re is an
onward movement in favor of its extinction, not only in England and
France, but in Cuba and Brazil, American legislators cling to this
enormous evil, without attempting to relax or mitigate its horrors."

How long shall such appeals, from such sources, be wasted upon us? Shall
our baleful example enslave the world? Shall the tree of democracy,
which our fathers intended for "the healing of the nations," be to them
like the fabled upas, blighting all around it?

The men of the North, the pioneers of the free West, and the non-
slaveholders of the South must answer these questions. It is for them to
say whether the present wellnigh intolerable evil shall continue to
increase its boundaries, and strengthen its hold upon the government, the
political parties, and the religious sects of our country. Interest and
honor, present possession and future hope, the memory of fathers, the
prospects of children, gratitude, affection, the still call of the dead,
the cry of oppressed nations looking hitherward for the result of all
their hopes, the voice of God in the soul, in revelation, and in His
providence, all appeal to them for a speedy and righteous decision. At
this moment, on the floor of Congress, Democracy and Slavery have met in
a death-grapple. The South stands firm; it allows no party division on
the slave question. One of its members has declared that "the slave
States have no traitors." Can the same be said of the free? Now, as in
the time of the fatal Missouri Compromise, there are, it is to be feared,
political peddlers among our representatives, whose souls are in the
market, and whose consciences are vendible commodities. Through their
means, the slave power may gain a temporary triumph; but may not the very
baseness of the treachery arouse the Northern heart? By driving the free
States to the wall, may it not compel them to turn and take an aggressive
attitude, clasp hands over the altar of their common freedom, and swear
eternal hostility to slavery?

Be the issue of the present contest what it may, those who are faithful
to freedom should allow no temporary reverse to shake their confidence in
the ultimate triumph of the right. The slave will be free. Democracy in
America will yet be a glorious reality; and when the topstone of that
temple of freedom which our fathers left unfinished shall be brought
forth with shoutings and cries of grace unto it, when our now drooping-
Liberty lifts up h