f of the army and navy, could have devised any
possible means whereby he might hope to suppress the rebellion
without the sacrifice of the life of one loyal citizen, without the
sacrifice of one dollar of the loyal North, it was clearly his duty
to have done so. Every interest of the insurgents, every dollar of
their property, every institution, every life in every rebel State
even, if necessary, should have been sacrificed, before one dollar
or one man should have been drawn from the free States. How much
more then was it the President's duty to confer freedom on the
millions of slaves, transform them into an army for the Union,
cripple the rebellion and establish justice, the only sure
foundation of peace. I therefore hail the day when the government
shall recognize that this is a war for freedom.

We talk about returning to "the Union as it was" and "the
Constitution as it is"--about "restoring our country to peace and
prosperity--to the blessed conditions which existed before the
war!" I ask you what sort of peace, what sort of prosperity, have
we had? Since the first slave ship sailed up the James river with
its human cargo and there, on the soil of the Old Dominion, it was
sold to the highest bidder, we have had nothing but war. When that
pirate captain landed on the shores of Africa and there kidnapped
the first stalwart negro and fastened the first manacle, the
struggle between that captain and that negro was the commencement
of the terrible war in the midst of which we are today. Between the
slave and the master there has been war, and war only. This is but
a new form of it. No, no; we ask for no return to the old
conditions. We ask for something better. We want a Union which is a
Union in fact, a Union in spirit, not a sham. By the Constitution
as it is, the North has stood pledged to protect slavery in the
States where it existed. We have been bound, in case of
insurrections, to go to the aid, not of those struggling for
liberty but of the oppressors. It was politicians who made this
pledge at the beginning, and who have renewed it from year to year.
These same men have had control of the churches, the
Sabbath-schools and all religious institutions, and the women have
been a party in complicity with slavery. They have made the large
majority in all the churches throug