* * * I know--few, I think, know better than I--the resources and
energies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the slave
power. I do ample justice to its traditional popularity. I know
further--few, I think, know better than I--the difficulties and
disadvantages of organizing a new political force, like the Republican
party, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestige
and without patronage. But, understanding all this, I know that the
Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise
into its place. The Democratic party derived its strength, originally,
from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to
all men. So long as it practised this principle faithfully, it was
invulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle,
and since that time it has maintained itself, not by virtue of its own
strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as
yet had appeared in the political field no other party that had the
conscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and practise the
life-inspiring principle which the Democratic party had surrendered.
At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows, now, as the
Republican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works,
"Equal and exact justice to all men.
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