ate wants
men upon the quarter deck of far reaching thought, of iron wills, of
hearts that know not fear; men whom storms cannot frighten and foes
cannot conquer--such men as will nail "the Union" to the mast and die
ere it comes down.

Lastly, my friends--Looking to the men who now compose and sustain it,
and to the platform on which it stands, I regard the National Democratic
party, lead by Stephen A. Douglas--I mean the party of the people, not
of the politicians--as the truly democratic and national--not
sectional--party of this country; a party that in the august presence
of the nation and its Federal Constitution, knows no North and no South,
but the Union, the whole Union and nothing but the Union, and whose
motto is not "_Liberty first and Union afterwards_," but that glorious
motto, "LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE."

Firmly convinced of the correctness of my opinions on the question
dividing the nation, I appeal in all kindness to the Whigs and
Democrats, now ranging under Republican banners, and perhaps under the
uniform of Republican wide-awakes, and I ask them, Whigs and Democrats,
who alike in 1852 and in 1856 sustained the compromise principle of
Congressional non-intervention with slavery: why have they changed their
ground? Why do they now support a party whose real motto is "No more
slave territory--no more Slave States," and whose candidates are
northern sectional men only? Is that the motto, or are these the
candidates for a Union in which there are North States and South States,
Free States and Slave States, all equal in the house of the nation, and
in the nation's fundamental law?

A fearful responsibility rests on every citizen who, by his vote or his
acts, aids in the first triumph of a party whose creed and whose men are
sectional. On that rock will the Union, if ever, be wrecked, and towards
that rock it is rapidly drifting now.

I ask again, where does the real National Democratic party of the
people, headed by Douglas, now stand on the question of slavery? I
answer, and no man can truthfully gainsay it, it stands where it stood
in 1840-44-48, and 1852-56. It stands where it stood in 1850, when it
aided to pass the great national compromise. It stands where it stood in
1854, when to carry out that compromise to its logical results, it
erased the Missouri compromise line of 1820, because _that_ was not a
constitutional line of national brotherhood and peace, but a le