Pass C *\ Book A WORKINGMAN'S REASONS FOB THE RE-ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LL\C The selection of a candidate for the highest office in the gift of the American people is, at all times, a matter of great im- portance, but no previous choice has ever involved questions of such grave moment as that which was made on the eighth of June, in the city of Baltimore. Actuated by the purest mo- tives, and the most sacred considerations for the national wel- fare, the delegates to the convention of the National Union Party did then and there, nominate Abraham Lincoln for re- election to the Presidency. As a plain working man, I desire to give, especially to working men, some reasons why the choice of the convention should be ratified at the polls next November. 1. Abraham Lincoln is in the strictest sense of the phrase a man of the people. With a single exception, all previous occu- pants of the Presidential chair proved themselves worthy of the great trust committed to them by their fellow-citizens. But they were not men of the people, in the same sense as the present incumbent. By birth, fortune, education, social position, and professional pursuit, they were far removed from the great mass of their countrymen. Andrew Jackson stood in closer proximity to the body of the people than any of his prede- cessors, and yet, all the circumstances of his early career, as well as the inherent force of his character, conspired to make him the leader of his associates and fellow-citizens of the south western frontier, rather than their equal companion. But what have we in Abraham Lincoln ? You are sufficiently familiar . with the story of his life to enable you to give a prompt answer to this question. His parents were poor, industrious, and re- spected for their virtues. Their son received the rich endowment from the Creator's hand, of a great intellect and a good heart. But they were so situated that their gifted child grew to manhood with very limited opportunities for intellectual culture, and subject to poverty's ordinary condition of hard labor for daily bread. When you see him in the pictorials of the day with sleeves tucked up to his elbows, and axe in hand, or floating down some Western stream on a raft of lumber, it is no partizan fancy sketch designed to take the eye, and secure the votes of workingmen, but a simple reality of his early life. He has been placed in your circumstances. He has felt your neces- sities. If he has risen so far above his companions in early toil, it is because God had endowed him with that rare superi- ority of intellect which no combination of disadvantages can depress or obscure. And now, in this great man, sprung from the ranks of the people, ought we not to see and acknowl- edge the hand of a special Providence ? What is that rebellion which broke out immediately upon the announcement of his election ? Is it not the will of a minority set up in defiance of the will of a majority ? Is it not a conspiracy of the few against the rights of the many ? Is it not bloody handed treason, in- augurated by a slave-breeding, and slave-trafficking aristocracy, for the purpose of nullifying the decisions of the ballot-box, and overthrowing a Government that makes the landless Avorking- man's vote equal to that of the richest proprietor in all the land ? Yes, such is precisely the character of the existing re- bellion. I repeat, therefore, may not a retributive hand of a just God be recognized in the selection of a man of the people to avenge the Avrongs of the people, and to put down a rebel- lion that seeks the establishment of monarchy and privileged orders upon the ruin of their equal rights ? 2. Abraham ]ji>t