, increased their demands. Every
concession we made to their insolent threats was only a step downwards
to a deeper abasement; and we parted with our most cherished convictions
of duty to purchase, not their gratitude, but their contempt. Every
concession, too, weakened us and strengthened them for the inevitable
struggle, into which the Free States were eventually goaded, to preserve
what remained of their dignity, their honor, and their self-respect. In
1850 we conceded the application of the Wilmot Proviso; in 1856 we were
compelled to concede the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. In 1850 we had
no fears that slaves would enter New Mexico; in 1861 we were threatened
with a view of the flag of the rattlesnake floating over Faneuil Hall.
If any principle has been established by events, with the certainty of
mathematical demonstration, it is this, that concession to the Slave
Power is the suicide of Freedom. We are purchasing this fact at the
expense of arming five hundred thousand men and spending a thousand
millions of dollars. More than this, if any concessions were to be made,
they ought, on all principles of concession, to have been made to the
North. Concessions, historically, are not made by freedom to privilege,
but by privilege to freedom. Thus King John conceded Magna Charta; thus
King Charles conceded the Petition of Right; thus Protestant England
conceded Catholic Emancipation to Ireland; thus aristocratic England
conceded the Reform Bill to the English middle class. And had not we,
the misgoverned many, a right to demand from the slaveholders, the
governing few, some concessions to our sense of justice and our
prejudices for freedom? Concession indeed! If any class of men hold in
their grasp one of the dear-bought chartered "rights of man," it is
infamous to concede it.

"Make it the darling of your precious eye!
_To lose or give 't away_ were such perdition
As nothing else could match."

Considerations so obvious as these could not, by any ingenuity of
party-contrivance, be prevented from forcing themselves by degrees into
the minds of the great body of the voters of the Free States. The common
sense, the "large roundabout common sense" of the people, slowly, and
somewhat reluctantly, came up to the demands of the occasion. The
sophistries and fallacies of the Northern defenders of the pretensions
of the slave-holding sectional minority were gradually exposed, and were
repudiated in the lump. The co