le, and then the
revolution which we will accomplish will be none the less radical from
being the result of pacific measures. The battle of freedom is to be
fought out on principle. Slavery is a violation of eternal right. We
have temporized with it from the necessities of our condition; but as
sure as God reigns and school children read, that foul lie can never be
consecrated into God's hallowed truth!

One great trouble in the matter is that slavery is an insidious and
crafty power, and gains equally by open violence of the brutal as well
as by sly management of the peaceful. Once let slavery get planted in a
locality, by ever so weak or doubtful a title, and in ever so small
numbers, and it is like the Canada thistle, you can't root it out. You
yourself may detest slavery; but your neighbor has five or six slaves,
and he is an excellent neighbor, or your son has married his daughter,
and they beg you to help save their property, and you vote against your
interest and principles to accommodate a neighbor, hoping that your vote
will be on the losing side. And others do the same; and in those ways
slavery gets a sure foothold. And when that is done the whole mighty
Union--the force of the Nation--is committed to its support.

It is a very strange thing, and not solvable by any moral law that I
know of, that if a man loses his horses the whole country will turn out
to help hang the thief; but if a man a shade or two darker than I am is
himself stolen the same crowd will hang one who aids in restoring him to
liberty. Such are the inconsistencies of slavery, where a horse is more
sacred than a man; and the essence of squatter or popular sovereignty--I
don't care how you call it--is that if one man chooses to make a slave
of another no third man shall be allowed to object. And if you can do
this in free Kansas, and it is allowed to stand, the next thing you will
see is shiploads of negroes from Africa at the wharf at Charleston; for
one thing is as truly lawful as the other; and these are the notions we
have got to stamp out, else they will stamp us out. But we cannot be
free men if this is, by our national choice, to be a land of slavery.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and,
under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

The conclusion of all this is that we must restore the Missouri
Compromise. We must highly resolve that Kansas must be free! We must
reinstate the birthday promise