Fellow-Citizens, I speak plainly; nor can words exhibiting the enormity of Slavery be too plain, whether it be regarded simply in the legislative and judicial decisions by which it is upheld, or in the unquestionable facts by which its character is revealed. It has been my fortune latterly to see Slavery face to face in its own home, in the Slave States; and I take this early opportunity to offer my testimony to the open barbarism which it sanctions. I have seen a human being knocked off at auction on the steps of a court-house, and, as the sale went on, compelled to open his mouth and show his teeth, like a horse; I have been detained in a stage-coach, that our driver might, in the phrase of the country, “help lick a nigger”; and I have been constrained, at public table, to witness the revolting spectacle of a poor slave, yet a child, almost felled to the floor by a blow on the head from a clenched fist. Such incidents were not calculated to shake my original convictions. The distant slaveholder, who, in generous solicitude for that truth which makes for Freedom, feared, that, like a certain Doctor of Divinity, I might, under influence of personal kindness, be hastily swayed from these convictions, may be assured that I saw nothing to change them one tittle, but much to confirm them,—while I was entirely satisfied that here in Massachusetts, where all read, the true character of Slavery is better known than in the Slave States themselves, where ignorance and prejudice close the avenues of knowledge.
And now, grateful for the attention with which you honor me, I venture to hope that you are assembled honestly to hear the truth,—not to gratify prejudice, to appease personal antipathies, or to indulge a morbid appetite for excitement, but with candor and your best discrimination to weigh facts and arguments in order to determine the course of duty. I address myself particularly to the friends of Freedom, Republicans, on whose invitation I appear to-night; but I make bold to ask you of other parties, who now listen, to divest yourselves, for the time, of partisan constraint,—to forget, for the moment, that you are Whigs or Democrats, or however called, and to remember only that you are men, with hearts to feel, with heads to understand, and with consciences to guide. Then only will you be in condition to receive the truth. “If men are not aware of the probable influence of party over them, they are so much the more likely to be blindly governed by it.” Such is the wise remark of Wilberforce.[25] And I fear that among us there are too many unconsciously governed by such bias. There are men, who, while professing candor, yet show that the bitterness of party has entered into their whole character and lives, as the bitterness of the soil in Sardinia is said to appear even in its honey.
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There are honorable responsibilities belonging to Massachusetts, as an early and constant vindicator of Freedom, which she cannot renounce. “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” The distant emigrant, the whole country, awaits the voice of our beloved Commonwealth in answer to the question, Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? So transcendent, so exclusive, so all-absorbing at the present juncture is this question, that it is vain to speak of the position of candidates on other things. To be doubtful on this is to be wrong, and to be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. Passing strange it is that here in Massachusetts, in this nineteenth century, we should be constrained to put this question; passing strange, that, when it is put, there should be any hesitation to answer it, by voice and vote, in such way as to speak the loudest for Freedom.
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But, without exposing the game of political sweepstakes which the Slave Oligarchy has perpetually played,—interesting as it would be,—I prefer to hold up for one moment the assumptions, aggressions, and usurpations by which, in defiance of the Constitution, it has made Slavery national, when it is in reality sectional. Here is a brief catalogue.
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Fellow-citizens, I have said enough to stir you; but this humiliating tale is not yet finished. An oligarchy seeking to maintain an outrage like Slavery, and drawing its inspirations from this fountain of wickedness, is naturally base, false, and heedless of justice. It is vain to expect that men who have brought themselves to become propagandists of this enormity will be constrained by any compromise, compact, bargain, or plighted faith. As the less is contained in the greater, so there is no vileness of dishonesty, no denial of human rights, that is not plainly involved in the support of an enormity which begins by changing man, created in the image of God, into a chattel, and consigns little children to the auction-block. A power which Heaven never gave can be maintained only by means which Heaven can never sanction. And this conclusion of reason is confirmed by late experience.
And here I approach the special question under which the country now shakes from side to side. The protracted struggle of 1820, known as the Missouri Question, ended with the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding State, and the prohibition of Slavery in all the remaining territory west of the Mississippi and north of 36° 30´. Here was a solemn act of legislation, called at the time a compromise, a covenant, a compact, first brought forward by the Slave Oligarchy, vindicated by it in debate, finally sanctioned by its votes,—also upheld at the time by a slaveholding President, James Monroe, and his cabinet, of whom a majority were slaveholders, including Mr. Calhoun himself,—and made the condition of the admission of Missouri, without which that State could not have been received into the Union. Suddenly, during the last year, without any notice in the public press or the prayer of a single petition, after an acquiescence of thirty-four years, and the irreclaimable possession by the Slave Oligarchy of its special share in the provisions of this Compromise, in violation of every obligation of honor, compact, and good neighborhood, and in contemptuous disregard of the outgushing sentiments of an aroused North, this time-honored Prohibition, in itself a Landmark of Freedom, was overturned, and the vast region now known as Kansas and Nebraska was opened to Slavery: and this was done under the disgraceful lead of Northern politicians, and with the undisguised complicity of a Northern President, forgetful of Freedom, forgetful also of his reiterated pledges that during his administration the repose of the country should receive no shock.