their Southern masters, so long as
you would be their slaves, they would permit the President to be
inaugurated. But so soon as you elected a President against their
dictation, then your suffrages should be nullified by the rebellion of a
minority against the majority. What is this but to say, that the
majority shall not elect a President, and thus render the right of
suffrage an empty form, striking at the fundamental principle of free
government, and substituting the _bayonets_ of the minority for the
_ballots_ of the majority of the people? Freemen of America, is it
possible that by voting against Mr. Lincoln now because of the Southern
rebellion, you will thus declare that the election of a President by the
people is not to be maintained, but that his reelection is to be
defeated, and that his authority, as your President and as your
representative, is therefore never to extend over the _whole United
States_, because a rebellious minority oppose it by force of arms? This
is one of the transcendent issues involved in this contest. It is in
fact the great question whether the majority shall rule or the
minority--whether self-government is an unreal mockery, or whether it is
indeed a God-given right of _man_, born in the image of his Maker. You
voted that Mr. Lincoln should be President of the _whole United States_.
That was your decision at the ballot box. Has it been obeyed? No: an
arrogant slave-holding minority has rebelled against it, and, within the
boundaries of the area occupied by that minority, has suppressed your
election by the bayonet, and substituted Jefferson Davis, one of the
rebel leaders, in place of Abraham Lincoln. Within the limits of that
rebellion, the power, under the Constitution, which you devolved upon
Abraham Lincoln, has been nullified by force of arms, and now, if you
abandon the war, or defeat his reelection, your choice will have been
nullified, and he never will have exercised throughout the United States
the power given to him by your suffrages under the Constitution. Now the
party in the North thus acquiescing in this destruction of the right of
suffrage, dares to assume the sacred name of Democracy, which you know
is but Anglicized Greek, meaning the _power of the people_. Shade of the
immortal Jackson! the father and founder of the Democratic party, burst
the cerements of the Hermitage, and blast with the thunders of New
Orleans the wretched traitors who thus dare to profane the sacr