the circumstances which surround him, will rise in intelligence,
capacity, and character, to the dignity of a freeman, and will be
free.

We cannot agree with you, and therefore do not propose to allow
slavery where we are responsible for it, outside of your State limits,
and under National jurisdiction. But we do not mean to interfere with
it at all within State limits. So far as we are concerned, you can
work out your experiment there in peace. We shall rejoice if no evil
comes from it to you or yours. [Mr. CHASE'S time having expired, he
was unanimously invited to proceed.]

Aside from the Territorial question--the question of slavery outside
of the slave States--I know of but one serious difficulty. I refer to
the question concerning fugitives from service. The clause in the
Constitution concerning this class of persons is regarded by almost
all men, North and South, as a stipulation for the surrender to their
masters of slaves escaping into free States. The people of the free
States, however, who believe that slaveholding is wrong, cannot and
will not aid in the reclamation, and the stipulation becomes therefore
a dead letter. You complain of bad faith, and the complaint is
retorted by denunciations of the cruelty which would drag back to
bondage the poor slave who has escaped from it. You, thinking slavery
right, claim the fulfilment of the stipulation; we, thinking slavery
wrong, cannot fulfil the stipulation without consciousness of
participation in wrong. Here is a real difficulty, but it seems to me
not insuperable. It will not do for us to say to you, in justification
of non-performance, "the stipulation is immoral, and therefore we
cannot execute it;" for you deny the immorality, and we cannot assume
to judge for you.

On the other hand, you ought not to exact from us the literal
performance of the stipulation when you know that we cannot perform it
without conscious culpability. A true solution of the difficulty seems
to be attainable by regarding it as a simple case where a contract,
from changed circumstances, cannot be fulfilled exactly as made. A
court of equity in such a case decrees execution as near as may be. It
requires the party who cannot perform to make compensation for
non-performance. Why cannot the same principle be applied to the
rendition of fugitives from service? We cannot surrender--but we can
compensate. Why not, then, avoid all difficulties on all sides, and
show respectively good