loose who seriously try to persuade the people to make an anti-emancipation man President of the United States. [Laughter and applause.]
Yes, incredible as it may seem to all who are not initiated into the mysteries of American politics, the idea is seriously entertained to carry out that third line of policy of which I spoke before—to invite the slave power back into the national organization, offering to it that supreme and absolute control of our national concerns without which it cannot insure its permanency in the Union; and, adroitly enough, this programme has been condensed into a single euphonious sentence which is well apt to serve as the campaign cry of a party. It is this: The Union must be restored “as it was.”
We are frequently cautioned against visionaries in politics, because with their extravagant schemes they are apt to lead people into dangerous and costly experiments. But the visionaries in innovation are harmless compared with the visionaries who set their hearts upon restoring what is definitively gone, and has become morally impossible; for while the former may find it difficult to make the people believe in the practicability of their novel ideas, the latter not rarely succeed in persuading the multitude that what had been may be again. Such a visionary was Napoleon, who planned the restoration of the empire of Charlemagne; he flooded Europe with blood, and failed. But the restoration of the empire of Charlemagne was mere child’s play in comparison with the restoration of the Union “as it was,” and a task far more difficult, than that to which the genius of old Napoleon succumbed, is by a discriminating fate wisely set apart for our “young Napoleon” to perform. [Peals of laughter.] We are, indeed, assured by his friends that he will again exhaust all the resources of his statesmanship for that purpose. [Continued laughter.] This states-
