ave
power? Do we wish to excite in your bosoms feelings of hatred
against citizens of a common country? Do we wish to array the
Free states against the Slave states in hostile strife? No,
fellow-citizens. But we wish to show you that, while the slave
states are inferior to us in free population, having not even
one half of ours; inferior in morals, being the region of bowie
knives and duels, of assassinations and lynch law; inferior in
mental attainments, having not one-fourth of the number that can
read and write; inferior in intelligence, having not one-fifth
of the number of literary and scientific periodicals; inferior
in the products of agriculture and manufactures, of mines, of
fisheries, and of the forest; inferior, in short, in everything
that constitutes the wealth, the honor, the dignity, the
stability, the happiness, the true greatness of a nation,--it is
wrong, it is unjust, it is absurd, that they should have an
influence in all the departments of government so entirely
disproportionate to our own. We would arouse you to your own
true interests. We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to
maintain your own rights. We would have you say to the
South,--if you choose to hug to your bosom that system which is
continually injuring and impoverishing you; that system which
reduces two millions and a half of native Americans in your
midst to the most abject condition of ignorance and vice,
withholding from them the very key of knowledge; that system
which is at war with every principle of justice, every feeling
of humanity; that system which makes man the property of man,
and perpetuates that relation from one generation to another;
that system which tramples, continually, upon a majority of the
commandments of the Decalogue; that system which could not live
a day if it did not give one party supreme control over the
persons, the health, the liberty, the happiness, the marriage
relations, the parental authority and filial obligations of the
other;--if you choose to cling to such a system, cling to it;
but you shall not cross our line; you shall not bring that foul
thing here. We know, and we here repeat it for the thousandth
time to meet, for the thousandth time, the calumnies of our
enemies, that while we may present to you every consideration of
duty, we have