Such, fellow-citizens, is the Popular Sovereignty of the Declaration of Independence, drawing its life, first, from the inalienable Rights of Man, and then, by positive words, restrained to what is Right.

And this is the Popular Sovereignty which, lifting the down-trodden and trampling on tyrants,--now gentle as Charity, and then terrible as an army with banners,--is destined to make the tour of the world, rendering Slavery everywhere…

How strange that words which hail the Angel of Human Liberation, with Liberty and Equality in her glorious train, should be invoked in support of a wicked tyranny, which, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, makes merchandise of our…

How, then, can any man, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, vote another to be a slave?

How, then, can any man, in this name, assert property in his fellow-man?

By what excuse, with what reason, on what argument can any such thing be done, without first denying all that is true and sacred?

Liberty, which is the active principle of Popular Sovereignty,--Equality, which is twin sister of Liberty,--and Justice, which sets bounds to all that men do on earth,--these are the irresistible enemies of Slavery, each and all of which…

But these, each and all, constitute that Popular Sovereignty which is the glory of our institutions.

Anything else calling itself by this great name is a mockery and a sham, fit only for hissing and scorn.

Here, at last, the rights of man were proclaimed, and a government was organized in subjection to the sovereign rule of Right.

The people, while lifting themselves to the duties of sovereignty, bowed before that overruling sovereignty whose seat is the bosom of God.

It was copied in France, under the lead of Lafayette; and there is no people struggling for Right in either hemisphere who have not felt its inspiration.

And yet this Declaration, standing highest among the historic landmarks of our country, is now assailed and dishonored.

It is assailed and dishonored, first, by denial of these natural rights which it so gloriously declares.

And now, secondly, the Declaration is assailed and dishonored by the claim, that men, in the exercise of sovereignty derived from the Declaration, may set up on an auction-block their fellow-men, if to them it seems fit, and that this…

Such a pretension is hardly less degrading to the Declaration than the open mockery of its primal truths by Mr.

Adams incessantly met all his assumptions for Slavery,--exposing its hateful character, insisting upon its prohibition in the Territories, and especially vindicating the Declaration of Independence.

But this was its characteristic excellence; for upon those abstractions hinged the justice of the cause.

Without them our Revolution would have been but successful rebellion.

The Declaration acknowledged a rule of Right paramount to the power of independent states itself, and virtually disclaimed all power to do Wrong.

This was a novelty in the moral philosophy of nations, and it is the essential point of difference between the system of government announced in the Declaration of Independence and those systems which had until then prevailed among men.……

I appeal, further, to the practice of the National Government, which from the beginning has sanctioned the Prohibition of Slavery in the Territories.

The pretension of Popular Sovereignty is altogether a modern invention, unknown to our fathers.

Thus did the hand which drew the Declaration of Independence first assert the practical application of its principles within the jurisdiction of Congress; and here the Popular Sovereignty of the Declaration receives most instructive…

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