A POLITICAL LETTER TO A FRIEND IN THE COUNTRY ;

66

OR, WHAT SHALL WE DO?

med us to the place of execution; and whether as ghostly apparitions, or as survivors of the political guillotine, let us ascertain the extent of our punishment, and take counsel how we shall soonest escape its deadly atmosphere.

DEAR SIR:-Your letter, dated on the Oth of November, at which time it seems e election returns of most of the States ad reached you, has been safely received, nd read with much interest and care. I ill endeavor to answer the brief and sigficant question with which it ends; and as Four States only out of Thirty-One have e have it on the best authority that "in a voted for our candidate. The rest have deultitude of counsellors there is safety," clared very plainly against us. New-York hope that from the fusing of my opinions proclaims a majority against us of twentyith those of other correspondents, many of five thousand. In Pennsylvania our defeat hem undoubtedly much wiser than myself, is relatively worse, though perhaps a trifle ou will be able, at least for yourself, to de- more tolerable. In Ohio we are left in a de upon some course proper to be pur- fearful minority. Our orators had talked of led by you, as an adherent to the main Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin; but where octrines of that party to which we belong. are they? The tornado has passed upon us You say that our defeat is entirely un-in Indiana and Illinois. Louisiana, Georgia, recedented," but you have not ventured to North Carolina,-what is their verdict? In all it unexpected. In truth, Sir, the basis hopeless but honorable conspicuousness, rari f our hopes during this momentous cam- nantes in gurgite vasto, stray wrecks upon a aign was of constantly shifting propor- boundless sea, the colors of Kentucky, Tenons, and oftener diminishing than expand-nessee, Vermont, and Massachusetts still fly g. Our enemies will not deny that we ave worked well and faithfully. We have irculated documents till the mail bags of he Government have been ready to cry out gainst us. Throughout the States, and specially throughout the Western States, here are few houses in which our tracts ave not been distributed with lavish prousion. Our meetings have been large. Many of the speeches of our orators have een masterly examples of stump eloquence. We have done all we could. We have neant well, and have labored well. But as it not occurred to you often during this anvass, that our political position was not of precisely that nature to command the ympathies and the votes of non-party electrs? Beneath our sanguine professions of hope, has not something rung hollow and leficient? Have not our brightest moments been darkened by the great shadow of the coming November? Now that the canvass s over, and the worst is on us, let us not fear o answer these questions frankly. Let us ace the music of the band that has drum

from Whig hulks. Shall these battered keels, strained and oarless, be the convoys of a new fleet, or have they escaped the storm only to be foundered by the slow process of leakage and decay?

Your question, Sir, again recurs with an importunity that will not be denied. That "a great conservative party must always exist, and does at this moment exist," is perfectly true. It has consoled you amid the bitterness of defeat; it has consoled me; it has consoled the thousands of right-minded men who think in common with ourselves. The election of Franklin Pierce has not changed the sentiment of the country. That sentiment is nearly the same that it was six months-a year ago. We are at this moment the same men who eight years ago contended in unsuccessful but honorable battle against the lead of South Carolina in the matter of the annexation of Texas. We are the men who spoke of territorial conquest, of war for the sake of land, of violation of international rights to feed our own selfishness-who spoke of these things

cess.

We

in strong and bold words, that found ready has ceased or not, it will no more find echoes in Georgia and Louisiana, as in Ohio soldiers among that body of men to which and Massachusetts. By whatever name we we, from the present month, belong. style ourselves," we still live," and from the are represented in every State of the Union, nature of our institutions and of ourselves, and we have seen that no good can come must continue to exist as an organization from attempted alterations of the compact that will be always powerful, and that need by which we are socially and politically not despair of an honorable share of suc- united. We have agreed, as States, to take each other for better or worse, to do each other all the good we can, and to defend our common rights and liberties when outside dangers shall threaten us. We respect the grand and simple code, hardly longer than the briefest document of the common law, which explains our duties and relations; and into which there seems to have been fused by some wonderful process the sublimest ethics of Christianity and Law. We are satisfied with its "Apology," recorded in the words-"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." We are very well satisfied with such a declaration; and having found the articles of which it is the preface, of great and signal value during seventy years of national existence, and feeling that we can all agree to preserve them in their integrity, while we cannot all agree to alter any one part; conscious, also, that to remodel any part of it would open the way for interminable, vexatious, not to say dangerous, discussions-in view of these things let us be contented with the privileges which it guarantees to each and all of us.

