with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.
And now, if they would listen, ā as I suppose they will not, ā I
would address a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them : You consider yourselves a reasonable and a
just people ; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason
and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you
speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles,
or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing
to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to " Black Republicans."
In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an un-
conditional condemnation of " Black RepubUeanism " as the first
thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to
be an indispensable prerequisite ā license, so to speak ā among you
to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now can you or not
be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just
to us, or even to yourselves"? Bring forward your charges and
specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or
justify.
You say we are sectional. "We deny it. That makes an issue;
and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and
what is it ? Why, that our party has no existence in your section
606 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
ā gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true ; but
(1(1.% it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without
change oi' principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should
ti,, r ,i,\ cease to he sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion;
and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will prob-
ably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get
votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to dis-
cover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the
issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your
making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that
fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we re-
pel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by
any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours ; but this brings
you to where you ought to have started ā to a discussion of the
right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice,
would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other
object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly
opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question
of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section ;
and so meet us as if it were possible that something may be said on
our side. Do you accept the challenge ? No ! Then you really be-
lieve that the principle which " our fathers who framed the govern-
ment under which we live " thought so clearly right as to adopt it,
and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact
so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a mo-
ment's consideration.
Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against
sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less
than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as
President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Con-
gress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Ter-
ritory, which act embodied the policy of the government upon that
subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and
about one year after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that he
considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same
connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy
of free States.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen
upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands
against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington him-
self speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who
sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it ? We respect that
warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with
his example pointing to the right application of it.
But you say you are conservative ā eminently conservative ā
while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort.
What is conservatism ? Is it not adherence to the old and tried,
against the new and untried ? We stick to, contend for, the identical
old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by " our
fathers who framed the government under which we live"; while
you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy,
ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 607
and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree
among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are
divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in
rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you
are for reviving the foreign slave-trade ; some for a congressional
slave code for the Territories ; some for Congress forbidding the
Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits: some for main-
taining slavery in the Territories through the judiciary ; some for
the " gur-reat pur-rinciple " that " if one man would enslave another,
no third man should object," fantastically called "popular sover-
eignty " ; but never a man among you is in favor of Federal prohibition
of slavery in Federal Territories, according to the practice of " our
fathers who framed the government under which we live." Not one
of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the
century within which our government originated. Consider, then,
whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge
of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable
foundations.
Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent
than it formerly was. "We deny it. We admit that it is more promi-
nent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who
discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist,
your innovation ; and thence comes the greater prominence of the
question. Would you have that question reduced to its former pro-
portions ? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again,
under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old
times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.
You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We
deny it ; and what is your proof Ā„ Harper's Ferry ! John Brown ! !
John Brown was no Republican ; and you have failed to implicate a
single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member
of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it, or you do not know
it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the
man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcus-
able for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion
after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need not be
told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true,
is simply malicious slander.
Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encour-
aged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it.
We know we hold no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were
not held to and made by " our fathers who framed the government
under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to
this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were
near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by
charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in
those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not
quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at
least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by
it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declara-
608 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
tious are accompanied with a continual protest against any inter-
ference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves.
Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in
common with " our fathers who framed the government under
which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the
slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do,
the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I be-
lieve they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrep-
resentations of us in their hearing. In your political contests
among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy
with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge,
defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood, and
thunder among the slaves.
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were be-
fore the Republican party was organized. What induced the South-
ampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three
times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry ? You can scarcely
stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton
was " got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state of things
in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very exten-
sive, slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of
action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid
communication ; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, sup-
ply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but
there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting
trains.
Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for
their masters and mistresses ; and a part of it, at least, is true. A
plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to
twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a
favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and
the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case
occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of
British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point.
In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret ; and yet
one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that
friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poi-
sonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the
field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to
occur as the natural results of slavery ; but no general insurrection
of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time.
Whoever much fears, or much hopes, for such an event, will be alike
disappointed.
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is
still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and depor-
tation peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear
off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white
laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature
must shudder at the prospect held up."
Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of
emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia;
ADDEESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 609
and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding
States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the
power of restraining the extension of the institution ā the power to
insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American
soil which is now free from slavery.
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.
It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in
which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd
that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could
not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the
many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and
emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till
he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He
ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.
Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at
Harper's Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The
eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New
England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two
things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of
John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican
organization ? Human action can be modified to some extent, but
human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feel-
ing against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and
a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling ā
that sentiment ā by breaking up the political organization which
rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army
which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire;
but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment
which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box into
some other channel ? What would that other channel probably be ?
Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the
operation?
But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of
your constitutional rights.
That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if
not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers,
to deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution.
But we are proposing no such thing.
When you make these declarations you have a specific and well-
understood allusion to an assumed constitutional right of yours to
take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as
property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitu-
tion. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We,
on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the
Constitution, even by implication.
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the
government, unless you be allowed to construe and force the Consti-
tution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us.
You will rule or ruin in all events.
This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the
Vol. I.ā 39
610 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Supreme Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in
your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's distinction
between dictum and decision, the court has decided the question
for you in a sort of way. The court has substantially said, it is
your constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal Territories,
and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was
made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided court, by a
bare majority of the judges, and they not quite agreeing with one
another in the reasons for making it ; that it is so made as that its
avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and
that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact ā the
statement in the opinion that " the right of property in a slave is
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."
An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of prop-
erty in a slave is not " distinctly and expressly affirmed " in it. Bear
in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such
right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution ; but they pledge their
veracity that it is " distinctly and expressly" affirmed there ā " dis-
tinctly," that is, not mingled* with anything else ā " expressly," that
is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and
susceptible of no other meaning.
If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others
to show that neither the word " slave " nor " slavery " is to be found
in the Constitution, nor the word " property " even, in any connection
with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that
wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a
"person"; and wherever his master's legal right in relation to him
is alluded to, it is spoken of as "service or labor which may be due "
ā as a debt payable in service or labor. Also it would be open to
show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to
slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on
purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could
be property in man.
To show all this is easy and certain.
When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their
notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mis-
taken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it f
And then it is to be remembered that " our fathers who framed
the government under which we live " ā the men who made the Con-
stitution ā decided this same constitutional question in our favor
long ago : decided it without division among themselves when mak-
ing 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 or 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 polit-
Lcal action? But you 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
ADDEESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 611
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 ā my money ā was
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 ex-
tort 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 contro-
versy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally sur-
rendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present
complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. In-
vasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them
if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insur-
rections ? 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 plat-
forms 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
ā done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated ā
we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's
new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all dec-
larations 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 con-
stitutions. 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, ā have never disturbed them, ā so that, after all, it is
012 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
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 say iugs 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 con-
trary that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demand-
ing 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 con-
viction 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 ā its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly
insist upon its extension ā 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 j r et 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 ā 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 hiving 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 Wash-
ington 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.
ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 613
March 5, 1860. ā Abstract of Speech at Hartford, Conn.
Slavery is the great political question of the nation. Though all
desire its settlement, it still remains the all-pervading question of