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 HOW SHALL WE VOTE? 
 
 It is to quiet citizens that I address myself 
 — not to professed politicians, nor to crowded 
 meetings, nor excited assemblies — but to those 
 patriotic and more silent citizens who seek for 
 no oflfice, but desire to vote in such manner as 
 best to secure the characteristic blessings of our 
 Government. I do not propose to argue the 
 great questions of public policy now before us. 
 The time for argument is mostly passed, and the 
 time for reflection and decision has arrived. I 
 propose only to briefly state the case. 
 
 All parties agree that this is the most import- 
 ant Presidential election which we have ever 
 held. The character of our institutions forever 
 seems to depend upon it. The great question 
 is : Shall Slavery be extended by law into the 
 Free Territories of the United States, and be 
 fortified and made impregnable — an eterr,al 
 characteristic of our Kepublic ? There are the 
 somewhat local questions — the Buchanan Ost- 
 end Circular — the robbing of a.friendly nation 
 of her territories in time of peace — aad the 
 question of a free piiblic highway across the 
 continent, through our own free territory — the 
 Pacific railroad. These are only branches of 
 the other question. The iorcible seizure and 
 annexation of Cuba is but a measure to fortify 
 Slavery, by adding new slave territory to the 
 United States. Let it be established that Cuba 
 must come into the Union as free territory, and 
 the gentlemen who met at Ostend would throw 
 up their hands in pious horror at the proposi- 
 tion to steal the queen of the Antilles. And 
 let Slavery be established throughout the Ter- 
 ritories of the Northwest, so that trains of caged 
 or chained slaves (cattle trains) may be sent as 
 merchandise across the continent, and the 
 South will have no constitutional scruples 
 against the Pacific Railroad. 
 
 The question is the great question of " the 
 liberties of America," as the phrase was in 
 1776, and this is the only question. One great 
 portion of the people believes that Slavery is a 
 moral, political and social evil, existing in 
 some of the States by their own laws, and that 
 whether it be or not necessary to their present 
 industrial and social position, it is a question 
 for those States alone ; but that its character 
 and effect upon the morals, the manners, the 
 
 reputation and the prosperity of all States where 
 it has existed witliout necessity, demonstrates 
 that it ought never to be extended to our now- 
 Free Territories. 
 
 Another powerful pprtion of the people — the 
 Southern people — believe that Slavery is a 
 blessing to every community — that it is the 
 natural relation between capital and labor^ — • 
 between employer and employed ; that the 
 Slave-trade ought to be renewed, and that 
 Slavery ought to be extended throughout the 
 United States and all her Territories. 
 
 The present excitement is the conflict of 
 these two opinions. It is not a question whether 
 it be lawful to hold slaves in those States where 
 Slaveiy now exists, nor whether those slaves 
 be well or ill-treated — sympathy for the slave 
 has nothing to do with it. The slave himself 
 is outside of the discussion. He is in the keep- 
 ing of States and laws to which the Northern 
 people are not a party and for which they are 
 not responsible. They did not make those 
 laws and they cannot repeal them. It is the 
 free and not the slave, the white, not the black, 
 whose interests are the subject of discussion. 
 
 So, too, it is not with the Southern States or 
 their institutions that we have to do. Virginia 
 and South Carolina, and the other Southern 
 States, are outside of the discussion. We look 
 only to that immense unsettled territorj' 
 where there is now no Slavery, and which, 
 thirty-five years ago, was dedicated by law 
 to Freedom by the consent of the people, 
 and not of any particular State, and for 
 which every American citizen is responsi- 
 ble. Shall that territory be blessed with 
 civil and religious liberty and Republican mu- 
 tuality — shall it be the land of Freedom or of 
 Slavery ? The territories are larger than any 
 ten States of the Union, and are to be inhabit- 
 ed by millions of people. 
 
 I do not regret that what is called a sec- 
 tional issue has been forced upon us in this 
 canvass. I see the finger of God in it. I hail 
 it as the harbinger of a better day. It is pre- 
 sented to us under peculiar circumstances. 
 Heretofore this great question of Freedom and 
 Slaver}' has been left to the politicians, to party 
 arrangements, personal trading and unworthy 
 bargains and compromises. It has been the 
 political makeweight of corrupt men and selfish 
 place-hunters, and how Freedom has sped 
 under it we all know. We have gone from 
 bad to worse, till the General Government 
 cannot protect its own legislators from being 
 beaten by bludgeons in the streets, in the pub- 
 lic conveyances, and in the Senate chamber, 
 
