It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of Slavery.

Let the minions of the Administration and of the Slavocracy harm one hair of your head, and they will raise a whirlwind that will sweep them to destruction.

The Colony that could issue this noble decree was inconsistent with itself, when it permitted its rocky soil to be pressed by the footstep of a single slave.

It is he, then, who is the offender; and no hardihood of denial can extricate him.

Let the Senator answer this objection, if, in any way, by twist of learning, logic, or law, he can.

It is a shame that you should be obliged to meet so much that is disgusting to the taste and shocking to the moral sense in the American Senate.

Unfolding these, I need not dwell on the wrong and shame of Slavery, or on the character of the Slave Power--that Oligarchy of Slaveholders--now ruling the Republic.

And yet there are two outrages, fresh in recollection, which I must not fail to expose, as natural manifestations of Slavery and the Slave Power.

Let magistrates and officers, called to enforce a cruel injustice, take notice.

Alas! alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction.

The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment.

But no man, who is not lost to self-respect, and ready to abandon that manhood which is shown in the Heaven-directed countenance, will voluntarily aid in enforcing a judgment which in conscience he believes wrong.

But there is a God, to be obeyed in all things, although kings, people, and even courts, assert the contrary.

Rather should it be said that every man owes a debt to mankind.

It was fit that the Congress which performed this memorable act should have for its President a merchant.

It was fit, that, in promulgating the Declaration of Independence, by which, in the face of kings, princes, and nobles, the New Era was inaugurated, the education of the counting-house should flaunt conspicuously in the broad and clerkly…

Here I see the triumph of personal merit, but still more the consummation of a new epoch.

And trade summons from the quarry choicest marble and granite to build its capacious homes, and now, in our own city, displays warehouses which outdo the baronial castle, and sales-rooms which outdo the ducal palace.

There are European bankers who vie in power with the dukes and princes of other days, and there are traffickers everywhere whose title comes from the ledger and not the sword, fit successors to counts, barons, and knights.

His character of pure and courageous principle may be little regarded yet; but as time advances, it will become a guiding luminary.

But Slavery grasps this whole day, and changes it to a day of injustice.

Here is a great change, worthy of notice and memory, for it attests the first stage of victory.

Its true rank is among works properly called philanthropic,--the title of highest honor on earth.

As the less is contained in the greater, so there is no vileness of dishonesty, no denial of human rights, that is not plainly involved in the support of an enormity which begins by changing man, created in the image of God, into a…

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