MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW HAVEN: If the Republican party
of this nation shall ever have the national house entrusted to its keeping,
it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs of national
housekeeping. Whatever matters of importance may come up, whatever difficulties
may arise in the way of its administration of the government, that party
will then have to attend to. It will then be compelled to attend to other
questions, besides this question which now assumes an overwhelming importance
-- the question of Slavery. It is true that in the organization of the
Republican party this question of Slavery was more important than any other;
indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question
can even get a hearing just at present. The old question of tariff -- a
matter that will remain one of the chief affairs of national housekeeping
to all time -- the question of the management of financial affairs; the
question of the disposition of the public domain -- how shall it be managed
for the purpose of getting it well settled, and of making there the homes
of a free and happy people -- these will remain open and require attention
for a great while yet, and these questions will have to be attended to
by whatever party has the control of the government. Yet, just now, they
cannot even obtain a hearing, and I do not purpose to detain you upon these
topics, or what sort of hearing they should have when opportunity shall
come.
For, whether we will or not, the question of Slavery is the question,
the all absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us -- and by
that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people,
here and elsewhere -- all of us wish this question settled -- wish it out
of the way. It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the
giving of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping.
The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled,
and yet it is not settled. And the reason is that they are not yet agreed
how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and some
another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling
in different directions, and none of them having a decided majority, are
able to accomplish the common object.
In the beginning of the year 1854 a new policy was inaugurated with
the avowed object and confident promise that it would entirely and forever
put an end to the Slavery agitation. It was again and again declared that
under this policy, when once successfully established, the country would
be forever rid of this whole question. Yet under the operation of that
policy this agitation has not only not ceased, but it has been constantly
augmented. And this too, although, from the day of its introduction, its
friends, who promised that it would wholly end all agitation, constantly
insisted, down to the time that the Lecompton bill was introduced, that
it was working admirably, and that its inevitable tendency was to remove
the question forever from the politics of the country. Can you call to
mind any Democratic speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
down to the time of the Lecompton bill, in which it was not predicted that
the Slavery agitation was just at an end; that "the abolition excitement
was played out," "the Kansas question was dead," "they
have made the most they can out of this question and it is now forever
settled." But since the Lecompton bill no Democrat, within my experience,
has ever pretended that he could see the end. That cry has been dropped.
They themselves do not pretend, now, that the agitation of this subject
has come to an end yet. [Applause.]
The truth is, that this question is one of national importance, and
we cannot help dealing with it: we must do something about it, whether
we will or not. We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot avoid
considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live without eating.
It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as much and as closely as
the natural wants attach to our natural bodies. Now I think it important
that this matter should be taken up in earnest, and really settled. And
one way to bring about a true settlement of the question is to understand
its true magnitude.
There have been many efforts to settle it. Again and again it has been
fondly hoped that it was settled, but every time it breaks out afresh,
and more violently than ever. It was settled, our fathers hoped, by the
Missouri Compromise, but it did not stay settled. Then the compromises
of 1850 were declared to be a full and final settlement of the question.
The two great parties, each in National Convention, adopted resolutions
declaring that the settlement made by the Compromise of 1850 was a finality
-- that it would last forever. Yet how long before it was unsettled again!
It broke out again in 1854, and blazed higher and raged more furiously
than ever before, and the agitation has not rested since.
These repeated settlements must have some fault about them. There must
be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose for which they were
designed. We can only speculate as to where that fault -- that inadequacy,
is, but we may perhaps profit by past experience.
I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our
best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question.
They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores -- plasters
too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have
proved so temporary -- so evanescent. [Applause.]
Look at the magnitude of this subject! One sixth of our population,
in round numbers -- not quite one sixth, and yet more than a seventh, --
about one sixth of the whole population of the United States are slaves!
The owners of these slaves consider them property. The effect upon the
minds of the owners is that of property, and nothing else -- it induces
them to insist upon all that will favorably affect its value as property,
to demand laws and institutions and a public policy that shall increase
and secure its value, and make it durable, lasting and universal. The effect
on the minds of the owners is to persuade them that there is no wrong in
it. The slaveholder does not like to be considered a mean fellow, for holding
that species of property, and hence he has to struggle within himself and
sets about arguing himself into the belief that Slavery is right. The property
influences his mind. The dissenting minister, who argued some theological
point with one of the established church, was always met by the reply,
"I can't see it so." He opened the Bible, and pointed him to
a passage, but the orthodox minister replied, "I can't see it so."