But in the first place, it is all-important that we understand one another. There are certain great questions of finance and politics on which our education has taught us to think alike. We believe in raising national revenue, and protecting our native workmen, by duties on foreign goods. We believe in extending to our great waters the wise care of the General Government. But a common sympathy in these matters is not of itself sufficient to unite us in steady and successful action. It does not sufficiently satisfy our notions of the Great Policy which every conspicuous political organization is bound to defend; and as a natural consequence of not living up to our political privilege, of not doing enough to give our muscles their legitimate play, we have become the beaten part of the nation, and our enemies at present regard us with so little fear, that they do not take the trouble to guess at our future movements, and load us with a complacent pity, which is infinitely more shameful and odious than the usual insults practised by political victors.

"The integrity of our Constitution," you say, "has been sanctioned; and the treacherous crutch on which one arm of the party has been tempted to lean, has been happily knocked away." It is refreshing, Sir, to hear words like these. I have heard many such since the second of November, and they have confirmed me in the belief that the great regulating wheel of our political engine is recovering from its temporary disturbance, and will soon again begin its ponderous and majestic movement. Its motions have indeed been sadly broken in upon of late; on that fatal day, hereafter memorable as the most gloomy hour of our political fortunes, it stood still. Counter impulses stopped its accustomed revolutions. Unless I am greatly mistaken, Sir, the impulse from one side has ceased. The axle has once more begun to turn; the power once more begins to make itself felt.

Whether the war upon the Constitution

It is simply better for us, as citizens of the several States, and possessed of many various interests, to respect our mutual rights as they are guaranteed by the present Constitution, than to break it up, and frame another. Do you not agree with me, Sir, looking at the matter dispassionately as one of pure theory, that if a violent set was made on any particular clause, or clauses of the Constitution, bearing on the rights and property of States, and if it appeared that the inroad must be successful-do you not think, I say, that both houses of Congress would go in with one unanimous rush for a new Constitution? And then, Sir, how long before we should have this new Constitution? For myself, I do not care to see the experiment made.

And now, Sir, I come to the most difficult all present political questions; and yet, ay I say, the most easy to be answered. Its fficulty lies in the fogs by which it is surunded, and in the prejudices which have een formed relative to it in recent times. egarding its own merits only, it is easy and mple. What shall we do with our Freeilers?" Your question, Sir, has been asked y many an anxious, honest man of us, since e second of November. "What shall we o with our Free-soilers?" And the inquiry host righteously deserves an answer.

he men or the party who make it, are not | ers; but Free-soilism must necessarily be a cessarily impious, or dastards, or traitors; feature of our creed, as it always has been. at they ought to have the very best rea- Once more, as in 1844, Time and Destiny ns for what they attempt to do. Neither press the issue upon us. Shall we open a u nor I want to belong, just now, to any fresh field for the furious inroads of Southern ch party. When we think it necessary to Democracy? Shall we conquer and then lopt their doctrines, it will be time enough admit a new foreign and slave State, to join our fortunes with theirs. awaken old agitations in Congress, and in every village of the country, and to strengthen the colonial Locofocoism of South Carolina? A great body at the North, and a body at the South, hardly less larger, when considered relatively to the population of the Southern States, consider acquisitions made in this way most inexpedient and undesirable; and they regard them as inexpedient and undesirable, not from any fear of foreign powers; not from any dread of the dissolution of our confederacy, a calamity sometimes augured from the extension of our territory; not from any timid or narrow Now, Sir, I submit that this term "Free- policy, but because of the moral and politibiler" has been very sadly perverted. A Free- cal sins which spring from and accompany piler is a man who desires that the extension all such measures of aggression and conquest. f the United States shall be accomplished The genius of the American Republic does y the introduction of free territory. The not naturally lead its citizens to such vioreat Whig party of 1844 was one vast Free lence. It is a bastard growth, a noxious bil party, headed by a Free-soiler whose weed upon our rich soil, and we should not hemory is regarded with a reverence such fear to cut it down because there are many s can be paid to no memory not truly Na- who wish it to live. Let us have no more onal, and possessed of warm adherents wars of conquest. Let us not drain our hroughout the length and breadth of the treasury, and sacrifice our young men, to laveholding States. But the great Free-soil conquer a territory which is not yet ready to Vhig party of 1844 was very different from become peaceably our own, and which is no he so-called Free-soil party who have just more desired by the conservative slaveoted for Hale and Julian. This party is owners and planters of the South than by hade up of two different sets of men, one the people of the North. If we judge the ortion Whigs who have unlearned the Southern people rightly, they are not reprehoderation of '44, but are in a much better sented by the furious oligarchists of South tate of mind to be taught it again than Carolina. Flibustierism has no attractions hey were two months ago; the other por- for them. They are not all anxious for the ion abolitionists of the school of Garrison growth of slavery. They wish slavery to be nd Pillsbury. The latter portion have cov- let alone in the States where it exists; and red the entire party with the odium of the new party now rising up have no intenheir own furious and demoralizing doctrines, tion of opposing this rational and just desire. nd have brought the term Free Soil into a They wish the North to respect their rights; lisrepute which does not fairly belong to it. aud when time shall have matured the Free institutions are the genius of our gov- remedy for the admitted evil that exists rnment, and our brightest future is read in among them, they will be the first to apply it. he acquisition of free territory. Desiring The present slave States are at last assured uch acquisitions, you and I, Sir, are Free- by a popular vote, too large to be cavilled Boilers, and we are such in common with at or misunderstood, that their rights are as all those men who voted for Clay in 1844. secure as if they were backed by a slave terIt may not suit us to adopt the name, for it ritory reaching to the Isthmus. They have, means too little, and it has been blown upon therefore, no further cause to ask for an inby Giddings and Garrison and their follow-crease of slave States, which can do them

