gainst
the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy
on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed
the government under which we live"; while you with one accord reject,
and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting
something new.

True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be.
You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in
rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are
for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a Congressional
slave-code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the
Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for
maintaining slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for
the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no
third man should object," fantastically called "popular sovereignty";
but never a man among you is in favour of Federal prohibition of slavery
in Federal Territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who
framed the government under which we live." Not one of all your various
plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which
our government originated.

Consider, then, whether your claim for conservatism for yourselves, and
your charge of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear
and stable foundations.

Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it
formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we
deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old
policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation;
and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have
that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old
policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you
would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy
of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it;
and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown! John Brown was no
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his
Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that
matter, you know it, or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do
not know it, you are inexcusable f