Then he showed him a single word "Can you see that?" "Yes,
I see it," was the reply. The dissenter laid a guinea over the word
and asked, "Do you see it now?" [Great laughter.] So here. Whether
the owners of this species of property do really see it as it is, it is
not for me to say, but if they do, they see it as it is through 2,000,000,000
of dollars, and that is a pretty thick coating. [Laughter.] Certain it
is, that they do not see it as we see it. Certain it is, that this two
thousand million of dollars, invested in this species of property, all
so concentrated that the mind can grasp it at once -- this immense pecuniary
interest, has its influence upon their minds.
But here in Connecticut and at the North Slavery does not exist, and
we see it through no such medium. To us it appears natural to think that
slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at
least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them
as well as to us. [Applause.] I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter
of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class
of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated
to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and
to undermine the very foundations of free society. [Continued applause.]
We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right
to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories,
where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a
regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that
we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think
that species of labor an injury to free white men -- in short, we think
Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because,
and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and
that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.
Now these two ideas, the property idea that Slavery is right, and the
idea that it is wrong, come into collision, and do actually produce that
irrepressible conflict which Mr. Seward has been so roundly abused for
mentioning. The two ideas conflict, and must conflict.
Again, in its political aspect, does anything in any way endanger the
perpetuity of this Union but that single thing, Slavery? Many of our adversaries
are anxious to claim that they are specially devoted to the Union, and
take pains to charge upon us hostility to the Union. Now we claim that
we are the only true Union men, and we put to them this one proposition:
What ever endangered this Union, save and except Slavery? Did any other
thing ever cause a moment's fear? All men must agree that this thing alone
has ever endangered the perpetuity of the Union. But if it was threatened
by any other influence, would not all men say that the best thing that
could be done, if we could not or ought not to destroy it, would be at
least to keep it from growing any larger? Can any man believe that the
way to save the Union is to extend and increase the only thing that threatens
the Union, and to suffer it to grow bigger and bigger? [Great applause.]
Whenever this question shall be settled, it must be settled on some
philosophical basis. No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical
public opinion can be permanently maintained. And hence, there are but
two policies in regard to Slavery that can be at all maintained. The first,
based on the property view that Slavery is right, conforms to that idea
throughout, and demands that we shall do everything for it that we ought
to do if it were right. We must sweep away all opposition, for opposition
to the right is wrong; we must agree that Slavery is right, and we must
adopt the idea that property has persuaded the owner to believe -- that
Slavery is morally right and socially elevating. This gives a philosophical
basis for a permanent policy of encouragement.
The other policy is one that squares with the idea that Slavery is wrong,
and it consists in doing everything that we ought to do if it is wrong.
Now, I don't wish to be misunderstood, nor to leave a gap down to be misrepresented,
even. I don't mean that we ought to attack it where it exists. To me it
seems that if we were to form a government anew, in view of the actual
presence of Slavery we should find it necessary to frame just such a government
as our fathers did; giving to the slaveholder the entire control where
the system was established, while we possessed the power to restrain it
from going outside those limits. [Applause.] From the necessities of the
case we should be compelled to form just such a government as our blessed
fathers gave us; and, surely, if they have so made it, that adds another
reason why we should let Slavery alone where it exists.
If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I
might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in
bed with my children, that would be another question. [Laughter.] I might
hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. [Applause.]
Much more if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound
myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his children under any circumstances,
it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman
alone. [Great laughter.] But if there was a bed newly made up, to which
the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young
snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was
any question how I ought to decide! [Prolonged applause and cheers.]
That is just the case! The new Territories are the newly made bed to
which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to say whether
they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not. It does not seem as if
there could be much hesitation what our policy should be! [Applause.]
Now I have spoken of a policy based on the idea that Slavery is wrong,
and a policy based upon the idea that it is right. But an effort has been
made for a policy that shall treat it as neither right or wrong. It is
based upon utter indifference. Its leading advocate has said "I don't
care whether it be voted up or down." [Laughter.] "It is merely
a matter of dollars and cents." "The Almighty has drawn a line
across this continent, on one side of which all soil must forever be cultivated
by slave labor, and on the other by free;" "when the struggle
is between the white man and the negro, I am for the white man; when it
is between the negro and the crocodile, I am for the negro." Its central
idea is indifference. It holds that it makes no more difference to us whether
the Territories become free or slave States, than whether my neighbor stocks
his farm with homed cattle or puts it into tobacco. All recognize this
policy, the plausible sugar-coated name of which is "popular sovereignty."
