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men, I again assert that the present corrupt leaders of the Democratic party-left me standing on the principles of Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson.

I will take another test and prove my assertion. Who are the Democratic leaders to-day all over the country? Let us look at our own city. Do you not all know that I have battled politically with my friends Wm. B. Reed, and Josiah Randall, and George M. Wharton, all my life, and with my distinguished friend here, when he was a Whig member of our City Councils? The leaders are not the same; the principles are not the same. Gen. Lewis Cass lives, at least so the newspapers inform me, to give his vigorous dissent to the Chicago platform. Preston King, George Bancroft, Daniel S. Dickinson, and the great Democrats of New York, Hannibal Hamlin, George S. Boutwell, and scores of the great leaders of the Democracy of New England-John A. Dix, Benjamin Butler, Grant, Sherman. Farragut-are all Democrats of the old school, but all stand by their country and its flag, and the Administration that is striving to maintain that country and flag. Gentlemen, if my "company" is small, it has, to say the least, some very good soldiers in it. You will not tell me that I need be ashamed of it!

I now turn to the proceedings of the Grand Council of the State of Indians, at their meeting held on the 16th and 17th of February, 1864. The session closed with a resolution “That the Grand Secretary prepare and publish, in pamphlet form, the address of the Grand Commander, with such part of the proceedings of the Grand Council as may be necessary for the information of the County Temples, and send one copy of said publication to each County Temple."

The Grand Commander begins by addressing his hearers as "Councillors,” and in the course of his remarks, says:—

"We are organized for a high and noble purpose, the erection and consecration of Temples to the service of true Republicanism; altars upon which we may lay our hands and hearts with the invocation of the God of our Fathers."" 6 (That is the beginning of one of their oaths.) "Well may we call upon the God of truth, justice, and human rights, in our efforts to preserve what the great wisdom and heroic acts of our Fathers achieved.

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This, my friends, is no small undertaking-requiring patience, fortitude, patriotism, and a self-sacrificing disposition from each and all, and may require us to hazard life itself, in support and defence of those great cardinal principles which are the foundation stones of the State and Federal Government."

"To hazard life itself, eh?" Some of the revolvers with which they were to be armed while making the hazard, were seized just as they had got them from New York, into the room of Commander Dodd, at the same time this pamphlet was found.

"The creation of an empire or republic," the Commander continues, "or the reconstruction of the old Union, by brute force, is simply impossible. The liberation of four million blacks and putting them upon an equality with the whites, is a scheme which can only bring its authors into shame, contempt, and confusion; no results of this enterprise will ever be realized beyond the army of occupation."

Is not this, let me ask, precisely the doctrines that my friend has been teaching you: That it is a war to free the blacks, and that we can never do anything in that war-that we cannot coerce the States, or conquer the people of the South?

But let the Commander go on :

“There need be no apprehension that a war of coercion will be continued by a Democratic administration, if placed in control of public affairs, for with the experience of the present one, which has for three years, with the unlimited resources of eighteen millions of people, in men, money, and ships, won nothing but its own disgrace, and probable downfall, it is not likely that another, if it values public estimation, will repeat the experiment."

You, gentlemen, have not known that when you were cheering for victories, you were cheering for the “disgrace" of your country or the administration that presides over it.

But still again to the commander: "If these men be prolonged in power, they must either consent to be content to exercise the power delegated by the people, or, by the gods, they must prove themselves physically the stronger." (They must fight.) "This position is demanded by every true member of this fraternity; honor, life-ay, more than life, the virtue of our wives and daughters demands it; and if you intend to make this organization of any practical value, you will do one of two things--either take steps to work the political regeneration of the party with which we are affiliated, up to this standard, or, relying upon ourselves, determine at once our plan of action.

"It might be asked now, shall men be coerced to go to war, in a mere crusade to free negroes, and territorial aggrandizement? Shall our people be taxed to carry forward a war of emancipation, miscegenation, confiscation, or extermination ?"

No: but it shall, Mr. Commander, and will be carried on to defend and maintain the great nation known as the United States.

But still again :

"It would be the happiest day of my life, if I could stand up with any considerable portion of my fellow-men and say, not another dollar-not another man for this nefarious war. But

the views and suggestions of exiled Vallandigham will be of greater consequence to you than

my own.

