lusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers who framed
the government under which we live"--the men who made the
Constitution--decided this same constitutional question in our favour
long ago; decided it without division among themselves when making the
decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it
after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing
it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified
to break up this government unless such a court decision as yours is
shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of
political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican
President! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union;
and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon
us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters
through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you
will be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me--my money--was my own; and I
had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is
my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the
threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be
distinguished in principle.

* * * * *

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 these 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 sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously
plied and belaboured,--contrivances such as groping for some middle
ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who
should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of
"don't care," on a question about which all true men do care; such as
Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to disunionists,
reversing the Divine rule, and calling not the sinners, but the
righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring
men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be s