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 upon 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 the free-States? If our
sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty,
fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those
sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied
and belabored, contrivances such as groping for some middle ground
between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who
should be neither a living man nor a dead man, such as a policy of
"don't care," on a question about which all true men do care, such
as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to
Disunionists; reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the
sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to
Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo
what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations
against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to
the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith
that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end,
dare to do our duty as we understand it.

[Sidenote] "New York Tribune," February 28, 1860.

The smiles, the laughter, the outburst of applause which greeted and
emphasized the speaker's telling points, showed Mr. Lincoln that his
arguments met ready acceptance. The next morning the four leading New
York dailies printed the speech in full, and bore warm testimony to
its merit and effect. "Mr. Lincoln is one of nature's orators," said
th