He says to you, "the only issue now is peace or war." Vallandigham, like his eminent disciple my friend, has an "American repugnance to bayonets and knocking out people's brains," and he says that "the only issue now is peace or war.") "the only issue now is peace or war.") "To the former he is committed, and cannot, will not retract. He tells us not to commit ourselves to men; as well as he loves, and much as he admires the little hero McClellan, he would have the Chicago Convention act with untrammelled freedom. He reasons that the spring campaign will be more disastrous to the Federal armies than those heretofore made. That by July, the increased call for troops, the certainty of a prolonged war, the rottenness of the financial system, defection of border State troops, the spread and adoption of the principles of this organization, will all tend to bring conservative men to one mind."

The commander must have forgotten that we had not McClellan still at the head of the army when he supposed that the spring campaign would be so disastrous, and would drag along so slowly. He did not remember that we had put "real" soldiers at the head of the army. He did not know that Sherman was going right down to Atlanta to take possession of the Southern railroad system. He did not know that Grant was going to hem in Lee's army and the citizens of Petersburg and Richmond, and then let Sheridan go down the Valley, cutting off their last railroad communications, so that in a little while they must surrender just as was done to Grant at Vicksburg and to Banks (who is still not in a gunboat) at Port Hudson.

Gentlemen: these peace Democrats are just as much mistaken when they say that we cannot conquer and repossess our own country, as they were in supposing that Grant and Sherman and Sheridan would not move our columns onward, or Farragut bring his guns into play.

In the gentleman's clamor against New England, he cites the Hartford Convention as an objectionable part of her record.

Do you not know, sir [addressing Mr. Northrop], that in the speech you made this evening you elaborated and approved the doctrines of the Hartford Convention? Do you not know that the men concerned in that movement were the peace men of 1812? Do you not know that they clamored for peace, and urged against the then Democratic Administration every charge that you and the Democratic leaders urge against Abraham Lincoln to-night? Do you not know that in that very portion of their report that you read was embodied the spirit of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, which were indorsed by the Cincinnati Democratic platform of 1856, and were reaffirmed by the Democratic Convention of 1860? It is wonderful that you have failed to perceive all this. At the Chicago Convention, Mr. Long, of Ohio, again offered those resolutions, and they were rejected. Why were they rejected? Because by those resolutions the right of a State that believes her constitutional rights to have been infringed is limited to nullifying the unconstitutional act. Mark you, in 1798 Virginia and Kentucky adopted resolutions defining the jurisdiction of the National Government over the States; and the Kentucky resolutions set forth that if the United States Government should infringe the reserved rights of a State, that State might nullify the objectionable act until its constitutionality could be tried in the Supreme Court. Mr. Alexander Long (whom we voted in Congress to be an unworthy member, and whom we would have expelled, but that the Democratic members sustained him, for praying God that we might never conquer the South) introduced those resolutions at Chicago as an addition to the platform, and the members of the Convention rejected them on the ground that they believed in the doctrine of secession, while the old States Rights resolutions of Kentucky and Virginia limited the remedial right of a State to the nullifying of an act until the Supreme Court could pass on its constitutionality. Those resolutions were not broad enough for the Chicago Convention; they did not assert the right of the South to secede, but did limit the remedial right of a State to the nullification of an unconstitutional law. The members of that Convention knew that the Federal Government had violated no constitutional right of the Southern States, and therefore they would not adopt those resolutions.

Let me now turn to the passage which was read the other evening by my distinguished friend from Dwight's History of the Hartford Convention. It is in these words :-"That acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are absolutely void, is an undeniable position. It does not, however, consist with the respect and forbearance due from a Confederate State towards the General Government, to fly to open resistance upon every infraction of the Constitution. The mode and energy of the opposition should always conform to the nature of the violation, the intention of its authors, the extent of the injury inflicted, the determination manifested to persist in it, and the danger of delay. But in cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a State and liberties of the people, it is not only the right, but the duty, of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection, in the manner best calculated to secure that end. When emergencies occur which are either beyond the reach of the judicial tribunals, or too pressing to admit of the delay incident to their forms, States, which have no common umpire, must be their own judges and execute their own decisions."

