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CELEBRATION 
 
 OF / I <J 
 
 JEFFERSON'S BIETHDAY 
 
 IN WASHINGTON. 
 
 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1859- 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 BUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS. 
 1859. 
 

MH. BL^IU'S ADDRESS. 
 
 The friends of Freedom in Washington, under 
 ihe auspices of the Republican Association, 
 celebrated the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, 
 on Wednesday, the loth instant, with great 
 spirit and enthusiasm. In the afternoon, one 
 hundred guns were fired, partly in honor of the 
 day, and also in celebration of the recent Re- 
 publican triumphs in Connecticut, Rhode 
 Island, Missouri, Michigan, and other States^ 
 
 In the evening, a large audience assembled 
 at Odd Fellows Hall, to hear an oration in 
 memory of the life, character, and principles of 
 Mr. Jefferson. The occasion was enlivened by 
 the presence of the Marine Band, which played 
 national and patriotic airs at the intervals in 
 the proceedings. Francis P. Blair, sgn., Esq., 
 presided, and introduced the proceedings by 
 the following address, which briefly and per- 
 spicuously sets forth the nature and objects of 
 the Republican organieation. 
 
 Gentlemen : There never was a more pro- 
 pitious moment than the present to revive the 
 recollection of the principles and Administra- 
 tion of Jefferson. When a spurious currency 
 has filled the channels of circulation, it can 
 only be expelled by putting it in competition 
 with the real standard of value. We have a 
 party in power who affect to represent Mr. Jef- 
 ferson, and carry out his doctrines in the con- 
 duct of the Government. They take the name 
 of National Democrats. The Republican party 
 have brought this " counterfeit presentment " 
 of the true faith which Mr. Jefferson inculcated 
 to the test in the measures they have submitted 
 to the country, to restore the original princi- 
 ples of the Government 
 
 I propose, as a preface to the proceedings of 
 this meeting, to present a naked schedule of 
 the acts of the National Democracy, in contrast 
 with the measures urged by their Republican 
 adversaries, and compare both with Jefferson's 
 standard. 
 
 The Democrats now deride the name of Re- 
 publicans. This, we learn from Jefferson's 
 Anas, was, at the threshold of Washington's Ad- 
 ministration, a name which excited some re- 
 pugnance in Wiishiugton, when used in some 
 document prepared for him by Jefferson. Re- 
 public, Washington held to be the true title of 
 our national institution. But it was doubtless 
 obnoxious to that section of Washington's 
 Cabinet which held the French Republic in 
 odium, and employed the disagreeable associa- 
 tion to prejudice him against its designation, 
 as reccommended by Jefferson. Washington 
 adopted, finally, the name preferred by Jefferson, 
 in his own official communications to Congress. 
 The oppouents of the present Administration 
 would restore the glory of the term which 
 Jefferson suggested, and which Washington 
 adopted, but which the oligarchs of that time 
 and of this disavow and endeavor to bring into 
 contempt. 
 
 2. Jefferson held that " Governments are re- 
 publican only in proportion, as they embody the 
 will of the people, and execute it.''^ 
 
 This is the true definition of popular sover- 
 eignty under our form of Government. It has 
 been the constant aim of the National Democ- 
 racy to stifle the principle, while professing to 
 adopt it. The leaders of the party and its 
 successive administrations have been the ac- 
 complices of all the fraud, violence, and cor- 
 ruption, which have during six years been em- 
 ployed, not only to defeat the will of the people 
 of Kansas, but the will of the nation, in refer- 
 
ence to the establishment of Slavery in that 
 Territory, and that west and south of Kansas. 
 The Republicans have fought the battle for the 
 rights of the people there, and throughout the 
 Tjnion, and in the neighboring nations. 
 
 3. Jefferson was in favor of "general suf- 
 frage," and " equal representation in the Legis- 
 lature." The Democratic party, in its new 
 pledge, commits itself to the doctrines of that 
 party in the South which subjects suffrage to 
 the slaveholding oligarchy ; that power render- 
 ing the popular vote for the most part nugatory, 
 by gerrymandering the States, so as to give the 
 strong negro districts absolute preponderance 
 in the State Governments ; the result being, on 
 the whole, the monopoly of the soil by means 
 of the monopoly of slave labor ; unequal rep- 
 resentation, in consequence of the control of 
 the suffrage of the poor; a monopoly of all the 
 official power in the hands of the caste holding 
 slaves, and the disfranchisement of the great 
 mass of the people holding none. 
 
 4. Jefferson was opposed to an irresponsible 
 Judiciary, and denied the right of the bench of 
 judges to decide political questions for the na- 
 tion, and to the obligation of the co-ordinate 
 department of the Government to submit them- 
 selves to the construction of the Constitution 
 imposed by the court. The Democratic party 
 and Administration deny this doctrine, and 
 hold the obiter dictum of the Supreme Court, 
 that this country can have no colonies, as a 
 part of the Constitution ; and its decision, that 
 Slavery is the law of the Territories in virtue of 
 the Constitution, and in spite of National Ter- 
 ritorial legislation, is conclusive to make it the 
 duty of both to protect it there as an inviolable 
 institution. The reasoning renders this de- 
 cision as applicable to States as to Territories. 
 The Republicans hold Jefferson's opinion, that 
 the decision of the court is not obligatory on 
 Congress or the country, and may be rightfully 
 opposed and reversed. 
 
 5. Jefferson considered the security and pu- 
 rity of the elective franchise as the basis of 
 representative institutions. The Democratic 
 party and its successive Administrations have 
 practiced upon a wholly different principle. 
 They assess the office-holders here and through- 
 out the Union, to raise means to corrupt the 
 elections. They give contracts to individuals 
 who advance money to carry the elections — 
 and this in opposition to the law giving con- 
 tracts to the lowest bidders. They use the pub- 
 lic money to enlist multitudes of laborers, not 
 required by the service, and pay them as voters : 
 colonizing them in navy yards and other na- 
 tional establishments, where they may hold the 
 balance between the contending parties in 
 elections. They corrupt members of Congress, 
 not only by the use thus made of public money 
 to control elections, but by authorizing them to 
 sell_ contracts and dispose of public offices, 
 taking a premium for the negotiation. The 
 Republicans, in the committees that have 
 
 brought these abuses to light, denounce them, 
 and propose their correction. The Democrats 
 apologize for the offenders, and labor to screen 
 them. 
 
 6. Jefferson maintains State Rights as a bar- 
 rier against a consolidated government. The 
 President, Senate, and Judiciary — the power 
 of the Democracy in the Government — con- 
 spire to sacrifice the rights of the States, by 
 the construction they impose on the Constitu- 
 tion. AVith them, the States can have no rights 
 but those admitted by the Supreme Court. 
 The Senate, too, has, in the case of Bright and 
 Fitch, assumed power to defeat the right of a 
 State to choose its own Senators, and substi- 
 tute Senators, by a party vote of a majority of 
 the Senate itself, for those elected by the Legis- 
 lature of the State. In the case of Harlan, it 
 excluded a Senator chosen by a joint meeting 
 of the Legislature of Iowa, called by both 
 branches, on the pretext that a majority of 
 both branches did not participate in the elec- 
 tion. In the case of Bright and Fitch they as- 
 sumed that a majority vote in one branch of 
 the Legislature made a legal election, although 
 the majority of the other branch not only re- 
 fused to make a joint meeting to go into the 
 election, but protested against it. The people 
 of Indiana were appealed to, to vindicate the 
 the State against this assumption of the Senate 
 of the United States. They maintained the 
 right of the State Legislature to elect Senators 
 to supplaut those chosen by only one Legisla- 
 tive branch, and both branches of the new 
 Legislature united to elect Senators. The 
 Senators of Indiana were refused even a hear- 
 ing before the usurping majority in the L^nited 
 States Senate, and thus it has in effect appoint- 
 ed Senators for the State of Indiana against its 
 will. 
 
