|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Book, page 260 / 313 it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise--repeal all compromise--repeal the Declaration of Independence--repeal all past history--still you cannot repeal human nature. * * * * * I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people,--a sad evidence that feeling prosperity, we forget right,--that liberty as a principle we have ceased to revere. * * * * * Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon. * * * * * Our Republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit if not the blood of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of "moral right" back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of "necessity." Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace. Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South--let all Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere--join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it, as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free, happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call
|
Knowledgerush Search
|
|
Contact Us
| Privacy Statement & Terms of Use
|