" that is, in words meaning
just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other
meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to
show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in
the Constitution, nor the word "property" even, in any connection with
language alluding to the things slave or slavery; and that wherever in
that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person"; and
wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it
is spoken of as "service or labor which may be due," as a debt payable
in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of
speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution
the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this, is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their notice,
is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken
statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers; who framed
the Government under which we live",--the men who made the
Constitution--decided this same constitutional question in our favor,
long ago; decided it without division among themselves, when making the
decision, without division among themselves about the meaning of it after
it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon
any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to
break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is shall be
at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?
But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that
supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say,
the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A
highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "stand
and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you'll be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me-my money was my own, and I had
a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my
own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of
destruction to the Union, to extort my v