Whitelaw Reid: “Have we not a better and more urgent use for our time now than in showing why some of us would have liked them settled…”

The question about the slaves being self-supporting, is a question no longer.

They appeared at times when public men often seemed to be groping in the dark on an unknown road, but it is now evident that the road which has been taken is substantially the road they marked out.

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

Let those who invoke the Supreme Law of the land learn and bow to it.