want of moral courage among the people and an indisposition to entertain and examine the subject. It is not, however, the fault of the people. This lack of moral courage is chiefly the fault of the political representatives of the people. In every district in the United States, and for every seat in congress, the people might select men apparently as brave, as truthful, as fearless and as firm as Owen Lovejoy. Yet, you may fill the halls of congress with men from all the free states who seem to be as reliable as Owen Lovejoy; but on the clangor of the slavery bugle in the hall they begin to waver and fail. They retire. They suffer themselves to be demoralized; and they return to demoralize the people. Slavery never hesitates to raise the clangor of the trumpets to terrify the timid.

Slavery has, too, another argument for the timid; it is power. The concentration of slavery gives it a fearful political power. You know how long it has been the controlling power in the executive department of the government. Slavery uses that power, as might be expected-to punish those who oppose it, to reward those who serve it. All representatives are naturally ambitious; all representatatives like fame; if they do not like pecuniary rewards, they like the distinctions of place. They like to be popular. When the people are demoralized, he who is constant becomes offensive and obnoxious; he loses position and the party chooses some other representative who will be less obnoxious. These demoralized representatives inculcate among the people pernicious lessons and sustain themselves by adopting compromises. They compromise so far, if possible, as to save place and a show of principle; they save themselves first, and let freedom take her chances.

A community thus demoralized by its representatives is fearful of considering the subject of slavery at all. It does not like to look back upon its record; it does not dare to look forward to see what are to be the consequences of errors. It desires peace and quiet. We shall see in a moment what fearful sacrifices have been made under the influence of this demoralization by the power of the government.

The first act of demoralization was to surrender the territory of Arkansas and the territory of Missouri to slavery, and also by im· plication all the rest of the territory of Louisiana acquired by purchase from France, that lay south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude. Take up your maps when you go home,

and observe what a broad belt of country, lying south of that line. was surrendered, with the states of Missouri and Arkansas, to slavery. Next, under the influence of this same demoralization, the whole of the peninsula of Florida acquired from Spain, was surrendered to slavery, rendering it practically useless for all the national purposes for which it was acquired, making it a burden instead of a blessing, a danger instead of a national safe-guard in the gulf of Mexico.

Then Texas was surrendered to slavery and brought in with the gratuitous agreement that four slave states should be made out of that territory. Next, in 1850, Utah and New Mexico were abandoned to slavery. After these events, following in quick succession, came the abrogation, in the year 1854, of the restriction contained in the Missouri compromise, by which it had been stipulated that all north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, excepting the state of Missouri, should be dedicated to freedom. That was abandoned to slavery to take it if she could get it; and the administration of the government of the United States, with scarcely a protest from the people, went on to favor its occupation by slavery. As a legitimate consequence came the refusal, on the part of the national government-for it was a practical refusal to admit Kansas into the Union because she would not accept slavery.

After these measures, what right had the nation to be surprised when the president and the supreme court at last pronounced that which in no previous year either of them would have dared to assert —that this constitution of ours is not a constitution of liberty, but that it is a constitution of human bondage; that slavery is the normal condition of the American people on each acre of the domain of the United States not organized into states-that is to say, that wherever this banner of ours, this star spangled banner, whose glories we celebrate so highly-wherever that banner floats over a national ship of a national territory, there is a land, not of freedom, but of slavery!

Thus it has happened, that the nation up to 1854 surrendered all the unoccupied portions of this continent to slavery, and thereby practically excluded freemen-because experience shows that when you have made a slave territory, freedom avoids it; just as much as when you make a free state, like Kansas, slavery disappears

I have said that the country was demoralized by its political representatives; but these political representatives have their agents. All men necessarily fall into some political party, and into some political parties and religious sects. To gain office in a political party and share its favors, when the nation was demoralized it becarne necessary that the candidate should be tolerant of slavery. So religious sects were ambitious to extend their ecclesiastical sway. The consequence was that year by year slavery had always a party; slavery had religious sect upon religious sect; church after church, But alas! until the dawn of that memorable year 1854 freedom had no party and no religious sect throughout this whole country.

