act, which you will in vain attempt to deny, but which in itself
presents an essential wickedness that makes other public crimes seem
like public virtues.

But this enormity, vast beyond comparison, swells to dimensions of
wickedness which the imagination toils in vain to grasp, when it is
understood that for this purpose are hazarded the horrors of intestine
feud not only in this distant Territory, but everywhere throughout the
country. Already the muster has begun. The strife is no longer local,
but national. Even now, while I speak, portents hang on all the arches
of the horizon threatening to darken the broad land, which already
yawns with the mutterings of civil war. The fury of the propagandists of
Slavery, and the calm determination of their opponents, are now diffused
from the distant Territory over widespread communities, and the
whole country, in all its extent--marshalling hostile divisions, and
foreshadowing a strife which, unless happily averted by the triumph
of Freedom, will become war--fratricidal, parricidal war--with an
accumulated wickedness beyond the wickedness of any war in human annals;
justly provoking the avenging judgment of Providence and the avenging
pen of history, and constituting a strife, in the language of the
ancient writer, more than foreign, more than social, more than civil;
but something compounded of all these strifes, and in itself more than
war; _sal potius commune quoddam ex omnibus, et plus quam bellum_.

Such is the crime which you are to judge. But the criminal also must be
dragged into day, that you may see and measure the power by which all
this wrong is sustained. From no common source could it proceed. In
its perpetration was needed a spirit of vaulting ambition which would
hesitate at nothing; a hardihood of purpose which was insensible to the
judgment of mankind; a madness for Slavery which would disregard the
Constitution, the laws, and all the great examples of our history;
also a consciousness of power such as comes from the habit of power;
a combination of energies found only in a hundred arms directed by
a hundred eyes; a control of public opinion through venal pens and a
prostituted press; an ability to subsidize crowds in every vocation
of life--the politician with his local importance, the lawyer with his
subtle tongue, and even the authority of the judge on the bench; and
a familiar use of men in places high and low, so that none, from the
President to the low