[Laughter.]
This policy chiefly stands in the way of a permanent settlement of the
question. I believe there is no danger of its becoming the permanent policy
of the country, for it is based on a public indifference. There is nobody
that "don't care." All the people do care! one way or the other.
[Great applause.] I do not charge that its author, when he says he "don't
care," states his individual opinion; he only expresses his policy
for the government. I understand that he has never said, as an individual,
whether he thought Slavery right or wrong -- and he is the only man in
the nation that has not! Now such a policy may have a temporary run; it
may spring up as necessary to the political prospects of some gentleman;
but it is utterly baseless; the people are not indifferent; and it can
therefore have no durability or permanence.
But suppose it could! Then it could be maintained only by a public opinion
that shall say "we don't care." There must be a change in public
opinion, the public mind must be so far debauched as to square with this
policy of caring not at all. The people must come to consider this as "merely
a question of dollars and cents," and to believe that in some places
the Almighty has made Slavery necessarily eternal. This policy can be brought
to prevail if the people can be brought round to say honestly "we
don't care;" if not it can never be maintained. It is for you to say
whether that can be done. [Applause.]
You are ready to say it cannot, but be not too fast! Remember what a
long stride has been taken since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise!
Do you know of any Democrat, of either branch of the party -- do you know
one who declares that he believes that the Declaration of Independence
has any application to the negro? Judge Taney declares that it has not,
and Judge Douglas even vilifies me personally and scolds me roundly for
saying that the Declaration applies to all men, and that negroes are men.
[Cheers.] Is there a Democrat here who does not deny that the Declaration
applies to a negro? Do any of you know of one? Well, I have tried before
perhaps fifty audiences, some larger and some smaller than this, to find
one such Democrat, and never yet have I found one who said I did not place
him right in that. I must assume that Democrats hold that, and now, not
one of these Democrats can show that be said that five years ago! [Applause.]
I venture to defy the whole party to produce one man that ever uttered
the belief that the Declaration did not apply to negroes, before the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise! Four or five years ago we all thought negroes
were men, and that when "all men" were named, negroes were included.
But the whole Democratic party has deliberately taken negroes from the
class of men and put them in the class of brutes. [Applause.] Turn it as
you will, it is simply the truth! Don't be too hasty then in saying that
the people cannot be brought to this new doctrine, but note that long stride.
One more as long completes the journey, from where negroes are estimated
as men to where they are estimated as mere brutes -- as rightful property!
That saying, "in the struggle between the White man and the negro,"
&c., which I know came from the same source as this policy -- that
saying marks another step. There is a falsehood wrapped up in that statement.
"In the struggle between the white man and the negro" assumes
that there is a struggle, in which either the white man must enslave the
negro or the negro must enslave the white. There is no such struggle! It
is merely an ingenious falsehood, to degrade and brutalize the negro. Let
each let the other alone, and there is no struggle about it. If it was
like two wrecked seamen on a narrow plank, when each must push the other
off or drown himself, I would push the negro off or a white man either,
but it is not; the plank is large enough for both. [Applause.] This good
earth is plenty broad enough for white man and negro both, and there is
no need of either pushing the other off. [Continued applause.]
So that saying, "in the struggle between the negro and the crocodile,"
&c., is made up from the idea that down where the crocodile inhabits
a white man can't labor; it must be nothing else but crocodile or negro;
if the negro does not the crocodile must possess the earth; [Laughter;]
in that case he declares for the negro. The meaning of the whole is just
this: As a white man is to a negro so is a negro to a crocodile; and as
the negro may rightfully treat the crocodile, so may the white man rightfully
treat the negro. This very dear phrase coined by its author, and so dear
that he deliberately repeats it in many speeches, has a tendency to still
further brutalize the negro, and to bring public opinion to the point of
utter indifference whether men so brutalized are enslaved or not. When
that time shall come, if ever, I think that policy to which I refer may
prevail. But I hope the good freemen of this country will never allow it
to come, and until then the policy can never be maintained.