It so happens, however, that the States of this Union have a common umpire. My friend has made to-night, and throughout this discussion, so far as he has argued logically, just the

argument contained in the passage I have just read. He tells you that the Southern States went out of the Union because the Northern people said ugly things to them; and he read portions of what had been said. He asked you whether you would not strike a person who called you a liar, implying that the Southern States were right in the course they have taken, because some persons in the North have applied offensive epithets, not, however, such as "mudsills of society." to them. He contends furiously for "free speech;" while his whole argument in justification of the South and its wicked war is founded on the fact that certain men in New England during a long period of time have thought for themselves, and have said what they thought. He does not point you to a single act of violence on the part of New England, or of any one of the States of New England. His whole complaint is that some of her clergymen and other citizens will think, and will say what they think, and that therefore the South has, to say the least, a thorough palliation, if not a sufficient vindication of her absolute right to go out and make war on us who remain. Is it not so?

When the gentleman denounced the Hartford Convention and its address, he was denouncing his own doctrines. That assemblage of New England gentlemen who, self-appointed, without authority and without power, met and prepared an address, which the gentleman professes to condemn, agreed with him more largely than he is willing to let you know. Did not the gentleman a night or two ago close his speech by denunciations of conscription? Did he not contend that the National Government, by assuming the right to conscript and to manage the militia of the States, is converting the State militia into a standing army? Let me return to the address of the Hartford Convention. I will read from page 358, while he read from page 361 of the same volume; there is but one leaf between the two extracts. The book is Dwight's Hartford Convention.

"The power of dividing the militia of the States into classes, and obliging such classes to furnish by contract or draft, able-bodied men to serve for one or more years for the defence of the frontier, is not delegated to Congress. If a claim to draft the militia for one year for such general object be admissible, no limitation can be assigned to it, but the discretion of those who make the law. Thus, with a power in Congress to authorize such a draft or conscription, and in the Executive to decide conclusively upon the existence and continuance of the emergency, the whole militia may be converted into a standing army, disposable at the will of the President of the United States.

"The power of compelling the militia, and other citizens of the United States, by a forcible draft or conscription, to serve in the regular armies as proposed in a late official letter of the Secretary of War, is not delegated to Congress by the Constitution, and the exercise of it would not be less dangerous to their liberties, than hostile to the sovereignty of the States. The effort to deduce this power from the right of raising armies, is a flagrant attempt to pervert the sense of the clause in the Constitution which confers that right, and is incompatible with other provisions in that instrument. The armies of the United States have always been raised by contract, never by conscription, and nothing now can be wanting to a Government possessing the power thus claimed to enable it to usurp the entire control of the militia, in derogation of the authority of the State, and to convert it by impressment into a standing army."

Are not these identically the suggestions of the gentleman? They are; and I beg him not to tell me, an old Democrat, that it is the Democratic party which stands on the doctrines of Benedict Arnold, of the Peace men of 1812, and the Peace men of the war with Mexico. A true Democrat denounces Arnold as a traitor, regards most of the doctrines of the Hartford Convention as dangerous, and believes that the war with Mexico was a just war. I learned all these things in the Democratic party, and I proclaimed them all through 1844, and at later periods when, long after I had come from New England, I stumped this State in the cause of the Democratic party. But, oh, God! what would the spirit of Thomas Jefferson think, if it could hear these Peace men proclaiming, in his name and in the name of Democracy, the treasonable sentiments of Arnold, the doctrines of the Hartford Convention, and the clamors of the Peace men of the Mexican War?

Here is the book which the gentleman introduced; here is the report from which he read. Now, who made that report? Is New England responsible for it? Did it emanate from any Legislature of New England? Was it made by any official body? No: certain gentlemen who had been elected to different Legislatures, and who held the tenets of the modern Peace Democracy—who were opposed to the war-who were aiding our enemies by embarrassing the Government-appointed a meeting at Hartford, just as Judge Black and Fernando Wood, and a number of peace men appointed a meeting the other day, at the New York Hotel, in the city of New York. They were merely private citizens (though very distinguished ones), and they adopted and published a report. But even they (and the gentleman knows it as well as I do), opposed as they were to the war, did not ask that the war should be stopped. They said that New England's frontier was not protected; that an adequate navy was not provided; that their fishermen and commercial marine were neglected; that their coast and their seaports had no defence, and they asked that New England might be permitted to raise her own taxes and carry on the war, so far as the coast and limits of New England extended, at her own cost and at her own risk. That is what they asked. They did not ask that the

flag should be stricken and furled, and an armistice granted, and that we should try to coax our enemy into consenting "on some terms or other," to let us go without looking at that ugly thing, a bayonet, which it is so un-American to use. Even the members of the Hartford Convention did not so far forget what was due to their manhood as to do that. But the gentleman has assumed all their doctrines, and he must stand by them.

