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September, 1860.    DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.    329
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rights and privileges where it does exist.– Carefully guarding the slave system within its present limits, the slaveholders have now impudently demanded the right to extend the evil over all the land.

In attestation of what I have now affirmed, let me give a few pages in our national history. You are familiar with the facts, and still it is well to revive them and keep them before the public mind. I wish to impress upon your minds how the anti-slavery cause has been subverted– how the whole abolition movement, or [[italics]]train[[/italics]], (to use a railroad phrase,) has been switched off the abolition track to that of non-extension. The deep game by which this was accomplished was brought to light sixteen years ago.

In the year 1844, while all that was honest and upright in the country was sighing over the atrocious scourge and the deep disgrace and scandal of America; while we were sedulously teaching the infant lips of the Republic to denounce the existence of slavery as a curse; to abolish the hateful thing forever– the slaveholder, with an audacity half sublime, openly flung into the Presidential canvass an imperative demand for the annexation of Texas, a country as large as the French empire.– There was no concealment of the motives for this measure. The slaveholders told the country and the world just what they wanted with Texas. Mr. JOHN C. CALHOUN, then Secretary of State under JOHN TYLER, was, as all know, the leading spirit in this bold enterprize, and the part he took in it showed his satanic sagacity. His policy still lives, and his spectre now leads the infernal hosts of slavery and the slave trade. Texas was in debt, like most other slave countries. She wanted money and wanted credit. TWO ways were open to her by which she could get both. England was willing to assist her, on condition that she would abolish her slavery; and American would assist her, provided she would make her slavery perpetual.

^[[x]] Again you have the Monarchy for freedom, and the model Republic for slavery and chains [[three spaces]] MR. CALHOUN at Washington, and Mr. EVERETT at London, both pressed the claims of this barbarism against the humanity and civilization of Europe. Mr. CALHOUN told the British Government, in the name of the whole American people, that Texas was desired as a means of propping up slavery, and that America could not permit Texas to come under the anti-slavery policy of England. This bold and skillful maneuver of the slaveholders worked admirably. It sent Mr. VAN BUREN in silence to Kinderhood, HENRY CLAY to the shades of Ashland, and JAMES K. POLK, a man unknown to fame, to the Presidential chair. Mr. VAN BUREN was moderately opposed to annexation; Mr. CLAY was against it at the North, and for it at the South; and Mr. POLK for it North and South alike. This decided the conflict. Mr. POLK was triumphantly elected, and you all know what followed. The war with Mexico, with all its waste of blood and treasure, was the bitter fruit of annexation; for, as all know, Texas was a revolted province of Mexico.- She had revolted in part because of the humane laws of Mexico for the abolition of slavery. In taking her we took her debts, her quarrels, her slavery and all the disgrace and scandal attaching to her name. Hers was the bad reputation of criminals, slaveholders and cut throats.
The people of the North are and have ever been a strangely hopeful and confiding people. They have always presumed upon the good disposition and good intentions of their Southern brethren. I remember well, when a man would have been laughed at as a simpleton or frowned at as a fanatic if he ventured to whisper a danger of the annexation of Texas. Up to the very year in which the perfidious deed was consummated, scarcely any one at the North believed that Texas could be annexed. Even after it was done, we went on hoping. Some went on so far as to tell the people that as Texas had been voted in, she could be [[/column 1]]

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voted out. Boston took the lead in denouncing the perfidy of forcing the old members of the Confederacy into this fellowship, without their consent or consultation. Others of the hopeful class said the South had got Texas, but the victory would be rendered barren by making the largest part of it into from States. Deluded and infatuated men !—- They did not know the rapacious spirit and fatal skill at work against them. Disappointed and defeated, they nevertheless maintained the same hopeful and confiding tone in regard to the Territoried acquired from Mexico after the war.

The Abolitionists who refused to vote for MR. CLAY—the man who was either for or against, or neither for nor against the annexation of Texas—were, during the interval between 1844 and 1848, placed in a trying position before the people of the North. They were kept under a galling fire of all the Whig guns of the country. They were charged with defeating MR. CLAY, by voiting for JAMES G. BIRNEY, electing MR. POLK, and annexing Texas. The thing was, to be sure, only a [[italics]]lie[[/italics]]; but having the advantage of being well stuck to, it produced a visible effect upon the abolition party. Voting directly for the abolition of slavery declined. The leaders of the party began to look for available candidates outside of the abolition ranks. Abolition lecturers were supplanted by merely Free Soil lecturers. Abolition newspapers, one after another, faded from view, and Free Soil papers took their places. The Buffalo Convention of 1848, being the first confluence of the abolition sentiment with the old corrupt political elements of the country, was higher toned in its anti-slavery than any Convention since held. The abolition element has by no means kept pace with the growth of the non-extension party. The National Conventions, held successively in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Chicago, have formed a regular gradation of descent from the better utterances of '48 at Buffalo, till at last good readers have been puzzled to find [[italics]]even[/italics]] a [[italics]]fibre[/italics]], to saying nothing of a plank of abolition in the platform adopted at Chicago. We have constantly been acquiescing in present attainments of slavery, and only battle against its future acquisitions. We hear nothing now of no more slave States. We hear nothing of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. We hear nothing of the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law; and even the Declaration of Independence, declaring all men free and equal, came near being voited down in the Chicago Convention, and was admitted at last only on the strength of the eloquence of GEO. W. CURTIS, who warmed the Convent on against rejecting it.

