"The prudent, penniless beginner in the World, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system, which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress, and improvement of condition to all.
"No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty—none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of Liberty shall be 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 South, their scheme was, the Northern candidate successful, to seize the Capital last Spring, and by a united South and divided North, hold it.
"Their scheme was defeated, in the defeat of the Disunion candidates in several of the Southern States.