To Weidmann, Roland confessed what was weighing on his heart; and Weidmann succeeded in changing his sorrow into joy, that the time had now come in which these things would have an end. He was peculiarly severe upon those, who, like sentimental criminals, represent, sin and crime as evil, and yet say, "There is no help for it. So it has been, and so it must be."
Goethe's verses now occurred to Roland, and he repeated them to Weidmann, who said,—
"It is the free man's inherited privilege to see absolute perfection in no man. Like Goethe, the Americans boast in having no mediæval conditions to overcome; but they have inherited slavery, which many even declare to be the natural condition of the laboring classes."
Weidmann gave Roland, Abraham Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Institute in New York.
Roland was requested to read it aloud; but his voice choked, and his utterance was painfully agitated, when he came to the words,—
"Were we even to withhold our votes, Republicans, you may be sure the Democrats would not be satisfied. We could not stop there. We must leave off calling slavery a wrong, and justify it loudly and unconditionally; we must pull down our Free State Constitutions; the whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
"And since the Southerners pretend that slavery is a righteous institution, honorable to mankind, the logical inference is, that it ought universally to be recognized as a moral good and a social blessing, and everywhere introduced.
"Our sense of duty forbids such a thought. And, if so, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored,—contrivances such as seeking for some middle ground between the right and wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man,—such as a policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care,—such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling not sinners but the righteous to repentance.
"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us; nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and, in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
Tears rose to Roland's eyes. He glanced up at the picture where the slave was stretching out his fettered hands; and within him rose the words, "Thou art free."