Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United StatesCrosby, Frank
History
Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States
Crosby, Frank
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
and often nearly half of the other. The process is this: Three,
four, or half a dozen questions are prominent at a given time; the
party selects its candidate, and he takes his position on each of
these questions. On all but one his positions have already been
indorsed at former elections, and his party fully committed to
them; but that one is new, and a large portion of them are against
it. But what are they to do? The whole are strung together, and
they must take all or reject all. They can not take what they like
and leave the rest. What they are already committed to, being the
majority, they shut their eyes and gulp the whole. Next election,
still another is introduced in the same way. If we run our eyes
along the line of the past, we shall see that almost, if not quite,
all the articles of the present Democratic creed have been at
first forced upon the party in this very way. And just now, and
just so, opposition to internal improvements is to be established
if Gen. Cass shall be elected. Almost half the Democrats here
are for improvements, but they will vote for Cass, and if he
succeeds, their votes will have aided in closing the doors against
improvements. Now, this is a process which we think is wrong. We
prefer a candidate who, like Gen. Taylor, will allow the people to
have their own way regardless of his private opinion; and I should
think the internal-improvement Democrats at least, ought to prefer
such a candidate. He would force nothing on them which they don’t
want, and he would allow them to have improvements, which their own
candidate, if elected, will not.
“Mr. Speaker, I have said Gen. Taylor’s position is as well defined
as is that of Gen. Cass. In saying this, I admit I do not certainly
know what he would do on the Wilmot proviso. I am a Northern
man, or, rather, a Western free State man, with a constituency I
believe to be, and with personal feelings I know to be, against the
extension of slavery. As such, and with what information I have,
I hope, and _believe_, Gen. Taylor, if elected, would not veto
the proviso; but I do not _know_ it. Yet, if I knew he would, I
still would vote for him. I should do so, because, in my judgment,
his election alone can defeat Gen. Cass; and because, _should_
slavery thereby go into the territory we now have, just so much
will certainly happen by the election of Cass; and, in addition,
a course of policy leading to new wars, new acquisitions of
territory, and still further extensions of slavery. One of the two
is to be President; which is preferable?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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