Historical voices

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.

Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit of their age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and toleration only by necessity.

The argument of "necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favour of slavery, and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did they ever go.

Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

It is a grave question for lovers of the Union, whether the final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these, and fatally increase the number of…

The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which first gave us the Constitution, and has thrice saved the Union--we shall have strangled and cast from us for ever.

But whether it be or not, we shall have repudiated--discarded from the councils of the nation--the spirit of compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national compromise?

Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history,--you still cannot repeal human nature.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.

What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

If the negro is a man, then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government,--that is despotism.

But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he, too, shall not govern himself?

The doctrine of self-government is right,--absolutely and internally right; but it has no just application as here attempted.

My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me.

In all these cases it is your sense of justice and human sympathy continually telling you that the poor negro has some natural right to himself,--that those who deny it and make mere merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death.

It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet; but with the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremony,--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact.

You despise him utterly; you do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man.

These sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern people manifest in many ways their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in the negro.

The great majority, South as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain.

But while you thus require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much?

Now, I admit that this is perfectly logical, if there is no difference between hogs and slaves.

A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.

My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not.