,:b^(p 
 
 2 
 
 for expressing sympathy for Freedom. Devout j 
 women are imprisoned for teaching human ' 
 beings to read the blessed Word of God. 
 American citizens are driven from their farms, 
 their stores, their business and their families, 
 and compelled to fly by night to the Free 
 States to escape lynching, tar and feathers and 
 assassination, because they belong to the politi- 
 cal party that is opposed to the extension of 
 Slavery. The great truths of tlie Declaration 
 of Independence, for which our fatliers pledged \ 
 their lives, their fortunes and their sacred j 
 honor, are called glittering generalities, intol- 1 
 erable and hateful ; and Kansas, a Northern [ 
 Territory, is made the scene of oppressions and j 
 cruelties, by the side of which the wrongs of ! 
 the Colonies before the Revolution are noth- t 
 ing — all the wrongs of twelve years before the 
 Eevolution, in all the Colonies, bear no com- I 
 parison with those that have been perpetrated , 
 in Kansas during the last twelve months, for 
 the purpose of extending Slavery, at the point 
 of the bayonet, over territories of immense ex- 
 tent, solemnly consecrated to Freedom by the 
 nation by public statute in 1820. 
 
 In 1820 a law was passed that there should 
 be no Slavery in the Territories now north of 
 30° 30' N. latitude. 
 
 What a contest there was then ! Those of us 
 who remember it see more freshly than it is re- 
 corded in history, with what desperation 
 Slavery was forced across the Mississippi ! In 
 1 836 with what blasphemous defiance the right 
 of petition was trodden under foot and the 
 sanctity and freedom of the public mails at- 
 tacked ! In 1850 what a strife, but how in- 
 effectual, to resist the new fetters for Freedom ! 
 In 1854 how the solemn and sacred compact 
 of 1820 was dishonorably rescinded ! and how 
 now our brothers' blood cries unto God from 
 the ground in Kansas I Kansas is entirely north 
 of 37°. Its climate is like that of Ohio, Illi- 
 nois, and Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and 
 Virginia. The capitals of Illinois, Indiana 
 and Ohio, and the City of Philadelphia, are 
 all further south than the Northern boundary 
 of Kansas. That boundary extended would 
 run nearly through the middle of New-Jersey. 
 If Slavery be necessary to the burning heats of 
 equatorial climates, if it be necessary to cotton 
 fields and rice swamps and sugar plantations, 
 it is not necessary to Kansas. There is not the 
 apology of climate or productions to place 
 slaves there or to exclude the thrift and pros- 
 perity of Free Labor, small ' farms, various 
 productions, and small happy homesteads scat- 
 tered all over the land. Slavery is pressed 
 upon Kansas only that thereby the whole North 
 may be fatally enslaved, and that as now in 
 Delaware one of her Senators declares to his 
 consituents in relation to something against 
 Slavery said by a Northern Senator, "Had he 
 said it in my presence I would have beaten 
 him to a jelly ;" as in Maryland citizens, 
 eaceably assembled for mere political consult- 
 ation, are compelled to flee for fear of assas- 
 sination ; as in Virginia,for the mere expression 
 of opinion unfriendly to Slavery, citizens are 
 
 compelled to flee to the Free States because 
 they belong to the party that is opposed to 
 the extension of Slavery ; as at the seat of 
 the Federal Government, (the place set apart 
 for free discussion,) for the mere discussion 
 of questions of public policy, editors and mem- 
 bers of Congrese from the Free States are 
 beaten down from behind and nearly murdered, 
 so hereafter it shall be in the hitherto Free 
 North. 
 
 All along it has been flung in our face that 
 the triumphs of Slavery have been accom- 
 plished by Northern votes, and so they have 
 been. But who would be willing to have his 
 name stand opposite these votes? Those 
 traitors to Freedom will be forgotten when 
 their names shall cease to be a stench in the 
 nostrils of the friends of Liberty, and not be- 
 fore ! 
 
 We have been thus defeated because the 
 voice of the people has not been taken. Now, 
 God in his Providence has smitten the politi- 
 cians with judicial blindness and madness, and 
 has said practically to every individual Ameri- 
 can, in his sovereign capacity. Stand up and , 
 say this day whom ye will sei-ve. If the Lord 
 be" God, follow him, and if Baal be God, fol- 
 I low him. If you desire Freedom, say so — if 
 I you prefer Slavery, say so. Be ready to an- 
 swer. God is calling the Ayes and Noes on 
 this question to put every man on record upon 
 it. Is there one friend of Freedom that does 
 not rejoice in the opportunity to ascertain the 
 extent of modern degeneracy? 
 
