Once the Free States inclined to Free Trade, but the Slave States went the other way; but when the former inclined towards Protection, the Slave Power in the dark behind dictated Free Trade, and so it has been till now.

Here is the subtle ruling influence, against which population, wealth, manufactures, commerce, schools, churches, libraries, and all the activities of a true Civilization are impotent.

The Slave Power is always master, and it is this Power which for sixty years, according to the boast of the Senator, has governed this broad and growing country, doing what it pleases, and penetrating far-away places, while it sacrifices…

Thus are our Slave-Masters an enormous Corporation, or Joint-Stock Company, by the side of which the United States Bank, with its petty thirty millions of capital, and without any peculiar representation, is dwarfed into insignificance.

All tyranny, like murder, is foul at the best; but this is most foul, strange, and unnatural, especially when it is considered that the States occupied by the Slave Oligarchy are far below the Free States in resources of all kinds.

From the beginning, all the great posts of the Republic--Presidency, Vice-Presidency, seats in the Cabinet, seats in the Supreme Court, Presidency of the Senate, Speakership--seem to be almost perpetually in their hands.

At this moment, the Free States, with double the population of the Slave States, have only four out of nine Justices of the Supreme Court; and of these four, it must be said, three are Northern men with Southern principles.

Down to our day it has held the keys of every office, from President to the humblest postmaster, compelling all to do its bidding.

From the Capitol to the most distant confines, the whole country is enslaved.

But Slavery is our Mecca, towards which everything turns, everything fronts, everything faces.

In maintaining its power the Slave Oligarchy applies a test for office very different from that of Jefferson: “Is he honest?

Standing on the bent necks of an enslaved race, with four millions of human beings as the black marble Caryatides to support its power, the Slave Oligarchy erects itself into a lordly caste which brooks no opposition.

As despotism is simply an abuse of monarchy, so Oligarchy is simply an abuse of aristocracy, unless it be that most vulgar of all, “aristocracy of the skin.” Derived from Slavery, and having the interests of Slavery always in mind, our…

All that is bad in Slavery, its audacity, its immorality, its cruelty, its robbery, its meanness, its ignorance, its barbarous disregard of human rights, and its barbarous disregard of every obligation, must all be reproduced in its…

If the Oligarchy hesitates at nothing to serve its selfish ends, it simply acts in harmony with Slavery, from which it draws its life-blood.

Punic in faith, as in fear, no compact can bind it, while all interpretations of the Constitution friendly to Freedom, though sanctioned by Court and Congress in continuous precedent, are unceremoniously rejected.

Surely, if the Oligarchy is to live yet longer, its badges should symbolize its peculiar despotism born of Slavery.

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…

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?

A Government which vindicates the sale of human beings need not hesitate to purchase votes, whether at the polls or in Congress.

Beyond all doubt your souls rise in judgment against these things.

There must be opposition, active, constant, perpetual; and this is the foremost duty of patriotism.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.