6 so long afflicted ; and it will be a melancholy- day for the Republic and for mankind, when her decision on even such an abstraction shall command' no respect, and inspire no hope into the hearts of the oppressed. But it is no such abstraction. It was no unnecessary dispute, no mere contest of blind passion, that brought that Compromise into being. Slavery and Freedom were active antagonists, then seeking for ascendency in this Union. Both Slavery and Freedom are more vigorous, active, and self-aggrandizing now, than they were then, or ever were before or since that period. The contest between them has been only protracted, not decided. It is a great feature in our national Hereafter. So the question of adhering to or abrogating this Compromise is no unmeaning issue, and no contest of mere blind passion now. To adhere, is to secure the occupation by freemen, with free labor, of a region in the very centre of the continent, capable of sustaining, and in that event destined, though it may be only after a far-distant period, to sustain ten, twenty, thirty, forty millions of people and their successive generations forever! To abrogate, is to resign all that vast region to chances which mortal vision cannot fully foresee; perhaps to the sovereignty of such stinted and short-lived communities as those ®f which Mexico and South America and the West India Islands present us with examples ; perhaps to convert that region into the scene of long and desolating conflicts between not merely races,.but castes, to end, like a similar conflict in Egypt, in a convulsive exodus of the oppressed people, d.espoiling their superiors ; perhaps, like one not dissimilar in Spain, in the forcible, expulsion of the inferior race, exhausting the State by the sudden and complete suppression of a great resource of national wealth and labor; perhaps in the disastrous expulsion, even of the superior race itself, by a people too suddenly raised from slavery to liberty, as-in St. Domingo. To adhere, is to secure forever the presence here, after some lapse of time, of two, four, ten, twenty, or more Senators, and of Representatives in larger proportions, to uphold the policy and interests of the non-slaveholding States, and balance that ever-increasing representation of slaveholding States, which past experience, and the decay of the Spanish American States, admonish us has only just begun; to save what the nonslaveholding States have in mints, navy yards, the military academy and fortifications, to balance against the capital and federal institutions in the slaveholding States; to save against any danger from adverse or hostile policy, the culture, the manufactures, and the commerce, as well as the just influence and weight of the national principles and sentiments of the slaveholding States. To adhere, is to save, to the non-slaveholding States, as well as to the slaveholding States, always, and in every event, a right of way and free communication across the continent, to and with the States on the Pacific coasts, and .with the rising States on the islands in the South Sea, and with all the eastern nations on the vast continent of Asia. To abrogate, on the contrary, is to commit all these precious interests to the chances and hazards of embarrassment and injury by legislation, under the influence of social, political, and commercial jealousy and rivalry; and in the event of the secession of the slaveholding States, which is so often threatened in their name, but I thank God without their authority, to give to a servile population a La Vendee at the very sources of the Mississippi, and in the very recesses of the Rocky Mountains. Nor is this last a contingency against which a statesman, when engaged in giving a Constitution for such a Territory, so situated, must veil his eyes. It is a statesman’s province and duty to look before as well as after. I know, indeed, the present loyalty of the American People, North and South, and East and West. I know that it is a sentiment stronger than any sectional interest or ambition, and stronger than eventhe love of equality in the non-slaveholding States; and stronger, I doubt not, than the love of slavery in the slaveholding States. But I do not know, and no mortal sagacity does know, the seductions of interest and ambition, and the influences of passion, which are yet to be matured in every region. I know this, however : that this Union is safe now, and that it will be safe so long as impartial political equality shall constitute the basis of society, as it has heretofore done, in even half of these States, and they shall thus maintain a just equilibrium against the slaveholding States. But I am well assured, also, on the other hand, that if ever the slaveholding States shall multiply themselves, and extend their sphere, so that they cwfld, without association with the nonslaveholding States, constitute of themselves a commercial republic, from that day their rule, through the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative powers of this Government, will be such as will be hard for the non-slaveholding States to bear; and their pride and ambition, since they are congregations of men, and are moved by human passions, will consent to no Union in which they shall not so rule. The slaveholding Slates already possess the mouths of the Mississippi, and their territory reaches far. northward along its banks, on one side to the Ohio, and on the other even to the confluence of the Missouri. They stretch their dominion now from the banks of the Delaware, quite around bay, headland, and promontory, to the Rio Grande. They will not stop, although they now think they may, on the summit of the Sierra Nevada; nay, their armed pioneers are already in Sonora, and their eyes are already fixed, never to be taken off, on the island of Cuba, the Queen of the Antilles. If we of the non-slaveholding States surrender to
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=