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This is a direct encouragement to insurrection, or secession by the slave-holding States, if the Republican candidate is elected; and all the more exceptionable coming from his competitor. It is not surprising that there have been divers glosses upon it, attempting to show that Mr. Fillmore did not mean what he said; but the meaning is quite plain, and if the truth were known, probably much of the violence and threats, of which we hear not a little, might be traced to it.

But suppose Mr. Fillmore had a chance of success. I do not wonder that this supposition provokes your laughter; but what is called a National Whig Convention has recently been held at Baltimore, and has indorsed, the nominations of the American party, and expressed something like a confidence in his success. I deny the authority of a portion of the Whigs to indorse the nominations of another party in the name of the Whig party. But being thus indorsed how is the election to be accomplished, and what is to be the result? The answer is clear. By defeating an election by the people, throwing it into the House of Representatives, and then standing out in the expectation that the Democratic party will give in. An election is thus to be postponed, the whole country convulsed with the excitement which will attend it, and the matter is to be accomplished at last by bargain and corruption, making Kansas the subject of a compromise. Compromising seems to have been considered as Mr. Fillmore's peculiar qualification in the convention at Boston. The presiding officer evidently regarded compromising with favor:

"In my honest judgment, fellow Whigs, if these perplexing and perilous questions are ever to be settled wisely, justly, and peaceably, it will not be by the triumph of either of the principal parties to the strife."

Another speaker is again more explicit,

"Now Mr. Fillmore has the support of many members of the Whig party on the ground that he is a man of that moderation of temper who will reconcile the extremes of opinion on both sides. Nothing but harm can come, if this attitude of opposition and collision between the North and South is to continue. Millard Fillmore stands in the position of a man who takes that moderate part which is never tasteful to the American people. It is one of the characteristics of the people to favor extreme measures. Moderation, conciliation, and compromise that class of qualities and that class of virtues - is not taking to the common American mind.”

This is somewhat more clearly foreshadowed in the Baltimore Convention. But what is the compromise? The question is, Shall slavery be extended into Kansas - Yes or No? If you say no, you do not compromise. If you say yes, you surrender. The election of Mr. Fillmore, then, is compromise, and compromise is surrender.

But it is objected that the Republican party is a fanatical party and a sectional party, and that it is seeking to deprive the Southern States of their rights under the constitution. Some of this was said in the speeches at the convention in Boston. More by the speakers from the free States at the Convention in Baltimore, and all of it is iterated and reiterated by the Democratic party, aided, as we have seen, by Mr. Fillmore himself. In reading the proceedings of the Baltimore Convention, I was struck with the fact that gentlemen from the slave-holding States hardly referred to the Republican as a sectional party, while those from the free States were openmouthed in that style of denunciation. A delegate from New York "referred at some length to the duty of the South to stand by those Whigs of the North in support of Mr. Fillmore to the necessity of the maintenance of the Union, despite the fanatical efforts of the abolitionists of the North."

It is amusing to contrast this with a remark of Mr. Alexander Rives of Virginia, who said, "I hail from the South - my heart throbs with every emotion that can touch the heart of a Southern man. But yet I tell you that from my heart of hearts, I loathe the Northern man with Southern principles. [Applause.] Bring a man from the extreme North, and set him down in my own cherished domicil, and let him strive to outvie me in praises of the institutions of the South, and I say he ought to be kicked out of doors."

Fellow-citizens, I do not recognize the old Anti-slavery party, nor even the Freesoil party proper, in the present Republican party. With something in common with the former, and much with the latter, it is not the same. The Republican party presents, as its great distinguishing principle, the non-extension of slavery, and I propose to show that this is a sound Whig principle, and a constitutional principle, which once might have been said to be the same thing.