 7. Jefferson was in favor of the diffusion of 
 knowledge. This is marked by his effort to get 
 the counties divided into townships, with a view 
 to have primary schools in each. The hostility 
 of the Democracy to the diffusion of knowledge 
 is marked by the neglect in all the States of 
 the South, which give law to the Democracy, to 
 establish primary schools, and by the late veto 
 of the President, at the behest of that party, 
 put on the bill making a large grant of land to 
 each of the States of the Union, to establish 
 schools to diffuse knowledge among the people. 
 
 8. Jefferson inscribed his character as a 
 friend to free labor on the Ordinance of l^S*", 
 reserving the whole public domain then ac- 
 quired, for those who lived by it. The Democ- 
 racy has inscribed its character, in reference to 
 free labor, in the Kansas-Nebraska act, the 
 Lecompton Constitution, and the judicial de- 
 cision opening all the Territories to Slavery. 
 
 9. Jefferson advocated the division of' the 
 lands among small freeholders, and favored 
 little tenements rather than great domains. 
 The strangling of the Homestead bill in the 
 Senate, which was carried by the united Re- 
 
publican vote of the House, discriminates the 
 enemies from the advocates of the Jefferson 
 party. 
 
 10. It was Jeffei'son's apothegm, "We must 
 make our election between economy and lib- 
 erty, or profusion and servitude." The present 
 Administration has more than doubled the ex- 
 penditures of Mr. Van Buren's Administration. 
 
 11. Mr. Jefferson abhorred a public debt. 
 Enumerating the dangers which threatened 
 free government, he said, " the fore horse of 
 this frightful team is a public debt." 
 
 The Government party has in two years sunk 
 a large surplus in the Treasury, and created a 
 public debt. Its new measures look to a lai-ge 
 accumulation of it, showing that a national 
 debt is a part of their system of policy. The 
 extinction of the public debt, and provision 
 against the organization of another, is the poli- 
 cy of the Kepublicans. 
 
 12. It was a cardinal principle in politics 
 with Jefferson, tliat Slavery begets Shifeiy. He 
 therefore maintained the necessity of the grad- 
 ual extinction of Slavery ; and the removal of 
 the subject caste is indispensable to the preser- 
 vation of the liberties of the whole laboring 
 class, and the preservation of .the Republican 
 form of government. It is the policy of the 
 National Democratic party to preserve and ex- 
 tend Slavery, as an institution replete with 
 blessings to mankind, and essential to the glory 
 of our Government. It is on this main issue 
 that the Republican party go with Jefferson 
 against the National Democracy, and submit 
 the trial to the country. 
 
 I might extend indefinitely this catalogue of 
 antagonisms between the policy of Jefferson 
 and that of the present enslaved Administra- 
 tion. There is, indeed, nothing in common be- 
 tween the^i ; and there could be, in the nature 
 of things, no agreement in any essential point 
 between Mr. Jefferson, who was the apostle of 
 Freedom and Equality, and a party deriving its 
 power from Slavery, and bent on extending and 
 perpetuating it. Nor do they conceal their 
 malice at every encounter with the principles or 
 suggestions of policy which he has left to pos- 
 terity. 
 
 But it does not follow, because the oligarch- 
 ists hate Jefferson, and know that their schemes 
 are utterly repugnant to his principles, that they 
 will not seek to draw support to themselves by 
 perverting his language and acts. Not at all. 
 
 They depend mainly upon imposture and fraua 
 to maintain their power ; and those who obtain 
 power wrongfully, and undertake wicked and 
 illegal enterprises to extend it, are not scrupu- 
 lous in adopting devices to gloss over their 
 schemes, or in endeavoring to assimilate them 
 to the approved acts of public benefactors. It 
 is for this reason that, whilst hating the name 
 of Jefferson, and opposing in every form his 
 policy of elevating the masses by making all 
 men free, providing for their education, and 
 enabling them to have freeholds, the oligarch- 
 ists are now attempting to assimilate their de- 
 signs against Cuba to Mr. Jefferson's acquisi- 
 tion of Louisiana. It is a shallow device. A 
 mere glance at what Mr. Jefferson did, and 
 proposed to do, as compared with what they 
 propose to do, will show that in this, as on any 
 other point of their 'policy, they are utterly an- 
 tagonistic to the views and ol)jects of Mr. Jef- 
 ferson. Mr. Jefferson, in the purchase of Lou- 
 isiana, acquired for $15,000,000 half a conti- 
 nent of rich vacant domain, to be planted with 
 free States. They propose to give hundreds of 
 millions for an island covered with slaves, to be 
 secured by a standing army, and looking finally 
 to the creation of an Empire founded on com- 
 pulsory labor throughout all the tropics. Mr. 
 Jefferson, on the contrary, looked to that region 
 as the place where free homes were to be ac- 
 quired for the colored people anaong us, to ful- 
 fill his cherished scheme of separating the races, 
 which he regarded as csential to the Freedom 
 of either. The result of the projected conquest 
 of Cuba will be the renewal of the slave trade, 
 to bring Africa in chains to the work of the 
 West Indies, whilst the poor caste of the white 
 race in our Southern regions are to be convert- 
 ed into a soldiery to maintain the process. 
 This mode of acquisition bodes war with for- 
 eign Powers, a separation of the Union, and, if 
 the v.dld hopes of the projectors could be ac- 
 complished, would renew around the Gulf of 
 Mexico a' sort of Turkish domain, like that 
 which once embraced the Mediterranean in its 
 bosom. These Saracens of the South, who 
 would propagate Slavery with the sword, must 
 expect a crusade against this scheme, by all 
 the nations of the New AVorld that love Free- 
 dom. Peace was the object and the result of 
 Mr. Jefferson's acquisition, under the banner 
 of Liberty. War, civil and servile, must follow in 
 the train of this new project to extend Slavery. 
 
EEADIIS'G OF THE DECLARATION OF EN^DEPEIs^DENCE. 
 
 After a fine piece of music from the baud, 
 Mr. Blair inti-oduced Major Benjamin B. French 
 as the person selected to read the Declaration 
 of Independence. 
 
 Mr. French prefaced the reading of that 
 cherished paper with the following remarks : 
 
 My Friends and Fellow Citizens : 
 
 About eighty-three years ago, the hand of 
 the man the anniversary of whose birth we 
 meet here this evening to celebrate, was en- 
 gaged in writing one of the most remai'kable 
 papers which ever emanated from mortal brain. 
 It was the (jreat charier of our Liberties — our 
 Declaration of Independence. 
 
 On the fourth of July, 1T76, that glorious 
 Declaration was unanimously adopted by the 
 Congress of the United Colonies, and this Na- 
 tion assumed its rank among the Nations of 
 the earth as '' the United States of America." 
 
 On that day, or immediately subsequent 
 thereto, that Declaration received "the signatures 
 
 of fifty-six men — brave, determined, resolute — 
 men who had declared their rights, and, at all 
 hazards, were determined to maintain them — 
 men whom we may well be proud to call our 
 political fathei-s, and whose like we ne'er shall 
 look upon again. 
 
 That Declaration emanated from the brain 
 and came from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, 
 well and truly designated as " the great Apostle 
 of Liberty,"' whose republican principles we 
 adopt, whose memory we revere, and the anni- 
 versary of whose birth we have met here to 
 commemorate. 
 
