slow to give
up old associations and leave the discussion of obsolete,
immaterial, or ephemeral issues.

At last the crisis came. In 1860, Mr. Lincoln, who was unfriendly
to slavery and faithful to the Union, was elected president. The
party of disunion and slavery were prepared for this event. Their
action was prompt, decisive, and defiant. They proceeded to
organize southern conventions, and formally to withdraw from the
Union, and undertook to establish a new government and a new Nation
on the soil of the United States.

Prior to 1860 the party calling itself Democratic had gathered
under one name and one organization almost the whole of the
secessionists of the South and a large body of the people of the
North, many of whom had no sympathy either with secession or
slavery. In 1860 the secessionists were so arrogant in their
demands that the great body of the Democratic party in the North
refused to yield to them, and supported Mr. Douglass in opposition
both to Mr. Lincoln, and to the disunion and slavery candidate, Mr.
Breckenridge. But it was well known that many leading Democrats who
supported Mr. Douglass leaned strongly toward the southern Calhoun
democracy, and that their sympathies were with slave-holding or at
least with slaveholders.

The evidence of this is abundantly furnished in their recorded
opinions. The most distinguished and perhaps the most influential
Democrat now actively engaged in politics in Ohio, who presided
over and addressed the last Democratic State Convention held at
Columbus, Mr. Pendleton, delivered a speech in the House of
Representatives on the 18th of January, 1861.

You will recollect how far the slaveholders had progressed in their
great rebellion at that date. Mr. Pendleton himself says:

"To-day, sir, four States of this Union have, so far as their power
extends, seceded from it. Four States, as far as they are able,
have annulled the grants of power made to the Federal Government;
they have resumed the powers delegated by the Constitution; they
have canceled, so far as they could, every limitation upon the full
exercise of all their sovereign rights. They do not claim our
protection; they ask no benefit from our laws; they seek none of
the advantages of the confederation. On the other hand,