MR. LINCOLN'S VIEWS OF THE AMERICAN OR KNOW-NOTHING PARTY.
That Mr. Lincoln found in the Declaration of Independence his perfect standard of political truth is perhaps in none of his utterances more conclusively shown than in a private letter to his old friend Joshua F. Speed, written in 1855, in which he says: "You enquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist. I am not a Know-Nothing! that is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'All men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'All men are created equal except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control it will read, 'All men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty,—where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
ACCOUNT OF ARRANGEMENTS FOR COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH.
New York, March 20, 1872.
My dear Sir, — ....I send you for such use as you may deem proper the following letter written by me when at "Old Orchard Beach" a few years ago, giving the "truth of history" in relation to the address of Mr. Lincoln at the Cooper Institute in this City on the 27th of February, 1860....
... We, the world, and all the coming generation of mankind down the long line of ages, cannot know too much about Abraham Lincoln, our martyr President.
Yours truly,
(Signed) James A. Briggs.Mr. Ward H. Lamon,
Washington, D. C.
"In October, 1859, Messrs. Joseph H. Richards, J. M. Pettingill, and S. W. Tubbs called on me at the office of the Ohio State Agency, 25 William Street, and requested me to write to the Hon. Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, and the Hon. Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and invite them to lecture in a course of lectures these young gentlemen proposed for the winter in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn.
"I wrote the letters as requested, and offered as compensation for each lecture, as I was authorized, the sum of two hundred dollars. The proposition to lecture was accepted by Messrs. Corwin and Lincoln. Mr. Corwin delivered his lecture in Plymouth Church as he was on his way to Washington to attend Congress. Mr. Lincoln could not lecture until late in the season, and a proposition was agreed to by the gentlemen named, and accepted by Mr. Lincoln, as the following letter will show:—