 Most appropriate and most proper, then, it is 
 that we should listen to that Declaration ; and 
 the welcome duty of reading it has been as- 
 signed to me, which I shall now proceed to 
 perform. 
 
 Mr. French then, in a clear and audible voice, 
 and with much emphasis, read the Declaration 
 of Independence. (Mr. French's remarks and 
 the reading were received with applause.) 
 
 MR. GOODLOE'S ORATION. 
 
 After another air from the band, the Chair- 
 man introduced to the audience Mr. Daniel R. 
 Goodloe, of North Carolina, who proceeded to 
 deliver the following oration : 
 Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 The name of Jefferson is familiar to you as 
 " household words," and it would be super- 
 fluous to recount in detail the events of his 
 life. He was born at a place called Shadwell, 
 in what is now the fine county of Albemarle, 
 on the 2d of April, 1743, old style ; which cor- 
 responds to the loth, under the new computa- 
 tion of time. He was educated at William 
 and Mary College, whose venerable walls have 
 been consumed by fire during the present year. 
 His education, in the judgment of modern 
 critics, was most thorough, and he continued to 
 add to his stores of knowledge, scientific and 
 literary, as well as political, until the day of his 
 death. 
 
 Like most young Virginians of opportunity 
 and ambition, he read the law, and was admit- 
 ted to the bar. He pursued the study and prac- 
 tice with avidity for some years, and was 
 rapidly rising into reputation, when his zeal in 
 behalf of his country and its liberties diverted 
 him from the law, and absorbed him in politics. 
 He was never distinguished as a public speak- 
 er. Few men have been more celebrated for 
 conversational eloquence than Mr. Jefferson ; 
 but his voice is said to have lacked compass 
 and strength for public speaking. His natural 
 diffidence was also an impediment to his suc- 
 cess in oratory ; and like Franklin, Washing- 
 ton, and other great men, he was rather dis- 
 tinguished for wisdom and weight of chai-acter, 
 than for the faculty of moving the passions of 
 men by displays of oratory. In this country, 
 where the gift of public speaking is so com- 
 mon, and where good oratory is not rare, we 
 can forgive Nature, if Nature were to blauvt, 
 
for denying to a mind like Jefferson's the 
 charm of oratory ; and it may well be doubted 
 if the laurels of the orator would not have been 
 taken from the brow of the philosophic states- 
 man. Nature cannot afford to give all her 
 choice gifts of genius to one mind. To one she 
 gives the pre-eminent endowment of thought, 
 to another action, to another oratory. It is the 
 glory of Jefferson to have been the philosopher 
 of the Revolution — excelling even Franklin in 
 this respect ; for Franklin, with all his match- 
 less powers, had dedicated them to the ad- 
 vancement of physical science, long before the 
 events which led to the Revolution had trans- 
 pired. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson grew up and his mind matured 
 in the midst of these stirring events. His pa- 
 * triotic enthusiasm was aroused, and he was 
 among the lirst to take sides with his country 
 against the Crown and Parliament of England. 
 I will not weary you with a recital of the vari- 
 ous political functions which he filled, much 
 less shall I attempt to show the important part 
 which he played on the public stage ; it will be 
 sufficient for my purpose to touch upon the 
 salient points of his public life, in order to show 
 the identity of modern Republicanism with the 
 principles of Mr. Jefferson. ■ 
 
 This will be my object on the present occa- 
 sion : and I will at the same time show that 
 no other party in this country has any affinity 
 with Jefferson. I make no arrogant boast; the 
 task is easy. Any man of common intelligence, 
 who will read twenty or thirty pages of Jeffer- 
 son's writings, and contrast them with the po- 
 litical history of the last two or ten years, can 
 do the same thing, 
 
 I will not confine my examination of the 
 political principles of Jefferson to the subject 
 of Slavery ; I intend to show that his views of 
 State Rights, and of the relative power of the 
 State and Federal Governments, are in har- 
 mony with those of the Republican party ; 
 while the party now in power is thoroughly 
 committed, in word and deed, to the most ulti-a 
 Federalism, 
 
 I begin, however, with the Slavery question, 
 because that is the great issue before the coun- 
 try ; the great issue which has been the nucleus 
 and centre of the Republican party, and which 
 has at the same time been the rock which has 
 shattered all other parties to atoms. 
 
 Let me first briefly state the principles and 
 objects of this new party. 
 
 The Repuljlican party has proposed no in- 
 vasion of the rights of the States — no intermed- 
 ling by Congress with Slavery in the States ; 
 but it insists upon the right of Congress to ex- 
 clude Slavery from the Territories, to conse- 
 crate them to free white labor, and to rear upon 
 them States constituted, not of a handful of 
 wealthy slaveholders, surrounded by thousands 
 of black slaves, but States composed of free- 
 men, white men, who will give invincible 
 strength to the nation. 
 
 The Republican party also insists upon the 
 right of freedom of speech and of the press. It 
 insists upon, and when it attains the control of the 
 Federal Government it will encourage, that sort 
 of freedom of speech in all the South which for 
 two or three years has existed in St. Louis, and 
 whose fruits have been more than one triumph- 
 ant election. 
 
 The Republican party is not in favor of the 
 amalgamation of the white and black races, 
 nor of a population composed of two separate 
 races. Nine-tenths of its members, while they 
 condemn the injustice which enslaves the black 
 man, are anxious for his colonization, in Africa, 
 in Mexico, in Central America, in South Amer- 
 ica, or in the West Indies. That party will 
 favor the colonization of the free people of color 
 and emancipated slaves, with their own con- 
 sent, in any of these countries, and a proposi- 
 tion to this effect has been made in each branch 
 of Congress, by distinguished Republicans. 
 
 I intend to show, that in every one of these 
 principles and proposed measures the Repub- 
 lican party of the present day is only treading 
 in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson — only pro- 
 posing to carry out his principles and meas- 
 ures — only endeavoring to realize the dream of 
 his life. 
 
 It would be equally as easy to show that In 
 this leading feature of the Republican platform 
 it has the sanction of nearly every great and 
 good name which achieved renown during the 
 Revolution, whether in the field or in the coun- 
 cil. It would be easy to quote Washington, 
 Franklin, Madison, the Adamses, the Ran- 
 dolphs, Mason, Henry, Pinckney, in support of 
 the Republican principles above laid down ; but 
 I shall have enough to do at present to use the 
 materials furnished by the writings of Jefferson 
 himself. 
 
 Democracy with Mr. Jefferson was a synonym 
 for universal freedom. The first sentence of 
 the Declaration of Independence is demonstra- 
 tive of this truth. It declares that " all men 
 are created equal,"' and "endowed by their 
 Creator with certain unalienable rights, among 
 which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
 piness." lam aware that it has been main- 
 tained by desperate demagogues that this dec- 
 laration of rights was not intended to embrace 
 black men ; but there exists the most abundant 
 testimony to the contrary. Mr. Jefferson was 
 fully committed to the universality of Freedom 
 before he became a member of the Continental 
 Congress, In his celebrated paper on the 
 " Rights of British America," prepared wbib 
 he was a member of the General Assembly of 
 Virginia, and published in ll^-i, he says:. 
 
 " The abolition of domestic Slavery is the 
 greatest object of desire in these Colonies, 
 where it was unhappily introduced in their, in-- 
 fant state." 
 
