how vile and mean are those men who in the South have
lost all national pride in a small-minded provincial attachment to a
State, who love their local county better still, and concentrate their
real political interests in the feudal government of a plantation. Shall
_we_ be as such,--_we_, the men who hold the destinies of a hemisphere
within our grasp? Never,--God help us,--_never!_

On the basis of free labor we are pressing onward over the mighty West.
Two great questions now require grappling with. The one is, whether
slavery shall henceforth be tolerated; the other, whether we shall
strengthen this great government of the Union so as to preserve it in
future from the criminal intrigues of would-be seceding, ambitious men
of no principle. Now is the time to decide.

We must not be blind to a great opportunity which may be lost, of
forever quelling a foul nuisance which would, if neglected _now_, live
forever. Do we not see, feel, and understand what sort of _white men_
are developed by slavery, and do we intend to keep up such a race among
us? _Do we want all this work to do over again_ every ten or five years
or all the time? For a quarter of a century, slavery and nothing else
has kept us in a growing fever, and now that it has reached a crisis the
question is whether we shall calm down the patient with cool rose-water.
In the crisis comes a physician who knows the constitution of his
patient, and proposes searching remedies and a thorough cure,--and, lo!
the old nurse cries out that he is interfering and acting unwisely,
though he is quite as willing to adopt her cooling present solace as
she.

If we had walked over the war-course last spring without opposition,--if
we had conquered the South, would we have put an end to this trouble?
Does any one believe that we would? This is not now a question of the
right to hold slaves, or the wrong of so doing. All of that old
abolition jargon went out and died with the present aspect of the war.
So far as nine-tenths of the North ever cared, or do now care, slaves
might have hoed away down in Dixie, until supplanted, as they have been
in the North, by the irrepressible advance of manufactures and small
farms, or by free labor. 'Keep your slaves and hold your tongues,' was,
and would be now, our utterance. But they would not hold their tongues.
It was 'rule or ruin' with them. And if, as it seems, a man can not hold
slaves without being arrogant and unjust to others, we