Curtin, when he was chosen governor by a majority of thirty-two thousand, was largely due to his able and persuasive presentation of the tariff question, and to his effective appeals to the laboring- men in the coal and iron sections of…

If Governor Curtin could have presented no other issue to the voters of Pennsylvania, he would undoubtedly have shared the fate which Wilmot met when he had these anti-slavery questions as his only platform.

The October election of Pennsylvania was for so long a period an unerring index to the result of the contest for the Presidency, that a feeling almost akin to superstition was connected with it.

Whichever party carried it was sure, in the popular judgment, to elect the President.

Lincoln's election, and that very fact added immeasurably to his popular strength in the closing month of the prolonged and exciting struggle.

In reviewing the agencies therefore which precipitated the political revolution of 1860, large consideration must be given to the influence of the movement for Protection.

The tariff therefore had a controlling influence not only in deciding the contest for political supremacy but in that more momentous struggle which was to involve the fate of the Union.

It had obtained a stronger hold on the Republican party than even the leaders of that organization were aware, and it was destined to a larger influence upon popular opinion than the most sagacious could foresee.

As contradistinguished from the theory of protection, England has realized freedom of trade by taxing only that class of imports which meet no competition in home production, thus excluding all pretense of favor or advantage to any of her…

England came to this policy after having clogged and embarrassed trade for a long period by the most unreasonable and tyrannical restrictions, ruthlessly enforced, without regard to the interests or even the rights of others.

England was however neither consistent nor candid in her advocacy and establishment of free-trade.

She did not apply it to all departments of her enterprise, but only to those in which she felt confident that she could defy competition.

Long after the triumph of free-trade in manufactures, as proclaimed in 1846, England continued to violate every principle of her own creed in the protection she extended to her navigation interests.

She had nothing to fear from the United States in the domain of manufacturers, and she therefore asked us to give her the unrestricted benefit of our markets in exchange for a similar privilege which she offered to us in her markets.

She could build engines at less cost than we, and when, soon afterward, her ship-builders began to construct the entire steamer of iron, her advantages became evident to the whole world.

She did not wait for her own theory of Free-trade to work out its legitimate results, but forthwith stimulated the growth of her steam marine by the most enormous bounties ever paid by any nation to any enterprise.

To a single line of steamers running alternate weeks from Liverpool to Boston and New York, she paid nine hundred thousand dollars annually, and continued to pay at this extravagant rate for at least twenty years.

In all channels of trade where steam could be employed she paid lavish subsidies, and literally destroyed fair competition, and created for herself a practical monopoly in the building of iron steamers, and a superior share in the ocean…

But every step she took in the development of her steam marine by the payment of bounty, was in flat contradiction of the creed which she was at the same time advocating in those departments of trade where she could conquer her competitors…

They have each in turn regulated the adoption of free-trade by the ratio of their progress towards the point where they could overcome competition.

The whole controversy over the Territories, as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to an imaginary negro in an impossible place.

Douglas rarely had a debate with either in which he did not lose his temper, and to lose one's temper in debate is generally to lose one's cause.

It would be unjust to the senators and representatives in Congress to leave the impression that their unavailing efforts at conciliating the South were any thing more or less than a compliance with a popular demand which overspread the…

Disunion, which had been so much threatened and so little executed, seemed now to the vision of the multitude an accomplished fact,--a fact which inspired a large majority of the Northern people with a sentiment of terror, and imparted to…

Meetings to save the Union upon the basis of surrender of principle were held throughout the free States, while a word of manly resistance to the aggressive disposition of the South, or in re-affirmation of principles so long contended…