 In his original draft of the Declaration, of 
 
 Independence he used the following language : 
 
 "He" (the King) "has waged ctuel war 
 
10 
 
 Democratic party still clings? Let us see. 
 There is the question of State rights. This 
 principle is multiform in its applications. Jef- 
 ferson and his party employed it to resist the 
 alien and sedition laws. Calhoun and South 
 Carolina revived it for the purpose of resisting 
 what they donouuced as an odious and uncon- 
 stitutional scale of tariff duties, designed not for 
 revenue, but for protection to American pro- 
 ducers, at the expense of the consumers. Wis- 
 consin, Vermont, and Massachusetts, are ap- 
 plying it to the nullification of the fugitive slave 
 law, which they insist, and which Mr. Webster, 
 Mr. Rhett of South Carolina, and the Charles- 
 ton Mercury, declared to be, in their judgments, 
 unwarranted by the Constitution. I shall not 
 stop to defend or to criticise any of these ap- 
 plications of the principles of State Rights. 
 My object is to show what those principles are. 
 
 The doctrine, as defined by Mr. Jefferson, may 
 be briefly stated thus, viz : the States having 
 reserved to themselves all powers not specifi- 
 cally granted to the Federal Government, and 
 the Constitution being a compact among the 
 States, the right to judge of its infringe- 
 ment belongs to the States themselves. If 
 the sole power of determining constitutional 
 questions is surrendered to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, or to any one of its departments, the 
 effect is to surrender all independence on the 
 part of the States, and they are forever bound 
 hand and foot by the decisions of the Supreme 
 Federal tribunal. The Federal Government is 
 itself the creature of the States, and the Su- 
 preme Court is the creature of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment ; hence, to make the Supreme Court 
 the final arbiter of constitutional questions, is 
 to subordinate the creators to their creature's 
 creature. So reasoned Jefferson and John 
 Taylor of Caroline, and so believed the Re- 
 publican party of their day. 
 
 In order that I may place this matter clearly 
 before you, I will read to you extracts from 
 Mr. Jefferson's writings, and then I propose to 
 contrast with them the more recent teachings 
 of the so-called Democratic party. 
 
 In the 9th volume of Mr. Jefferson's Works, 
 at page 464, 1 find a series of resolutions which 
 the compiler of his Works thinks were the orig- 
 inal of the famous Kentucky resolutions of 
 1799. The Virginia resolutions of 1798, of 
 which you have heard so much, were from the 
 pen of Mr. Madison ; and they are substantially 
 the same as those written by Mr. Jefferson for 
 Kentucky. The first of these is as follows : 
 
 " 1. liesolved, That the several States com- 
 posing the United States of America are not 
 united on the principle of unlimited submission 
 to their General Government, but that by a 
 compact, under the syle and title of a Consti- 
 tution for the United States, and of amend- 
 ments thereto, they constituted a General Gov- 
 ernment for special purposes— delegated to that 
 Government certain definite powers, reserving, 
 each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to 
 
 their own self-government ; and that whensoever 
 the General Government assumes undelegated 
 powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and 
 of no force ; that to this compact each State 
 acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its 
 co-States forming, as to itself, the other party ; 
 that the Government created by this compact 
 was not made the exclusive or final judge of 
 the extent of the powers delegated to itself, 
 since that would have made its discretion, and 
 not the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; 
 but that, as in all other cases of compact 
 among Powers having no common judge, each 
 party has an equal right to judge for itself as 
 well of infractions as of the measure and modS 
 of redress." 
 
 So much for Mr. Jefferson's general view of 
 the relations of the States to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment. I will next read from his letters, to 
 show what he thought of the Supreme Court, 
 which President Buchanan and his followers 
 have apotheosized since its determination of the 
 Dred Scott case. 
 
 In a letter to W. H. Torrance, dated Monti- 
 cello, June 11, 1815, Mr. Je&ersou says: 
 
 " The second question, whether the judges 
 are invested with exclusive authority to decide 
 on the constitutionality of a law, has been here- 
 tofore a subject of consideration with me in the 
 exercise of oflicial duties. Certainly there is 
 not a Avord in the Constitution which has given 
 that power to Ihem, more than to the Executive 
 or Legislative branches. Questions of property, 
 of charactei', and of crime, being ascribed to 
 the judges through a definite course of legal 
 procedure, laws involving such questions be- 
 long, of course, to them ; and as they decide on 
 them ultimately, and without appeal, they of 
 course decide for iJiemselccs. The constitution- 
 al validity of the law or laws again prescribing 
 Executive action, and to be administered by 
 that branch ultimately, and without appeal, 
 the Executive must decide for themselves also, 
 whether under the Constitution they are valid 
 or not. So also as to the laws governing the 
 proceedings of the Legislature, that body must 
 judge _/br itself the constitutionality of the law, 
 and equally without appeal or control from its 
 co-ordinate branches. And, in general, the 
 branch which is to act ultimately, and without 
 appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor of 
 the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the 
 opinions of the other co-ordinate authorities. 
 It may be said that contradictory decisions may 
 arise in such case, and pi-oduce inconveuieuce. 
 This is possible, and is a necessary failing in 
 all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of 
 the public functionaries and authority of pub- 
 lic opinion will generally produce accommoda- 
 tion." — Jeffersoii's Complete Works, vol. G, pages 
 GGl, GG2. 
 
 It would be difficult to find two theories of 
 the Constitution more widely different than 
 this one of Jefferson, and that of President 
 Buchanan, as laid down in his inaugural, his 
 
11 
 
 Silliman letter, and his messages In regard to 
 Kansas. But I will come to that presently. 
 
 On this subject of the power of the Supreme 
 Court, numbers of Mr. Jefferson's letters might 
 be quoted, to the same purport as the above. 
 I have only time to present brief extracts. In 
 a letter to Judge Koane, dated Poplar Forest, 
 September 6, 1819, he says, referring to the 
 Supreme Court: 
 
 " In denying the right they usurp, of exclu- 
 sively explaining the Constitution, I go further 
 than you do, if I understand rightly your quo- 
 tation from the Federalist of an opinion that 
 'the Judiciary is the last resort in relation to 
 the other departments of the Government, but 
 not in relation to the rights of the parties to 
 the compact under which the Judiciary is de- 
 rived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed 
 is our Constitution a complete ^eZo de se. For, 
 intending to establish three departments, co- 
 ordinate and independent, that they might 
 check and balance one another, it has given, 
 according to this opinion, to one of them alone 
 the right to prescribe rules for the government 
 of the others, and to that one, too, which is un- 
 elected by, and independent of, the nation." 
 
 * * * " The Constitution, on this hy- 
 pothesis, is a mere thing of wax, in the hands 
 of the Judiciary, which they may twist and 
 shape into any form they please. It should be 
 remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in 
 politics, that whatever power in any Govern- 
 ment is independent, is absolute also ; in theory 
 only at first, while the spirit of the people is 
 up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes. In- 
 dependence can be trusted nowhere but with 
 the people in mass. They are inherently inde- 
 pendent of all but moral law."' 
 
 To Thomas Ritchie, whose name as the ed- 
 itor of the Richmond Enquirer is familiar to us 
 all, Mr. Jefferson wrote, under date of Decem- 
 ber 25, 1820, as follows: 
 
 " The Judiciary of the United States is the 
 subtle corps of sappers and miners, constantly 
 working under ground to undermine the found- 
 ations of our confederated fabric. They are 
 construing our Constitution from a co-ordina- 
 tion of a general and special Government, to a 
 general and supreme one alone." 
 