A people who are demoralized are every day more easily operated upon; they are easily kept persistently in the same erroneous habit which has demoralized them. The first practice for continuing to extend the power of slavery upon this continent, is that of alarm. Fears of all kinds are awakened in the public mind. The chief of them is the fear of turbulence, of disorder, of civil commotions, and of civil war. The slaveholders in the slave states very justly, and truthfully, and rightfully assume that slaves are the natural enemies of their masters; and, of course, that slaves are insidious enemies of the state which holds them, or requires them to be held in bondage; that insidious enemies are dangerous; and, therefore, in every slave state that has ever been founded in this country, a policy is established which suppresses freedom of speech and freedom of debate, so far as liberty needs advocates, while it extends the largest license of debate to those who advocate the interests of slavery. This lack of freedom of speech and freedom of debate is followed in slave states by the necessary consequence, that there is no freedom of suffrage. So that at the last presidential election-the first when this question was ever distinctly brought before the American people-there were no slave states in which a ballot-box was open for freedom, or where free men might cast their ballots with safety. If one side only is allowed to vote in a state, it is very easy to see that that side must prevail.

If the condition of civil society is such that voting is not to be done safely, few men will vote. Every man who wishes, perhaps only consents, to express his choice is not expected to be a martyr. The world produces but few men willing to be martyrs, my friends, and I am sorry to say they have not been very numerous in our

day. Nearly one-half of the United States, then-that is, all the slave states-are at once to be arrayed on the side of slavery; and behold then they tell us that republicanism, which invites them to discuss the subject, is sectional, and they are national. But the slave states are not willing to rest content with this exclusion of all freedom of suffrage, of speech and of debate on the subject of slavery within their own jurisdiction, but they require the free states to accept the same system for themselves. They insist that although they may be able at home to keep down their slaves if we will be quict, yet they cannot tolerate a discussion of slavery in the free states, as we thereby encourage the slaves in the slave states to insurrection and sedition. Lest this argument might fail to reach and convince us, inasmuch as we, ourselves, are safe from any danger to result from insurrection in the slave states, they bring it home to our fears by declaring that their peace is of more importance than the interest of the nation; that they prefer slavery even to Union; that if we will not acquiesce in allowing them to maintain, fortify and extend slavery, then they will dissolve the Union, and we must go down together, or all suffer a common desolation. There are few men—and there ought to be few-who would be so intent on the subject of establishing freedom that they would consent to a subversion of the Union to produce it, because the Union is a positive benefit, nay, an absolute necessity, and to save the Union, men may naturally dare to delay. Most men, therefore, very cheerfully prefer to let the subject of slavery rest for some better time-for some better occasion-for some more fortunate circumstance, and they are content to keep the Union with slavery if it cannot be kept otherwise.

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You see how this has worked in demoralizing the American people. Less than thirty years ago the governor of Massachusetts -that first and freest of the states-actually recommended the legislature to pass laws which would delare that the meetings of citizens held to discuss the subject of slavery should be deemed seditious, and should be dissolved by the police! The governor of the state of New York, who preceded me in that high office, during his administration, and within your own lifetime and mine, actually made the same recommendation to the legislature of that state. What was recommended, but not carried out in those states by law, became a custom and practice; for, as you know, when the laws did not

dissolve the public assembly, there was a period of near twenty years in which no meeting of men opposed to the extension or aggrandizement of slavery, could be held without being dispersed by the mob, acting in harmony with the general opinion of the country. When the people of the free states were thus demoralized, what wonder is it, that for twelve years all debate in congress on the subject of slavery or the presentation of the subject by the people even in the form of a petition, was repressed and trampled under foot, and remained there until John Quincy Adams at last rallied a party around him, strong enough to restore freedom of debate in the house of representatives! What wonder is it that within the last year, in the very face of the organization, and the onward march of the republican party, the administration of the federal government has actually, by its officers, appointed in compliance with the dictation of the slaveholders, abandoned the federal mails to the inspection and surveillance of the magistrates of the slave states; so that they may abstract and commit to the flames every word that any statesman may speak, however eloquent, able, truthful or moderate, in the halls of congress against slavery and in favor of freedom.

This, fellow citizens, is your government. This is the condition in which you are placed, I am sorry to say-but I like to be truthful that I have no especial compliments for you of the state of Illinois, on this subject; for in this long catalogue of extraordinary concessions to slavery, under the influence of fear, I think the very first protest that ever came from the state of Illinois was as late as the year 1855; after all the most atrocious concessions had been made. You sent two senators to congress; you insisted upon extending the Wilmot proviso over the territory acquired from Spain. How did they do it? They voted for the Wilmot proviso under your instructions, and they voted against it without instructions, when it came to the practical test. I think you made no protest until Mr. Douglas demanded one single and last concession "for the purpose, as he said, "of excluding the whole subject from congress." That was the abrogation of the Missouri compromise, containing the restrictions for the protection of freedom in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Then you sent a noble representative to the senate in the person of Judge Trumbull.

I marveled when I rose here before you to-day and saw this immense assemblage, which no edifice, but only the streets, of Chica_o