Any recognition of Slavery is bad enough; but this will be recognition with welcome and benediction, imparting new consideration and respectability, and, worse still, securing new opportunity and foothold for the supremacy it openly…

The candidate nation, unashamed of Slavery, should be robed in black, while it conducts the great canvass, and asks the votes of the Christian powers.

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,” as the outrage proceeds; for the candidate gravely asks international recognition of the claim to hold property in man, to sell wife away from husband, to sell child away from parent, to…

The candidate proceeds in the canvass, notwithstanding all history declares Slavery essentially barbarous, and that whatever it touches it changes to itself,--that it barbarizes laws, barbarizes business, barbarizes manners, barbarizes…

And yet, with the phantasy that man can hold property in man shooting from his lips, with the shackle and lash in his hands, with barbarism on his forehead, with filibusterism in his recorded life, and with Slavery woven in his flag…

To detest and combat such an accursed pretension it is not necessary even to be a Christian,--it is sufficient to be a man.

If the recognition of a de facto power were a duty imposed upon other nations by International Law, there would be no opportunity for objections founded on principle or policy.

International Law leaves to each nation, precisely as the Municipal Law leaves to each citizen, what company to keep or what copartnership to form.

International Law on this head is like the Constitution of the United States, which declares, “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union.” Not must, but may,--it being in the discretion of Congress to determine whether the…

And now the old Missouri Question, in more outrageous form, on vaster theatre, with “monarchs to behold the swelling scene,” is presented to the Christian powers of the world.

Practical statesmen have always treated recognition as a question of policy, to be determined on the whole case, even where the power is de facto established,--as amply appears in the Parliamentary debates on the recognition of Spanish…

If we go behind the practical statesmen and consult the earliest oracles of International Law, we find, that, according to their most approved utterances, not only may recognition be refused, but there are considerations of duty this way…

It might be argued, on grounds of reason and authority even, that the declared principle of the pretended power was a violation of International Law.

Eminent magistrates have solemnly ruled, that, in the development of civilization, the Slave-Trade has become illegal by a law higher than any statute.

In the determination of present duty, it is not necessary to assume that Slavery or the Slave-Trade is positively forbidden by existing International Law.

It is not a question of Law, but of Morality.

The Rule of Law is sometimes less comprehensive than the Rule of Morality, so that the latter may positively condemn what the former silently tolerates.

But within its own domain Morality cannot be less authoritative than Law.

It is, indeed, nothing less than the Law of Nature, which is the Law of God.

Jurists of all ages and countries have delighted to acknowledge its authority, if it spoke only in the still, small voice of conscience.

The Rule of Morality differs from the Rule of Law in this respect,--that the former finds support in the human conscience, the latter in the sanctions of public force.

I am sure that a good nation will not do what a good man would scorn to do.

Never before in history has a candidacy been put forward in the name of Slavery, and the terrible outrage is aggravated by the Christian light which surrounds it.

How truly he would have repelled any recognition for the sake of Slavery let his life testify.

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