 I should weary you if I were to quote a tithe 
 of what Mr. Jefferson has left us on this subject. 
 "What I have presented will suffice to show you 
 that he entertained a deep-seated jealousy of 
 Federal encroachments upon the rights of the 
 States, and that he utterly repudiated the mod- 
 ern doctrine of the party which claims to be 
 Democratic, that the Supreme Court is the final 
 arbiter of constitutional questions. 
 
 I now present the views of the modern De- 
 mocracy touching these qtiestions of constitu- 
 tional power and the authority of the Supreme 
 Court. I know that the President has fallen 
 into disrepute with large sections of his party ; 
 but, inasmuch as the sentiments advanced in 
 his inaugural, in his Silliman letter, and in his 
 
 first annual message, were universally applaud- 
 ed. North and South, as the very perfection 
 of human wisdom and statesmanship, I make 
 bold to asstime that the passages which I shall 
 quote from these documents express the settled 
 principles of the Democratic party. In his in- 
 augural, delivered March 4, 1857, the President 
 says: 
 
 " A difference of opinion has arisen in regard 
 to the point of time when the people of a Terri- 
 tory shall decide this question (meaning Sla- 
 very) for themselves. 
 
 " This is, happily, a matter of but little prac- 
 tical importance. Besides, it is a judicial ques- 
 tion, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, before whom it is 
 now pending, and will, it is understood, be 
 speedily andjinalhj settled. To their decision, 
 in common with all good citizens, I shall cheer- 
 fully submit, whatever this may be, though it 
 has ever been my individual opinion that, under 
 the Nebraska-Kansas act, the appropriate pe- 
 riod will be when the number of actual resi- 
 dents in the Territory shall justify the forma- 
 tion of a Constitution with a view to its admis- 
 sion as a State into the Union." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson contended that the co-ordinate 
 branches of the Government — that is to say, the 
 Executive, the two Houses of Congress, and the 
 Supreme Court — have each the right of judg- 
 ing for themselves of the constitutionality of 
 questioHs; that the States severally have the 
 same right ; and that the people at large are to 
 be the final arbiters. But, according to our 
 modern oracle of Democracy, the people are 
 bound, like obedient subjects, to submit at dis- 
 cretion to the decision of the Supreme Court. 
 The President sets them the example, by sur- 
 rendering the Executive authority to what Mr. 
 Jefferson describes as "the subtle corps of sap- 
 pers and miners," who are at work night and 
 day in the effort to overthrow the Constitution, 
 and convert the Federal Government into a 
 despotism. 
 
 In the President's letter to Professor Silli- 
 man, dated August 15, 1857, he uses the fol- 
 lowing language : " Slavery existed at that pe- 
 rio(?, (that is to say, when the Nebraska bill 
 was passed,) and still exists, in Kansas, under 
 the Constitution of the United States. This 
 point has at last been finally settled, by the 
 highest tribunal known to our laws.'' 
 
 Here, again, the President sets the Supreme 
 Court above the Executive, above the Congress, 
 and above the people. He reiterates the senti- 
 ments of his inaugural ; and the party, from 
 Maine to Texas, cry amen, and denounce as 
 traitors all who dare question the truth of the 
 President's views. The files of the Virginia 
 papers, and even those of South Carolina, fur 
 two or three months after the date of this let- 
 ter, teem with laudations of it, and fully en- 
 dorse its ultra Federal sentiments. 
 
 I know that whenever the States Rights prin- 
 ciples of Mr. JclTerson happen to chime in with 
 
10 
 
 Democratic party still clings ? Let us see. 
 There is the question of State rights. This 
 principle is multiform in its applications. Jef- 
 ferson and his party employed it to resist the 
 alien and sedition laws. Calhoun and South 
 Carolina revived it for the purpose of resisting 
 Avhat they donounced as an odious and uncon- 
 stitutional scale of tariff duties, designed not for 
 revenue, but for protection to American pro- 
 ducers, at the expense of the consumers. Wis- 
 consin, Vermont, and Massachusetts, are ap- 
 pilying it to the nullification of the fugitive slave 
 law, which they insist, and which Mr. Webster, 
 Mr. Rhett of South Carolina, and the Charles- 
 ton MerczDy, declared to be, in their judgments, 
 unwarranted by the Constitution. I shall not 
 stop to defend or to criticise any of these ap- 
 plications of the principles of State Rights. 
 My object is to show what those principles are. 
 
 The doctrine, as defined by Mr. Jeffei'son, may 
 be briefly stated thus, viz : the States having 
 reserved to themselves all powers not specifi- 
 cally granted to the Federal Government, and 
 the Constitution being a compact among the 
 States, the right to judge of its infringe- 
 ment belongs to the States themselves. If 
 the sole power of determining constitutional 
 questions is surrendered to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, or to any one of its departments, the 
 eflfect is to surrender all Independence on the 
 part of the States, and they are forever bound 
 hand and foot by the decisions of the Supreme 
 Federal tribunal. The Federal Government is 
 itself the creature of the States, and the Su- 
 preme Court is the creature of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment ; hence, to make the Supreme Court 
 the final arbiter of constitutional questions, is 
 to subordinate the creators to their creature's 
 creature. So reasoned Jefferson and John 
 Taylor of Caroline, and so believed the Re- 
 publican party of their day. 
 
 In order that I may place this matter clearly 
 before you, I will read to you extracts from 
 Mr. Jefferson's writings, and then I propose to 
 contrast with them the more recent teachings 
 of the so-called Democratic party. 
 
 In the 9th volume of Mr. Jefferson's Works, 
 at page 4G4, 1 find a series of resolutions which 
 the compiler of his Works thinks were the orig- 
 inal of the famous Kentucky resolutions of 
 1799. The Virginia resolutions of 1798, of 
 which you have heard so much, were from the 
 pen of Mr. Madison ; and they are sul)stantially 
 the same as those written by Mr. Jefferson for 
 Kentucky. The first of these is as follows : 
 
 " 1. Resolved, That the several States com- 
 posing the United States of America are not 
 united on the principle of unlimited submission 
 to their General Government, but that by a 
 compact, under the syle and title of a Consti- 
 tution for the United States, and of amend- 
 ments thereto, they constituted a General Gov- 
 ernment for special purposes— delegated to that 
 Government certain definite powers, reserving, 
 each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to 
 
 their own self-government ; and that whensoever 
 the General Government assumes undelegated 
 powers, Its acts are unauthoritative, void, and 
 of no force ; that to this compact each State 
 acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its 
 co-States forming, as to itself, the other party ; 
 that the Government created by this compact 
 was not made the exclusive or final judge of 
 the extent of the powers delegated to itself, 
 since that would have made its discretion, and 
 not the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; 
 but that, as in all other cases of compact 
 among Powers having no common judge, each 
 party has an equal right to judge for itself as 
 well of infractions as of the measure and mod§ 
 of redress." 
 
 So much for Mr. Jefferson's general view of 
 the relations of the States to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment. I will next read from his letters, to 
 show what he thought of the Supreme Court, 
 which President Buchanan and his followers 
 have apotheosized since its determination of the 
 Dred Scott case. 
 
