Henry Ward Beecher

It would stand in silent majesty, pointing its granite finger up to Heaven and to God--an everlasting witness against all Slavery, and all its abettors or defenders.

Yea, read those doctrines on Bunker Hill--and would it flame or quake?

Read that book in Faneuil Hall, and a thousand aroused and indignant ghosts would come flocking there, as if they heard the old roll-call of Bunker Hill.

A Southern volcano in New-Hampshire, pouring forth the lava of despotism in that incorrupt, and noble old fortress of liberty!

Old New-England, that suckled American liberty, is now suckling wolves to devour it.

The struggle, then, between the North and the South is not one of sections, and of parties, but of Principles--of principles lying at the foundations of governments--of principles that cannot coalesce, nor compromise; that must hate each…

And that theory differs in nothing from outright European Aristocracy, save in the forms and instruments by which it works.

The seat of empire may be indifferently on the Massachusetts Bay or the Ohio, on the Lakes or on the Gulf; if it be the same empire, acting in good faith for the same democratic ends.

For fifty years the imperious spirit of the South has sought and gained power.

There these antagonistic principles, which creep with subtle influence through the very veins of their respective States, break out into open collision upon every question of national policy.

It is a union of merchants and politicians and not of the people.

It is equally plain that while there may be a union between Northern and Southern States, it is external, or commercial, and not internal and vital, springing from common ideas, common ends, and common sympathies.