of the Constitution, and then drive out, by threats or
violence, any man who may come into the State to test the validity of
such enactments.

Before you complain of us, go home and seize and hang the pirates who
are hovering around your shores, engaged in the slave trade. You may say
a jury will not convict them. Why not? Because the community sustains
them in their unholy traffic and in their violation of the laws. But if
you really desired to punish those men, you could easily devise the ways
and means--a whipping on the bare back with a raw-hide, a coat of tar
and feathers, or some other corrective that you are in the habit of
using. I would not advise these punishments; in a free State they would
not be practicable; but in States where such things are in constant use,
it is rather surprising that some person has not thought of thus
applying them. Men who commit acts declared by the whole civilized world
to be piracy, you permit to escape, while you say you will hang the man
who circulates Helper's book. Before you complain of the free States,
arrest and punish the scoundrels who so cruelly treated the Irishman at
Columbia, South Carolina, for no offence but saying that slavery was
detrimental to free labor.

Take from place and power the men whose hands and faces are reeking and
smoking with the blood of our people in Kansas, and put them to death.
Punish the thousands of others who have committed acts of violence
against free-State men, and are yet unwhipped of justice. These things
you must do, before you complain of us. I take no pleasure in these
criminations and recriminations. I know that all the States are a part
of my country; but when I hear of the wrongs and outrages perpetrated on
men merely because they will not subscribe to the doctrines you hold,
and hear you complain of us for not doing our duty as citizens, I will
let you know that you, too, "are made of penetrable stuff." I have

"Learned to deride your fierce decree,
And break you on the wheel you meant for me."

I do not mean to interfere with any man's legal or constitutional
rights. The people of the slave States have the right to continue
slavery there if they desire so to do. I have no right to interfere with
it. But I intend to maintain my own rights.

To draw an impassable line around slavery, and confine it within its
present limits; an absolute abolition of the African slave trade; the
Territories to be kept free for homes fo