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Updated: June 24, 2025
It was at this juncture that Douglas wrote to Dean Richmond, the Deus ex machina in the delegation, "If my enemies are determined to divide and destroy the Democratic party, and perhaps the country, rather than see me elected, and if the unity of the party can be preserved, and its ascendancy perpetuated by dropping my name and uniting upon some reliable non-intervention and Union-loving Democrat, I beseech you, in consultation with my friends, to pursue that course which will save the country, without regard to my individual interests.
To stifle any such movement, both houses of the Legislature on the last night of their session adopted a concurrent resolution declaring that the proposition to organize a National Democratic party, having already misled some of their friends, would divide pro-slavery Whigs from Democrats and weaken their party one-half; that it was the duty of the pro-slavery, Union-loving men of Kansas "to know but one issue, slavery; and that any party making or attempting to make any other is and should be held as an ally of abolitionism and disunion."
He remembered Paul Abbot as being a leader in the younger set at Harvard, and was delighted to hear of him "under the colors," where every Union-loving man should be where, as he recalled him, he knew Abbot must be, for he belonged to one of the oldest and best families in all Massachusetts; he was a gentleman born and bred, and would make a name for himself in this war.
By the terms of his message, too, the President was pledged to favor such amendments as might originate with the people for the settlement of the slavery question, even if the settlement should be repugnant to the principles of his party. Mr. Lincoln should receive the thanks of all Union-loving men for having "sunk the partisan in the patriot."
And in fact his settlement was at the time accepted by the great mass of Union-loving men, North and South. Some Northern States, and especially Massachusetts, showed a disposition to break away under what seemed to them the unbearable strain of the Fugitive Slave Law. But in dealing with Massachusetts Clay found a powerful ally in Webster.
Temperate, reasonable, kindly, persuasive it seems strange that Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural Address did not disarm at least the personal resentment of the South toward him, and sufficiently strengthen the Union-loving people there, against the red-hot Secessionists, to put the "brakes" down on Rebellion.
"Fellow citizens," he said, in his rich, sonorous voice, sounding the key-note of his subsequent career, "I beseech you, with reference to former party divisions, to lay aside all political asperities, all personal prejudices, to indulge in no criminations or recriminations, but to unite with me, and all Union-loving men, in a common effort to save the country from the disasters which threaten it."
God knows we do not want them in our Section of the Union. But, Sir, having learned and believing that these persons have been employed with arms in their hands to shed the blood of the Union-loving men of this Country, I shall now vote in favor of that amendment with less regard to what may become of these people than I had on Saturday. I will merely instance that there is a precedent for this.
The planters were, and are yet, in bloody earnest in this rebellion; and my impression, since coming North, is, that the mass of Union-loving people here are asleep, because they do not fully understand the resources and earnestness of the South. There is no such universal and intense earnestness here, as prevails all over the Rebel States.
In that event no form of government, however admirable in itself and however productive of material benefits, can compensate for the loss of peace and domestic security around the family altar. Let every Union-loving man, therefore, exert his best influence to suppress this agitation, which since the recent legislation of Congress is without any legitimate object.
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