btless thought they were doing God service--their cause in their
minds, was the cause of christianity and of humanity, and as Godfrey of
Bouillon set the standard of the cross upon the walls of Jerusalem,
recovered from the power of the infidel Moslem, he was ready like Mr.
Seward, when he contemplates the results of the repeal of the Missouri
compromise in the victories of the Republican party, to take up and
exult in the song of Miriam, the prophetess. But as history proves in
the case of the old crusades, so will it prove in the case of the
crusade of abolition, that any premature attempt by material or
political armaments to forestall and hurry on the great purposes and
movements of Providence, cannot succeed. History tells us the result of
the crusades.

"Every road leading to Palestine was drenched with blood, and along its
dreary track lay scattered at no distant intervals the skeletons and the
wrecks of nations. After four years of toil and misery and victory,
Jerusalem was conquered by the crusaders; but as their conquests were
not the work of wisdom and prudence, but the fruit of a blind enthusiasm
and an ill-directed heroism, they laid the foundation of no permanent
settlements, and in fact soon melted away like frost-work in the sun."

For seven hundred years since the crusades to free the christian people
of Asia from Moslem rule, that rule has been maintained in all its
despotic power.

When will men learn by severe experience that political and religions
ideas have conquered more in defence than in offence and aggression, and
that reason is the true leader of ideas, and the paths of peace their
certain way to victory?

In this one idea then of "black African slavery," as Mr. Seward calls
it, we have reached the central fact, or as Abraham Lincoln would say,
"_the particular spot_" upon which sectional parties are staking the
destiny of the American Union. All other political questions have sunk
to insignificance when compared with this. It would seem as if reckless
men were determined that from "this mean and miserable rivulet," are to
go out the poisonous waters that shall blast the fair face of this
promised land of freedom.

"Slavery agitation, in my opinion," says Abraham Lincoln, "will not
cease until a crisis has been reached and passed. 'A house divided
against itself cannot stand.'" We are now in the midst of that crisis.
It is the pendency of that crisis which has prompted me to address you