The fugitive-slave
acts that disfigured our statute-book were blotted out, and
fugitive-slave-stealer acts filled their vacant places. The seal of
freedom, unconditional, perpetual, and immediate, was set upon the broad
outlying lands of the republic, and from the present Congress we
confidently await the crowning act which shall make slavery forever
impossible, and liberty the one supreme, universal, unchangeable law in
every part of our domains.

What we have done is an earnest of what we mean to do. After nearly four
years of war, and war on such a scale as the world has never before
seen, the people have once more, and in terms too emphatic to be
misunderstood, proclaimed their undying purpose. With a unanimity rarely
equalled, a people that had fought eight years against a tax of
threepence on the pound, and that was rapidly advancing to the front
rank of nations through the victories of peace,--a people jealous of its
liberties and proud of its prosperity, has reelected to the chief
magistracy a man under whose administration burdensome taxes have been
levied, immense armies marshalled, imperative drafts ordered, and
fearful sufferings endured. They have done this because, in spite of
possible mistakes and short-comings, they have seen his grasp ever
tightening around the throat of Slavery, his weapons ever seeking the
vital point of the Rebellion. They have beheld him standing always at
his post, calm in the midst of peril, hopeful when all was dark, patient
under every obloquy, courteous to his bitterest foes, conciliatory where
conciliation was possible, inflexible where to yield was dishonor. Never
have the passions of civil war betrayed him into cruelty or hurried him
into revenge; nor has any hope of personal benefit or any fear of
personal detriment stayed him when occasion beckoned. If he has erred,
it has been on the side of leniency. If he has hesitated, it has been to
assure himself of the right. Where there was censure, he claimed it for
himself; where there was praise, he has lavished it on his subordinates.
The strong he has braved, and the weak sheltered. He has rejected the
counsels of his friends when they were inspired by partisanship, and
adopted the suggestions of opponents when they were founded on wisdom.
His ear has always been open to the people's voice, yet he has never
suffered himself to be blindly driven by the storm of popular fury. He
has consulted public opinion, as the public serva