he concise statements, the strong links of reasoning, and the
irresistible conclusions of the argument with which the speaker followed
his close historical analysis of how "our fathers" understood "this
question," held every listener as though each were individually merged
in the speaker's thought and demonstration.

"It is surely safe to assume," said he, with emphasis, "that the
thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution and the seventy-six
members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken
together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called 'our
fathers who framed the government under which we live.' And, so
assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole
life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local
from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories."

With equal skill he next dissected the complaints, the demands, and the
threats to dissolve the Union made by the Southern States, pointed out
their emptiness, their fallacy, and their injustice, and defined the
exact point and center of the agitation.

"Holding, as they do," said he, "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 upon which depends the whole
controversy.... 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 sophistic