13 Sir, in view, once .more, of this subject of Slavery, I submit that our own dignity requires that we shall give over this champerty with slaveholders, which we practice in prescribing acquiescence in their rule as a condition of toleration of self-government in the Territories. We are defeated in it. We may wisely give it up, and admit Kansas as a free State, since she will consent to be admitted only in that character. Mr. President, if I could at all suppose it desirable or expedient to enlarge the field of slave labor, Ind of slaveholding sway, in this Republic, I should nevertheless maintain that it is wise to relinquish the effort to sustain Slavery in Kansas. The question, in regard to that Territory, has risen from a private one about Slavery as a domestic institution, to one of Slavery as a national policy. At every step, you have been failing. Will you go on still further, ever confident, and yet ever unsuccessful? I believe,.sir, to some extent, in the isothermal theory. I think there are regions, beginning at the North pole, and stretching southward, where Slavery will die out soon, if it be planted; and I know, too well, that in the tropics, and to some extent northward of them, Slavery lives Jong, and is hard to extirpate. But I cannot find a certain boundary. I am sure, however, that 36° 30z is too far north. I think it is a movable boundary, and that every year it advances towards a more southern parallel. But is there just now a real want, of a new State for the employment of slave labor? I see and feel the need of room for a new State to be assigned to free labor, of room for such a new State almost every year. I think I see how it arises. Free white men abound in this country, and in Europe, and even in Asia. Economically speaking, their labor is cheap—there is a surplus of it. Under improved conditions of society, life grows longer, and men multiply faster. _Wars, which sometimes waste them, grow less frequent and less destructive. Invention is continually producing machines and engines, artificial laborers, crowding them from one field of industry to another—ever more from the Eastern regions of this continent to the West, ever more from the overcrowded Eastern continent to the prairies and the wildernesses in our own. But I do not see any such overflowing of the African slave population in this country, even where it ig- unresisted. Free labor has been obstructed in Kansas. There are, nevertheless, 50,000 or 60,000 freemen gathered there already; gathered there within four years. Slave labor has been free to importation. There are only 100 to 200 slaves there. To settle and occupy a new slave State anywhere is, pari passu, to depopulate old slave States. Whence, then, are the supplies of slaves to come, and how ? Only by reviving the African Slave trade. But this is forbidden. Visionaries dream that the prohibition can be repealed. The idea is insane. A Republic of thirty millions of freemen, with a free white laboring population so dense as already to crowd on subsistence, to be rought to import negroes from Africa to sup- \nt them as cultivators, and so to subject them- >s to starvation Though Africa is yet un- ' organized, and unable to protect itself, still it has ( already exchanged, in a large degree, its wars to 1 make slaves-, ,and its commerce in slaves, for legitimate agriculture and trade. All European States are interested in the civilization of that continent, and they will not consent that we shall arrest it. The Christian church cannot be forced back two centuries, and be made to sanction the African slave trade as a missionary enterprise. Every nation has always some ruling idea, wnich, however, changes with the several stages of its development. A ruling idea of the colonies on this continent, two hundred years ago, was labor to subdue and reclaim nature. Then African Slavery was seized and employed as an auxiliary, under a seeming necessity. That idea ( has ceased forever. It has given place to a new one. Aggrandizement of the nation, not indeed as it once was, to make a small State great, but to make a State already great the greatest of all States. It still demands labor, but it is no longer the ignorant labor of barbarians, but labor perfected by knowledge and skill, . and combination with all the scientific principles of mechanism. It demands, not the labor of slaves, which needs to be watched and defended, but voluntary, enlightened labor, stimulated by interest, affection,’and ambition. It needs that every man shall own the land he tills ; that every head shall be fit for the helmet, and every hand fit for the sword, and every mind ready and qualified for counsel. To attempt to aggrandize a country with slaves for its inhabitants, would be to try to make a large body of empire with feeble sinews and empty veins. Mr. President, the expansion of territory to make slave States will only fail to be a great crime, because it is impracticable, and therefore Will turn out to be a stupendous imbecility. A free republican Government, like this, notwith- standihg all its constitutional checks, cannot long resist and counteract the progress of society. Slavery, wherever and whenever, and in whatsoever form it exists, is exceptional, local, and short-lived. Freedom is the common right, interest, and ultimate destiny, of all mankind. All other nations have already abolished, or are about abolishing, Slavery. Does this fact mean nothing ? All parties in this country that have tolerated the extension of Slavery, except one, has perished for that error already. That last one—the Democratic party—is hurrying on, irretrievably, toward the same fate. All Administrations that have avowed this policy have gone down dishonored for that cause, except the present one. A pit deeper and darker still is opening to receive this Administration, because it sins more deeply than its predecessors. There is a meaning in all these facts, which it becomes us to -study well. The nation has advanced another stage; it has reached the point where intervention, by the Government, for Slavery and slave States, will no longer be tolerated. Free labor has at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its power, and its destiny, and is organizing itself to assume the government of the Republic. It will henceforth meet you boldly and
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=