Lay aside party prejudice, for one moment, my dear Andrew, and tell me
if the world ever saw a more humiliating spectacle. Slighted, spurned,
spit upon by their ancient allies, compelled to bear the odium of an
aggressive and offensive pro-slavery policy, tamely consenting to a
denial of the dearest human rights and the plainest principles of
natural justice, rewarded only by a share in the Federal offices, and
punished by the contempt of all who, at home or abroad, intelligently
and unselfishly studied the problem of our republican institutions, the
Northern Democracy found themselves, at the most critical period of our
national history, abandoned by the masters whom they had faithfully
served, and whom many were willing to follow to a depth of degradation
which could have no lower deep. And yet, when thus freed from their long
slavery by the voluntary act of their oppressors, we hear them to-day
clamoring for the privilege of wearing anew the accustomed yoke, and
feeling again the familiar lash! Are these white men, with Anglo-Saxon
blood in their veins, and the fair fame of this country in their
keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern
plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of
a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his
miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the
priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural
stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed
him to remain, to the day of his death, a hewer of wood and a drawer of
water?
But, as if to render the humiliation of these Democratic leaders still
more fruitless and gratuitous, mark how their overtures are received by
their Southern brethren.
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