Let me pause to ask what the sentiment of New England really was in regard to the constitutional questions involved in the extract which the gentleman read? The book which I hold in my hand (Elliott's Debates, vol. iv.) contains the answer of every New England State to the Virginia resolutions of 1798. There is the answer of Connecticut, of Massachusetts, of New Hampshire, of Vermont, of Rhode Island. They are all there. I commend them to the gentleman, and I ask him to find in one of them any declaration which does not say that the Union is supreme, which does not repudiate the doctrines both of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, and of the Hartford Convention-which does not put those States thoroughly upon the doctrine of the supremacy of the General Government. And, sir, no one of these States has failed to fill its quota, and to fill it promptly, under any call during this war.

Thus, I have shown, that when the gentleman went to New England to find all that was, in his judgment, vile-all that he might hope would inflame your passions-he found in the saddest page of her history his own doctrines; when he pointed to the most damning fact in her whole record, he held up before you the conduct and opinions of men who, did they still live, and hold the opinions they then did, would rally around him and cheer him for the speeches he is making to-night.

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Now, sir, I pass to another point. I am, sir, in favor of maintaining the Monroe Doctrine. But what is the use of talking about the Monroe Doctrine, while between our armies and Mexico, or Central America, lies a proud military Confederacy. We cannot attempt to carry out the Monroe Doctrine until we get Jeff. Davis and his army out of the way. And what is the use of fighting Europe about an abstraction which cannot become practical until we shall have repossessed our country? I turn, sir, and ask you, whether you are in favor of the Monroe Doctrine; and if you say you are, I ask you to explain how the United States Government can enforce the Monroe Doctrine if it permits an alien Confederacy to extend from the Sabine, ay, from the Del Norte to the Potomac. It is my devotion to the Monroe Doctrine that makes me want to see this foreign government that has been set up on our soil kicked into the Gulf. No foreign or stranger power must flout a flag alongside of ours, on the American continent, whether it be the stars and bars of Jeff. Davis, or the lily of France, or the eagle of Austria; and I tell you, my friends, that when we have finished the war in which we are now engaged, the Monroe doctrine must be enforced. When that is to be done, the 127th regiment of U. S. colored troops, that I saw march through the city today, with others like it, will be of special value. They are composed of just the kind of men to walk across Central America, for the enforcement of the Monroe doctrine. We of the white race cannot go there. That is a tropical country; it is malarious; and its malaria is fatal to our race. Do you know that so fatal a region is that to the white man, that to construct the railroad across the Isthmus cost seven thousand human lives? Men took the job of working upon it. Their names appeared on the pay-roll for one, two, or three days, and then they disappeared forever-victims to the Chagres fever, as travellers call it. Our enterprising but heartless men, instead of taking negro laborers to make that railroad, because they are opposed to giving the negro wages for his work, pressed on and hired white men until they had laid along the line of that short road the bones of seven thousand human beings. We who are born in the North-we whose skins are white, and who thrive in the cold regions of the world-we who, in the North, live long, carry our teeth well, get many children, cannot live and propagate in that tropical and malarious region. Our race runs out there. But in that region the negro lives long; he carries a head as white as the driven snow, because no snow comes there to chill him; his family is numerous, and he dies with his teeth firmly set in his head. And when we shall have "crushed out" this rebellion, these black soldiers of ours will take the American flag in their hands, and sweep across that to us pestilent region, and drive the Austrian cousin of the august Emperor of France into the ocean or on to a "gunboat," and maintain, in the name of the American people, the Monroe doctrine. But they, with the other soldiers of our army, must first annihilate the army of Jefferson Davis, which enjoys in so eminent a degree the sympathy of my friend, because the New England people made faces at the Southern people and called them ugly names. Yes, I am in favor of the Monroe doctrine, of preventing all foreign interference in this country, and so are you, my honest Democratic fellow citizens; and you will overwhelm your leaders with indignant contempt, when you come to fairly and fully understand what they have been and are now doing.

