Nor have they been sufficiently modest to cloak their designs under the veil of secrecy. These people advocated their pernicious doctrines openly in your leading cities, even within the consecrated walls of Fanueil Hall.
Openly among your people, in the very light of day, these efforts were carried on for the destruction of your sister States. There has not been an effort of the law nor an exertion of public opinion to put them down.
These efforts culminated in the actual invasion of my own old honored State, and your people thought they were doing GOD service in signing a petition to our authorities for mercy to John Brown and his ruffian invaders of our soil. And when these men met the just reward of their crime, there was, throughout the North, in your meetings and your public prints, expressions of sympathy for these robbers and murderers. They were looked upon as the victims of oppression, as martyrs to a holy and righteous cause. Gentlemen, consider these things, and tell me, is there not to-day reason for suspicion; on the part of the South for grave apprehension?
But the half is yet to be told; I have looked only at the moral aspect of the question. Dangerous enough hitherto, it becomes far more dangerous when it culminates on the arena of politics, and asks, with the powerful aid of a majority, the interference and the aid of the Government.
As soon as it became the party of one idea it began to draw to it, first the support of one, then another political party. It went on securing the assistance of one after another until it demoralized, until it brought each to ruin. It destroyed the grand old Whig party. Fanatic enough before, when it had brought that party to its grave, it thrust upon the arena of politics this question of slavery in the territories. Then for the first time it raised the cry of "Free Soil," and brought to its support the hearts of a majority of the people of the northern States.
The people of the North and Northwest have long been noted for their acquisitive disposition, especially for the acquisition of lands. This has been manifested in every form. Carried into effect it has made them powerful, until, not long since, they thought they might get entire dominion at no distant day. Then arose in their hearts a desire greater than the greed of land—the greed of office and power. They then saw that perhaps the North alone might control the national government, and with it the South. Then, too, the great class of protected interests at the North—always greater at the North than at the South—joined with them. All these protected classes, whose advantages had been diverted from other classes to which they belonged, joined with landseekers to secure power. Influence after influence of this sort combined, until it produced your great Republican party; in other words, your great Sectional party, which has at length come to majority and power.
I do not wish to dwell upon the principles of that party, or to discuss them; I simply assert that their principles involve all the sentiments of abolitionism. They may be summed up in this: you determine to oppose the admission of slave States in the future.
You say that the whole power of the country, the whole power of the administration, shall be used in future for the final extinction of slavery.
This, now, is the ruling idea of your great sectional party. It is simply the rule of one portion of the country over another. There is no difference between attacking slavery in the States and keeping it out of the territories. It is only drawing a parallel around the citadel at a more remote point.
Now, see how the South is placed. The South has forborne as long as it can, just as long as party organization existed, and as long as the South could keep it in existence. It was only when we saw that the whole united Government was to be turned against us, that we began to think of taking the subject into our own hands.