 In a letter to W. H. Torrance, dated Monti- 
 cello, June 11, 1815, Mr. Jefferson says: 
 
 " The second question, whether the judges 
 are Invested with exclusive authority to decide 
 on the constitutionality of a law, has been here- 
 tofore a subject of consideration with me in the 
 exercise of official duties. Certainly there is 
 not a Avord in the Constitution which has given 
 that power to them, more than to the Executive 
 or Legislative branches. Questions of property, 
 of character, and of crime, being ascribed to 
 the judges through a definite course of legal 
 procedure, laws involving such questions be- 
 long, of course, to them ; and as they decide on 
 them ultimately, and without appeal, they of 
 course decide for fJiemselvcs. The constitution- 
 al validity of the law or laws again prescribing 
 Executive action, and to be administered by 
 that branch ultimately, and without appeal, 
 the Executive must decide Jbr themselves also, 
 whether under the Constitution they are valid 
 or not. So also as to the laws governing the 
 proceedings of the Legislature, that body must 
 judge for itself the constitutionality of the law, 
 and equally without appeal or control from Its 
 co-ordinate branches. And, In general, the 
 branch which is to act ultimately, aud without 
 appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor of 
 the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the 
 opinions of the other co-ordinate authorities. 
 It may be said that contradictory decisions may 
 arise in such case, and produce inconvenience. 
 This is possible, and is a necessary failing in 
 all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of 
 the public functionaries and authority of pub- 
 lic opinion will generally produce accommoda- 
 tion." — Jefferson's Complete Works, vol. G, pages 
 G61, G62. 
 
 It would be dllBcult to find two theories of 
 the Constitution more widely different than 
 this one of Jefterson, and that of President 
 Buchanan, as laid down in his inaugural, his 
 
11 
 
 Silliman letter, and his messages In regard to 
 Kansas. But I will come to that presently. 
 
 Ou this subject of the power of the Supreme 
 Court, numbers of Mr. Jefferson's letters might 
 be quoted, to the same purport as the above. 
 I have only time to present brief extracts. In 
 a letter to Judge Roane, dated Poplar Forest, 
 September 6, 1819, he says, referring to the 
 Supreme Court: 
 
 " In denying the right they usurp, of exclu- 
 sively explaining the Constitution, I go further 
 than you do, if I understand rightly your quo- 
 tation from the Fedei^aUst of an opinion that 
 ' the Judiciary is the last resort in relation to 
 the other departments of the Government, but 
 not in relation to the rights of the parties to 
 the compact under which the Judiciary is de- 
 rived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed 
 is our Constitution a complete felo de se. For, 
 intending to establish three departments, co- 
 ordinate and independent, that they might 
 check and balance one another, it has given, 
 accoi'ding to this opinion, to one of them alone 
 the right to prescribe rules for the government 
 of the others, and to that one, too, which is un- 
 elected by, and independent of, the nation." 
 
 •JT •«■ * u rpjjg Constitution, on this hy- 
 pothesis, is a mere thing of wax, in the hands 
 of the Judiciary, which they may twist and 
 shape into any form they please. It should be 
 remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in 
 politics, that whatever power in any Govern- 
 ment is independent, is absolute also ; in theory 
 only at first, while the spirit of the people is 
 up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes. In- 
 dependence can be trusted nowhere but with 
 the people in mass. They are inhei'eutly inde- 
 pendent of all but moral law." 
 
 To Thomas Ritchie, whose name as the ed- 
 itor of the Richmond inquirer is familiar to us 
 all, Mr. Jefferson wrote, under date of Decem- 
 ber 25, 1S20, as follows : 
 
 " The Judiciary of the United States is the 
 subtle corps of sappers and miners, constantly 
 working under ground to undermine the found- 
 ations of our confederated fabric. They are 
 construing our Constitution from a co-ordina- 
 tion of a general and special Government, to a 
 general and supreme one alone." 
 
 I should weary you if I were to quote a tithe 
 of what Mr. Jefferson has left us on this subject. 
 What I have presented will sutfice to show you 
 that he entertained a deep-seated jealousy of 
 Federal encroachments upon the rights of the 
 States, and that he utterly repudiated the mod- 
 ern doctrine of the party which claims to be 
 Democratic, that the Supreme Court is the final 
 arbiter of constitutional ([uestions. 
 
 I now present the views of the modern De- 
 mocracy touching these questions of constitu- 
 tional power and the authority of the Supreme 
 Court. I know that the President has fallen 
 into disrepute with large sections of his party ; 
 but, inasmuch as the sentiments advanced in 
 his inaugural, in his Silliman letter, and in his 
 
 first annual message, were universally applaud- 
 ed. North and South, as the very perfection 
 of human wisdom and statesmanship, I make 
 bold to assume that the passages which I shall 
 quote from these documents express the settled 
 principles of the Democratic party. In his in- 
 augural, delivered March 4, 1857, the President 
 says: 
 
 " A difference of opinion has arisen in regard 
 to the point of time Avhen the people of a Terri- 
 tory shall decide this question (meaning Sla- 
 very) for themselves. 
 
 " This is, happily, a matter of but little prac- 
 tical importance. Besides, it is a judicial c|ues- 
 tion, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, before whom it is 
 now pending, and will, it is understood, be 
 speedily and finalJy settled. To their decision, 
 in rummon with all good citizens, I shall cheer- 
 fully submit, whatever this may be, though it 
 has ever been my individual opinion that, under 
 the Nebraska-Kansas act, the appi'opriate pe- 
 riod will be when the number of actual resi- 
 dents in the Territory shall justify the forma- 
 tion of a Constitution with a view to its admis- 
 sion as a State into the Union." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson contended that the co-ordinate 
 branches of the Government — that is to say, the 
 Executive, the two Houses of Congress, and the 
 Supreme Court — have each the right of judg- 
 ing for themselves of the constitutionality of 
 c|uestiows; that the States severally have the 
 same right ; and that the people at large are to 
 be the final arbiters. But, according to our 
 modern oracle of Democracy, the people are 
 bound, like obedient subjects, to submit at dis- 
 cretion to the decision of the Supreme Court. 
 The President sets them the example, by sur- 
 rendering the Executive authority to what Mr, 
 Jefferson describes as "the subtle corps of sap- 
 pers and miners," who are at work night and 
 day in the effort to overthrow the Constitution, 
 and convert the Federal Government into a 
 despotism. 
 
 In the President's letter to Professor Silli- 
 man,, dated August 15, 1857, he uses the fol- 
 lowing language : " Slavery existed at that pe- 
 riod, (that is to say, when the Nebraska bill 
 was passed,) and still exists, in Kansas, under 
 the Constitution of the United States. This 
 point has at last been -finally settled, by the 
 highest tribunal known to our laws.'' 
 
 Here, again, the President sets the Supreme 
 Court above the Executive, above the Congress, 
 and above the people. He reiterates the senti- 
 ments of his inaugural ; and the party, from 
 Maine to Texas, cry amen, and denounce as 
 traitors all who dare question the truth of the 
 President's views. The files of the Virginia 
 papers, and even those of South Carolina, fur 
 two or three months after the date of this let- 
 ter, teem with laudations of it, and fully en- 
 dorse its ultra Federal sentiments. 
 
 I know that whenever the States Rights prin- 
 ciples of Mr. Jefferson happen to chime in with 
 
12 
 
 the prevalent passion of the " Democracy" in 
 those States, they are not slow to make use of 
 them ; but they can never more pretend to an 
 inviolable faith in and devotion to those prin- 
 ciples, after endorsing these Federal heresies of 
 Mr. Buchanan. 
 
