as not, Will any measure, or any
construction of the constitution, benefit the nation? but, Will it
weaken or strengthen slavery? All that was good, or great, or national,
was opposed by slavery--science, literature, the improvement of rivers
and harbors, homesteads for the West, defences and navies for the East.
American ocean steamers were sacrificed to foreign subsidies, and all
aid was refused to canals or railroads, including that to the Pacific,
although essential to the national unity. Slavery was attempted to be
forced on Kansas, first by violence and invasion, and then by fraud, and
the _forgery of a constitution_. Defeated in Kansas by the voice of the
people, slavery then took the question from the people, and promulgated
its last platform in 1860, by which all the Territories, nearly equal in
area to the States, were to be subjected forever _as Territories_ to
slavery, although opposed by the overwhelming voice of their people.
Slavery was nationalized, and freedom limited and circumscribed with the
evident intent soon to strangle it in all the States, and spread forced
labor over the continent, from the North to Cape Horn. Failing in the
election, slavery then assailed the vital principle of the republic, the
rule of the majority, and inaugurated the rebellion. Slavery kept
perjured traitors for months in the cabinet and the two Houses of
Congress, to aid in the overthrow of the Government. Then was formed a
constitution avowedly based on slavery, setting it up as an idol to be
worshipped, and upon whose barbaric altars is now being poured out the
sacrificial blood of freemen. But it will fail, for the curse of God and
man is upon it. And when the rebellion is crushed, and slavery
extinguished, we shall emerge from this contest strengthened, purified,
exalted. We shall march to the step and music of a redeemed humanity,
and a regenerated Union. We shall feel a new inspiration, and breathe an
air in which slavery and every form of oppression must perish.

Standing upon these friendly shores, in a land which abolished slavery
in the twelfth century, and surrounded by a people devoted to our
welfare, looking westward, along the path of empire, across the
Atlantic, to my own beloved country, these are my views of her glorious
destiny, when the twin hydras of slavery and rebellion are crushed
forever.

If our Irish adopted citizens could only hear, as I now do, the
condemnation of slavery and of this revolt, by