All will admit that any influence which they bring, hostile to our institutions, calculated to substitute priestcraft for religion and bigotry for Christianity, must be deprecated and opposed. All will admit, too, that there must be some assurance of their purpose to become not merely consumers of the fruits of our soil, but useful, loyal, and permanent members of our community, upholders of the general welfare. With this simple explanation, I cannot place any check upon the welcome to foreigners. There are our broad lands, stretching towards the setting sun; let them come and take them. Ourselves children of the Pilgrims of a former generation, let us not turn from the Pilgrims of the present. Let the home founded by our emigrant fathers continue open in its many mansions to the emigrants of to-day.
The history of our country, in its humblest as well as most exalted spheres, testifies to the merit of foreigners. Their strong arms have helped furrow our broad territory with canals, and stretch in every direction the iron rail. They fill our workshops, navigate our ships, and even till our fields. Go where you will among the hardy sons of toil on land or sea, and there you find industrious and faithful foreigners bending their muscles to the work. At the bar and in the high places of commerce you find them. Enter the retreats of learning, and there too you find them, shedding upon our country the glory of science.[29] Nor can any reflection be cast upon foreigners, coming for hospitality now, which will not glance at once upon the distinguished living and the illustrious dead,—upon the Irish Montgomery, who perished for us at the gates of Quebec,—upon Pulaski the Pole, who perished for us at Savannah,—upon De Kalb and Steuben, the generous Germans, who aided our weakness by their military experience,—upon Paul Jones, the Scotchman, who lent his unsurpassed courage to the infant thunders of our navy,—also upon those great European liberators, Kosciusko of Poland, and Lafayette of France, each of whom paid his earliest vows to Liberty in our cause. Nor should this list be confined to military characters, so long as we gratefully cherish the name of Alexander Hamilton, who was born in the West Indies, and the name of Albert Gallatin, who was born in Switzerland, and never, to the close of his octogenarian career, lost the French accent of his boyhood,—both of whom rendered civic services to be commemorated among the victories of peace.
Nor is the experience of our Republic peculiar. Where is the country or power which does not inscribe the names of foreigners on its historic scroll? It was Christopher Columbus, of Genoa, who disclosed to Spain the New World; it was Magellan, of Portugal, sailing in the service of Spain, who first passed with adventurous keel through those distant Southern straits which now bear his name, and opened the way to the vast Pacific Sea; and it was Cabot, the Venetian, who first conducted English enterprise to this North American continent. As in triumphs of discovery, so also in other fields have foreigners excelled, while serving states to which they were bound by no tie of birth. The Dutch Grotius, author of the great work, “Laws of War and Peace,” an exile from his own country, became Ambassador of Sweden; and, in our own day, the Italian Pozzo di Borgo, turning his back upon his own country, reached the most exalted diplomatic trust in the jealous service of Russia. In the list of monarchs on the throne of England, not one has been more truly English than the Dutch William. In Holland no ruler has equalled in renown the German William, Prince of Orange. In Russia the German Catharine the Second takes place among the most commanding sovereigns. And who of Swedish monarchs was a better Swede than Bernadotte, the Frenchman? and what Frenchman was ever filled with aspiration for France more than the Italian Napoleon Bonaparte?
I pass from these things, which have occupied me too long. A party, which, beginning in secrecy, interferes with religious belief, and founds a discrimination on the accident of birth, is not the party for us.
“Where Liberty is, there is my country,” was the sentiment of that great Apostle of Freedom, Benjamin Franklin, uttered during the trials of the Revolution. In similar strain, I would say, “Where Liberty is, there is my party.” Such an organization is now happily constituted here in Massachusetts, and in all the Free States, under the name of Republican Party.
In assuming our place as a distinct party, we simply give form and direction, in harmony with the usage and genius of popular governments, to a movement which stirs the whole country, and does not find adequate and constant organ in either of the other existing parties. The early opposition to Slavery was simply a sentiment, outgushing from the hearts of the sensitive and humane. In the lapse of time it became a determined principle, inspiring larger numbers, and showing itself first in an organized endeavor to resist the annexation of slaveholding Texas; next, to prohibit Slavery in newly acquired territories; and now, alarmed by the overthrow of all rights in Kansas, and the domination of the Slave Oligarchy throughout the Republic, it breaks forth in a stronger effort, a wider union, and a deeper channel, inspiring yet larger numbers and firmer resolves, while opposite quarters contribute to its power,—even as the fountain, first outgushing from the weeping sides of its pure mountain home, trickles in the rill, leaps in the torrent, and flows in the river, till, at last, swollen with accumulated waters, it presses onward, in irresistible, beneficent current, fertilizing and uniting the spaces which it traverses, washing the feet of cities, and wooing states to repose upon its banks.
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Our party has its origin in the exigencies of the hour. Vowing ourselves against Slavery, wherever it exists, whether enforced by Russian knout, Turkish bastinado, or lash of Carolina planter, we do not seek to interfere with it at Petersburg, Constantinople, or Charleston; nor does any such grave duty rest upon us. Political duties are properly limited by political responsibilities; and we are in no just sense responsible for the local law or usage by which human bondage in these places is upheld. But wherever we are responsible for the wrong, there our duty begins. The object to which, as a party, we are pledged, is all contained in acceptance of the issue which the Slave Oligarchy tenders. To its repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and its imperious demand that Kansas shall be surrendered to Slavery, we reply, that Freedom shall be made the universal law of all the national domain, without compromise, and that hereafter no Slave State shall be admitted into the Union. To its tyrannical assumption of supremacy in the National Government we reply, that the Slave Oligarchy shall be overthrown. Such is the practical purpose of the Republican Party.