Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,

In color though varied, in beauty may vie.

'Tis clime of the South, 'tis land of the sun.”

What think you of this description of the modern Eden, the Elysium, which the President would have us buy for the weary children of Africa? But what is to be the cost of its acquisition? Perhaps only a few hundred millions. This presents the disagreeable and embarrassing suggestion which Mr. Lincoln has not met, that we may not have the gold on hand that we can conveniently spare. But perhaps we can buy with Treasury notes, and they may be multiplied as the leaves on the trees or the sands upon the seashore. But if John Bull should be the owner he is not in temper with us just now, and many prove churl enough to say, I will keep my land of orange groves where the nightingales ever sing, rather than take your promises to pay.

Clay and Jackson and Webster, and statesmen of that class, regarded the colonization of the negroes as a work of such enormous cost as not to be undertaken by the Government, even when at peace and free from debt; but in the midst of a civil war, trade and commerce disturbed, our sources of revenue impaired, with our industry paralyzed, and a national debt accumulating at the rate of nearly two millions per day, the wisdom and statesmanship that now manage our public affairs, commends it as feasible and desirable. When we see such stupendous folly united to most abandoned corruption and wickedness, we can not too earnestly strive to rescue the Government from such control.

Emancipation, then, as a war measure, is weakness and not strength, a burthen and not a support, and can be adopted only as a means of revenge to destroy the South, but not to restore the Union; and to that aspect of the question I call your attention.

As a party, the Democracy of the Northwest have not

been sectional, but have advocated equality of rights and privileges to all, and thus far have even conceded that New England and Pennsylvania might have the revenue policy of the United States so adjusted as to give them an advantage of from twenty to forty per cent upon their labor, more than could be given to our labor. But we are now being so crushed that if we and our children are not to become the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for the capitalists of New England and Pennsylvania, we must look to the interests of our section; and for the first time in my life I intend to speak as a sectional

man.

We are not a manufacturing people, and can not well become such; our wealth must come from the cultivation of the soil, and of those heavy and bulky articles that require a convenient market and cheapness of transportation. A foreign demand will enrich those regions from which there is convenient and cheap approach to the ocean, but it can not greatly benefit us; our corn and wheat, hogs and cattle are so weighty and bulky that before they reach the sea coast much of their value is lost in the cost of transportation; and this must continue, for railroad transportation can not become cheap. The malign policy of the party now in power, in the enactment of the tariff of last summer, which in ordinary times will be prohibitory and defeat revenue, and which makes us buy at high prices and sell at low prices, and which will impair our foreign market, has heretofore been partially defeated by the short crops in Europe, causing a larger foreign demand for breadstuffs than we have enjoyed perhaps since 1847; yet, with an extraordinary foreign demand for all we have to sell, what is our condition? Compare the present with our condition sixteen months since, and we have the answer. Our hogs were then worth from four to five dollars per hundred; they are now worth from two to two dollars and fifty cents. Our corn and wheat

and cattle have fallen in almost like proportion; and further to the West I understand the losses are still greater, to the degree that in some localities in Illinois, the useful and valuable article of corn is used as the cheapest fuel. To estimate our losses in Indiana for this year is difficult, but we may assume upon the following: upon each 100 pounds $2, and an average weight of 250 pounds gives a loss of $5 on each hog. Upon one railroad there have been shipped 100,000 head, and assuming that to be onetenth of the hogs in the State, the entire stock for the market in the State for this year is 1,000,000, and our losses upon pork $5,000,000. It is probably safe to assume an equal loss upon each of the articles of corn, wheat, and other stock, making the loss to the agricultural interests of Indiana $20,000,000.

These estimates are not reliable, and are not given as such, but rather as illustrations. The main fact is that our losses are enormons. In the reflective mind the inquiry arises, why is this so? It is not for the want of a foreign demand-we have that in an increased degree; it is not in the scarcity of money—that is abundant for all the wants of our trade; but the answer is in the fact that we are cut off from our Southern market. It is a striking fact in contrast, that the Eastern States, during the last nine months, have accumulated more wealth than during the same time at any period of their history. For the want of the Southern market, the men of Indiana lose nearly one-half the rewards of their labor. Why that market is of such value to us is apparent from a moment's reflection; the transportation of our heavy and bulky products upon the rivers is easy and cheap-it is the interest of the South mainly to employ her labor in the production of rice, sugar, hemp, tobacco and cotton-articles which we do not produce-and to depend upon and buy from us the productions of our lands and labor. To encourage and stimulate the people of the South in the production

of their peculiar commodities, that they may be large buyers from us, has been and, so long as "grass grows and water runs," will be the true interest of the Northwest; and that political party that would destroy that market is our greatest foe.

Most earnestly, then, do I call upon the men of Indiana to consider what President Lincoln seems to favor, what Cameron urges, what the Republican members of Congress, in caucus, have determined upon, and what bills now pending in Congress contemplate,-the freedom of the Negroes in the rebel States, in a word the destruction of Southern labor and the ruin, forever, of our rich trade and the value of our products.

Impelled by a false philanthropy, England has made her rich islands a luxuriant waste and wilderness, the trade of which is worth no more than one of the jewels in the Queen's crown. Are we now, who have for ourselves and the generations yet to come such important interests involved, to consent to such policy towards the great and fertile regions upon the Gulf of Mexico?

The first and highest interest of the Northwest is in the restoration and preservation of the Union upon the basis of the Constitution, and the deep devotion of her Democracy to the cause of the Union is shown by its fidelity in the past; but if the failure and folly and wickedness of the party in power render a union impossible, then the mighty Northwest must take care of herself and her own interests. She must not allow the arts and finesse of New England to despoil her of her richest commerce and trade, and to render her labor wholly subservient to an Eastern, sectional, and selfish policy-Eastern lust of power, commerce, and gain.

I know the potent appeal that has been made to our prejudice, upon the charge that slave labor is in competition with the free labor of the North; but I know also that it is not founded in fact. The cultivation of rice,

sugar, cotton, tobacco, and hemp is not in competition. with our labor, but in aid and support of it. With the gold which the Southerner receives for the sale of his crops he purchases our products, and thus secures to our labor its high rewards. But if we disturb the institutions. as our fathers approved them-if we free the negroes of the South, what are the consequences upon us? Large numbers of the negroes would seek the North, expecting to meet a peculiar sympathy, and one of two results would follow; either they would not work, and thus be supported out of the earnings of our labor, or they would come directly in competition with our labor; and being of an inferior class, and not competent to do as much work, nor do it as well as the white man, our labor would be degraded and cheapened; and the white man would be driven to seek employment in competition with the negro, and to accept as the reward of his labor, the standard of prices which that competition would fix.

IV. ON RECONSTRUCTION.

SPEECH IN REPLY TO SENATOR OLIVER P. MORTON,

United States Senate, Washington, January 30, 1868.

Mr. President: The policy and measures of Congress in relation to the South are maintained in this debate upon two propositions: First, that at the end of the war there were no governments of any kind existing in those States; and second, that in such case Congress has the power, under the clause of the Constitution which declared that the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, to reconstruct the State governments, or, in plain words, to make