“Many persons, who read this speech without having previously
read a number of speeches made on the other side, may be likely
to consider it too abstract in its character. But, as many
Southern Senators, who assume to be the representative men
of their section, have gravely lectured the Senate at great
length in defence of the principles and practice of Slavery,
have taken the bold ground that it is in accordance with the
commands of God and the teachings of experience, have attempted
to show that it elevates the white man and blesses the black,
have even gone so far as to assert that labor, whether white
or black, is happier when owned than when hired, and on the
strength of these assumptions have eagerly argued for the
extension of such a beneficent institution into territory now
free, it is certainly proper that some man from the Northern
States should make an attempt to save religion, conscience,
reason, common sense, common sensibility, from being pressed
into the service of the wickedest and most nonsensical
paradoxes that ever entered the brain or came out of the mouth
of educated men.”