This is a Negro, a _Negro_! Besides,
he is PROPERTY!" And so America looked up, determined to ignore
the kneeling form. With pious blasphemy it said, "He is here
providentially; God in His own good time will dispose of him"; as
if God's hour for a good effect were not the earliest hour at
which courage and labor can bring it about, not the latest to which
indolence and infidelity can postpone it. Then it looked away across
oceans to other continents, and began again the chant, "Man is man;
natural right is sacred forever; and of politics the sole basis is
universal justice." Joyfully it sang for a while, but soon there began
to come up the clank of chains mingling with its chant, and the groans
of oppressed men and violated women, and prayers to Heaven for another
justice than this; and then the words of its chant grew bitter in the
mouth of our nation, and a sickness came in its heart, and an evil
blush mounted and stood on its brow; and at length a devil spoke in
its bosom and said, "The negro has no rights that a white man is bound
to respect"; and ere the words were fairly uttered, their meaning, as
was indeed inevitable, changed to this,--"A Northern 'mudsill' has no
rights that a Southern gentleman is bound to respect"; and soon guns
were heard booming about Sumter, and a new chapter in our history and
in the world's history began.

Our nation refused allegiance to its own principles, refused to pay
the lawful costs of its virtue and nobility; therefore it is sued in
the courts of destiny, and the case is this day on trial.

The case is plain, the logic clear. Natural right is sacred, or it is
not. If it is, the negro is lawfully free; if it is not, you may be
lawfully a slave. Just how all this stands in the Constitution of the
United States I do not presume to say. Other heads, whose business it
is, must attend to that. Every man to his vocation. I speak from the
stand-point of philosophy, not of politics; I attend to the logic of
history, the logic of destiny, according to which, of course, final
judgment will be rendered. It is not exactly to be supposed that
the statute of any nation makes grass green, or establishes the
relationship between cause and effect. The laws of the world are
considerably older than our calendar, and therefore date yet more
considerably beyond the year 1789. And by the laws of the world, by
the eternal relationship between cause and effect, it stands enacted
beyond repeal, and grav