re compelled, by our peculiar
condition and other circumstances, to advocate it concretely, though
damning it in the raw. Henry Clay was a brilliant example of this
tendency; others of our purest statesmen are compelled to do so; and thus
slavery secures actual support from those who detest it at heart. Yet
Henry Clay perfected and forced through the compromise which secured to
slavery a great State as well as a political advantage. Not that he hated
slavery less, but that he loved the whole Union more. As long as slavery
profited by his great compromise, the hosts of proslavery could not
sufficiently cover him with praise; but now that this compromise stands in
their way--

"....they never mention him,
His name is never heard:
Their lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word."

They have slaughtered one of his most cherished measures, and his ghost
would arise to rebuke them. [Great applause.]

Now, let us harmonize, my friends, and appeal to the moderation and
patriotism of the people: to the sober second thought; to the awakened
public conscience. The repeal of the sacred Missouri Compromise has
installed the weapons of violence: the bludgeon, the incendiary torch, the
death-dealing rifle, the bristling cannon--the weapons of kingcraft, of
the inquisition, of ignorance, of barbarism, of oppression. We see its
fruits in the dying bed of the heroic Sumner; in the ruins of the "Free
State" hotel; in the smoking embers of the Herald of Freedom; in the
free-State Governor of Kansas chained to a stake on freedom's soil like a
horse-thief, for the crime of freedom. [Applause.] We see it in Christian
statesmen, and Christian newspapers, and Christian pulpits applauding the
cowardly act of a low bully, WHO CRAWLED UPON HIS VICTIM BEHIND HIS BACK
AND DEALT THE DEADLY BLOW. [Sensation and applause.] We note our political
demoralization in the catch-words that are coming into such common use;
on the one hand, "freedom-shriekers," and sometimes "freedom-screechers"
[Laughter], and, on the other hand, "border-ruffians," and that fully
deserved. And the significance of catch-words cannot pass unheeded, for
they constitute a sign of the times. Everything in this world "jibes" in
with everything else, and all the fruits of this Nebraska Bill are like
the poisoned source from which they come. I will not say that we may not
sooner or later be compelled to meet force by force; but the time has not
yet come, and