ect, calls the immortal Declaration "a self-evident lie;"
while at the birth-place of freedom--in the shadow of Bunker Hill and of
the "cradle of liberty," at the home of the Adamses and Warren and
Otis--Choate, from our side of the house, dares to fritter away the
birthday promise of liberty by proclaiming the Declaration to be "a
string of glittering generalities;" and the Southern Whigs, working hand
in hand with pro-slavery Democrats, are making Choate's theories
practical. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, mindful of the moral element
in slavery, solemnly declared that he "trembled for his country when he
remembered that God is just;" while Judge Douglas, with an insignificant
wave of the hand, "don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted
down." Now, if slavery is right, or even negative, he has a right to
treat it in this trifling manner. But if it is a moral and political
wrong, as all Christendom considers it to be, how can he answer to God
for this attempt to spread and fortify it? [Applause.]
But no man, and Judge Douglas no more than any other, can maintain a
negative, or merely neutral, position on this question; and,
accordingly, he avows that the Union was made _by_ white men and _for_
white men and their descendants. As matter of fact, the first branch of
the proposition is historically true; the government was made by white
men, and they were and are the superior race. This I admit. But the
corner-stone of the government, so to speak, was the declaration that
"_all_ men are created equal," and all entitled to "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." [Applause.]
And not only so, but the framers of the Constitution were particular to
keep out of that instrument the word "slave," the reason being that
slavery would ultimately come to an end, and they did not wish to have
any reminder that in this free country human beings were ever
prostituted to slavery. [Applause.] Nor is it any argument that we are
superior and the negro inferior--that he has but one talent while we
have ten. Let the negro possess the little he has in independence; if he
has but one talent, he should be permitted to keep the little he has.
[Applause.] But slavery will endure no test of reason or logic; and yet
its advocates, like Douglas, use a sort of bastard logic, or noisy
assumption, it might better be termed, like the above, in order to
prepare the mind for the gradual, but none the less certain,
encroachments of the Mol
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