" Even when it first entered the
field, only half organized, it struck a blow which only just failed to
secure complete and triumphant victory. In this, its second campaign, it
has already won advantages which render that triumph now both easy and
certain.
The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic
which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting
imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of
one idea; but that is a noble one--an idea that fills and expands all
generous souls; the idea of equality--the equality of all men before
human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the Divine
tribunal and Divine laws.
I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the
world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty Senators and a
hundred Representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments
and opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so many men, even
in this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago.
While the Government of the United States, under the conduct of the
Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and
castle after another to slavery, the people of the United States have
been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forces
with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles
which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive
blow, the betrayers of the Constitution and freedom forever.
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