 I will read for your edification a few other 
 authoritative *•' Democratic " endorsements of 
 Mr. Buchanan's Federalism. The Washington 
 Union has been the recognised official organ of 
 the Government, representing the President 
 and his Cabinet. It is rumored that this paper 
 is about to change its name, for some reason ; 
 but there is no ground for hope that its endorse- 
 ment of the President's inaugural, or the Dred 
 Scott decision, has made a change of name de- 
 sirable. That journal contained a leading edi- 
 torial, March 11, 1857, from which I will read 
 you a few lines. It said : 
 
 '■ There was but one thing needed to give to 
 the result in the Presidential contest the force 
 of an absolute and final settlement of the sec- 
 tional issue. That thing was, tlie judgment of 
 the Supreme Court, in confirmation of the 
 Democratic doctrine, which had received the 
 popular endorsement. The decision in the 
 Dred Scott case has furnished the closing and 
 clinching confirmation needed ; and henceforth 
 sectional fanaticism cannot maintain its war- 
 fare, tviihouf airai/ing itself distindli/ against 
 the Constitutiony 
 
 Shade of Jetferson ! What would that philo- 
 sophic founder of the States Rights creed say 
 to this? What! a Democratic organ, the organ 
 of a Democratic Administration, declare it 
 treason to question the validity of a Supreme 
 Court decision ! 
 
 I will not now stop to expose the assumption 
 of the Union, that the people in the Presiden- 
 tial election endorsed the President and his 
 views, when in fact he fell short of a popular 
 majority by nearly four hundred thousand. I 
 let that pass for what it is worth. 
 
 I proceed to give another high Democratic 
 view of the Supreme Court and its authority. 
 It is that of the late Attorney General Gushing. 
 Just about the time the Supreme Court was 
 about to be delivered of its famous Dred Scott 
 opinion, Mr. Gushing, who had watched and 
 fostered the process of gestation, was compelled 
 to take official leave of that august body. As 
 a member of General Pierce's Cabinet, h : »vent 
 out of office with it. On surrendering ' -je seals 
 of office, he addressed the court as f aows : 
 
 " Yours is not the gauntleted hand of the 
 soldier, nor yours the voice that commands ar- 
 mies, rules cabinets, or leads senates. But 
 though you are none of these, yet you are 
 backed by all of them. Theirs is the external 
 power which sustains your moral authority ; 
 you are ike incarnate mind of the political body 
 of the nation. In the complex institutions of 
 our country, you are the pivot point upon tchich 
 the rights and liberties of all, Government and 
 people alike, turn ; or, rather, you arc the cen- 
 
 tral light of constitutional tvisdom, aroxind 
 ivhich they perpetually revolve.^'' 
 
 Here, then, is modern Democracy ! Behold 
 it, and contrast it with Jeffersonian Democra- 
 cy! Mr. Jefferson declared that the Execu- 
 tive and Congress have an equal right with the 
 Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution ; 
 and that the Judges of the Supreme Court are 
 " the subtle corps of sappers and miners '' who 
 are continually mining- for its overthrow. 
 
 Mr. Buchanan says that the question of Sla- 
 very in the Territories is not a political but a 
 judicial question ; and that it having been de- 
 termined finally and forever by the Court, he 
 submits his judgment, as President, to that 
 of the Court, and declares that all good citi- 
 zens will do likewise. 
 
 The Washington Union, the President's or- 
 gan, goes a step further, and denounces all 
 who dare question the validity of the decision, 
 as enemies of the Constitution ; while the reti- 
 ring Attorney General, with a climax of eulogy, 
 tells tha Judges, in language which must have 
 caused a blush to mantle in their venerable 
 cheeks, that " You are the central light of con- 
 stitutional wisdom, around which they (mean- 
 ing Avhat Mr. Jefferson styles the co-ordinate 
 departments) perpetually revolve.'' 
 
 Well might Mr. Jefferson predict, as he did 
 in a letter to the Hon. William T. Barry, of 
 Kentucky, that the most disastrous consequen- 
 ces to the cause of true Democracy would re- 
 sult from the large Federal recruits which were 
 then coming into the Democratic ranks. This 
 prophetic letter is dated July 2, 1822. He 
 says : 
 
 " Whether the surrender of our opponents, 
 their reception into our camp, their assumption 
 of our name, and APPARENT accession to 
 our objects, may strengthen or weaken the gen- 
 uine principles of Republicanism, may be a 
 good or an evil, is yet to be seen.'^ 
 
 Sir, I will not undertake to say that Mr. Jef- 
 ferson had his sinister forebodings turned par- 
 ticularly to Pennsylvania when writing this 
 letter ; but I believe it was about that time 
 that an important accession was made to the 
 Democracy in the vicinity of Lancaster, from 
 the ranks of Federalism. To say the least of 
 the matter, there is a remarkable coincidence 
 of time, and a marvellous realization of the 
 prediction. 
 
 Having shown what were Mr. Jefferson's 
 views upon these great questions of Slavery and 
 Slates Rights, I will briefiy advert to another of 
 permanent interest, on which he was most ex- 
 plicit. I allude to the subject of political tol- 
 erance. When he became President in ISOl, 
 he found every place under the Government 
 filled by his political opponents. He was op- 
 posed to proscription for opinion's sake ; but at 
 the same time justice must be done. It would 
 not have been just to his fri^-^ds, then consti- 
 tuting a majority of the nation, that their op- 
 ponents should continue to monopolize all pat- 
 
13 
 
 ronage, and hence many changes became neces- 
 sary. He vindicates his course in a letter 
 written in reply to a memorial from Connecti- 
 cut, and lays down the true, humane, and states- 
 manlike rule of his administration as follows. 
 Adverting to the state of things just recited, he 
 says : 
 
 " It would have been to me a circumstance 
 of great relief, had I found a moderate partici- 
 pation of office in the hands of the majority. I 
 would gladly have left fo time and accident to 
 raise them to their just share. But their total 
 exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I 
 shall correct the procedure ; but, that done, re- 
 turn with joy to that state of things when the 
 only questions concerning a candidate shall be, 
 Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful 
 to the Constitution ? " 
 
 Such was the golden rule of Jefferson. You 
 all know how it is kept by the present Admin- 
 istration. The rule now is, to require every 
 office-holder to pay liberally to the Democratic 
 clubs, and whoever dares refuse is immediately 
 dismissed. The official organ some five or six 
 months ago explicitly laid down this as the rule 
 of action, and denounced all officials as drones 
 who failed to comply with it, and insisted that 
 they should at once be dismissed from the ser- 
 vice. The test questions now addressed to ap- 
 plicants for office are. Is he in favor of extend- 
 ing and perpetuating Slavery ? Does he swear 
 allegiance to the Supreme Court and the Dred 
 Scott decision ? Will be contribute freely of 
 his salary to the electioneering fund ? He who 
 passes this ordeal safely, need not despair. 
 
 Before concluding my remarks, I will address 
 myself to a brief consideration of the probable 
 eonsecjuences of the triumph of the Republican 
 party in this country. I know that there are 
 many good people, North and South, who are 
 deeply anxious on this point. They fear that 
 some terrible calamity, such as a dissolution of 
 the Union, or civil war, will result from the 
 election of a Republican President. 
 
 I have myself given a good deal of anxious 
 thought to this subject; I have endeavored to 
 analyze it, and ascertain what foundation there 
 is for these sinister predictions. As the result 
 of my investigations, I have arrived at the con- 
 clusion that they are wholly without reason or 
 probability to support them. 
 
 For, in the first place, a constitutional major- 
 ity of the people of the Union have the right to 
 elect a President; the Constitution defines who 
 may be President; and if the man chosen by 
 the constitutional majority of the people is eli- 
 gible, there can be no possible objection to his 
 inauguration. Whoever raises his hand against 
 the inauguration of a President legally chosen, 
 and eligible, is a traitor, and all good law- 
 abiding peoi>lo. North and South, will sustain 
 the Government in bringing him to condign 
 punishment. State Rights will sustain no man 
 in resisting the installation of a legally-elected 
 President. So far from it, the honest champion 
 
 of the reserved rights of the States will be 
 equally tenacious of the powers granted to the 
 Federal Government. 
 
