a stand? It must be made now, to-day. The Freemen of the Republic, thank God, have still left in their hands a peaceful and Constitutional remedy-the ballot box. The power and designs of Slavery must be checked, and the original policy of the Government on the subject restored. To this end we must lay asidepostpone for a time-the strifes of party over minor points of controverted policy, and unite in this great work of preserving our Free Institutions from impending destruction. The first blow must be aimed for the overthrow of the present National Administration-the mere tool and puppet of the Slave power. Through the corrupting influence of its patronage upon the peoples' representatives, Freedom has been betrayed. It must be overwhelmed at every point with ignominious defeat. We cannot shorten its constitutional term of office, but we must strike down its allies in every State, district and county. It must have no props in the State upon which to lean for support of its iniquitous policy. No man should be elected to a responsible office, Governor, member of Congress, Representative, whose relations of friendship and alliance with the National Administration are open to suspicion. We must accept of nothing, in the candidates presented for our suffrages, short of undisguised hostility to the ultra pro-slavery power at Washington. Anything short of this is folly, idle, trifling, shilly-shally nonsense; and designed in the end to lead the people step by step into acquiescence in the policy and plans of Slavery. Let no candidate pretend to condemn the recent legislation of Congress, and yet hold himself in party alliance with the present Administration. He cannot be trusted; and so sure as he is trusted, so sure will the people, and their rights, again be betrayed. The man who will not face, in open and manly resistance, the aggressions of the Slave power to-day, cannot be relied upon to do so, on the occasion of a future provocation. He is hopelessly rotten-unsound to the core, and will sacrifice his country's highest interests and glory for some paltry partisan considerations. Slavery is deaf to the voice of our remonstrance. In vain we point to the history of the country-in vain we invoke the names of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and their compatriots, in defense of the early policy and settled maxims of the Government -in vain we appeal to the eternal principles of justice and right -all, all are unheeded, unavailing. In the absorbing selfishness of a great interest, Slavery pushes onward in its barbarous and destructive policy; subverting every principle that gave life, vigor and success to our Revolutionary struggle, and defeating all the great ends for which the Government was established. It has broken down the highest precedents of Constitutional law, in opening to its ingress the territories of the Nation. To-day, Slavery is prostituting the holiest functions of Government, endangering the public peace, and provoking on the country the horrors of war, for its extension and aggrandizement. Now, at this present writing, it is insidiously undermining one of the most valuable and sacred constitutional rights of the people, in its efforts to put the National Treasury, through the treaty-making power, at the virtual disposal of the Executive and Senate. The Constitution designed that the immediate representatives of the people should be the especial guardians of the treasury of the Nation-now, as a mere matter of form, they are called upon to vote in the dark enormous sums of money, in fulfilment of treaties for the acquisition of foreign provinces and States, without even having laid before them the instructions and correspondence under which the treaty was negotiated. When, I again inquire, are the encroachments and the aggressions of Slavery to be resisted, if not now? The Constitution is invaded subject to constant change, in the violent interpretations put upon it from time to time, to meet the growing demands and audacity of Slavery, and enforced upon the country, under threats of disunion, and the corrupting appliances of Presidential patronage. The independence of the House of Representatives is unblushingly assailed by promises of Executive favor to such members as would betray their constituents on a question of the institution of Freedom. Legislative enactments the most solemn and binding, after being enforced upon the country by the power and votes of Slavery, are repealed under pretenses false in fact and insulting to our intelligence. Party platforms are erected at the bidding of Slavery, and when upon the face of their honest observance their candidates are elected, they are treacherously violated, and new and more degrading tests of party fealty imposed. I am a democrat-deeply imbued with the doctrines of that political school. My principles are safe-I have no fear of losing them. I know what they are, and whither they point; and when assailed shall defend them with the earnestness of a thorough conviction in their soundness and truth. I repel with scorn the insolent mandates of the Administration requiring adhesion to its measures as a test of democratic orthodoxy. Democracy had a life and history some time before this Administration abused its name and principles, and will survive its brief day of mischievous power. Not the least of the crimes of Slavery is the attempt it has made to prostitute the name and principles of democracy, in its assaults upon the Constitution and liberties of the country. This Congressional District gave near 2,500 majority for Gen. Pierce; and to this result I contributed my vote. I trust the future will show how grossly he has outraged the principles of its intelligent voters. Slavery demands entire submission to its policy, as a condition of its support-let candidates henceforth learn that here at least in Pennsylvania, if nowhere else within the State, we require of them guaranties of fidelity to the principles and rights of Freedom. Very respectfully, Willard Richardson, Esq., Your ob't servant, D. WILMOT. The demand for Wilmot's counsel and interpretation of the times came from afar, as well as from followers in his home district. In the late autumn of 1854 he was announced as one of the speakers in a course of lectures on slavery to be delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, on Thursday evenings throughout the winter, the other lecturers in the series being Charles Sumner, Salmon P. Chase, Anson Burlingame, Wendell Phillips, Cassius M. Clay, Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, John P. Hale, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel P. Banks, Lewis D. Campbell, Samuel Houston, and Charles W. Upham. The plan was that Wilmot should speak March 1, following and replying to the address of Sam Houston. This was but one of the details which not unnaturally went awry in so long a composite program. There were, inevitably, transpositions and substitutions. Hale was replaced by Thomas D. Eliot, and General Banks by Fred Douglass. The evening of March I was reassigned to William Lloyd Garrison. Wilmot himself, just at that time, was engrossed with a new development in Pennsylvania politics quite sufficient to prevent him from absenting himself so far from the focus of activities at Harrisburg. CHAPTER XXVII BIRTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 1854 was the year for the gubernatorial election in Pennsylvania, and with the progress of the campaign the separation between the two elements of the democratic party became sharper and deeper. The rising tide of indignation among the free-soilers-their determination to repudiate the attempt to commit them to the Administration policies by forcing these policies as a part of party "regularity"-turned against the State ticket, and especially against the candidate for the governorship, William Bigler. It was in vain that he pleaded his personal record, and attempted to dissociate State from national issues to deny the pertinency of the slavery question to the internal affairs of Pennsylvania. He had repudiated anteelection promises to support the antislavery movement, and indorsed the Nebraska Bill. Wilmot entered the campaign actively against him, and Bigler's alarm at his opposition took the fruitless form of yet more violent abuse in the hunker and Administration press. The address of the Central Committee had attached the purposes and the fate of the democratic party solidly to the indorsement of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and all that it implied, and the break-up of their organization had begun. Blinded by their solicitude to hold the support of the South for the retention of the presidency and the Senate, and perhaps deceived by the docility of the hunker or "dough face" faction, they had fearfully misjudged the proportions and the temper of the antislavery group in the North. The times were changing faster than they realized or could believe. Pennsylvania, which had given Bigler a majority of some 8,000 when he went into office, in 1851, turned him out by 37,000. But four |