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To show it to be a Whig principle, I need go no farther back than the 29th of September, 1847. On that day the Whig party of Massachusetts held a convention at Springfield. Mr. Webster was present, " and addressed the meeting in his most powerful manner for nearly an hour and a half. His speech was devoted to a review of the war and its origin, and the policy of the administration with regard to it." Two or three short extracts from that speech may be found useful.

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'My opposition [to the annexation of Texas] was founded on the ground that I never would, and never should, I repeat now, I never will and never shall, give my vote in Congress for any further annexation to this country with a slave representation.

"We hear much, just now, of a panacea for the danger and evils of slavery and slave annexation, which they call the Wilmot Proviso. That sentiment is a just sentiment, but it is not a sentiment to form any new party

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upon. It is not a sentiment on which Massachusetts Whigs differ. There is not a man in this hall who holds to it any more firmly than I do, or one who adheres to it more than another. I feel some little interest in this matter, Sir. Did I not commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? And I must be permitted to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim the merit and take out a patent. I deny the priority of their invention. Allow me to say, Sir, it is not their thunder." . . . "We can only say, and in my judgment, Mr. President, I can only say, that we are to use the first, the last, and every occasion that offers to oppose the extension of slave power. But I speak of it here as in Congress, as a political question for statesmen to act upon. We must so regard it. I certainly do not mean to say it is less important in a moral point of view, – that it is not more important in many other points of view. But as a legislator, or in an official capacity, I must look at it, consider it, and decide it, as a matter for political action."

The platform of that convention contained a very full and emphatic annunciation of Whig principles. It was resolved, among other things,

"That the acquisition of Mexican territory, under the circumstances of the country - unless under adequate securities for the protection of human liberty — can have no other probable result than the ultimate advancement of the sectional supremacy of the slave power.

"That if the war shall be prosecuted to the final subjugation or dismemberment of Mexico, the Whigs of Massachusetts now declare, and put this declaration of their purpose on record,— that Massachusetts will never consent that Mexican territory, however acquired, shall become a part of the American Union, unless on the unalterable condition that 'there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude therein, otherwise than in the punishment of crime.'

“That, in making this declaration of her purpose, Massachusetts announces no new principles of action in regard to her sister States, and makes no new application of principles already acknowledged. She merely states the great American principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence — the political equality of persons in the civil State; the principle adopted in the Legislation of the States under the confederation, and sanctioned by

the Constitution; in the admission of all the new States formed from the only territory belonging to the Union at the adoption of the Constitution; it is, in short, the imperishable principle set forth in the ever memorable ordinance of 1787, which has for more than half a century been the fundamental law of human liberty in the great valley of the Lakes, the Ohio and the Mississippi, with what brilliant success, and with what unparalleled results, let the great and growing States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, answer and declare.

"And that uncompromising hostility to all wars for conquest, and to all acquisitions of territory in any manner whatever, for the diffusion and perpetuity of slavery, and for the extension and permanency of the slave power, are now as they have been cardinal principles in the policy of the Whigs of Massachusetts, and form, in their judgment, the broad and deep foundations on which rest, and ever must rest, the prospective hopes, and enduring interests of the whole country."

There has been no repeal of these resolutions.

With regard to Mr. Webster, who may be allowed by the Whig friends of Mr. Fillmore to have been a sound exponent of Whig principles, his opposition to the extension of slavery was distinctly expressed in a speech at Niblo's Garden in New York, in 1837; and he adhered to it throughout his whole life.

When the bill to establish a territorial government in Oregon was under consideration in August, 1848, Mr. Webster said:

"For one, I wish to avoid all committals, all traps by way of preamble or recital; and as I do not intend to discuss this question at large, I content myself with saying, in few words, that my opposition to the further extension of local slavery in this country, or to the increase of slave representation in Congress, is general and universal. It has no reference to limits of latitude or points of the compass. I shall oppose all such extension and all such increase, in all places, at all times, under all circumstances, even against all inducements, against all supposed limitation of great interests, against all combinations against all compromises. This is short, but I hope clear and comprehensive."

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