 Party associations and sympathies have 
 heretofore hindered us in the expression 
 of our real sentiments — now Divine Provi- 
 dence has delivered us all from such 
 compulsion. Party lines are obliterated 
 and party discipline has lost its force. Par- 
 ties are really broken up. There is no party 
 allegiance that compels any citizen to vote for 
 any one of the candidates. Col. Fremont is 
 a Democrat from his boyhood of the school of 
 Jefferson and Jackson. Mr. Buchanan is 
 of the routed party and the exploded princi- 
 ples of Calhoun and McDuffie, who arrayed 
 the State of South Carolina against the Gov- 
 ernment, in open civil war and rebellion, 
 twenty-five years ago. Mr. Fillmore is not a 
 Whig — he belongs to no party. The Whig 
 Party has no candidates nor organization. Its 
 great leaders bore a barren sceptre. They are 
 dead, no son of theirs succeeding. The Demo- 
 cratic Party, broken to pieces half-a-dozen 
 times in as many ye^rs, has no leaders that the 
 party can follow \\-ithont forswearing all their 
 principles. With such an opportunity, who 
 would not yield to the temptation to follow the 
 dictates of his own conscience ? 
 
 As it is the first opportunity, so it may be 
 the last. 
 
 All these aggressions by the South have been 
 resisted. We have never consented to them, 
 but we have been subdued, and we have 
 yielded much that we might save some- 
 thing. We have been subdued in return 
 for forbearance and liberalitv. We have 
 
never failed to treat our Southern breth- 
 ren with more than a generous share of our 
 consideration. 
 
 When the Constitution was formed a 
 ratio of representation was consented to by 
 which now the North has but one member 
 of the House of Kepresentatives for every 
 20,706 white males over 21 years of age, (and 
 these are the people in all the States,) while 
 the South has one for every 12,108 — nearly 
 twice their just proportion ; and in the Senate 
 the Nortli has one Senator for eveiy 113,855, 
 while the South has one for every 48,424 — a 
 great deal more than twice their proportion. 
 Taken altogether, the representation of South- 
 ern voters in Congress is more than twice as 
 great as their equal proportion — an inequality 
 and injustice which nothing but a spirit of con- 
 ciliation could make tolerable to the North. 
 This first great advantage to the South has 
 been never disturbed, and is of itself enough to 
 account for all the victories of the South. 
 
 We also gave them the seat of Government 
 in the Slave States, surrounded on all sides by 
 Pro-Slaverj' influences — another immense ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 If a Northern man would recover his labor- 
 ing animals found in a Slave State, he can re- 
 cover them only by an appeal to the Courts in 
 that State and to the verdict of her juries. He 
 must take the law's delay pt his own expense — 
 but let a slaveholder claim that a black man 
 (his laboring animal) has escaped into a Free 
 State, and the slaveholder seizes the alleged 
 fugitive, by the hair and the throat — tears him 
 from his family and property — drags him be- 
 fore a single individual who is hired by double 
 fees to decree him to be a slave without Judge 
 or Juiy, and the General Government pays the 
 expense of transporting him in chains to Slav- 
 ery. What an inequality of privilege in favor 
 of Slavery the North allows to the South ! 
 
 And relying up n the good faith and honor of 
 the South, when Territories north of the Mis- 
 souri Compromise line should be ready, we have 
 consented to the admission of the States south 
 of that line, but when our turn came southern 
 honor has failed us and the restriction is re- 
 pealed. 
 
 As the natural result of these inequalities, a 
 vast majority of the officers of the General Gov- 
 ernment in the army and the navy and the civil 
 service are given to the South. 
 
 And so of the highest honors — of the twelve 
 Presidents of the United States, chosen by the 
 people, all but three have been of southern 
 birth. Out of sixty-eight years the Goveni- 
 nient has been twenty years only in the hands 
 of Northei-n Presidents, and forty-eight in the 
 hands of Southern Presidents ; and for thirty 
 years past all the candidates of the party uni- 
 formly opposed to the extension of Slavery to 
 Free Territory have been of Southern birth — 
 incapable of looking upon the Slavery question 
 from the fanatical point of view — Clay, WietJ 
 Harrison, Taylor, Scott, Fremont. 
 
 Of the exalted officers who. have the most 
 controlling influence in directing the aflfairs of 
 
 the legal and admisistrative policy of the Gov- 
 ernment, the comparison of the natives of the 
 North and those of the South is equally strik- 
 ing : 
 
 Free. Slave. 
 
