on in Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural, that they had "no purpose to
interfere, directly or indirectly, with the institution of Slavery in the
States where it exists." It had never been possible to obtain the votes of
three-fourths of the States in favor of emancipation; and a large majority
of those who held human servitude to be a moral wrong had looked upon its
toleration among our neighbors of the South as an evil of less magnitude
than the violation of the Constitution.

Though the wisdom of the ablest statesmen of the Revolution, without
distinction of sections, recognized negro slavery as an iniquity and as a
political element fraught with inevitable danger in the future, yet the
evils and the dangers which are inseparably connected with that element
have never been so clearly seen, have never made themselves so terribly
apparent, as in the course of this war.

The conviction that Slavery is a standing menace to the integrity of the
Union and the one great obstacle to peace gathers strength so rapidly from
day to day, that many men are adopting the opinion, that it must needs be
extirpated, if even at the cost of a revolutionary act.

It would be a misfortune, if this were the alternative. It is easy to pass
the limit of regulated authority, but impossible to estimate the dangers
we may encounter when that guardian limit is once transgressed. We may
resolve that we will go thus far and no farther. So thought the honest and
earnest Girondists of revolutionary France; but the current to which they
had first opened a passage swept them away. Though the experiment succeed
at last, a long Reign of Terror may overwhelm us ere success is reached.

And thus it is a matter of surpassing interest to determine whether the
present stupendous insurrectionary convulsion has brought about a state of
things under which, in strict accordance with the Constitution as it is,
we may emancipate all negroes throughout the Union who are now held in
involuntary servitude. This question I propose to discuss.

* * * * *

Every one is familiar with the words in which the Constitution, while not
naming Slavery, recognizes, under a certain phase, its existence, and aids
it, under certain circumstances, to maintain the rights to involuntary
labor which, under State laws, it claims; thus:--

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in conseque