stily can, in all their
enormity, and if the Judge hereafter chooses to confine himself to a war
upon these principles, he will probably not find me departing from the
same course.

We have in this nation this element of domestic slavery. It is a matter of
absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. It is the opinion
of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is
a dangerous element. We keep up a controversy in regard to it. That
controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion; and if we can
learn exactly--can reduce to the lowest elements--what that difference
of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the
different systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that
disturbing element. I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to
its lowest of terms, is no other than the difference between the men who
think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong. The Republican
party think it wrong; we think it is a moral, a social, and a political
wrong. We think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons
or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to
say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation.
Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal
with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as
we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the run
of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due regard to
the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting
rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations
thrown about it. I suppose that in reference both to its actual existence
in the nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we have no right at
all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we profess that we
have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the right to do it.
We go further than that: we don't propose to disturb it where, in
one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us. We think the
Constitution would permit us to disturb it in the District of Columbia.
Still, we do not propose to do that, unless it should be in terms which
I don't suppose the nation is very likely soon to agree to,--the terms of
making the emancipation gradual, and compensating the unwilling owners.
Where we suppose we have the constitutional