the identical old policy on the point
in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government
under which we live"; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and
spit upon that old policy and insist upon substituting something new.
True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be.
You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in
rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are
for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional slave
code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to
prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the
Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple"
that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,"
fantastically called "popular sovereignty"; but never a man among you in
favor of Federal prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according
to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which
we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an
advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider,
then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge
of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable
foundations.

Again: You say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it
formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny
that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy
of the fathers. We resisted and still resist your innovation; and thence
comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question
reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has
been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace
of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it;
and what is your proof'? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his
Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that
matter you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do
not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for
persisting in the assertion after