 But this idea of resisting the inauguration of 
 a Republican President, which was prevalent 
 in the South in 1856, and was threatened even 
 by the Governor of Virginia, is no longer 
 dreamed of except by a few mad-caps in the 
 extreme South. On sober second thoughts, the 
 wise men of the South, of the dominant party, 
 have concluded to abide by the Constitution, 
 and make no effort at resistance until their con- 
 stitutional rights are invaded. The Opposition 
 in the South, composed of old conservative 
 Whigs and Americans, have never threatened 
 resistance to the constituted authorities on any 
 such issue. They will stand by the Government 
 until the rights of the States are encroached 
 upon by the Federal power. 
 
 And here is the point. What will the Re- 
 publicans do ? Will they trench upon the 
 rights of the States ? 
 
 So far as I know the sentiments of prominent 
 Republicans, or of the masses, I know of no 
 such purpose, and I therefore feel authorized 
 to say that no such encroachment is contem- 
 plated. 
 
 What, then, will the Republican party do 
 with its power ? I answer, first, it will prevent 
 the extension of Slavex-y into new Territories. 
 To effect this object, it may be necessary to 
 legislate Slavery out of them ; or the result 
 may be attained by the exercise of the moral 
 influence of the Government. For a number of 
 years past, this iufiuence and patronage have 
 been sufficient to make the Territories, as a 
 general rule, Pro-Slavery in feeling and politi- 
 cal bias; and, for my part, I think it will be 
 much easier to make them Anti-Slavery than 
 Pro-Slavery, for the reason that Freedom is in 
 itself more reasonable, beautiful, and com- 
 mendable, than Slavery. But, in any event, 
 the Republicans claim it to be the right and 
 duty of the Federal Government to exclude 
 Slavery from the public domain, by act of Con- 
 gress, or by moi-al influence, operating upon 
 and controlling Territorial legislation. 
 
 In the second place, while the Republican 
 party, as the States Rights party, will studious- 
 ly refrain from trenching upon the reserved 
 rights of the States, it will feel bound to wield 
 the patronage and influence of the Federal 
 Government for the promotion of sound morals, 
 and the dissemination of enlightened views of 
 public policy among the people. North and 
 South. A Republican Administration will give 
 no aid to the modern Pro-Slavery heresy in the 
 South, but will endeavor to discountenance and 
 supplant it by encouraging a return to the en- 
 lightened, liberal, and philanthropic views of 
 Washington, Jefferson, and Mailison. This 
 the champions of Slavery and Disunion may 
 count on ; and well they may, for it is destined 
 to produce a revolution in public sentiment at 
 no distant day. 
 
14 
 
 The free-soil tendency In all the border slave 
 States is conspicuously manifest even now. In 
 Missouri, it has broken out in vigorous political 
 action. It was but the other day that your city 
 newspapers chronicled a splendid free-soil vic- 
 tory in St. Louis, not the first, though the 
 largest of its kind. All over Missouri, this free- 
 soil sentiment is more or less prevalent and 
 out-spoken. It is diffused through Kentucky, 
 Western Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware ; and 
 the triumph of the Republican party in the 
 Presidential contest will be the signal for the 
 grandest outburst of the pent-up hopes and as- 
 pirations of the people in these States, of which 
 our history furnishes any example. The people 
 of the South yearn for Freedom. They are 
 kept spell-bound and terror-stricken by the 
 eternal hue and cry of danger to the State, kept 
 up by a few interested agitators. These dema- 
 gogues keep up a perpetual reign of terror at 
 the South, so that no man can hope for public 
 favor, or even for private respect, who refuses 
 to join in it. The people look to the State 
 Governments, and they find these agitators in 
 power; and turning to the Federal Government, 
 they find the same men or their creatures ready 
 to crush every aspiration for Liberty. 
 
 The inauguration of a Republican President 
 will reverse all this. He will stretch out the 
 arm of Federal influence to protect and en- 
 rourage Freedom, and to build up a party of 
 Freedom in every Southern State, similar to 
 that which exhibits such healthy growth in 
 Missouri. Who can doubt what the effect will 
 be ? If Freedom is irrepressible, with all the 
 weights which now oppress it, what will it not 
 be when those weights are removed, and their 
 influence thrown into the opposite scale ? 
 
 I may be too sanguine, but I am willing to 
 hazard the prediction, that before the end of 
 the firstRepublican Presidential term, the party 
 will carry the day in every one of the border 
 slave States. I am equally confident that a 
 Pro-Slavery party will never again enter the 
 field for the Presidency, after four years of Re- 
 publican rule. 
 
 What, then? Are we to have no more parties? 
 Is the millennium at hand ? Sir, I am not so 
 hopeful as that. I cannot doubt that we shall 
 have parties ; but the issue between them will 
 no longer be Freedom or Slavery. They will 
 both protest allegiance to Freedom, and will 
 only dispute about the best mode of removing 
 Slavery. 
 
 Such are my views of the future. I have no 
 fears of a dissolution of the Union. The South- 
 ern people, sustained by the Federal Govern- 
 ment, will not permit a handful of discontented, 
 
 rule-or-ruin fire-eaters to dissolve the Union. 
 Neither will they be permitted to revive that 
 greatest crime which a nation ever embarked 
 in — the slave trade. The laws, which brand it 
 as piracy and punish it with death, will neither 
 be repealed, nor suffered to sleep as they novr 
 are. The whole Union is interested in putting 
 an end to this infamous traSic, which threatens 
 to deluge the South with African barbarism, 
 drive out the white population, and Africanize 
 the continent. 
 
 Sir, we have been falsely styled Black Re- 
 publicans. It is a miserable trick of dema- 
 gogues to misrepresent and render us odious. 
 While we are opposed to the enslavement of 
 black men, we have no wish to augment the 
 number among us by foreign importations, 
 whether free or slave. We know that black men 
 are tropical in origin and adaptation, and we 
 desire to inaugurate a policy which will restore 
 the black race to the tropical regions. If any 
 party deserves the name of Black, it is that which 
 advocates the perpetuation of black Slavery in 
 these States, and which, not satisfied with the 
 stock on hand, is now importing more from Af- 
 rica. The Republican party, when it attains 
 power, as it is destined to do at an early day, 
 will put a stop to this iniquity, and it could do 
 nothing better calculated to popularize itself 
 south of Mason and Dixon's line. 
 
 I now conclude, my friends, this brief tribute 
 to the memory, the character, and the principles 
 of Jefferson. The party which he instituted 
 has fallen to decay. It abandoned his princi- 
 ples, it has adopted those which he loathed, 
 and, as a climax of apostacy, it has elevated to 
 the Presidency a Federalist, whose first official 
 declaration was to proclaim the overthrow of 
 States Rights, their subordination to the Su- 
 preme Court, and the universality of Slavery. 
 it remains for us to rescue the memory and 
 principles of Jefferson from the oblivion into 
 which they are passing, and to reassert for 
 them their legitimate influence upon American 
 politics. 
 
 The Washington States estimates that the 
 Hall was two-thirds full. It seats eight hun- 
 dred. We may add, that profound and respect- 
 ful attention was given to the proceedings ; and 
 what is very unusual, although there were not 
 more than a dozen ladies pi'esent, the audience 
 sat with uncovered heads. Those portions of 
 the address denouncing the extension of Sla- 
 very and the slave trade were received with 
 rapturous applause. 
 
 UBJa'12