Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/244

 Americans have brought one single able man before the people, who was not known to the people just as well before, you. shall determine what that fact means. I shall not say just now. At the Souths this party has done greater service than at the North; for, among the non-slaveholders at the South, there is a class of men with very little money, less education, and no social standing whatsoever. That class have been deprived of their political power by the rich, educated, and respectable slave-holders; for the slave-holders make the laws, ml the offices, and monopolize all the government of the South. Those Poor-whites are nothing but the dogs of the slave-holder. Whenever he says, "Seize him. Dirt-eater!" away goes this whole pack of pro-Slavery dogs, catching hold of whomsoever their master set them upon. This class of men, having no money and no education, and no means of getting any, deprived of political influence, felt that they were crushed down; but they were too ignorant to know what hurt them. They had no newspapers, no means of concerted action. Northern men have undertaken to help those men. Mr. Vaughan established his newspaper at Cleveland chiefly for the purpose of reaching them. Cassius M. Clay, in Kentucky, said, "Let us speak to that class of men." Once in a while, you hear of their holding a meeting somewhere in Virginia, and uttering some kind of anti-Slavery sentiment or idea. Very soon they are put down. Now, the Know-Nothings went among the Poor-whites in the South, and organized American lodges. The whole thing was done in secret; so that the organization was established, and set on its legs, before the slave-holders knew anything about it : it was strong, and had grown up to be a great boy before they knew the child was bom. Of course, the Southern Know-Nothing party, at first, does not know exactly what to do; so it taKes the old ideas of persons that are about it, and becomes intensely pro-Slavery. That is not quite all. The Whigs at the South have always been feeble. They saw that their party was going to pieces ; and, with the instinct of that other animal which flees out of the house which is likely to fall, they sought shelter under some safer roof: they fled to the know-Nothing organization. The leading Whigs got control of the party at the South, and made