have constantly
protested our purpose to let them alone; but this had no tendency to
convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they
have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join
them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly--done in
acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated--we must place
ourselves avowedly with them. Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted
and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether
made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest
and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down
our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected of
all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe
that all their troubles proceed from us. So long as we call slavery wrong,
whenever a slave runs away they will overlook the obvious fact that he ran
away because he was oppressed, and declare he was stolen off. Whenever
a master cuts his slaves with a lash, and they cry out under it, he will
overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they are hurt,
and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally abolitionist.

I am quite aware that 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 that 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. 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