This declaration is one of the disheartening features of the times. The facts wear anything but a cheering aspect to those of us who looked hopefully to the speedy abolition of slavery by moral and political action ; and yet our cause is not lost, or is it powerless. The abolition idea is still abroad, and may yet be made effective. It has no powerful party committed distinctly to its realization, but has a party distinctly committed to a policy which the people generally think will do certain preliminary work essential to the overthrow of slavery. While I see with others, and our noble friends GERRIT SMITH and WILLIAM GOODELL among them, that the Republican party is far from an abolition party, I cannot fail to see also that the Republican party carries with it the anti-slavery sentiment of the North, and that a victory gained by it in the present canvass will be a victory gained by that sentiment over the wickedly aggressive pro-slavery sentiment of the country. I would gladly have a party openly combined to put down slavery at the South. In the absence of such a party, I am glad to see a party in the field against which all that is slaveholding, malignant and negro-hating, both at the North and the South, is combined. I know of no class of men whose instincts as to men and measures touching slavery are more to be depended upon than those of the slaveholders. There are gradations in [[/column 2]]

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all things, and reforms among them. A man need not be a WILLIAM LLOYED GARRISON or a WILLIAM H. SEWARD in order to get himself recognized as an enemy to slavery. The slaveholders know that the day of their power is over when a Republican President is elected. The mobs gotten up to put down the Republican Conventions at Baltimore, Alexandria and Wheeling, the threats of violence offered to CASSIUS M. CLAY and his Republican associates in Kentucky, and the threats of a dissolution of the Union in case of the election of LINCOLN, are tolerable endorsements of the anti-slavery tendencies of the Republican party ; and for one, Abolitionist though I am, and resolved to cast my vote for an Abolitionist, I sincerely hope for the triumph of that party over all the odds and ends of slavery combined against it. I do not accord with those who prefer the defeat of the Republican party from a fear that it will serve slavery as faithfully as the Democratic party, or either branch of it. To do any thing of the kind would be to cut its own thread of existence.

If the Republican party shall arrest the spread of slavery ; if it shall exclude from office all such in the slave States who know only slavery as master and law-iver, who burn every newspaper and letter supposed to contain anti-slavery matter, who refuse to hand a black man a letter from the Post Office because he is of the hated color, and will put men into office who will administer them justly and impartially ; if it will send ministers and other agents to foreign courts who will represent other interests than slavery, and will give a colored citizen of a free State a passport as any other citizen—place th honor of the nation on the side of freedom, encourage freedom of speech and of the press, protect Republican principles and organizations in the slave States—that party, though it may not abolish slavery, will not have existed in vain. But if, on the other hand, it shall seek first of all to make itself acceptable to slaveholders—do what it can to efface all traces of its anti-slavery origin—fall to slave-catching—swear by the Dred Scott decision, and perpetuate slaveery in the District of Columbia—it will disappoint the hopes of all its heart friends, and will be deserted, shunned and abhorred as the other parties now are, and its place will be taken by another and better party, organized on higher ground and animated by a nobler spirit. Bad as the moral condition of this country is, and powerful as may be the influence of prejudice, the sun of science and civilization has risen too high in the heavens for any party to stand long on the mean, narrow and selfish idea of a 'white man's party.' This is an age of universal ideas. Men are men, and governments cannot afford much longer to make discriminations between men in regard to personal liberty.—Surely the Republican party will not fall into the mistake or the crime of competing with the old parties in the old worn out business of feeding popular malignity, by acts of discrimination against the free colored people of the United States. I certainly look to that party for a nobler policy than that avowed by some connected with the Republican organization.

How stands the case with the two wings of the so-called Democratic party ? What is the difference between DOUGLAS and BRECKINRIDGE ? I will tell you : BRECKINRIDGE believes that the Supreme Court has decided that the slaveholder has a right to carry his slaves into any Territory belonging to the U.S., and that while Congress is bound to protect the slaveholders in this right, there is no power either in Congress, or in any such Territory, to prohibit the relation of master and slave. MR. DOUGLAS does not believe that the Supreme Court has so decided, but avows himself ready to abide by the decision as soon as the Court shall so decide. The difference between the two, is the difference between two obedient servants of the same master.—One thinks himself ready upon the moment of receiving orders. MR. DOUGLAS, addressing the [[/column 3]]