l
overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they are hurt,
and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally abolitionist.

I am quite aware that 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--have
never disturbed them--so that, after all, it is what we say which
dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we
cease saying.

I am also aware that 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 sayings against it;
and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow
of these constitutions will be demanded. It is nothing to the contrary
that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding 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 conviction
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--its universality: if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist
upon its extension--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 on 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 yet 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?