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permanent, under the name of the Free Democracy.
Thus in our very designation expressing our devotion to Human Rights, and especially to Human Freedom.
Professing honestly the same sentiments, wherever we exist, in all parts of the country, East and West, North and South, we are truly a National party.
We are not compelled to assume one face at the South and another at the North; to blow hot in one place, and blow cold in another; to speak loudly of Freedom in one region, and vindicate Slavery in another; in short, to present a combination, in which the two extreme wings profess opinions, on the Great Issue before the country, diametrically opposed to each other.
We are the same everywhere.
And the reason is, because our party, unlike the other parties, is bound together in support of certain fixed and well-defined principles.
It is not a combination, fired by partisan zeal, and kept together, as with mechanical force, by considerations of political expediency only; but a sincere, conscientious, inflexible union for the sake of Freedom.
The Address shows that all the old Issues which had hitherto divided the country were obsolete; that the Bank, the Sub-Treasury, the
Public Lands, had disappeared from the political field, and that even the Tariff question could not draw a distinguishing line.
The devices of party could no longer stave off the Great Issue.
Politicians could by no subterfuge escape it. Office-seekers could not dodge it by any trick.
It would mix itself up in every election.
Wherever men met to speak of public affairs, it would come up, in city, village, field, workshop—everywhere the question sounded in the ears of men, would be, ‘Are you for Freedom, or against it?’
And now, instead of these superseded questions, which were connected for the most part only with the material interests of the country, and which, though not unimportant in their time, all had the odor of the dollar, you are called to consider a cause which is connected with all that is divine in Religion, with all that is pure and noble in Morals, with all that is truly practical in Politics.
Unlike the other questions, it is
