But the latter is only a cover for the former.

If Slavery were out of the way, there would be no trouble from State Rights.

The war, then, is for Slavery, and nothing else.

It is an insane attempt by arms to vindicate the lordship asserted in debate.

With madcap audacity it seeks to install this Barbarism as the truest Civilization.

Slavery is announced as the “corner-stone” of the new edifice.

The question is presented between Barbarism and Civilization,--not merely between two different forms of Civilization, but between Barbarism on the one side and Civilization on the other side.

On the one side are women and children at the auction-block, families rudely separated, human flesh lacerated and seamed by the bloody scourge, labor extorted without wages; and all this frightful, many-sided wrong is the declared…

Therefore the battle waged by the Union is for Civilization itself, and it must have aid and God-speed from all not openly for Barbarism.

Nobody now questions their bravery or capacity for discipline.

The enemies of the Union are the enemies of their race.

Therefore, in defending the Union, they defend themselves even more than other citizens; and in saving the Union, they save themselves.

It is enough that our country, aroused at last to a sense of justice, seeks to enroll colored men among its defenders.

Help to overcome your cruel enemies battling against your country, and in this way you will surely overcome those other enemies, hardly less cruel, here at home, who still seek to degrade you.

Do your duty to our common country, and you will set an example of generous self-sacrifice which must conquer prejudice and open all hearts.

I have told Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.

Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed; For never can true courage dwell with them Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.

Now, as soon as the nature of this Constitution is truly explained and understood, is it possible that the nations of the earth can admit such a Confederacy into their society?

Can any nation calling itself civilized associate, with any sense of self-respect, with a nation avowing and practising such principles?

Will not every civilized nation, when the nature of this Confederacy is understood, come to the side of the United States, and refuse all association with them, as, in truth, they are, hostes humani generis?

For the African is as much entitled to be protected in the rights of humanity as any other portion of the human race.

In the dreary annals of Slavery it is by compromise that slave-masters have succeeded in warding off the blows of Liberty.

The British merchant builds his hopes of trade and profit on the progress of civilization and good government, on the successful assertion of Freedom,--of Freedom, that parent of talent, that parent of heroism, that parent of every virtue.

I blame men who are eager to admit into the Family of Nations a state which offers itself to us, based upon a principle, I will undertake to say, more odious and more blasphemous than was ever heretofore dreamed of in Christian or Pagan…

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