no good, and which there is every reason to believe would lower the price of their own products. What profit does the Louisana or Mississippi planter expect from the acquisition of Cuba? Protected by a thirty per cent. duty, his own sugar barely competes with Cuban sugar in the home market; and if this duty were removed by the entrance of Cuba as a State, it is not difficult to tell what would become of his sugar mills and his negroes.

tralize the effect of this name, and not to bring our opinions into a fair competition and comparison with those of other parties.

Let us call ourselves, too, by some name that shall satisfy ourselves and the world. We owe it to ourselves to possess such a name as shall not repel those honest and simple men who come to us from other countries, knowing little of our institutions, but anxious to be republicans and progressive citizens. There is nothing in the name Whig to attract them; there is every thing in the name Democrat to allure them. Now we do not want these men to be influenced Nothing will be more easy for us, Sir, by titles. We want them to examine printhan to return to the position where we ciples, to compare the doctrines of the stood in 1840 and '44. We have passed several parties who solicit their votes, and through stormy and exciting times since to decide as their reason, not their fancy, then, but, if I mistake not, we are ready to prompts. But we cannot expect this, so meet once more, and to stand together in long as we are eclipsed by the name of defense of those righteous and plain meas-"Democracy." It is an act of injustice to ures about which there can be no dispute, and ourselves, and injustice to them, not to neuout of which can grow no dissensions. We are left leaderless. We are not in danger, therefore, of being drawn apart by personal idolatries or clannish predilections. Never has there been a time so favorable for the complete and harmonious organization of a great national, regulating party. Never has there been a time so apt for a right selection of principles, and for a sagacious determination of future policy. The party, Sir, of which you and I must be members, will naturally advocate the protection of American industry and the improvement of the shores and beds of our great waters. They will oppose wars of conquest. They will advocate by honest and temperate argument the freedom of the territories of the United States. Such a party cannot fail to be an economical party. They will wage no costly wars of conquest. By their care to create a home market they will increase the national wealth. By improving our great national channels of intercommunication, they will mitigate sectional feelings, which exist in proportion as different parts of a country are removed from and made independent of each other. Does not this party exist? Do not you and I and millions of Americans believe in these doctrines? Do we need anything more than that we shall definitely organize in their defense, that we shall come together from every part of the Union by the representation of trusted, able men, and inscribe our unanimous faith on a chart which shall be submitted to the sober sense of the American people? And can we not do this now, as well as at any future time?

Let us not suffer our veneration to override our reason. As wise men we must act as if we believed it to be our first duty to succeed. We cannot cling to an unprofitable and unpopular name, and hope that our attachment will be generously allowed for by the mass of the people. Does not our admitted minority in a popular vote suggest to us its cause? Why is it that the American Party, the Party advocating the protection of American workmen, and the best market to American farmers; the Party advocating generous Internal Improvements, the Party advocating honorable peace in preference to dishonorable war; why is it that this Party should be a minority Party? It is not because the nation have a particular friendship for foreign manufactures, not because our farmers prefer selling grain to England rather than to their neighbors, not because Internal Improvements are unpopular, but because the name of our opponents enables them to control the balance of power in the shape of voters who honestly believe that nothing bearing the name of Democracy can be wrong. We cannot blame these men. We cannot expect them to think differently, as things now stand. But we ought to blame ourselves for not eradicating the causes of our minority. We have fallen very far short of that serpentine wisdom which Holy Writ commands us to exercise. We neglect means, and wonder that we do not prosper. The mountain will not come to