yourselves, and your charge
of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable
foundations.

Again: You say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it
formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny
that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy
of the fathers. We resisted and still resist your innovation; and thence
comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question
reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has
been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace
of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it;
and what is your proof'? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his
Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that
matter you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do
not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for
persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not
know to be true is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged
the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We
know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held
to and made by our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred,
some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident
glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get
an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your
expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that,
as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much
inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines
and declarations are accompanied with a continued protest against any
interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves.
Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common
with "ou