, a victory for freedom and justice crowned their labors. It remains for you and the people at large to say whether this auspicious success shall be followed up and consummated in the national canvass, which is just opening, by

a triumph of free labor as well as free principles, peaceful in its character, patriotic in its objects, republican in its results. With a man of firmness, as well as of patriotism in the presidential chair, the government will be restored to the policy of its fathers; and the slanders of our opponents will be disproved by his vindicating the eternal truth of our American Magna Charta on the one hand, while opposing all unconstitutional interference with the rights of the slave States on the other. With the country thus happily and justly governed, it cannot fail to go on in a career of prosperity, development and wealth, which freedom will be certain to bring in its train, until the efforts now making to blot out the example of our forefathers, and to extend the dominion of human bondage, shall be looked upon from the clearer stand-point of the Hereafter with wonder and regret by all.

"In this noble work, with such happy results as must inevitably flow from your labors, you need no words of encouragement from me. With union and concord, you cannot fail. The principles upon which we stand cannot but command success when the public mind is concentrated on this great issue. Politicians in the Senate may clamor in regard to 'the equality of the States,' which no man denies. But the people will regard it as a higher and nobler principle that we vindicate in our policy, the equality of the American freeman; and that we demand, as one of the 'needful rules and regulations for the territory of the United States,' which Congress is expressly authorized by the Constitution to enact, that the territories shall be so organized, as in 1789, that all of our citizens, from whatever clime they may come, or whatever may be their pecuniary condition,

shall have equal rights in their settlement; and that no institution shall prevail in them which shall degrade American labor and press down the mechanic, the daylaborer, the road-builder, or the worker in the fields, towards the social condition of the Southern slave. In

a word, that it shall be the first duty of the Government to see to it, that, wherever it has constitutional authority, LABOR, the primal element of American prosperity, shall be honored, elevated and protected. Then the true policy of the founders of the republic will be vindicated by their successors. And then, as the vanguard of Anglo-Saxon civilization pushes forward and takes possession of the wide-spread territories of the West, ever beneath the folds of the national banner, as it greets the morning breeze and reflects the setting sun, the great central truth of the Declaration of Independence shall be recognized and avowed—that all men are endowed by their Creator with liberty, and that it is one of the highest aims and noblest duties of government to protect this God-given and inalienable right, wherever it possesses the power.

"Very truly yours,

"SCHUYLER COLFAX."

One sentence of this letter is an ingot of golden truth. As a motto it should be emblazoned on the political banners of the land. It should forever gleam there in undimming brightness. "Labor, the primal element of American prosperity, shall be honored, elevated and protected." This is no narrow creed. It is the sentiment of a heart, that has known the straitened circumstances of poverty, that has known the necessities of toil, and that is all live with sympathy for honest, hard-handed industry.

CHAPTER IX.

SPEECH OF MR. COLFAX UPON THE BOGUS LAWS OF KANSAS"-ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS-HOLDING THE BALL AND CHAIN-RENOMINATED FOR CONGRESS-REELECTED-ELECTION OF MR. BUCHANAN PREDICTED.

DURING this session of Congress Mr. Colfax made a speech upon "the bogus laws of Kansas," which stamped him as one of the most effective Congressional orators. This speech was extensively circulated as a campaign document in the Presidential contest of the same year. It was placed in every house in Connecticut by the earnest Republicans of that State. More than half a million copies of it were scattered over the country. Among the laws, which in that speech Mr. Colfax unearthed, was one providing a ball and chain as a reward for free speech if exercised in denouncing slavery. Mr. Colfax caused such a ball to be procured, and at the desired moment, it was brought upon the floor, and he held it up, as he spoke, the splendid ornament devised for a free people. Alexander H. Stephens, who sat near, and who, being on the same Committee with Mr. Colfax, was intimate with him, asked him for the ball, as if to test its weight. Having satisfied his curiosity, he offered to return it; but Mr. Colfax, looking down upon him with a smile, requested him to hold it, until he finished his speech, and Mr. Stephens complied. "That globe of iron," said one, speaking of the scene after two years of the rebellion had passed, "was a locket of fine gold to the mill-stone that the reluctant, nerveless Vice-President of rebels hung about his neck."

We add the following extract from the speech:

"In such a state of affairs as this, to talk of going to the polls and having the laws repealed is worse than a mockery. It is an insult. It is like binding a man hand and foot, throwing him into the river, and telling him to swim to the shore and he will be saved. It is like loading a man with irons, and then telling him to run for his life. The only relief possible, if Kansas is not promptly admitted as a State, which I hope may be effected, is in a change of the administration and of the party that so recklessly misrules the land; and that will furnish an effectual relief.

"As I look, sir, to the smiling valleys and fertile plains of Kansas, and witness there the sorrowful scenes of civil war, in which, when forbearance at last ceased to be a virtue, the Free State men of the territory felt it necessary, deserted as they were by their Government, to defend their lives, their families, their property, and their hearthstones, the language of one of the noblest statesmen of the age, uttered six years ago at the other end of this Capitol, rises before my mind. I allude to the great statesman of Kentucky, Henry Clay. And while the party, which, while he lived, lit the torch of slander at every avenue of private life, and libelled him before the American people by every epithet that renders man infamous, as a gambler, debauchee, traitor, and enemy of his country, are now engaged in shedding fictitious tears over his grave, and appealing to his old supporters to aid by their votes in shielding them from the indignation of an uprisen people, I ask them to read this language of his, which comes to us as from his tomb to-day. With the change of but a single geographical word in the place of 'Mexico,' how prophetically does