liberate the millions in chains by violence. I do not say that we should incite them to revolt against their tyrants. Nor am I prepared to affirm either the right or the duty of the National Government forthwith to sever the relation of master and slave; for the overthrow of so monstrous a system, interwoven with the whole frame-work of society in the South for so many generations, however ardently we may wish it, or fervently pray for it, can only be accomplished peaceably by eradicating the sentiment of tyranny from the white man's heart, whilst we smite the chain from the black man's limbs. The abolition of slavery must be at first virtual, and at last actual. The act of abolition must be a continuous act. It must become an educational process, before it can be realized in fact through any act of the government. It will take place in some States sooner than in others, owing to local and other causes; and our reliance must be the resistless pressure of a growing antislavery opinion, without which acts of Congress and judicial decrees are worthless. Whilst striving by the help of such an opinion to brand slavery as a political outlaw wherever found beyond the States which it scourges, and thus to stamp it with national reprobation as did our fathers, I would inspire in the people of the free States a love of liberty so dominant and all-swaying, and a hatred of slavery so intense and unquenchable, that our brethren in the South would desert it as men desert a sinking ship. And to this end, as the Constitution has long been moulded by the plastic hand of slavery into just such shape as would further its own behests, so in our warfare against it I would invoke, just as fast as practicable, the awakening humanity of the people in the use of all the constitutional authority of the Federal Government, and of the free States, interpreted strictly against slavery as an exceptional interest, a loathsome and wicked anomaly, but liberally in favor of freedom as the source of our national life and the grand purpose of our National Union. "The system of the General Government," says Jefferson, "is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. When first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all." In the name of the father of American Democracy I plead this principle, not simply in behalf of State Rights against federal usurpation, but in behalf of freedom against slavery. We must not, we dare not slumber, whilst this sleepless despotism is forging our chains in the name of the Constitution. To accept a defensive position now is death. To meditate it is cowardice. Our attitude, if really defensive, must be aggressive. In the language of Jefferson, "we must join in the

scramble or get nothing," for " he who lies still loses all." We must make of the Constitution our citadel, our high tower. We must wrest from the enemy every "doubtful ground," and make it a bulwark of freedom. In view of the priceless value of liberty, and of the subtle, unscrupulous, and relentless tyranny with which we are forced to wrestle, we must, in self-defense, seize every possible vantage-ground afforded by the Constitution, and resolutely maintain it as necessary to our political salvation.

And cannot all anti-slavery men who believe in the use of the ballot, notwithstanding their differences, unite in this struggle? The Philadelphia Platform, unlike those adopted at Buffalo and Pittsburg, does not avow the doctrine of non-interference by the General Government with slavery in the States. It does not avow the opposite doctrine. It lays down a few clear, comprehensive principles, and proposes a few practical measures, made absolutely necessary by the state of the country. Its framers did not foresee exactly the course of future events, and therefore could not propose any precise policy in advance. They declared themselves in favor of "the union of the States and the rights of the States," but they gave the people no definitions, whilst there was manifestly something dearer in their eyes than either union or State Rights. They expressed their reverence for the policy of our fathers, and announced principles that in their working must put an end to slavery, but they dealt not in specifics as to the mode. They did not anticipate the Dred Scott decision, making slavery no longer a peculiar but a National institution, nor say that the time might not come when the only hope of destroying it, or even checking its ravages, would be in smiting it in the States with the weapons so earnestly commended to our use by the Liberty Party. They knew that usurpation, long continued, breeds revolt in a people determined to be free, and that revolt knows no law but necessity for its action. Planting themselves upon the Declaration of Independence as the basis of their policy, they did not say precisely how the enemies of slavery should make their approaches or prosecute their assaults, whether chiefly through federal agencies, or the saving grace of State Rights so gloriously illustrated by the Republican State of Wisconsin; but they virtually proclaimed war against the institution, and the determination to rescue the nation from its power. They did not, in my judgment, hedge up the way of any earnest foe of slavery who desires to oppose it by political action. I accept it, because I think I can stand on it and preach from it the whole anti-slavery gospel. I accept it, because it commits me to nothing

