lainly enough it
could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with
the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings
and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people
till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He
ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own
execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's
attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the
same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case,
and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of
the two things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John
Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican
organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human
nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against
slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of
votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling--that
sentiment--by breaking up the political organization which rallies
around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has
been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if
you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which
created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some
other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the
number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of
your Constitutional rights.[33]

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if
not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of
numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the
Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and
well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of
yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them
there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the
Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such
right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence
in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that