“Whatever promise in our books finds entry
We strictly carry into act.”
But no compact or promise binds our gentry, although entered again and
again in their books.
According to a famous saying, Russia is a “despotism tempered by
assassination”; but even the steel of Brutus, refulgent in the Capitol,
without the supplementary fulfilment of the wish of Caligula, that all
should have a single life, must fail to reach our despotism, which
in numbers enjoys an immunity beyond any solitary tyrant. Surely, if
the Oligarchy is to live yet longer, its badges should symbolize its
peculiar despotism born of Slavery. The coin, seal, and flag must be
changed. Let the eagle be removed, giving place to the foul vulture
with vulgar beak and filthy claw,--how unlike that bird of Jove, with
ample pinion, and those mighty pounces, holding the dread thunderbolt
and better olive of peace!--and instead of these, let there be fetter
and lash, borrowed from the plantation, which is the miniature of the
broader plantation to which the Republic is reduced. That appearance
may be according to reality, and that we may not seem what we are not,
this at least must be done. Abandon, too, the stars and stripes,--the
stars numbering the present Union, the stripes numbering that Union
which gave to mankind the Declaration of Independence with immortal
truth; and let these also be replaced by the universal fetter and lash,
for here is typified our Oligarchy, in all present power, as in all
vital principle. Fetter and lash! The schoolboy shall grow up honoring
the chosen emblems; the citizen shall hail them with sympathetic pride;
the Republic shall be known by them on coin, seal, and flag; while
the ruler of the subjugated land, no longer President, shall be called
Overseer.
* * * * *
Of course, fellow-citizens, you are now ready to see that the
corruptions by which the present Administration is degraded are the
natural offspring of slaveholding immorality. They have all concurred
in sustaining the policy of the Oligarchy, and in the case of the
Lecompton Constitution in direct effort to fasten Slavery upon a
distant Territory, and they are all marked by the effrontery of
Slavery. There is also its vulgarity; but this is natural; for is not
pretension a fruitful source of vulgarity? and, pray, what is Slavery,
but an enormous Pretension? Smollett attributes the peculiar profligacy
of England at a particular period to the demoralization of the South
Sea Bubble; but what is such a fugitive influence, compared with
Slavery, which, indeed, if it were not a crime, might well be called a
Bubble? A Government which vindicates the sale of human beings need not
hesitate to purchase votes, whether at the polls or in Congress. The
two transactions belong to the same family, though unquestionably the
last is the least reprehensible.
* * * * *
Fellow-citizens,--And now we are brought to the practical bearing of
this statement. Beyond all doubt your souls rise in judgment against
these things. Beyond all doubt you are saddened at the shadow which
they cast over the land. Beyond all doubt you are unwilling to bear any
responsibility for their longer continuance. But this is not enough.
There must be opposition, active, constant, perpetual; and this is the
foremost duty of patriotism. From the virtuous Reformer, Wycliffe,
whose name illumines the earlier period of English history, we learn
that men are sharers in evil deeds who from “coward dumbness” fail
to oppose them. There can be no such coward dumbness now. Happily, a
political party is at hand whose purpose is to combine and direct all
generous energies for the salvation of the country.
Would you arrest these terrible corruptions, and the disastrous
influence from which they spring, involving nothing less than
civilization on this continent, the Republican party tells you how,
and, in telling you how, vindicates at once its Origin and its
Necessity. The work must be done, and there is no other organization by
which it can be done. A party with such an origin and such a necessity
cannot be for a day, or for this election only. It cannot be less
permanent than the hostile influence which it is formed to counteract.
Therefore, just so long as the present false theories of Slavery
prevail, whether concerning its character, morally, economically,
and socially, or concerning its prerogatives under the Constitution,
and just so long as the Slave Oligarchy, which is the sleepless and
unhesitating agent of Slavery in all its pretensions, continues to
exist as a political power, the Republican party must endure. If bad
men conspire for Slavery, good men must combine for Freedom; nor can
the Holy War be ended, until the Barbarism now dominant in the Republic
is overthrown, and the Pagan power is driven from our Jerusalem.
And when this triumph is won, securing the immediate object of our
organization, the Republican party will not die, but, purified by long
contest with Slavery, and filled with higher life, it will be lifted
to yet other efforts for the good of man.
At present the work is plain before us. It is simply to elect
our candidates: Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, whose ability, so
conspicuously shown in his own State, attracted at once the admiration
of the whole country, whose character no breath has touched, and
whose heart is large enough to embrace the broad Republic and all its
people,--him you will elect President; and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine,
whose clear head, firm principles, and ample experience none who
sit with him in the Senate Chamber can contest,--him you will elect
Vice-President. Electing these, we shall put the National Government,
at least in its Executive department, openly and actively on the side
of Freedom; and this alone will be of incalculable influence, not only
in itself, but as harbinger of the Future.
First and foremost, we shall save the Territories from the five-headed
Barbarism of Slavery, keeping them in their normal condition, as they
came from the hand of God, free,--with Freedom written on the soil
and engraved on the rock, while the winds whisper it in the trees,
the rivers murmur it in their flow, and all Nature echoes it in joy
unspeakable.
Next, we shall save the country and the age from that crying infamy,
the Slave-Trade, whose opening anew, as now menaced, is but a logical
consequence of the new theories of Slavery. If Slavery be the
“blessing” it is vaunted, then must the Slave-Trade be beneficent,
while they who ply it with fiercest activity take place among the
missionaries and saints of humanity.