Now let us turn to the letter of Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, respecting_mediation. It is an official communication from the English Minister to his Government. It is dated Washington, November 17th, 1862-two years ago the coming 17th of November.

Lord Lyons writes :—

"In his despatches of the 17th and 24th ultimo, and of the 17th instant, Mr. Stuart reported

to your lordship the result of the elections for members of Congress and State officers, which have recently taken place in several of the most important States of the Union. Without repeating the details, it will be sufficient for me to observe that the successes of the Democratic, or (as it now styles itself) the conservative party, has been so great as to manifest a change in public feeling, among the most rapid and the most complete that has ever been witnessed in this country.

"On my arrival at New York, on the 8th instant, I found the conservative leaders exulting in the crowning success achieved by the party in the State. They appeared to rejoice, above all, in the conviction that personal liberty and freedom of speech had been secured for the principal State of the Union. They believed that the Government must at once desist from exercising in the State of New York the extraordinary (and as they regarded them) illegal and unconstitutional powers which it had assumed. They were confident that at all events after the 1st of January next, on which day the newly-elected Governor would come into office, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus could not be practically maintained."

Mark you, Democrats, Lord Lyons informed his Government that the Democratic leaders believed that Horatio Seymour would bring on a collision between the State of New York and the General Government, rather than permit the Government to do that which I have shown you General Jackson did, and by vindicating the constitutionality of which Douglas made his fame. And they talk about being Democrats and patriots.

His Lordship continues:

On the following morning, however, intelligence arrived from Washington which dashed the rising hopes of the Conservatives. It was announced that General McClellan had been dismissed from the command of the Army of the Potomac, and ordered to repair to his home; that he had, in fact, been removed altogether from active service. The General had been regarded as the representative of conservative principles in the army.”

"The General had been regarded as the representative of conservative principles in the army,' "-when "conservative principles" meant opposition to the suspension of the habeas corpus and similar exertions of constitutional power! Was he cheating the Democratic leaders, or was he cheating the Government and the country? We looked upon him as the head of our army--as one who was striving to lead it to victory; but the Democratic peace leaders who were in confidential relations with him looked upon him as their "representative" in the army!

Again, his Lordship says: "Support of him had been made one of the articles of the Conservative electoral programme. His dismissal was taken as a sign that the President had thrown himself entirely into the arms of the extreme radical party, and that the attempt to carry out the policy of that party would be persisted in. The irritation of the Conservatives at New York was certainly very great; it seemed, however, to be not unmixed with consternation and despondency."

I do not wonder at it; for they saw that when he was removed, it was probable that his place would be filled by a General who would represent the United States and not the Democratic Peace party. In such a change they found full cause for their "consternation and despondency.

But again: "Several of the leaders of the Democratic party sought interviews with me, both before and after the arrival of the intelligence of General McClellan's dismissal. The subject uppermost in their minds, while they were speaking to me, was naturally that of foreign mediation between the North and South."

Here we see the leaders of the Democratic party creeping to the feet of the British minister, to talk of foreign mediation. Are you, sir, and are these your political brethren in favor of the Monroe doctrine ?

But to his Lordship again: "Many of them seemed to think that this mediation must come at last, but they appeared to be very much afraid of its coming too soon. It was evident that they apprehended that a premature proposal of foreign intervention would afford the Radical party a means of reviving the violent war spirit, and of thus defeating the peaceful plans of the Conservatives."

Gentlemen, do you not agree with me in thinking that if the citizens of this country, especially the honest Democrats, had known that the Democratic leaders were with Lord Lyons, trying to get his Government to straighten us up, by dividing our country, it would have "revived the radical spirit" a little, and possibly at the cost of some of those leaders?

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They," says his Lordship, "appeared to regard the present moment as peculiarly unfavorable for such an offer, and indeed to hold that it would be essential to the success of any proposal from abroad, that it should be deferred until the control of the Executive Government should be in the hands of the Conservative party."

They pledged themselves to Lord Lyons that when the Government should come into their hands Great Britain should have her way about dividing our country; but they thought it would not be judicious to make the proposition at that time. Wait," said they, "till the Government comes into the hands of the Conservative party”—the party of my friend here and of General McClellan, and of that eminent conservative, George H. Pendleton, who has never voted a man or a dollar for the prosecution of this war.

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