SJE CTIONALISM. 2 5 1 



and intrigues which have conspired to destroy that essential equipoise 

 between the great industries of the country, and which has robbed the 

 many to enrich the few, and thus placed our republic and its institutions 

 in imminent peril, no factor has been more potential than the wicked 

 spirit of sectionalism. 



We have thus been brought to confront forces, social, industrial, 

 moral, and political, which are dangerous alike to the liberty of the 

 citizen and to the life of the republic ; and we stand to-day in the 

 crucial era of our free institutions, of our republican form of government, 

 and of our Christian civilization. Mighty problems confront us, and 

 they must be met in a spirit of fairness, of manliness, of justice, and of 

 equity. 



The evils under which the great laboring millions of America are 

 suffering are national in their character, and can never be corrected by 

 sectional effort or sectional remedies. In all the broad field of our 

 noble endeavor as an order, there is no purpose grander in its design, 

 more patriotic in its conception, or more beneficent in its possible results / 

 to the whole country and to posterity, than the one in which we declare/ 

 to the world that henceforth there shall be no sectional lines across 

 Alliance territory. Failing in all else we may undertake as an organiza- 

 tion, if we shall accomplish only a restoration of fraternity and unity, 

 and obliterate the unnatural estrangement which has unfortunately so 

 long divided the people of this country, the Alliance will have won for 

 itself immortal glory and honor. In the spirit of a broad and liberal 

 patriotism, it recognizes but one flag and one country. Confronted by 

 a. common danger, afflicted with a common evil, impelled by a common 

 hope, the people of Kansas and Virginia, of Pennsylvania and Texas, 

 of Michigan and South Carolina, make common cause in a common 

 interest. The order recognizes the fact that the war ended in 1865, 

 that chattel slavery is gone, and that the prejudices and divisions, born 

 of its existence, should go with it. 



Happily for the country and posterity, the great mass of the' people 

 have become aroused to this truth, and they have severed sectional 

 lines in twain. The ex-slave holder of the South, who believed that he 

 held the slaves not only by constitutional but by divine right, and who 

 bravely imperilled his life to defend the institution, to-day stands hand- 

 in-hand with him who was born and reared an abolitionist, and who 

 regarded slavery as an unmitigated evil and curse ; and disregarding 

 sectional folly and madness, they have solemnly pledged their alliance 

 in a common cause the cause of a common country. 



We cannot fail to see the opportunity of the hour ; and, recognizing 



