What party is most deserving of our confidence? There is but one way to determine the character of a party, and that is, by ascertaining its history. Could we have safely trusted the Democratic party in 1860? No. And why not? Because it was a believer in the right of secession--a believer in the sacredness of human slavery. The Democratic party then solemnly declared--speaking through its most honored and trusted leaders--that each State had the right to secede. This made the Constitution a _nudum pactum_, a contract without a consideration, a Democratic promise, a wall of mist, and left every State free to destroy at will the fabric of American Government--the fabric reared by our fathers through years of toil and blood. Could we have safely trusted that party in 1864, when, in convention assembled, it declared the war a failure, and wished to give up the contest at a moment when universal victory was within the grasp of the Republic? Had the people put that party in power then, there would have been a Southern Confederacy to-day, and upon the limbs of four million people the chains of slavery would still have clanked. Is there one man present who, to-day, regrets that the Vallandigham Democracy of 1864 was spurned and beaten by the American people? Is there one man present who, to-day, regrets the utter defeat of that mixture of slavery, malice and meanness, called the Democratic party, in 1864? Could we have safely trusted that party in 1868? At that time the Democracy of the South was trying to humble and frighten the colored people or exterminate them. These inoffensive colored people were shot down without provocation, without mercy. The white Democrats were as relentless as fiends. They killed simply to kill. They murdered these helpless people, thinking that they were in some blind way getting their revenge upon the people of the North. No tongue can exaggerate the cruelties practiced upon the helpless freedmen of the South. These white Democrats had been reared amid and by slavery. Slavery knows no such thing as justice, no such thing as mercy. Slavery does not dream of governing by reason, by argument or persuasion. Slavery depends upon force, upon the bowie-knife, the revolver, the whip, the chain and the bloodhound. The white Democrats of the South had been reared amid slavery; they cared nothing for reason; they knew of but one thing to be used when there was a difference of opinion or a conflict of interest, and that was brute force. It never occurred to them to educate, to inform, and to reason. It was easier to shoot than to reason; it was quicker to stab than to argue; cheaper to kill than to educate. A grave costs less than a schoolhouse; bullets were cheaper than books; and one knife could stab more than forty schools could convert.