 Presidents -» 3 9 
 
 Attorneys General 5 14 
 
 Judges Supreme Court 11 17 
 
 Pi-esidents of Senate pro tern 16 61 
 
 Speakers of the House 11 21 
 
 Total Tie 122 
 
 And this while by the Census Keport the white 
 males over 21 years of age was in 1852 : 
 
 Free States ' 3,644,341 
 
 Slave States .■1,45'2,9T3 
 
 Difference , '. 2,191,365 
 
 And when we look at the rights guaranteed 
 to all the citizens ^ the Constitution, how 
 much greater still is the practical inequality ! 
 
 "The citizens of each State shall be entitled 
 to all privileges and immuiiities of citizens of 
 the several States." 
 
 " Congi'ess shall make no law abridging the 
 freedom of speech or of the press." 
 
 "The right of the people to keep and bear 
 arms shall not be infringed." 
 
 "The right of the people to be secure in 
 their persons, houses, papers and effects against 
 unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be 
 violated." (Vide the Constitution passim.) 
 
 The booksellers and publishers, and printers 
 and editors, a numerous, valuable, and peace- 
 able class of our citizens — what sort of privi- 
 leges and immunities would they enjoy 
 if they should remove to the Slave 
 States with their stock of books, their 
 printing-presses, and their newspapers, and 
 their freedom of speech and the press ? And so 
 of clergymen, and lecturers, and professors and 
 teachers — nothing could save them from tar and 
 feathers, and ignominious assassination, but 
 hurried flight by night. The right freely to dis- 
 cuss the conduct and purposes of our nilers, 
 and to vote for those we prefer — what an ines- 
 timable right of the American people ! — but 
 what friend of Freedom dare to do it now, un- 
 armed and unguarded in the land of Slavery ? 
 Congress is the supreme power in the Terri- 
 tories — all legislation in the Territories is 
 mediately or immediately from Congress. 
 E^ansas is still under the legislative powers of 
 the Union. How many citizens seeking new 
 homes there have been murdered and scalped 
 even by Pro-Slavery ruffians ! How many 
 burning dwellings have lighted up the few 
 clearings in the wilderness ! How many print- 
 ing offices and presses have been destroyed ! 
 How many stands of arms have been wrested 
 from citizens in a new countrj-, infested by wild 
 beasts and bloody men ! 
 
 What bloody laws have been enacted to sub- 
 ject the citizen to fine, imprisonment, and igno- 
 minious death, for having a book, circulating a 
 newspaper, expressing an opinion unfriendly 
 to the extension of Slavery to Kansas, and even 
 for not taking oaths to sustain such atrocious 
 legislation ! — and when the people have peace- 
 ably assembled with a view to redress their 
 grievances, in the same manner in which orga- 
 
 L 
 
 7 
 
nic legislation is always performed in this conn- 
 trr, these friends of the People have heen ar- 
 rested and kept in prison, to be tried for the 
 pretended offence of treason — and the Army of 
 the United States, under the so-called flag of 
 Freedom, by orders of a Pro- Slavery Presi- 
 dent, has marched to the Legislative Hall, and 
 dispersed by force the representatives of the 
 People, whose only alleged offence was that 
 they sought to establish free institutions. 
 
 Is this the Union in which we entered in 
 1788, "to establish justice, and to secure the 
 blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
 terity ?" Is this a jiist and equal partnership ? 
 Are we of the North free in such a state of 
 things? Col. Feesiont, the pride and the 
 honor of his country and the world, is he 
 free, when he is deprived of the right of being 
 voted for, in many of the States ? 
 
 But some of our Southern fellow-citizens in- 
 sist that, by prohibiting the extension of Slav- 
 ery to the Free Temtories, it would prevent 
 their going there, and deny them their share in 
 those Territories. It is not possible that there 
 should be a more transparent fallacy. We do 
 not prevent their going there — we do not ob- 
 ject to their going there. They are all welcome 
 there — they can buy land there, and reside 
 there. In every particular they are equal there 
 to the citizens of the North. There is no dis- 
 tinction in law, or in fact, there, between the 
 North and the South. If Slavery shall be pro- 
 hibited there, then neither Northern nor South- 
 ern men can keep slaves there. The laws of 
 the United States have for years provided that 
 no person shall take ardent spirits into the In- 
 dian country, and that it shall be lawful for 
 any person to take and destroy any ardent spi- 
 rits or wine found in the Indian country, — (4 
 Stat. 732, Sec. 20,) and that no person shall set 
 up or continue any distillery in the Indian 
 country, under a penalty of $^1,000, and that 
 it shall be the duty of the Superintendent of 
 Indian Affairs forthwith to destroy and break 
 up the same. — {Hid. Sec. 21.) 
 
