you
say it is wrong--but your leader never does, and you quarrel with anybody
who says it is wrong. Although you pretend to say so yourself, you can
find no fit place to deal with it as a wrong. You must not say anything
about it in the free States, because it is not here. You must not say
anything about it in the slave States, because it is there. You must not
say anything about it in the pulpit, because that is religion, and has
nothing to do with it. You must not say anything about it in politics,
because that will disturb the security of "my place." There is no place to
talk about it as being a wrong, although you say yourself it is a wrong.
But, finally, you will screw yourself up to the belief that if the people
of the slave States should adopt a system of gradual emancipation on the
slavery question, you would be in favor of it. You would be in favor of
it. You say that is getting it in the right place, and you would be glad
to see it succeed. But you are deceiving yourself. You all know that Frank
Blair and Gratz Brown, down there in St. Louis, undertook to introduce
that system in Missouri. They fought as valiantly as they could for the
system of gradual emancipation which you pretend you would be glad to see
succeed. Now, I will bring you to the test. After a hard fight they were
beaten, and when the news came over here, you threw up your hats and
hurrahed for Democracy. More than that, take all the argument made in
favor of the system you have proposed, and it carefully excludes the idea
that there is anything wrong in the institution of slavery. The arguments
to sustain that policy carefully exclude it. Even here to-day you heard
Judge Douglas quarrel with me because I uttered a wish that it might
sometime come to an end. Although Henry Clay could say he wished every
slave in the United States was in the country of his ancestors, I am
denounced by those pretending to respect Henry Clay for uttering a
wish that it might sometime, in some peaceful way, come to an end. The
Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not tolerate the
merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least degree of wrong about
it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas's arguments. He says he "don't care
whether it is voted up or voted down" in the Territories. I do not care
myself, in dealing with that expression, whether it is intended to be
expressive of his individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the
national policy he desi