must come. But we can put
it off. By annihilating free speech; by forbidding the utterance
of a word in the pulpit and by the press, for the rights of man;
by hurling back into the jaws of oppression, the fugitive
gasping for his sacred liberty; by recognizing the right of one
man to buy and sell other men; by spreading the blasting curse
of despotism over the whole soil of the nation, you may allay
the brutal frenzy of a handful of southern slave-masters; you
may win back the cotton States to cease from threatening you
with secession, and to plant their feet upon your necks, and so
evade the trouble that now menaces us. Then you may live on the
few years that are left you, and perhaps--it is not certain--we
may be permitted to make a little more money and die in our
beds. But no, friends, I am mistaken. We cannot put the trouble
off. Or, we put it off in its present shape, only that it may
take another and more terrible form. If, to get rid of the
present alarm, we concede all that makes it worth while to
live--and nothing less will avail--perhaps those who can
deliberately make such a concession, will not feel the
degradation, but, stripped of all honor and manhood, they may
eat as heartily and sleep as soundly as ever. But the
degradation is not the less, but the greater, for our
unconsciousness of it. The trouble which we shall then bring
upon ourselves, is a trouble in comparison with which the loss
of all things but honor is a glorious gain, and a violent death
for right's sake on the scaffold, or by the hands of a mob,
peace and joy and victory.

Since we are thus placed, and there is no alternative for us of
the free States, but to meet the trouble that is upon us, or by
base concessions and compromises to bring upon ourselves a far
greater trouble, in the name of God, let us let all things go,
and cleave to the right. Prepared to confront the crisis like
men, let us with all possible calmness endeavor to take the
measure of the calamity that we dread. God knows I have no
desire to make light of it. But I affirm, that never since the
world began, was there a grander cause for which to speak, to
suffer and to die, than the cause of these free States, as
against that of the States now rushing upon Secession. The great
grievance of which they complain, is nothing