 By another law the importation of all inde- 
 cent and obscene prints, lithographs, paintings, 
 engravings, &c., are prohibited. If imported 
 thoy shall be seized and forfeited, "and the 
 said articles shall be forthwith destroyed."- 
 (r> do., 56(i, § 28.) What now if the dealers 
 in ardent spirits, and the distillers, and the 
 dealers in indecent prints and ])ictures should 
 determine to dissolve the Union — to march to 
 Washington and take possession of the ar- 
 chives of the Government and the Treasury, 
 because of these laws which prevent them 
 from taking their jtroperty to the territories ! ! 
 The Northern and the Southern man are on 
 equal terms in all these respects. The latitude 
 or the point of the compass is nothing ; who- 
 ever comes there with his forbidden property 
 will lose it. His slaves will be free, his pic- | 
 tures and prints will be destroyed, his rum 
 will be poured out upon the ground, and his: 
 distillery burnt down. This property claim, i 
 this slave in the territory claim, is hollow and 
 nnreal. The claim is not to take property | 
 
 there, but to take laws there which the Con- 
 gress or the territory have never enacted. The 
 claim is that a single Carolinian or Virginian 
 slaveholder shall, by the laws of his own 
 State, a thousand miles from that State, have 
 the privilege of importing and planting and 
 spreading in the territor / a poison by 
 tlie side of which indecent prints and 
 maddening drink are blessings. Is there 
 anything so demoralizing as Slavery — any- 
 thing so inconsistent with moral health — so 
 dangerous to the peace of a community — so 
 hostile to the freedom, equality and mutuality 
 : of American Institutions? 
 
 Where Slavery exists and produces its proper \ 
 fruits can an American citizen receive through 
 the public mails such^mail matter as he pleases 
 ; — can he read such books as he pleases — can he 
 j have such a library as he pleases — can he hear 
 I such preachers as he pleases — can he peaceably 
 express such opinions as he pleases — can he 
 openly belong to such political party as he 
 ! pleases ? Not at all — not one of them ; because 
 I of the terrible dreams that shake the slave- 
 holder nightl}' — because the whole people sleep 
 in fear lest the words of Freedom for which our 
 fathers bled, and on which our countiy rests, 
 shall reach the ears of the slaves that cook their 
 food, that kindle their fires and till their fields, 
 and are ignorant and brutal, impulsive and re- 
 vengeful. 
 
 Compare the average value of the land in the \ 
 Free States and the Slave States, as given by 
 the census, and we shall see if, as a property 
 institution, it should be extended to the virgin 
 soil of the Territories. : v 
 
 Average valu« \^ 
 per oci e . 
 
 New-England .- $20 27 
 
 Middle States 2S 07 
 
 Southern States 5 34 
 
 Southwestern States, without Texas and Cali- 
 fornia 6 26 
 
 What a difference! 
 
 Shall a few slaveholders be per.jitted thus 
 to destroy the value of every man's land in the 
 Territories? 
 
 The glory and the strength of the nation are 
 ever^-thing to American citizens. We must 
 bear the blight which Slavery has put upon the 
 jjnsent Slave States. We can well say that, 
 as it now exists, it is not our fault — a disease 
 of our Colonial life, so incorporated into the 
 States where it exists that it cannot be eradi- 
 cated ; but how shall we apologize to the out- 
 raged moral sense of the whole Christian world 
 if we deliberately inoculate all our new States, 
 and through them the whole nation, with the 
 loathsome disease, and make the American 
 Union a curse and a disgrace to liberty through- 
 out the world ! 
 
 American citizens hold a peculiar relation 
 to the questions connected ■with human liberty. 
 For two hundred years Divine Providence 
 seems to have given that precious deposit in 
 some sort to us. Through a long course of 
 generations we have been intrusted with it. 
 We have published its great truths to the world 
 of nations — have hazarded our national exis- 
 tence upon it, and we have shed our blood over 
 
and over again to vindicate our opinions and 
 our declarations. No matter how feeble, how 
 poor or how unprepared we have been, we have 
 always buckled on our armor to fight for Lib- 
 erty. How we struggled up through the ditH- 
 ciilties of colonial dependence — how we re- 
 sisted the first attempt to oppress us, and peti- 
 tioned, and prayed and forbore through fifteen 
 years of oppressions — how we fought, and 
 united, and fought again, and united 
 more widely and more closely, and then 
 became a united nation of rebels and traitors, 
 and prevailed in an unequal strife, predicted 
 to fail by the voice of all the world beside ! 
 Those who would have been hanged have since 
 been canonized. They are saints in the cal- 
 endar of Freedom throughout the world, and 
 ever since that time we have been a city set on 
 a hill — a beacon light to the oppressed every- 
 where. 
 
