ves they say
"persons held to service or labor." If they had said slaves it would have
been plainer, and less liable to misconstruction. Why did n't they do it?
We cannot doubt that it was done on purpose. Only one reason is possible,
and that is supplied us by one of the framers of the Constitution--and
it is not possible for man to conceive of any other--they expected and
desired that the system would come to an end, and meant that when it did,
the Constitution should not show that there ever had been a slave in this
good free country of ours.

I will dwell on that no longer. I see the signs of approaching triumph
of the Republicans in the bearing of their political adversaries. A great
deal of their war with us nowadays is mere bushwhacking. At the battle
of Waterloo, when Napoleon's cavalry had charged again and again upon
the unbroken squares of British infantry, at last they were giving up
the attempt, and going off in disorder, when some of the officers in mere
vexation and complete despair fired their pistols at those solid squares.
The Democrats are in that sort of extreme desperation; it is nothing else.
I will take up a few of these arguments.

There is "the irrepressible conflict." How they rail at Seward for that
saying! They repeat it constantly; and, although the proof has been thrust
under their noses again and again that almost every good man since the
formation of our Government has uttered that same sentiment, from General
Washington, who "trusted that we should yet have a confederacy of free
States," with Jefferson, Jay, Monroe, down to the latest days, yet they
refuse to notice that at all, and persist in railing at Seward for saying
it. Even Roger A. Pryor, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, uttered the same
sentiment in almost the same language, and yet so little offence did
it give the Democrats that he was sent for to Washington to edit the
States--the Douglas organ there--while Douglas goes into hydrophobia and
spasms of rage because Seward dared to repeat it. This is what I call
bushwhacking, a sort of argument that they must know any child can see
through.

Another is John Brown: "You stir up insurrections, you invade the South;
John Brown! Harper's Ferry!" Why, John Brown was not a Republican!
You have never implicated a single Republican in that Harper's Ferry
enterprise. We tell you that if any member of the Republican party is
guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If y