Do you dare to complain of this deliverance? You ought rather
to go on your knees every day of your life, and devoutly thank the kind
Providence which gave you such an unexpected opportunity to escape from
so demoralizing a servitude.
Do not allow your attachment to party names and party associations to
warp your judgment or limit your patriotism. You need have no fear that
any one of the sound and beneficent ideas which the Democratic party has
ever impressed upon the mind of the nation will perish or be forgotten.
Whatever features of the organization, whatever principles which it has
labored to inculcate, are essential to the just development of our
intellectual activity or our material resources, will survive the
present struggle, perhaps to reappear in the creed and be promulgated by
the statesmen of some future party; or who shall say that the Democratic
party, freed from its corrupting associations, rejecting the leaders who
have been its worst enemies, and the political heresies which have
wrought its temporary ruin, may not again wield its former power, and
once more direct the destinies of the country?
But, returning to considerations of more immediate importance, what, I
ask, is the obvious duty of every true and loyal citizen in such a
crisis as this? You resent, as insulting, any imputation of disloyalty,
and therefore I have a right to infer that you are unwilling to be
ranked among the enemies of your country.
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