14 resolutely here ; it will meet you everywhere, in the Territories or out of them, wherever you may go to extend Slavery. It has driven you back in California and in Kansas; it will invade you soon in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. It will meet you in Arizona, in Central America, and even in Cuba. The invasion will be not merely harmless, but beneficent, if you yield seasonably to its just and moderated demands. It proved so in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the other slave States, which have already yielded in that way to its advances. You may, indeed, get a start under or near the tropics, and seem safe for a time, but it will be only a short time. Even there you will found States only for free labor to maintain and occupy. The interest of the white races demands the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect, with needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you to decide. For the failure of your system of slave labor throughout the Republic, the responsibility will rest not on the agitators you condemn, or on the political parties you arraign, or even altogether on yourselves, but it will be due to the inherent error of the system itself, and to the error which thrusts it forward to oppose and resist the destiny, not more of the African than that of the white races. The white man needs this continent to labor upon. His head is clear, his arm is strong, and his necessities are fixed. He must and will have it. To secure it, he will oblige the Government of the United States to abandon intervention in favor of slave labor and slave States, and go backward forty years, and resume the original policy of intervention in favor of free labor and free "States. The fall of the castle of San Juan d’Ulloa determined the fate of Mexico, although sore sieges and severe pitched battles intervened before the capture of the capital of the Aztecs. The defeats yon have encountered in California and in Kansas determine the fate of the principle for which you have been contending. It is for yourselves, not for us, to decide how long and through what further mortifications and disasters the contest shall be protracted, before Freedom shall enjoy her already assured triumph. I would have it ended now, and would have the wounds of society bound up and healed. But this can be done only in one way. It cannot be done' by offering further resistance, nor by any evasion or partial surrender, nor by forcing Kansas into the Union as a slave State, against her will, leaving her to cast off Slavery afterwards, as she best may; nor by compelling Minnesota and Oregon to wait, and wear the humiliating costume of Territories at the doors of Congress, until the people of Kansas, or their true defenders here, shall be brought to dishonorable compromises. It can be done only by the simple and direct admission of the three new States as free States, without qualification, condition, reservation, or compromise, and by the abandonment of all further attempts to extend Slavery under the Federal Constitution. You have unwisely pushed the controversy so far, that only these broad concessions will now be accepted by the interest of free labor and free States. For myself, I see this fact, perhaps, the more distinctly now, because I have so long foreseen it. I can therefore counsel nothing less than those concessions. I know the hazards I incur in taking this position. I know how men and parties, now earnest, and zealous, and bold, may yet fall away from me, as the controversy shall wax warm, and alarms and dangers, now unlooked for, shall stare them in the face, as men and parties, equally earnest, bold, and zealous, have done, in like circumstances, before. But it is the same position I took in the case of California, eight years ago. It is the same I maintained on the great occasion of the organization of Kansas and Nebraska, four years ago. Time and added experience have vindicated it since, and I assume it again, to be maintained to the last, with confidence, that it will be justified, ultimately, by the country and by the civilized world. You may refuse to yield it now, and for a short period, but your refusal will only animate the friends of Freedom with the' courage and the resolution, and produce the union among them, which alone are necessary, on their part, to attain the position itself simultaneously with the impending overthrow of the existing Federal Administration and the constitution of a new and more independent Congress. Mr. President, this expansion of the empire of free white men is to be conducted through the process of admitting new States, and not otherwise. The white man, whether you consent or not, will make the States to be admitted, and he will make them all free States. We must admit them, and admit them all free; otherwise, they will become independent and foreign States, constituting a new empire to contend with us for the continent. To admit them is a simple, easy, and natural policy. It is not new to us, or to our times. It began with the voluntary union of the first thirteen. It has continued to go -on, overriding all resistance, ever since. It will go on until the ends of the continent are the borders of- our Union. Thus we become co-laborers with, our fathers, and even with our posterity throughout • many ages. After times, contemplating the whole vast structure, completed and perfected, will forget the dates, and the eras, and the individualities, of the buildeis in their successive generations. It w’ill be one great Republic, founded by one body of benefactors. I wonder that the President of the United States undervalues the Kansas question, when it is a part of a transaction so immense and sublime. Far from sympathizing with him in his desire to depreciate it, and to be rid of it, I felicitate myself on my humble relation to it,'for I know that Heaven cannot grant nor man desire a more favorable occasion to acquire fame, than he enjoys who is engaged in laying the foundations of a great empire ; and I know, also, that while mankind have often deified their benefactors, no nation has ever yet bestowed honors on the memories of the founders of Slavery. I have always believed, Mr. President, that
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