 Every American citizen is responsible 
 to History, I 
 
 to Patriotism, 
 to Conscience, and 
 to God, 
 for the exercise of his power and influence in 
 behalf of liberty. The Past points him to his 
 duty, and so does the Present, and above all 
 the Future is dependent upon him. To History 
 and t/ie Past and the Future — How a long line 
 of historical glory comes down to us from the 
 dead braves of our early periods of self-sacri- 
 fice for Freedom ! How we exult as we 
 seem to see on the now unwritten pages of his- 
 tory millions of hardy, industrious, intelligent 
 and free citizens filling that boundless North- 
 west with the wealth and glory of Freedom, as 
 it now exists wherever under our flag produc- 
 tive industry is respectable ! To Patriotism — 
 Who would betray this glorious country, and 
 undo all that our fathers did — roll back the 
 wheels of Liberty, and install the fetters and the 
 lash and the ignorance and the brutality of 
 Negro Slavery as the everywhere present 
 American characteristic ! Who would give to 
 that great West senility in youth — sterility in 
 such a soil, and negro huts and slave pens in 
 the midst of such a people and such a land- 
 scape ! To Conscience and to God — Ah, there's 
 the rub. What fearful evils to morals and 
 religion must come in with the spread of 
 Slavery and the reopening of the slave-trade in 
 the hands of American activity and enterprise ! 
 What defilement and blasphemy of the image 
 of God ! What a degradation of free and 
 honest industry, the only agent of modern pro- 
 gress and civilization ! What a time when the 
 mason and the carpenter and the blacksmith 
 and the tailor and all the artisans and the farm 
 hands shall be bought and sold like oxen and 
 horses and mules ! 
 
 When the holy prophet of the Lord, 
 in the ecstacy of his divine inspirations, 
 proclaimed to the indiscriminate future : 
 " Wo to him that useth his neighbor's ser- 
 oice without wajes, and giveth him not for his 
 work" he was not announcing a curse to 
 the unfortunate being who was deprived 
 
 of his right to wages, and yet compelled 
 to toil. It was not to the \'ictim, con- 
 demned to lose his manhood in the qualities of 
 the brute — not to the slave, but to his master, 
 that the voice of retributive justice announced 
 the woe. The master may add field to field — he 
 may grow rich on the uncompensated labor of 
 his slaves — he may meet no resistance to his 
 exactions — no reprisals in those whom he has 
 stripped of everything — he ijaay even demon- 
 strata that their condition is improved by being 
 unhumanized ; still, the divine woe to him 
 that useth his neighbor's senice without wages 
 may bring sterility to those fields — may send a 
 canker into his wealth — may give his sons fierce 
 and murderous passions — may mingle the 
 dreams of terror with the dreams of guilt, 
 when, in his midnight fancies, trodden hu- 
 manity shall spring up and look around for 
 vengeance. 
 
 But how shall we vote ? Principles are im- 
 portant, but without men to assert them they 
 are powerless. Think what the country has 
 some to by electing a man of dough in 1852. 
 Shall we now go back to the man of wax whom 
 we made Vice President in 1848, and accident 
 made President? While in the cool North, 
 how stiflf'and staimch he was ! Under the in- 
 fluences of the warm South, how he softened 
 ' and yielded and took the shape they gave him — 
 I and sent back to the North, how he has stiffened 
 again in his Southern shape ! Shall we take 
 him ? Or shall we take the man of putty, that 
 I cold or warm, in any latitude, and in any 
 [ hands is as clay in the hands of the potter? 
 j Are these the men for this crisis, or do we want 
 ; a man of firmness and energy, and well-con- 
 sidered and positive opinions ? 
 j We are not left to doiibt tliat Col. Fremont 
 is the man for the time and the place — devoted 
 1 to Liberty and Union, from his boyhood — the 
 ; inflexible friend of the rights of the States as 
 they now exist — and inflexibly md always 
 opposed to the extension of Slavery to the free 
 I Territories. Would you know if he be a real 
 friend of Freedom, and likely to show himself 
 a powerful friend if opportunity be given him, 
 (anl the same of his rivals,) you have only to 
 see wh.;t the enemies of Freed am and the 
 friends of Slavery extension say of them all. 
 How they curse and revile him — how they fear 
 him — how with one accor . they in er his future 
 conduct from his known character. They even 
 declare that they will rebel against his very 
 election. On the other hand, how they will 
 allow no one to compete with his rivals. The 
 only question seems to be between those rivals, 
 not which is most the friend of t e South — 
 they are alike in that — but which is most likely 
 to defeat Col. Fremont. He alone is the can- 
 didate of Freedom. 
 
