omething new.

True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be.
You have considerable variety of new propositions and plans, but you are
unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some
of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a congressional
slave code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the
Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining
slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat
pur-rinciple" that if one man would enslave another, no third man should
object--fantastically called "popular sovereignty." But never a man among
you in favor of prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according
to the practice of our fathers who framed the Government under which
we live. Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an
advocate in the century within which our Government originated. And yet
you draw yourselves up and say, "We are eminently conservative."

It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great confederacy shall
be at peace, and in harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do our
part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through
passion and ill-temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much
as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them
if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all
they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with
us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered
to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against
us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections
are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, in the future, if we have nothing
to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so
know because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and
insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the
charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: we must not only
let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them
alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so
trying to convince them, from the very beginning of our organization, but
with no success. In all our platforms and speeches, we