Next, we shall save the Constitution, at least within the sphere
of Executive influence, from outrage and perversion; so that the
President will no longer lend himself to that wildest pretension of
the Slave Oligarchy, as Mr. Buchanan has done, declaring that Slavery
is carried under the Constitution into all the Territories, and that
it now exists in Kansas as firmly as in South Carolina. As out of
nothing can come nothing, so out of the nothing in the Constitution on
this subject can be derived no support for this inordinate pretension,
which may be best dismissed in that classical similitude by which the
ancients rebuked a groundless folly, when they called it _ass’s wool_,
or something that does not exist, and plainly said to its author,
_Asini lanas quæris_,--“You are in quest of ass’s wool!”[163]
Next, we shall help save the Declaration of Independence, now
dishonored and disowned in its essential, life-giving truth,--_the
Equality of Men_. This transcendent principle, which appears twice
at the Creation, first, when God said, “Let us make man in our
image,” and, secondly, in the Unity of the Race, then divinely
established,--which appears again in the New Testament, when it was
said, “God, that made the world and all things therein, hath made of
one blood all nations of men,”--which appears again in the primal
reason of the world, anterior to all institutions and laws,--belongs
to those self-evident truths, sometimes called axioms, which no man
can question without exposing to question his own intelligence or
honesty. As well deny arithmetically that two and two make four, or
deny geometrically that a straight line is the shortest distance
between two points, as deny the axiomatic, self-evident, beaming
truth, that all men are equal. As of the sun in the heavens, blind
is he who cannot perceive it. Of course, this principle, uttered in
a Declaration of Rights, is applicable simply to rights; and it is
a childish sophism to allege against it the obvious inequalities of
form, character, and faculties. As axiom, it admits no exception; for
it is the essence of an axiom, whether in geometry or in morals, to be
universal. As abstract truth, it is also without exception, according
to the essence of such truth. And, finally, as self-evident truth,
so announced in the Declaration, it is without exception; for only
such truth can be self-evident. Thus, whether axiom, abstract truth,
or self-evident truth, it is always universal. In vindicating this
principle, the Republican party have a grateful duty, to which they are
moved by justice to a much-injured race, excluded from its protection,
and by justice also to the Fathers, whose well-chosen words, fit
foundation for empire, are turned into mockery. Nor can the madness
of the Propagandists be better illustrated than in this assault on
the Declaration of Independence, stultifying the Fathers for no other
purpose than to clear the way for their five-headed abomination of
_Compulsory Labor without Wages_.
And, finally, we shall help expel the Slave Oligarchy from all its
seats of National power, driving it back within the States. This alone
is worthy of every effort; for, until this is done, nothing else can
be completely done. In vain you seek economy or purity in the National
Government, in vain you seek improvement of rivers and harbors, in
vain you seek homesteads on the public lands for actual settlers, in
vain you seek reform in administration, in vain you seek dignity and
peace in our foreign relations, with just sympathy for struggling
Freedom everywhere, while this selfish and corrupt power holds the
National purse and the National sword. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy,
and the door will be open to all generous principles. Prostrate the
Slave Oligarchy, and the wickedness of the Fugitive Slave Bill will
be expelled from the statute-book. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy,
and Slavery will cease at once in the National Capital. Prostrate
the Slave Oligarchy, and the Slave-Trade will no longer skulk along
our coasts beneath the National flag. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy,
and Liberty will become, in fact, as in law, the normal condition of
all the National Territories. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the
National Government will be at length divorced from Slavery. Prostrate
the Slave Oligarchy, and the National star will be changed from Slavery
to Freedom. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the North will be no
longer the vassal of the South. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the
North will be admitted to its just share in the trusts and honors of
the Republic. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and a mighty victory of
Peace will be won, whose influence on the Future of our country and of
mankind no imagination can paint.
Prostrated, exposed, and permanently expelled from ill-gotten power,
the Oligarchy will cease to exist as a political combination. Its final
doom may be postponed, but it is certain. Languishing, it may live yet
longer; but it will surely die. Yes, fellow-citizens, surely it will
die, when, disappointed in purpose, driven back within the States, and
constrained within these limits, it can no longer rule the Republic as
a plantation of slaves at home, can no longer menace the Territories
with five-headed device to compel _Labor without Wages_, can no longer
fasten upon the Constitution an interpretation which makes merchandise
of men and gives disgraceful immunity to brokers of human souls and
butchers of human hearts, and can no longer grind flesh and blood, with
groans and sighs, tears of mothers and cries of children, into the
cement of a barbarous political power. Surely, then, in its retreat,
smarting under the indignation of an aroused people and the concurring
judgment of the civilized world, it must die,--it may be as a poisoned
rat dies of rage in its hole.
Meanwhile all good omens are ours. The work cannot stop. Quickened
by the triumph now so near, with a Republican President in power,
State after State, quitting the condition of a Territory and spurning
Slavery, will be welcomed into our Plural Unit, and, joining hands
together, will become a belt of fire girt about the Slave States,
within which Slavery must die,--or, happier still, joining hands
together, they will become to the Slave States a zone of Freedom,
radiant, like the ancient cestus of Beauty, with transforming power.
It only remains that we speed these good influences. Others may dwell
on the Past as secure; but to my mind, under the laws of a beneficent
God, _the Future also is secure_,--on the single condition that we
press forward in the work with heart and soul, forgetting self, turning
from all temptations of the hour, and, intent only on the cause,
“With mean complacence ne’er betray our trust,
Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.”[164]