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framed the government under which we live " the men who made the Constitution decided this same constitutional question in our favor long ago: decided it without division among themselves when making the decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this government unless such a court decision as yours is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you I will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me my moneywas my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace and in harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, What will satisfy them? 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 so trying 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 to convince them 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. Senator 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.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone; do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone,- have never disturbed them, so that, after all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not as yet in terms demanded the overthrow of our free-State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of slavery with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. 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 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 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 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 the right and the 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.

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Lincoln's address at the Cooper Institute, New York, on the evening of February 27, 1860, was, perhaps, the most important single speech which he made before his presidency and the most systematic and powerful statement which he ever made of the case against slavery and its defenders. The occasion itself was noteworthy. Lincoln's debate with Douglas in 1858 had given him a national reputation, and the anti-slavery men of the East were curious and anxious to see and hear him. Nicolay and Hay, in their Life of Lincoln, devote an entire chapter (vol. ii., chap. xii.) to this great speech and the circumstances of its delivery. "Since the days of Clay and Webster," said the Tribune the next morning, "no man has spoken to a larger assemblage of the intellect and mental culture of our city." William Cullen Bryant presided, and the leading Republicans of New York sat upon the platform. "The representative men of New York," wrote the biographers, were naturally eager to see and hear one who, by whatever force of eloquence or argument, had attracted so large a share of the public attention. We may also fairly infer that, on his part, Lincoln was no less curious to test the effect of his words on an audience more learned and critical than those collected in the open-air meetings of his Western campaigns. This mutual interest was an evident advantage to both: it secured a close attention from the house and insured deliberation and emphasis by the speaker, enabling him to develop his argument with perfect precision and unity, reaching, perhaps, the happiest general effect ever attained in any one of his long addresses. ... If any part of the audience came with the expectation of hearing the rhetorical fireworks of a Western stump-speaker of the half-horse, half-alligator' variety, they met novelty of an unlooked-for kind.' In Lincoln's entire address he neither introduced an anecdote nor essayed a witticism; and the first half of it does not contain even an illustrative figure or a poetical fancy. It was the quiet, searching exposition of the historian and the terse, compact reasoning of the statesman about an abstract principle of legislation, in language well-nigh as restrained and colorless as he would have employed in arguing a case before a court. Yet such was the apt choice of words, the easy precision of sentences, the simple strength of propositions, the fairness of every point he assumed, and the force of every conclusion he drew, that his listeners followed him with the interest and delight a child feels in its easy mastery of a plain sum in arithmetic."

The next morning the four leading New York newspapers printed the address in full. "Mr. Lincoln is one of nature's orators," said the Tribune, "using his rare powers solely to elucidate and convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify as well. We present herewith a very full and accurate report of this speech; yet the tones, the gestures, the kindling eye, and the mirth-provoking look defy the reporter's skill. The vast assemblage frequently rang with cheers and shouts of applause, which were prolonged and intensified at the close. No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience." A pamphlet reprint was at once announced by the Tribune, and later a more careful edition was prepared and circulated.

From New York Lincoln went to speak at several places in New England, everywhere making a deep impression; and this Eastern visit did much to bring him into prominence as a candidate for the presidency. See Herndon's Life of Lincoln for an account of the great care which he gave to the preparation of the Cooper Institute speech, and its important influ ence on his own fortunes.

Lincoln's Complete Works, comprising his speeches, letters, state papers, and miscella neous writings, edited by Nicolay and Hay, are published in two volumes. There have already been published in the series of Old South Leaflets Lincoln's Inaugurals (No. 11) and the First Lincoln and Douglas Debate (No. 85).

PUBLISHED BY

THE DIRECTORS OF THE OLD SOUTH WORK,

Old South Meeting-house, Boston, Mass.

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An Historical Account of the Application of Steam for the Propelling of Boats: a letter from Chancellor Livingston to the editors of the "American Medical and Philosophical Register," published in that journal in January, 1812 (vol. ii. p. 256).

It is much to be wished that a regular account of the introduction of useful arts had been transmitted by the historical writers of every age and country, not merely that justice might be done to the genius and enterprise of the inventors, and the nation by whom they were fostered, but that the statesman and philosopher might mark the influence of each upon the wealth, morals, and characters of mankind. Every one sees and acknowledges the changes that have been wrought by the improvements in agriculture and navigation, but seldom reflects on the extent to which apparently small discoveries have influenced not only the prosperity of the nation to which the invention owes its birth, but those with which it is remotely connected.. When Arkwright invented his cotton-mills, the man would have been laughed at that ventured to predict that not only Great Britain would be many millions gainer annually by it, but that in consequence of it the waste lands of the Carolinas and Georgia would attain an incalculable value, and their planters vie in wealth with the nabobs of the East. A new art has sprung up among us, which promises to be attended with such important consequences that I doubt not, sirs, you will with pleasure make your useful work record its introduction; that when in future years it becomes common, the names

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