s, 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
views, 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 duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us
be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are
so industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping for
some middle ground between right and wrong: vain as the search for a
man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a
policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care;
such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to
Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners,
but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington,
imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington
did.

"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations
against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the
government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right
makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty
as we understand it."

From New York Lincoln went to New Hampshire to visit his son Robert,
then at Phillips Exeter Academy. His coming was known only a short
time before he arrived and hurried arrangements were made for him to
speak at Concord, Manchester, Exeter and Dover. At Concord the address
was made in the afternoon on only a few hours' notice;