Now consider the effect of this policy. We in the States are not to
care whether Freedom or Slavery gets the better, but the people in the
Territories may care. They are to decide, and they may think what they
please; it is a matter of dollars and cents! But are not the people of
the Territories detailed from the States? If this feeling of indifference
-- this absence of moral sense about the question -- prevails in the States,
will it not be carried into the Territories? Will not every man say, "I
don't care, it is nothing to me?" If any one comes that wants Slavery,
must they not say, "I don't care whether Freedom or Slavery be voted
up or voted down?" It results at last in nationalizing the institution
of Slavery. Even if fairly carried out, that policy is just as certain
to nationalize Slavery as the doctrine of Jeff Davis himself. These are
only two roads to the same goal, and "popular sovereignty" is
just as sure and almost as short as the other. [Applause.]
What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think
slavery wrong. But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed to
it, but yet act with the Democratic party -- where are they? Let us apply
a few tests. You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce
all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong,
that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so careful,
so tender of this one wrong and no other? [Laughter.] You will not let
us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will
allow it to be even called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the Free
States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave
States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because
that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong
in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must
not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those
are such unsuitable places, and there is no single place, according to
you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong! [Continued laughter
and applause.]
Perhaps you will plead that if the people of Slave States should themselves
set on foot an effort for emancipation, you would wish them success, and
bid them God-speed. Let us test that! In 1858, the emancipation party of
Missouri, with Frank Blair at their head, tried to get up a movement for
that purpose, and having started a party contested the State. Blair was
beaten, apparently if not truly, and when the news came to Connecticut,
you, who knew that Frank Blair was taking hold of this thing by the right
end, and doing the only thing that you say can properly be done to remove
this wrong -- did you bow your heads in sorrow because of that defeat?
Do you, any of you, know one single Democrat that showed sorrow over that
result? Not one! On the contrary every man threw up his hat, and hallooed
at the top of his lungs, "hooray for Democracy!" [Great laughter
and applause.]
Now, gentlemen, the Republicans desire to place this great question
of slavery on the very basis on which our fathers placed it, and no other.
[Applause.] It is easy to demonstrate that "our Fathers, who framed
this government under which we live," looked on Slavery as wrong,
and so framed it and everything about it as to square with the idea that
it was wrong, so far as the necessities arising from its existence permitted.
In forming the Constitution they found the slave trade existing; capital
invested in it; fields depending upon it for labor, and the whole system
resting upon the importation of slave-labor. They therefore did not prohibit
the slave trade at once, but they gave the power to prohibit it after twenty
years. Why was this? What other foreign trade did they treat in that way?
Would they have done this if they had not thought slavery wrong?
Another thing was done by some of the same men who framed the Constitution,
and afterwards adopted as their own act by the first Congress held under
that Constitution, of which many of the framers were members; they prohibited
the spread of Slavery into Territories. Thus the same men, the framers
of the Constitution, cut off the supply and prohibited the spread of Slavery,
and both acts show conclusively that they considered that the thing was
wrong.
If additional proof is wanting it can be found in the phraseology of
the Constitution. When men are framing a supreme law and chart of government,
to secure blessings and prosperity to untold generations yet to come, they
use language as short and direct and plain as can be found, to express
their meaning. In all matters but this of Slavery the framers of the Constitution
used the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language. But the Constitution
alludes to Slavery three times without mentioning it once! The language
used becomes ambiguous, roundabout, and mystical. They speak of the "immigration
of persons," and mean the importation of slaves, but do not say so.
In establishing a basis of representation they say "all other persons,"
when they mean to say slaves -- why did they not use the shortest phrase?
In providing for the return of fugitives they say "persons held to
service or labor." If they had said slaves it would have been plainer,
and less liable to misconstruction. Why didn't they do it. We cannot doubt
that it was done on purpose. Only one reason is possible, and that is supplied
us by one of the framers of the Constitution -- and it is not possible
for man to conceive of any other -- they expected and desired that the
system would come to an end, and meant that when it did, the Constitution
should not show that there ever had been a slave in this good free country
of ours! [Great applause.]
I will dwell on that no longer. I see the signs of the approaching triumph
of the Republicans in the bearing of their political adversaries. A great
deal of their war with us nowa-days is mere bushwhacking. [Laughter.] At
the battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon's cavalry had charged again and again
upon the unbroken squares of British infantry, at last they were giving
up the attempt, and going off in disorder, when some of the officers in
mere vexation and complete despair fired their pistols at those solid squares.
The Democrats are in that sort of extreme desperation; it is nothing else.
[Laughter.] I will take up a few of these arguments.
