ase to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most
of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and
say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone have never
disturbed them--so that after all it is what we say which dissatisfies
them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of
our free State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of
slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it;
and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow
of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the
demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole
of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they
can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they
do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot
cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a
social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our conviction
that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and
constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and
swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality
its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its
extension--its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant if we
thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they
thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the
precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right,
as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as
being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we
cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral,
social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think
slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that
much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the
nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread
into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free
States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our