I think it just to say that all true men North should sympathize with them, and ought to be willing to do any possible and needful thing to right their wrongs.

His successor in the leadership has written the word "white" before men, making it read "all white men are created equal." Pray, will or may not the Know-nothings, if they should get in power, add the word "protestant," making it read "all…

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

The necessary result was to establish the rule of violence--force, instead of the rule of law and reason; to perpetuate and spread slavery, and, in time, to make it general.

Here is where the greatest danger lies--that, while we profess to be a government of law and reason, law will give way to violence on demand of this awful and crushing power.

We are here to stand firmly for a principle--to stand firmly for a right.

The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle.

It was a violation of both law and the sacred obligations of honour, to overthrow and trample underfoot a solemn compromise, obtained by the fearful loss to freedom of one of the fairest of our Western domains.

But however much you may argue upon it, or smother it in soft phrases, slavery can only be maintained by force--by violence.

The Union is undergoing a fearful strain; but it is a stout old ship, and has weathered many a hard blow, and "the stars in their courses," aye, an invisible power, greater than the puny efforts of men, will fight for us.

In the Somerset case, decided nearly a century ago, the great Lord Mansfield held that slavery was of such a nature that it must take its rise in positive (as distinguished from natural) law; and that in no country or age could it be…

In the Constitutional Convention, George Mason of Virginia made a more violent abolition speech than my friends Lovejoy or Codding would desire to make here to-day--a speech which could not be safely repeated anywhere on Southern soil in…

Indeed, abolition societies existed as far south as Virginia; and it is a well-known fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton were qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on that subject than we of…

In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by South and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment about it was not controlled by geographical lines or considerations of climate, but by moral and…

We allow slavery to exist in the slave States--not because slavery is right or good, but from the necessities of our Union.

We grant a fugitive slave law because it is so "nominated in the bond;" because our fathers so stipulated--had to--and we are bound to carry out this agreement.

But they did not agree to introduce slavery in regions where it did not previously exist.

And, in spite of this, Freedom's share is about to be taken by violence--by the force of misrepresentative votes, not called for by the popular will.

This thing of slavery is more powerful than its supporters--even than the high priests that minister at its altar.

It gathers strength, like a rolling snow-ball, by its own infamy.

Monstrous crimes are committed in its name by persons collectively which they would not dare to commit as individuals.

It yields nothing itself; it keeps all it has, and gets all it can besides.

By the same right as, and no higher or greater than, slavery is seeking dominion in Kansas: by political force--peaceful, if that will suffice; by the torch (as in Kansas) and the bludgeon (as in the Senate chamber), if required.

And so history repeats itself; and even as slavery has kept its course by craft, intimidation, and violence in the past, so it will persist, in my judgment, until met and dominated by the will of a people bent on its restriction.

We know that great political and moral wrongs are done, and outrages committed, and we denounce those wrongs and outrages, although we cannot, at present, do much more.