There is "The Irrepressible Conflict." [Applause.] How they
rail at Seward for that saying! They repeat it constantly; and although
the proof has been thrust under their noses again and again, that almost
every good man since the formation of our government has uttered that same
sentiment, from Gen. Washington, who "trusted that we should yet have
a confederacy of Free States," with Jefferson, Jay, Monroe, down to
the latest days, yet they refuse to notice that at all, and persist in
railing at Seward for saying it. Even Roger A. Pryor, editor of the Richmond
Enquirer, uttered the same sentiment in almost the same language, and yet
so little offence did it give the Democrats that he was sent for to Washington
to edit the States -- the Douglas organ there, while Douglas goes into
hydrophobia and spasms of rage because Seward dared to repeat it. [Great
applause.] This is what I call bushwhacking, a sort of argument that they
must know any child can see through.
Another is John Brown! [Great laughter.] You stir up insurrecti6ns,
you invade the South! John Brown! Harper's Ferry! Why, John Brown was not
a Republican! You have never implicated a single Republican in that Harper's
Ferry enterprise. We tell you that if any member of the Republican party
is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do
know it you are inexcusable not to designate the man and prove the fact.
If you do not know it, you are inexcusable to assert it, and especially
to persist in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the
proof You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not
know to be true is simply malicious slander. Some of you admit that no
Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair; but
still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such
results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrines, and make
no declarations, which were not held to and made by our fathers who framed
the Government under which we live, and we cannot see how declarations
that were patriotic when they made them are villainous when we make them.
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to that affair -- and I will say
frankly that I know of nothing in your character that should lead us to
suppose that you would. You had just been soundly thrashed in elections
in several States, and others were soon to come. You rejoiced at the occasion,
and only were troubled that there were not three times as many killed in
the affair. You were in evident glee there was no sorrow for the killed
nor for the peace of Virginia disturbed -- you were rejoicing that by charging
Republicans with this thing you might get an advantage of us in New York,
and the other States. You pulled that string as tightly as you could, but
your very generous and worthy expectations were not quite fulfilled. [Laughter.]
Each Republican knew that the charge was a slander as to himself at least,
and was not inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. It was mere
bushwhacking, because you had nothing else to do. You are still on that
track, and I say, go on! If you think you can slander a woman into loving
you or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied! [Tremendous
applause.]
Another specimen of this bushwhacking, that "shoe strike."
[Laughter.] Now be it understood that I do not pretend to know all about
the matter. I am merely going to speculate a little about some of its phases.
And at the outset, I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in
New England under which laborers can strike when they want to [Cheers,]
where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not
tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not! [Cheers.] I
like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might
prevail everywhere. [Tremendous applause.] One of the reasons why I am
opposed to Slavery is just here. What is the true condition of the laborer?
I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property
as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent
a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do
not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man
an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. [Applause.] When one starts
poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows
he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition
of labor, for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty five
years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat
-- just what might happen to any poor man's son! [Applause.] I want every
man to have the chance -- and I believe a black man is entitled to it --
in which he can better his condition -- when he may look forward and hope
to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward,
and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system. Up here
in New England, you have a soil that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans,
and yet where will you find wealthy men so wealthy, and poverty so rarely
in extremity? There is not another such place on earth! [Cheers.] I desire
that if you get too thick here, and find it hard to better your condition
on this soil, you may have a chance to strike and go somewhere else, where
you may not be degraded, nor have your family corrupted by forced rivalry
with negro slaves. I want you to have a clean bed, and no snakes in it!
[Cheers.] Then you can better your condition, and so it may go on and on
in one ceaseless round so long as man exists on the face of the earth!
[Prolonged applause.]
Now, to come back to this shoe strike, -- if, as the Senator from Illinois
asserts, this is caused by withdrawal of Southern votes, consider briefly
how you will meet the difficulty. You have done nothing, and have protested
that you have done nothing, to injure the South. And yet, to get back the
shoe trade, you must leave off doing something that you are now doing.
What is it? You must stop thinking slavery wrong! Let your institutions
be wholly changed; let your State Constitutions be subverted, glorify slavery,
and so you will get back the shoe trade -- for what? You have brought owned
labor with it to compete with your own labor, to underwork you, and to
degrade you! Are you ready to get back the trade on those terms?
But the statement is not correct. You have not lost that trade; orders
were never better than now! Senator Mason, a Democrat, comes into the Senate
in homespun, a proof that the dissolution of the Union has actually begun!
but orders are the same. Your factories have not struck work, neither those
where they make anything for coats, nor for pants, nor for shirts, nor
for ladies' dresses. Mr. Mason has not reached the manufacturers who ought
to have made him a coat and pants! To make his proof good for anything
he should have come into the Senate barefoot! [Great laughter.]
