Simply this: We must not only
let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them
alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so
trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but
with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly
protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to
convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they
have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join
them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly--done in
acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated--we must place
ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be
enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong,
whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits; or in private. We must
arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must
pull down our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be
disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will
cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most
of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and
say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone have never
disturbed them--so that after all it is what we say which dissatisfies
them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of
our free State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of
slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it;
and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow
of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the
demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole
of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they
can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they
do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot
cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a
social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save