NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
September/October 1860
From The Missouri Democrat, Thursday, September 20, 1860.
Anti-Republicanism Re-inforced—The Movement of the Abolitionists to defeat Lincoln.
We notice that several Democratic newspapers, which, but very lately, were overwhelmed with blank despair, seem to discern a ray of hope in a new quarter. The Abolitionists in their National Convention, which met at Syracuse, nominated a Presidential ticket—Gerritt Smith, of New York, for President, and Samuel McFarland, of Pennsylvania, for Vice President—and it is thought by the anti-Republican organs that this ticket may subtract a sufficient number of votes from the Republican ticket to defeat Lincoln and Hamlin. There can be no doubt that the movement was set on foot with that view. Shortly after his nomination, Mr. Lincoln was denounced by Wendell Phillips as a slave-hound. The newspaper organs of the Abolitionists have followed the lead of Phillips, abusing the Republican candidate, ever since, with all that talent for vituperation which distinguishes them in common with the slavery propagandists. They have sagacity enough to see that the success of Republicanism is the annihilation of Abolition and Disunion. The Abolitionists, being Disunionists, sympathize strongly with the Disunionists of the South. The aim of both factions being the overthrow of the Confederacy as the shortest way of accomplishing their purposes, they necessarily regard each other’s success as a mutual gain. Hence it was that Wendell Phillips expressed himself last spring at a public meeting in favor of the election of the Democratic nominee for the Presidency, rather than Mr. Seward or any other Republican; hence it is that the Abolition platform, on which Smith and Mr. McFarland have been nominated, proclaims that “for Abolitionists to vote for a candidate like Abraham Lincoln, who stands ready to advocate the accursed Fugitive Slave Law, to suppress the insurrections among slaves, to admit new slave States, and to support the ostracism socially and politically of the black men of the North, is to give the lie to their professions.” The Republican party is also accused of Heaven-defying effrontery, because it proclaims it resolution to quiet the slavery agitation.
Thus it is plain that the Abolitionists will co-operate with the Democracy against Lincoln, as they did in ’44 against Clay. The New York Herald estimates their vote in that State at fifty thousand, but this is plainly a gross exageration [sic]. When Gerritt Smith ran for Governor of New York two years ago, he received but five or six thousand votes, and that is probably their maximum strength. But it does not matter whether they are five or fifty thousand, unless they vote the anti-Republican fusion ticket, for they have always voted against the Republican ticket, and consequently their numbers, whether great or small, implies neither the augmentation nor dimunition of the Republican vote. They are the allies of the anti-Republicans, and although too fanatically honest to fuse with the other enemies of Lincoln, they are not less intent on defeating him.
Illinois and Ohio, as well as New York, will have Abolition electoral tickets in the field. The convention to nominate the electors for Illinois met in the town of Lexington yesterday, and the Ohio convention meets in Oberlin on the 3rd of October. The opponents of Lincoln, however, can gather but small comfort from these events. There has been uncompromising antagonism between the Republicans and Abolitionists from the beginning, and the former has had to contend with and overcome the hostility of the latter, wherever they are.
The Syracuse platform, we notice, declares that either the Abolitionists or the Breckenridge men are right; that between the two no logical ground can be discovered. We prefer to think that the middle way is the right, as well as the safe way. Let slavery alone in the States, and keep it out of the Territories is the true policy; and the policy which will prevail in spite of the efforts of the Abolitionists on one side, and the Bell men, Breckenridge men, and the Douglas men—all of who are slavery extensionists covertly or openly—on the other. The people of the United States are not responsible, even at the bar of conscience, however scrupulous and inquisitorial it may be, for an institution older than the general Government itself, and over which that Government has no control; but they are responsible for the character of the institutions which they bestow, through the instrumentality of Congresses, Judiciaries and Presidents, on the States growing up under their auspices. That responsibility they cannot shirk by adopting non-intervention or any similar expedient as a finality; but as ends and [illegible] means should be regarded, unnecessary in[illegible]ntion [intervention?] should be deprecated.