Another bushwhacking contrivance; simply that, nothing else! I find
a good many people who are very much concerned about the loss of Southern
trade. Now either these people are sincere or they are not. [Laughter.]
I will speculate a little about that. If they are sincere, and are moved
by any real danger of the loss of Southern trade, they will simply get
their names on the white list, and then, instead of persuading Republicans
to do likewise, they will be glad to keep you away! Don't you see they
thus shut off competition? They would not be whispering around to Republicans
to come in and share the profits with them. But if they are not sincere,
and are merely trying to fool Republicans out of their votes, they will
grow very anxious about your pecuniary prospects; they are afraid you are
going to get broken up and ruined; they did not care about Democratic votes
-- Oh no, no, no! You must judge which class those belong to whom you meet;
I leave it to you to determine from the facts.
Let us notice some more of the stale charges against Republicans. You
say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of
proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our
party has no existence in your section -- gets no votes in your section.
The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does,
then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes
in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape
this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you
will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall
get votes in your section this very year. [Applause.] The fact that we
get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours.
And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and
remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or
practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault
is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started -- to a
discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put
in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any
other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are
justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of
whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so
meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side.
Do you accept the challenge? No? Then you really believe that the principle
which our fathers who framed the Government under which we live thought
so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their
official oaths, is, in fact, so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation
without a moment's consideration.
Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional
parties given by Washington in his Farewell address. Less than eight years
before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United
States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition
of Slavery in the northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy
of Government upon that subject, up to and at the very moment he penned
that warning; and about one year after he penned it he wrote LaFayette
that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same
connection his hope that we should some time have a confederacy of Free
States.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen
upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against
us or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he
cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or
upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we
commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application
of it. [Applause.]
But you say you are conservative -- eminently conservative while we
are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism?
Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy
which was adopted by our fathers who framed the Government under which
we live; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that
old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree
among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You have considerable
variety of new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting
and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving
the foreign slavetrade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories;
some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within
their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the
Judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rin-ciple" that "if
one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically
called "Popular Sovereignty;" [great laughter,] but never a man
among you in favor of Federal prohibition of Slavery in Federal Territories,
according to the practice of our fathers who framed the Government under
which we live. Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or
an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. And
yet you draw yourselves up and say "We are eminently conservative!"
[Great laughter.]
It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy
shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans
do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing
through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not
so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield
to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging
by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy
with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them?
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered
to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against
us, the Territories arc scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections
are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing
to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know
because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections;
and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the
denunciation.
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: we must not
only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let
them alone. [Applause.] This, we know by experience is no easy task. We
have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization,
but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches, we have constantly
protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to
convince them, Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they
have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince
them? This, and this only; cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in
calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly -- done in acts as well
as in words. Silence will not be tolerated -- we must place ourselves avowedly
with them. Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing
all declarations that Slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses,
in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves
with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State Constitutions. The
whole atmosphere must be disinfected of all taint of opposition to Slavery,
before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from
us. So long as we call Slavery wrong, whenever a slave runs away they will
overlook the obvious fact that he ran because he was oppressed, and declare
he was stolen off. Whenever a master cuts his slaves with the lash, and
they cry out under it, he will overlook the obvious fact that the negroes
cry out because they are hurt, and insist that they were put up to it by
some rascally abolitionist. [Great laughter.]
I am quite aware that they do not state their case precisely in this
way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing
to us, and say what you please about Slavery." But we do let them
alone -- have never disturbed them -- so that, after all, it is what we
say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing,
until we cease saying.
I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow
of our Free State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong
of Slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against
it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow
of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist
the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the
whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they
do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding
as they do, that Slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they
cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right,
and a social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction
that Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and
Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced,
and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality
-- its universality; if it is wrong they cannot justly insist upon its
extension -- its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if
we thought Slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they
thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is
the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy Thinking it right
as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as
being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can
we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our
moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?
Wrong as we think Slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where
it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual
presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow
it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these
Free States?
If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly
and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances
wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored -- contrivances such
as groping for middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the
search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man -- such
as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true
men do care -- such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield
to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners,
but the righteous to repentance -- such as invocations of Washington, imploring
men to unsay what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against
us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government,
nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might;
and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand
it.
March 6, 1860