lost. * * * The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day-it is
a vast future also. * * * "
So too, Andrew Johnson, in his speech before the Senate, January 31,
1862, spake well and truly when he said that "there has been a
deliberate design for years to change the nature and character and
genius of this Government." And he added: "Do we not know that these
schemers have been deliberately at work, and that there is a Party in
the South, with some associates in the North, and even in the West, that
have become tired of Free Government, in which they have lost
confidence."
Said he: "They raise an outcry against 'Coercion,' that they may
paralyze the Government, cripple the exercise of the great powers with
which it was invested, finally to change its form and subject us to a
Southern despotism. Do we not know it to be so? Why disguise this
great truth? Do we not know that they have been anxious for a change of
Government for years? Since this Rebellion commenced it has manifested
itself in many quarters.
"How long is it since the organ of the Government at Richmond, the
Richmond Whig, declared that rather than live under the Government of
the United States, they preferred to take the Constitutional Queen of
Great Britain as their protector; that they would make an alliance with
Great Britain for the purpose of preventing the enforcement of the Laws
of the United States. Do we not know this?"
Stephen A. Douglas also, in his great Union speech at Chicago, May 1,
1861--only a few days before his lamented death-said:
"The election of Mr. Lincoln is a mere pretext. The present Secession
movement is the result of an enormous Conspiracy formed more than a year
since formed by leaders in the Southern Confederacy more than twelve
months ago. They use the Slavery question as a means to aid the
accomplishment of their ends. They desired the election of a Northern
candidate by a Sectional vote, in order to show that the two Sections
cannot live together.
"When the history of the two years from the Lecompton question down to
the Presidential election shall be written, it will be shown that the
scheme was deliberately made to break up this Union.
"They desired a Northern Republican to be elected by a purely Northern
vote, and then assign this fact as a reason why the Sections cannot live
together. If the Disunion candidate--(Breckinridge) in the late
Presidential contest had carried the united So
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