Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
"It is pleasant for us at all times to recall the traditions of
our fathers, to repeat their affirmation of principles, which seem
to us to be self-evident truths, and which were announced to the
world by men who were ready and able to support them in council,
and to defend them in the field. But it is a pleasure that cannot
be enjoyed apart from the conviction that it is for us an equal,
if not a higher duty, vigilantly to course every means that will
tend to insure and perpetuate their supremacy, on this continent
at least. If it shall hereafter appear that our Government has
departed therefrom, and joined itself to other and false political
doctrines, I trust that it may never be said of the people of
Massachusetts, that an unreasonable refusal of minor concessions,
or their immaterial diversities of opinions--always the bane of
republics--gave success and perpetual power to their opponents. No
one can doubt that a vast majority of the people of the United
States are opposed to the policy represented by the slavery
propagandists; and still less can we doubt that it is their
diversity of opinion in non-essentials that encourages the
Government with hopes of success, and constantly defeats the
purposes of the people. It is no less a shame for us, under such
circumstances, to admit our incapacity to maintain our principles,
than to acknowledge a defection from the faith of our fathers.
"In our age, with our lights, success is a duty. The graves of the
past proclaim that failure must be the fault of the people, and
not of their cause. But there will be no permanent failure. There
was never a more auspicious hour for the friends of freedom than
the present. To whatever policy the Government may now devote its
energies, political power must soon fall into new hands. And when
power shall pass into the hands of the young men of this age, I
can entertain no doubt that, like the young men of a past age, to
whom Jefferson appealed, and who were his constant supporters in
the great battles of his day, for the suppression of the slave
trade, and the ultimate supremacy of Liberty in the early councils
of our people, they will give renewed life to a national policy of
freedom, traditional and true, which must be the basis of all
moral or material prosperity, and which is dictated alike by
conscience and common sense. I rejoice with an inward joy, that
the young men of Massachusetts, as it were by spontaneous
movement, and with a true appreciation of their duty and power,
have assumed a position and unfurled a flag that will be hailed in
other States as a harbinger of a better age--a radiant star, that
shall lead to new and decisive victories for the good old cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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