ystem. It promised a gold and
silver currency, and told the farmers that they and their wives
should have 'long silken purses, through the interstices of
which the yellow gold would shine and glitter,' but has given
us instead more than thirteen hundred State bonds, with a
capital of more than three hundred millions. It has united the
purse and the sword by means of its odious Sub-Treasury. It
trampled beneath its feet the broad seal of the State of New
Jersey, and encouraged Dorr's rebellion.
"It annexed Texas and California, and has strengthened the
Abolition power. It sustains the frequent use of the veto, and
under the name of Democracy delights in the exercise of
monarchical prerogative. It proclaimed in 1844 and 1845, that
not a thimblefull of blood would be shed by any war growing out
of the annexation of Texas, when that war sacrificed thousands
of lives, and has cost us millions in money and land. It
boasted, in regard to the Oregon question, that we must have
'54 deg. 40' or fight,' but swallowed its own words, and in later
times has attempted to retrieve its courage by the sublime and
magnificent bombardment of Greytown! It ordered General Taylor
into the heart of the Mexican country with a feeble force, and
when his victories had won the grateful plaudits of his
countrymen, it had the unparalleled meanness, while he was
still fighting our battles, to censure the capitulation of
Monterey. It had the baseness to call General Scott from the
head of a victorious army, and to attempt to disgrace him in
the eyes of his own country and the world. It denounced Judge
White as a renegade, General Harrison as a coward, Mr. Clay as
a blackguard, and General Scott as a fool. And, without
repeating what has been already urged in regard to its attitude
upon the slavery question and the other topics that have been
discussed, I submit to the old-line Whigs that there is no
principle which the Democratic party sincerely holds in common
with them, and that they should unite with us in the effort to
man the ship of State with officers and men devoted to the
Constitution and true to the Union, in the hope that it may be
rescued from the whirlpools and breakers among which it has
been so recklessly conducted.
"Having expressed myself with
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