 It is, however, said that he has no antece- 
 dents. But he is a man of most wonderful and 
 consistent antecedents. Before he was nomi- 
 nated his antecedents had made him the most 
 famous and well known living American citi- 
 zen, with perhaps one or two exceptions. Ac- 
 tive and laborious beyond parallel, he has been 
 
6 
 
 eqnally conspicuous. In 1833 — twenty-three 1 
 years ago — he entered the public service of the 
 United States, and with only occasional inter- 
 vals has been in that service ever since. He 
 had then an accomplished liberal education of 
 which the history, the politics, the statesman- 
 ship and the heroism of ancient and modern 
 nations form a part in which he took an extra- 
 ordinary interest at that early period, exhibit- 
 ing and forming h'n taste for public affairs. He 
 was educated at Charleston, the seat of South 
 Carolina nullification, and was there during the 
 time of its greatest virulence, when the great 
 questions — the Tariff and Free Trade and 
 Protection — State Rights — the strength and 
 value of the Union, and the construction of 
 the Constitution, were discussed by the great 
 men of the nation as they have never been dis- 
 cussed since, and they were by the ablest men 
 South Carolina has ever produced brought to 
 the near decision of insurrection, rebellion and 
 treason in civil war. It was in the midst of 
 such scenes that Col. Fremont entered the 
 public service with a mind of thorough cultiva- 
 tion, of wonderful capacity and activity. He 
 came in, under General Jackson, on the side 
 of Freedom, Patriotism, Liberty and Union, 
 and he has never swerved from it. It was 
 quite impossible that he should not feel such an 
 interest in public afl'airs as to make him forever 
 afterwards a careful observer and student of 
 the nature, character and practical adminis- 
 tration and policy of our Government, even 
 if he had retired immediately to private 
 life. But he continued in the service of the 
 Government. He received appointments under 
 General Jackson in 1833-35 and 36, under 
 Mr. Van Bueen in 1838, under Mr. Tyler 
 in 1842-45, under Mr. Polk in 1845 and '46, 
 under General Taylor in 1848. Having con- 
 quered California and been its Governor when 
 the office of Governor embraced all the func- 
 tions of government, legislative, judicial, and 
 administrative, and under circumstances re- 
 quiring a knowledge of international law. In 
 December 1849, he was elected a Senatov of 
 the United States and was such till March 4th, 
 1851, a period of about fifteen months, and his 
 entry into the Senate soon demonstrated that 
 the great duties of that office had been the 
 subject of great study and the numerous and 
 important measixres that he introduced and 
 advocated, showed the wisdom and breadth of 
 Ms views. 
 
 Dui-ing a large portion of his life he has 
 been the commander and director, as well as 
 the active leader, of bodies of men of iron 
 wills and heroic bravery, under circumstances 
 of great delicacy, difficulty, and danger, and 
 with unexampled success, demonstrating his 
 great executive ability. 
 
 A scholar, a man of highly cultivated liter- 
 ary tastes and of profound and various practi- 
 cal science, he commenced as a schoolmaster 
 and professor of mathematics, to support his 
 widowed mother and his sister. Having made 
 a cruise of two and a half years in the Navy, 
 he became a surveyor and engineer, and an ex- 
 
 plorer of a Continent. He passed through 
 every grade of military life, from a lieutenant 
 to a commander-in-chief. He was the con- 
 queror and governor of California. Then 
 a Boundary Commissioner, then a Senator 
 of the United States. A traveled man in 
 wildernesses and in courts, he is familiar with 
 the huts of the savage and the palaces of 
 civilization, and every form of life and man- 
 ners, and his remarkable variety of life and 
 of cultivation have made him a gentleman ac- 
 cessible and acceptable to all classes of persons. 
 