that I do not believe. I accept it, because it accepts the Declaration of Independence and the policy of our fathers. I accept it, because it deals in no negatives, does not apologize to the slaveholder, nor cravenly remind him of any constitutional guarantees in favor of his system. I accept it, because, as I understand it, the ultimate banishment of American slavery is deemed by it necessary to the well-being if not the life of the nation, and must be steadily prosecuted till it shall be accomplished. Let us speak this plainly in the ear of our brethren in the South. Let us tell them that although we recognize slavery as peculiarly an institution of the States, we yet regard it as the serious concern of every man in the nation; that it frustrates the design of our fathers "to form a more perfect union;" makes it impossible "to establish justice," or "to secure domestic tranquillity; " weakens "the common defense" by inviting foreign attack; opposes "the general welfare" by its merciless aristocracy in human flesh; denies "the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," and gives us the curses of slavery instead; lays waste the fairest and most fertile half of the Republic, staying its progress in population, wealth, power, knowledge, civilization, the arts, and religion, thus weighing down the whole nation, and costing us far more than the market price of all the millions in bonds; makes the establishment of free schools and a general system of education impossible; brands labor as dishonorable and degrading; fills the ranks of infidelity, and brings religion itself into scorn, by bribing its professors to espouse its revolting iniquity; denounces the Declaration of Independence as a self-evident lie, and deals with our fathers as men who affirmed its self-evident truths with a mental reservation, whilst they hypocritically appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions; and pleads the cause of despotism abroad whilst spreading licentiousness, concubinage, and crime where it rules. Let it be distinctly understood that the slavery of the Southern States is thus necessarily our slavery; that the colossal power it now wields is the work, in part, of our hands; that in so far as we made it the duty of unmaking it lies at our own doors; and that we will not shirk this duty by admitting any impossible constitutional barrier in our way, or impiously pleading that God has permitted a remediless evil. Instead of deprecating radical measures, disavowing "abolitionism," and fulsomely parading our devotion to the Union, let us declare ourselves the unqualified foes of slavery in principle, and make good the declaration by the same boldness of action and uncalculating directness of policy which make the politicians of the

South, in this respect, our fit example. Let us tell them in pointblank words that liberty is dearer to us than the Union; that we value the Union simply as the servant of liberty; and that we can imagine no earthly perils or sacrifices so great that we will not face them, rather than buy our peace through the perpetual enslavement of four millions of people and their descendants. If we assure them that we love the Union, let us not fail to inform them that we mean the Union contemplated by our fathers, with the chains of the slave falling from his limbs as the harbinger of "liberty throughout all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof," and that only by restoring their policy, and reanimating the people with the spirit of 1776, can these States be permanently held together. With equal frankness let us tell them that we do not love the Union so dearly prized by modern Democracy, with James Buchanan as its king, and Chief Justice Taney as its anointed high-priest; and that at whatever cost we will resist its atrocious conspiracy to establish, on the ruins of the Republic, the hugest and most desolating slave empire that ever confronted heaven since the creation of man. Let us have the Christian manhood to say with Paul, that we are "persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the "life-giving truths of the Declaration of Independence, in the utmost fullness of their meaning, and the perfect length and breadth of their saving power.

THE CAUSE AND CURE OF OUR NATIONAL

TROUBLES.

IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, JANUARY 14, 1862.

[The congressional speech, during the late war, was a power in the country. It was quite as much the educator as the reflex of the public mind. Very large editions of this speech were published; and whoever will recall the state of the country at the time, the extent to which "Border State" policy and Conservatism swayed the administration, and the Radicalism it finally accepted as a necessity, will be able to estimate the value and timeliness of its utterances.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, - Every thinking man naturally surveys the field of politics from his own peculiar stand-point, and reaches his conclusions by the help of his own methods of thought. Considerable diversities of judgment are therefore inevitable, even among the disciples of the same faith, while uniformity of opinion, however desirable in matters essential, is of far less consequence than perfect freedom of thought. The discovery and practical acceptance of the truth should be our grand aim; and all harmony among men, secured by the sacrifice of this aim, is at once the sure prophecy and natural parent of discord. Since free thought and its free utterance must be the condition precedent of all progress, it may be safe to affirm that he is a better soldier in the army of reform who conscientiously battles even for false principles, than he who meanly accommodates himself to that which has numbers on its side, through a cowardly fear of dissent and division.

I propose, sir, somewhat in the spirit of these observations, to speak of the war in which our country is involved. In the name of a constituency of freemen, I shall say what I believe ought to be said, in the present stage of our national troubles; and I shall do so without favor or fear. This is a war of ideas, not less than of armies, and no servant of the Republic should march with muffled drums against the foe. So far as my own personal or political fortunes are concerned, I shall take no thought for the morrow. This is no time for any public man to confer with flesh and blood. The fabric of free government, reared by our fathers, is in flames. In the opinion of many, the great Model Republic of the world is