277

BONDAGE AND FREEDOM

273

Sir, these objects are forcibly presented to us in the stem logic of passing events; in the facts which are and have been passing around us during
the last three years. The country has been and is now dividing on these
grand issues. In their magnitude, these issues cast all others into the shade,
depriving them of all life and vitality. Old party ties are broken. Like is finding its like on either side of these great issues, and the great battle is at hand.
For the present, the best representative of the slavery party in politics is the
democratic party. Its great head for the present is President Pierce, whose
boast it was, before his election, that his whole life had been consistent with
the interests of slavery, that he is above reproach on that score. In his inaugural address, he reassures the south on this point. Well, the head of the
slave power being in power, it is natural that the pro-slavery elements
should cluster around the administration, and this is rapidly being done. A
fraternization is going on. The stringent protectionists and the free-traders
strike hands. The supporters of Fillmore are becoming the supporters of
Pierce. The silver-gray whig shakes hands with the bunker democrat; the
former only differing from the latter in name. They are of one heart, one
mind, and the union is natural and perhaps inevitable. Both hate negroes;
both hate progress; both hate the "higher law;" both hate William H. Seward; both hate the free democratic party; and upon this hateful basis they
arc forming a union of hatred. "Pilate and Herod are thus made friends."
Even the central organ of the whig party is extending its beggar hand for a
morsel from the table of slavery democracy, and when spurned from the
feast by the more deserving, it pockets the insult; when kicked on one side
it turns the other, and perseveres in its importunities. The fact is, that paper
comprehends the demands of the times; it understands the age and its issues; it wisely sees that slavery and freedom are the great antagonistic
forces in the country, and it goes to its own side. Silver grays and hunkers
all understand this. They are, therefore, rapidly sinking all other questions
to nothing, compared with the increasing demands of slavery. They are collecting, arranging, and consolidating their forces for the accomplishment of
their appointed work.

The keystone to the arch of this grand union of the slavery party of the
United States, is the compromise of 1850. In that compromise we have all
the objects of our slaveholding policy specified. It is, sir, favorable to this
view of the designs of the slave power, that both the whig and the democratic party bent lower, sunk deeper, and strained harder, in their conventions,
preparatory to the late presidential election, to meet the demands of the
slavery party than at any previous time in their history. Never did parties