 When, with a fainily on his hands, without 
 wealth and without friends, overcome, but not 
 conquered, by his enemies, he was oflered his 
 sword and his rank by the President of the 
 United States, with an implied stain upon his 
 name, and he spurned them both, and preferred 
 to stand alone, in conscious rectitude, nothing 
 but John C. Fremont, to begin the world 
 anew, tiiere yousawthe man. Such are his an- 
 tecedents. It is impossible that such a man, 
 with such experience, and such ability, and 
 such principles, such energy, and such love of 
 true glory, should not be fit for any civil or 
 military office, no matter how high. But there 
 are antecedents which he has not. It is not 
 possible to believe that he would coimsel cor- 
 rupt bargaining to secure a political elevation. 
 It is impossible to imagine him a trimmer, a 
 time-server, a facile man, to be kneaded, and 
 moulded and used by those who are about him. 
 It is impossible to make him say that he is not 
 John C. Fremont, but a mere party platform. 
 He has no train of corrupt iretainers, who have 
 for a quarter of a century been attached to his 
 interests, and are entitled to his first and high- 
 est favors and his bosom confidence. He never 
 bit the hand that led him up to honor. He 
 never betrayed his associates. He never aban- 
 doned and betrayed the principles on which he 
 had been elevated. He never betrayed Free- 
 dcm that he might rise by Slavery. He never 
 sold himself to a bigoted, proscriptive, secret 
 and stealthy political faction, that he might be 
 restored to the place and the power which lie 
 could not retain when clothed with the influ- 
 ence and patronage of the whole Government. 
 He never approved and counseled disunion 
 and I'ebellion if he should be found in the mi- 
 nority, and he has never called the repeal of 
 the Missouri Compromise a boon from the 
 North to the South. He. has not these ante- 
 cedents. 
 
 Then, with such a man and such a cause, on 
 such a question, how shall we vote ? Listen 
 to the voice from the North and the South, and 
 the East and the West. Is it not the voice of 
 God, saying : ''If you desire Freedom, say so 
 — if you prefer Slavery, say so. Be ready 
 with your answer?" 
 
 A notorious tyrant is said to have wished 
 that all his people had but one neck, 
 that by one blow he might glut his ven- 
 geance. That great figure is here real- 
 ized. The freedom of that great unsettled 
 territory, and through that of all the Northern 
 States, is centred in Kansas. Her position 
 
and circumstances make her the connecting 
 link. If she be free, all are free ; if she be 
 cursed with Slavery, we are all enslaved. 
 
 If the cause of Freedom do not triumph at 
 this election, then before the 4th of March next 
 Kansas and Utah will be admitted as Slave 
 States. Utah has her Slave Constitution ready 
 made and is only waiting for her opportunity. 
 The Border-Ruffian Legislature will make a 
 Slave Constitution for Kansas in Januarj', and 
 the incoming Pro-Slavery President will come 
 to Washington in Febniary, with all the officers 
 and power and patronage of the Government 
 in his hands, and in less than one week after 
 he shall say, "yon see the Free-Soil movement 
 has failed — return my friends to your old party 
 sympathies — let us forget and forgive, and organ- 
 ize an Administration accordinsr to the voice of 
 the people," and there will be no longer any 
 majority for Freedom in the House. A foreign 
 mission — a seat in the Cabinet — a fat pecuniary 
 office judiciously applied, and it is all over — 
 and as Texas was annexed on the 2d day of 
 March, 1845, two days before Mr. Polk was 
 inaugurated, so if a Pro-Slavery President is 
 elected, Kansas and Utah will be admitted as 
 Slave States before he is inaugurated, so that 
 the new Administration may find the Pro- 
 Slavery policy of Atchison, Pieece and Doug- 
 las the settled and immovable policy of the 
 country. The neck of Liberty will be cut off. 
 
 If Slavery should triumph and sweep over 
 the Northwest, then to have voted against 
 Freedom and for Slavery, what a reflection to 
 
 treasure up ! — what an inheritance to leave to 
 our descendants ! What a place voluntarily 
 to take in history ! What a precious memory 
 to one it is to know that in the days of the col- 
 onial struggle for Freedom his ancestors were 
 on the side of Liberty ! I cherish in my heart 
 of hearts the knowledge that mine were at 
 Long Island and Whiteplains and Harlem, no 
 matter in how humble a station. How much 
 would not the descendants of Tories give now, 
 if they could blot out all memory, all history, 
 all tradition, that their ancestors were arrayed 
 against Liberty ! What shall our descendants 
 say of us? We are called upon to express 
 through the sacred and independent voice of 
 the ballot-box our confidential and honest opin- 
 ion on this question of Freedom in the Territo- 
 ries. We cannot escape the expression of our 
 sovereign will. It is easy by silence or through 
 the secrecy of the ballot to conceal from our 
 fellow-citizens the decision which we make. 
 But from ourselves ? No ! From conscience ? 
 No ! We may say openly, we are for Freedom, 
 we may say we are for Americanism, we may 
 say we are for Democracy, we may say we are 
 for Whig principles, but if we neglect to vote, 
 or do not vote right on this occasion, we shall 
 vote against them all — and if Slavery shall pre- 
 vail by one vote, what a rooted sorrow for our- 
 selves, what a legacy of shame for our children, 
 what a place in history for those whose shame 
 shall be of sufficient importance to be there re- 
 corded ! 
 
 Oct., 1856. E. C. B. 
 
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