"Prior to 1854," he said, "this country was divided into two great political parties, known as the Whig and Democratic parties. Both were national and patriotic. * * * Whig principles had no boundary sectional line, * * * but applied and were proclaimed wherever the Constitution ruled or the American flag waved over American soil.
So it was, and so it is, with the great Democratic party, which from the days of Jefferson to this period has proven itself to be the historic party of this Nation. * * * The Whig party and the Democratic party jointly adopted the Compromise measures of 1850as the basis of a proper and just solution of this slavery question in all its forms. Clay was the great leader, with Webster on his right and Cass on his left, and sustained by the patriots in the Whig and Democratic ranks. * * * * In 1851 the Whig party and the Democratic party united in Illinois in approving the principles of the Compromise measures of 1850. * * * In 1852 the Whig party in Convention at Baltimore declared the Compromise measures of 1850a suitable adjustment of that question. * * * * The Democratic Convention assembled in Baltimore the same year and adopted the Compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of Democratic action. ** * They both stood on the same platform with regard to the slavery question. That platform was the right of the people of each State and Territory to decide their local and domestic institutions for themselves, subject only to the Federal Constitution.
"In 1854 I introduced into the Senate a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that principle which had been adopted in the Compromise measures of 1850, and indorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic party in National Convention in 1852. * * * Thus you see that up to 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska bill was brought into Congress for the purpose of carrying out the principles which both parties up to that time had indorsed and approved, there was no division of opinion in this country in regard to that principle, except the opposition of the Abolitionists. In the House of Representatives of Illinois upon a resolution asserting that principle every Whig and every Democrat voted in the affirmative."In 1854 Lincoln, the leader of the Whigs, and Trumbull, one of the Democratic chiefs, entered into an arrangement to dissolve the old Whig and Democratic parties and to unite the members of both into the Abolition party under the name and guise of a Republican party. The terms were that Lincoln should have Shield's place in the Senate, then about to become vacant, and that Trumbull should have Douglas' seat when his term expired. Lincoln went to work to Abolitionize the old Whig party, pretending that he was as good a Whig as ever, and Trumbull began preaching Abolitionism in milder and lighter form, hoping to Abolitionize the Democratic party.
The party met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed its platform. This document christened the coalition the Republican party. It pledged the party to bring the administration of the Government back to the control of first principles; to restore Kansas and Nebraska to the position of free Territories; to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it existed; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude it from all the Territories and resist the acquirement of more unless it should be prohibited therein. He asked Lincoln to answer whether he stood pledged to each article in that creed and would carry it out.
"I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions in order that when I trot him down to lower Egypt (Southern Illinois) I may put the same questions to him. My principles are the same everywhere.
I can proclaim them alike in the North and the South, the East and the West. My principles will apply wherever the Constitution prevails and the American flag waves. I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln's principles will bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro. I put these questions to him to-day distinctly and ask an answer. I have a right to an answer, for I quote from the platform of the Republican party, made by himself and others at the time that party was formed and bargain made by Lincoln to dissolve and kill the old Whig party and transfer its members, bound hand and foot to the Abolition party. * * * I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to Lincoln. I have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery keeper in the town of Salem. * * * I made as good a school teacher as I could and, when a cabinet maker, I made a good bedstead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else. * * * Lincoln was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a foot race, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper, could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together, and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse race or a fist fight excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody."After Lincoln and Trumbull had formed their combination to Abolitionize the old parties and put themselves into the Senate, he said, Trumbull broke faith by demanding Shield's place for himself when it fell vacant and leaving Lincoln to fight for Douglas' seat two years later. Trumbull was stumping the State for Lincoln in order to quiet him. Lincoln was opposed to the Dred Scott decision and would not submit to it because it deprived the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship.
