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tion and gave him the opportunity for which he had been waiting for more than a year.

He said, "The time is at hand; this is the mighty shock that is to knock all the old organizations-except the Democratic-to pieces, and is to rally their elements around the flag of Republicanism;" and from that time on until the thing was done, he devoted his days and his nights to the work.

I remember well that the "tallow candle" kept up its light in the little white school house, on the prairie, long after midnight, and that when he came home and was asked what he had been doing, he replied, "I have been making a bit of history."

There is not the least doubt that the Republican party had its formal birth here, in Ripon; and here the Republican name was familiar to all ears months before it was heard else- „ where; so that when the great party finally came to the country at large, it came not as a stranger needing an introduction to the people of the West Assembly District of Fond du Lac county, but as an old and familiar acquaintance.

Circumstances were favorable. Free-Soilism had pervaded the community for years, and just at the right time there happened to be a man here who was able and willing and ardent; who had the ear of Horace Greeley; was a skillful organizer, in short, who seized the opportunity and achieved the result. Without him it could never have been done-as it was done and without the conditions he could not have accomplished it.

These, my dear sir, are the facts as I saw them, very briefly stated, and they are subject to your good pleasure. Very truly yours,

DAVID P. MAPES.

An earlier letter from Judge E. L. Runals, a wealthy and influential resident of Wisconsin, written for another purpose, will be inserted:

RIPON, December 19, 1879.

DEAR SIR:-I remember well a conversation I had with you in the fall of 1852, not more than two or three weeks,'】 should think, after the election of Franklin Pierce to the Presidency, in relation to the political affairs of the country.

You, in substance, said that the Whig party, to which you belonged, could not survive such an overwhelming defeat as it had just suffered; that it could never rally again; that it would have to abandon its organization and its name; that the country had ceased to care for the old Whig issues; that

slavery had become the all-absorbing question; that on some phase of this question a new party would probably soon be formed at the North, which would combine Whigs, FreeSoilers, and all outside elements against Democracy, which was the great pillar and support of slavery; that the selection of a name would be an object of the first importance to this new party; and that, in your opinion, it should be called the REPUBLICAN party. You also gave your reasons at considerable length for so thinking. Yours very truly,

To Major A. E. Bovay, Ripon, Wisconsin.

E. L. RUNALS.

CHAPTER XV

THE REPUBLICAN GENESIS.

Greeley's Timidity-A Deaf Ear to Bovay's Early Pleadings-The Mountain Must Come to Mahommet-Aroused at Last-Sends Fire Brands Among the Philistines-The New York Tribune Declares All the Old Parties Have Outlived Their Usefulness-The Whigs Astounded-The Plan of 1852 Again Urged Upon Greeley in 1854Letter from Mr. Bovay Containing an Outline of His Plan-Greeley Still Hesitated-Fac Simile of His Reply-He Enters Upon the Task of Solidifying all the Opponents of Slavery and Slavery Extension-He Indorses the Name-The Great Contest Fairly Begun. Mr. Bovay was an early friend, co-laborer and adviser of Greeley, and immedaitely after the disastrous defeat of the Whigs in 1852, began, as we have seen, to urge the great editor and agitator to abandon the carcass of Whiggery, from which the foul stench of pro-slaveryism had begun to rise, and form a new party with a broad platform of equality and human rights, upon which could be united all the friends of universal freedom in the Republic.

Greeley answered all these advances in a spirit of willingness to do whatever might seem for the best, as occasion should arise, but would not for some time advocate in the

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Tribune a complete abandonment of the Whig organization. He argued that the Whigs might perhaps be induced to discard their bad principles, recently adopted for the purpose of winning the smiles and favor of the slave power, which course would undoubtedly be preferable to a general exodus of the rugged liberty-lovers and honest yeomen from Whiggery.

As long as nothing was pending to effectively demonstrate that such indeed might not be the case, it was impossible to argue Greeley out of his position. Finally, however, when Congress met in 1853,and a number of the Whig members of the free States, of whom he had hoped better things, outraged their constituents by the utmost servility to the slaveowners of the South, obeying their every behest and supporting their every measure, be it never so repugnant to the spirit of freedom and the principles of a Republic, he was aroused.

Having staked his faith on the representatives of the free people of the free States and lost, his powerful pen became a sword of flame and his 100,000 Tribunes spread among the people every week like Samson's brands through the dry sheaves and prolific olive yards of the Philistines.

He was now more favorably inclined toward Mr. Bovay's plan, which had been submitted to and examined by him, and wrote a powerful editorial occupying more than the entire length of one of the wide columns of the old Tribune, declaring that all the parties of the day had out-lived their usefulness. Yet he refused to comply with Mr. Bovay's request to advocate the formation of a new party to be called Republican, although the Wisconsin patriot had been persistent, and held a deal of correspondence with Greeley, urging many reasons, many hopes and many facts in support of his view of the great political problem.

The article referred to was a bomb in the Whig camp, because it classed pro-slavery Whiggery as no better than pro

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