there, and had no standing there. The court go on and argue themselves into the belief that either a man may be so monstrously low, or the court itself so monstrously high, that he cannot sue in its presence for his rights. I believe this is the first nation on God's earth that ever placed any mortal man, or anybody bearing the human form, on so low a level, or any court on so high a one as that. But let this go. Dred Scott brought his suit. The plea in abatement was demurred to; the question arose upon that demurrer, and a majority of the court decided that Dred Scott, being a negro, a descendant of an African, and his ancestors having been slaves, he could not maintain a suit in that court, because he was not a citizen under the law. Now, sir, I ask every lawyer here, was not there an end of the case? In the name of Heaven, Judge Taney, what did you retain it for any longer? You said Dred Scott could not sue; he could not obtain his liberty; he was out of court; and what further had you to do with all the questions that you say were involved in that suit? Upon every principle of adjudication, you ought not to have gone further. No court has ever held more solemnly than the Federal courts that they will not go on to decide any more than is before the court; and every lawyer knows that if they do, all they say more is mere talk, and though said by judges in a court house, has just as much operation and effect as if it had been said by a horse-dealer in a barroom, and no more. And yet we are told that we must follow the dicta of these packed judges-for they were packed, a majority of them interested too, in the very question to be decided. I do not want to go back to see what Jefferson and others said about it. I know the nature of man. know, as they know, that to arm this judiciary with the power, not only to decide questions between private individuals, but to affect the legislation of the nation, to affect the action of your President, to affect the coördinate branches of this Government, is a fatal heresy, that, if persisted in by a majority of the people, cannot result in any other than an utter consolidated despotism; and I am amazed that men who have had their eyes open, and who have held to other doctrines in better days, should, for any temporary purpose, heave overboard, and bury in the deep sea, the sheet-anchor of the liberties of the nation.-Hon. Benjamin Wade, 1860.

I

RESPONSE TO THREATS.

MR. Chairman, it has been declared here, by some of the ablest speakers from the South, that the success of our party -which seeks to do nothing that may not be clearly done within the protection and under the authority of the Constitution which they profess to admire and venerate-will compel them to withdraw from this Union of sovereign States. I have no desire to discuss a statement which always when made assumes the attitude of a threat. But do you not see, gentlemen, that to make such a threat is to render certain of success, beyond the peradventure of defeat, the party you threaten? The Republican party proposes to ascertain whether the Union is not strong enough to sustain an administration which will rest upon the theory of our Constitution, and upon the foundation which the fathers laid.

You may shatter, if you can, this fair fabric of our freedom; you may make desolate the temple, and strike down the statue; but the terrible responsibility shall rest upon yourselves.

In the earlier ages of the world, within one of the old temples of Memnon, a colossal statue had been erected; and it was said that daily, in the morning, as the rays of the sun fell upon the image, sounds of sweet music went from it to inspirit and to encourage the votaries at the shrine. But an Egyptian king caused the statue to be shattered and the music to be hushed, that he might find whence the strains proceeded, and whether the priests within the temple had not deceived the people. Sir, upon this land our fathers reared their temple, and within it the colossal statue of liberty has stood. Not in the morning alone, but at high noon and at set of sun, day after day, sounds of heavenly harmony have gone from it, calling upon the oppressed and down-trodden to come and to be free. Rude hands have been laid upon that temple; hard southern blows have fallen upon the statue; but when, if ever, the power shall come that will shatter the edifice and lay the colossal image low, in order that the mystery may be revealed, it will be found, I believe, in the providence of God, that other hands will rebuild and reconsecrate them both; but no Washington, nor Jefferson, nor Madison, nor Hamilton, nor such like artificers, will be commissioned for the work, until that institution, which dishonors man and debases labor and steals from the stooping brow the sweat which should earn his bread, shall be forever overthrown.

Hon. Thomas D. Eliot, 1860.

THE DEMANDS OF THE PRO-SLAVERY PARTY.

THE question recurs: what will satisfy the pro-slavery party? Simply this; we must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been trying so to convince them, from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches, we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly-done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated; we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free State Constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. Holding as they do that slavery is morally right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it as a legal right and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, 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 would readily grant if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Can we cast our votes with their view, 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 so 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 the right and the wrong, vain as the search for one who should be neither a living nor a dead man-contrivances such as a policy of "don't care” on a question about which all true men do care-Union appeals, beseeching true Union men to yield to disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling not the sinners but the righteous to repentance-invocations of Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be frightened from our duty by false accusations, nor by menaces of destruction to the government or 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.

Hon. Abraham Lincoln, 1860.

A PATENT GOSPEL.

MR. CHAIRMAN, the justification of slavery is sometimes placed on the ground of the inferiority of the enslaved race. Now, sir, we may concede, as a matter of fact, that it is inferior; but does it follow, therefore, that it is right to enslave a man, simply because he is inferior? This, to me, is a most abhorrent doctrine. It would place the weak everywhere at the mercy of the strong; it would place the poor at the mercy of the rich; it would place those that are deficient in intellect at the mercy of those that are gifted in mental endowment. The principle of enslaving human beings because they are inferior is this: If a man is a cripple, trip him up; if he is old and weak, and bowed with the weight of years, strike him, for he cannot strike back; if idiotic, take advantage of him; and if a child, deceive him. This, sir, is the doctrine of devils; and there is no place in the universe, outside of hell, where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace. If the strong of the earth are to enslave the weak, angels would be justified in enslaving men, because they are superior; and archangels in turn would be justified in subjugating those who are inferior in intellect and position; and the principle carried out would transform Jehovah into an infinite Juggernaut, rolling the

huge wheels of his omnipotence amid the crushed and mangled bodies of human beings, on the plea that he was infinitely superior and that they were an inferior race.

Another ground upon which it is attempted to justify slaveholding, is, that it is a mode of imparting Christianity and civilization to the slaves. But the truth is, that the practice of slaveholding has a powerful tendency to drag communities back to barbarism. It is actually having that effect upon the slave States of this Union; and were it not for the Christian women that have gone from free States and intermarried in the slave States; and were it not for those noble women in the slave States that preserve womenly purity and Christianity, in spite of the unhappy influences of slaveholding, the slave States to-day would be as far back in barbarism as the State of Mexico.

Sir, if you step into the Smithsonian Institute, or into the Patent Office, you will find implements of husbandry imported from Japan and China, showing just about the same development in civilization as the implements that you find on the plantations. Now, sir, the truth is, that the practice of slaveholding drags slaveholding communities further below the plane of the Christian civilization of the age, than the civilization which the slave receives elevates him above the plane of heathenism by being held in these Christian communities. Sir, how do they impart civilization and Christianity?

a strange mode of Christianizing a race to turn them over into brutism without any legal marriage. Among the four million slaves in this country, there is not a single husband or wife. There is not legally a single father or child. There is not a single home or hearthstone among these four millions. And you propose to civilize and Christianize a people without giving them homes, without allowing them the conjugal and parental relations, and without having those relations sanctioned and protected by law.

Mr. Chairman, no community can make one step of progress in civilizing a race till you give them homes; till you protect the sanctity of the home, as we hold it should be protected in regard to those Mormons on the plains of Utah.

How are you going to Christianize men whom you turn out to herd together like the buffaloes that roam upon the Western prairies? Christianizing them, sir? Christianizing them by a new process! The slave States have a right to an exclusive patent for it.-Hon. Owen Lovejoy, 1860.