New York Herald, September 19, 1860

The political issue that is now before the country is a far more momentous one than has ever before been presented here, and the consequences flowing from its decision will affect our historic developement for ages to come, if they do not establish an early period to our existence as a nation.

Party divisions among us have hitherto been based on questions of policy in government, but without departing from the great principle of the rightful preponderance of the white race. Thus, in the first division of parties after the establishment of the constitution, the lines of the federal and republican organizations were drawn on the great question of a stronger or weaker form of federal government, involving the right of controlling personal liberty, the freedom of the press, and other questions of a similar character, which marked our legislation and political agitation during the closing years of the last century. This was succeeded by party divisions on the question of a second war with England in defence of our rights on the ocean, and the patriotic sacrifices the war party then led the country to make in the face of the bitter opposition of "the Massachusetts school" were the foundations of our present commercial glory. After this came the great division under Jackson, on the questions of bank, tariff and internal improvements by the general government. All of these questions were discussed with partisan bitterness, but in them the doubt of the right of the white man to rule never entered.

The only party division that exists to-day, aside from the bickerings of selfish and unscrupulous leaders, who are each endeavoring, with their petty cockle boats, to gather the fragments that are floating upon the tide of party revolution, involves a far deeper and older question than any that has previously been discussed among us during our national career. The issue that is presented by the black republican party involves the whole question of our social and national existence. Black republicanism, founded on and animated by the anti-slavery idea, and pursuing an exaggerated notion of individual rights, involves not only an attempt to equalize dissimilar and discordant races in their social and political immunities, but also the most destructive theories in regard to the organization of society. Socialism in its worst form, including the most advanced theories of women's rights, the division of land, free love and the exaltation of the desires of the individual over the rights of the family, and the forced equality of all men in phalansteries, or similar organizations, are a part of the logical chain of ideas that flow from the anti-slavery theory which forms the soul of black republicanism.

This anti-slavery idea aims to establish a new social policy in this country—the policy of an equalization of the white and black races—which has never produced anything but bloodshed in other parts of the world, and which can only result in the subjugation or destruction of the numerically weaker race. There is no possibility of the black and the white existing harmoniously together in social and political equality. Even the blacks and mulattoes cannot do it. We have pregnant examples of this truth in the bloody history of Hayti and the Dominican republic; in the scenes that have been witnessed wherever European colonization has been established in Africa; in the events now passing in every Spanish-American republic within the tropics, and even among ourselves, in the popular feeling in the southern counties of the free States bordering on those holding slaves. It is then the question of a revolution in our social organization that the black republicans present to the people—a revolution that brings with it a perpetual war of races, which must endure, when once inaugurated, until the blacks now on this continent have been swept from the face of the earth. With the abolition of slavery in the Northern States, the negroes that once existed among us in family servitude have been almost exterminated. The paucity of their numbers prevented their presenting any resistance to this social extermination, and the same reason applies to the fact that the loss of their labor was not felt to any great degree by the material interests of the community.

But this does not and cannot apply to the Southern States, where four millions of blacks are now held in a position of social subjection, which contributes to their own moral and material welfare, and to that of the whole community in which they exist. The triumph of the antislavery sentiment, through the election of Lincoln to the Presidency, will initiate a social revolution among us which will require generations, and perhaps centuries, for its consummation, if we exist through it so long. Such a war of races will absorb all the powers of our society, diverting them from the prosecution of domestic industry and foreign trade. Above all, it will produce division and conflict among ourselves, as it has divided the whites everywhere that it has prevailed, while the blacks, without other policy or impulses, will be united by the bond of color. There is no escape from these logical conclusions. We are subject to the same laws that rule mankind everywhere. There are thousands of conservatives among the black republicans who believe that they can restrain their party from these extreme results; but they deceive themselves. Their party organization is based on an idea fomented by the abolition societies of the North for the past twenty-five years, and it cannot escape from the rule of that idea. This is clearly seen in the public declarations of Lincoln, the teachings of Spooner, the incendiary instigations of Helper, the approval that followed the bloody acts of John Brown, the outpourings of Sumner and Wilson, the diatribes of Greeley, and the recent speeches of Seward at Boston, Detroit, Lansing and Madison.

The real question, therefore, now presented to the people of the United States is the question of our social developement for generations yet to come, and involving our very existence as a nation. If we once begin the war of races, which will inevitably follow from the triumph of the abolition idea and its control of our government, it cannot cease until the black race has been exterminated or driven from among us. Such a war will involve the cessation of the prosecution of many of the industrial pursuits that now constitute our prosperity and national greatness. It will bring civil and servile war to our now peaceful land. It will consume all the elements that now contribute to our intellectual and material developement. With such certainties before us, involving our posterity for centuries in conflict and ruin, it becomes every man to take heart and do his utmost to defeat the fanatical and revolutionary black republicans, who, blinded by their own zeal, following a fallacy that elsewhere has conduced only to destruction, and obstinately refusing to learn wisdom from the experience and disasters of other lands and nations, are bent on establishing here the most destructive conflict of races that the world has ever witnessed.