In the last Congress it is plain the democratic idea was beaten. Congress said to California, "You may come in, and you need not keep slaves unless you please." It said, "You shall not bring slaves to Washington for sale, you may do that at Norfolk, Alexandria, and Georgetown, it is just as well, and this 'will pacify the North.'" Utah and New Mexico were left open to slavery, and fifty thousand or seventy thousand square miles and ten million dollars were given to Texas lest she should "dissolve the Union,"—without money or men! To crown all, the Fugitive Slave Bill became a law.
I think it is very plain that the democratic idea was defeated, and it is easy to see why. The three powers which are the allies of the despotic idea, were ready, and could act in concert—the Southern slaveholders, the leading politicians, the rich and educated men of the Northern cities, with their appendages and servile adherents. But since then, the conduct of the people in the North, and especially in this State, shows that the nation has not gone that way yet. I think the nation never will; that the idea of freedom will never be turned back in this blessed North. I feel sure it will at last overcome the idea of slavery.
I come to this conclusion, firstly, from the character of the tribe: this Anglo-Norman-Saxon tribe loves law, deliberation, order, method; it is the most methodical race that ever lived. But it loves liberty, and while it loves law, it loves law chiefly because it keeps liberty; and without that it would trample law under foot.
See the conduct of England. She spent one hundred millions of dollars in the attempt to wipe slavery from the West Indies. She keeps a fleet on the coast of Africa to put down the slave-trade there—where we also have, I think, a sloop-of-war. She has just concluded a treaty with Brazil for the suppression of the slave-trade in that country, one of her greatest achievements in that work for many years.
See how the sons of the Puritans, as soon as they came to a consciousness of what the despotic idea was, took their charters and wiped slavery clean out, first from Massachusetts, and then from the other States, one after another. See how every Northern State, in revising its Constitution, or in making a new one, declares all men are created equal, that all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Then the religion of the North demands the same thing. Professors may try to prove that the Old Testament establishes slavery; that the New Testament justifies the existence of slavery; that Paul's epistle to Philemon was nothing more than another fugitive slave law, that Paul himself sent back a runaway; but it does not touch the religion of the North. We know better. We say if the Old Testament does that and the New Testament, so much the worse for them both. We say, "Let us look and see if Paul was so benighted," and we can judge for ourselves that the professor was mistaken more than the apostle.
Again, the spirit of the age, which is the public opinion of the nations, is against slavery. It was broken down in England, France, Italy, and Spain; it cannot stand long against civilization and good sense; against the political economy and the religious economy of the civilized world. The genius of freedom stands there, year out, year in, and hurls firebrands into the owl's nest of the prince of darkness, continually,—and is all this with no effect?
Besides that, it is against the law of God. That guides this universe, treating with even-handed justice the great geographical parties, Austrian, Roman, British, or American, with the same justice wherewith it dispenses its blessings to the little local factions that divide the village for a day, marshalling mankind forward in its mighty progress towards wisdom, freedom, goodness towards men, and piety towards God.
Of the final issue I have no doubt; but no man can tell what shall come to pass in the mean time. We see that political parties in the State are snapped asunder: whether the national party shall not be broken up, no man can say. In 1750, on the 28th day of November, no man in Old England or New England could tell what 1780 would bring forth. No man, North or South, can tell to-day what 1880 will bring to pass. He must be a bold man who declares to the nation that no new political machinery shall be introduced, in the next thirty years, to our national mill. We know not what a day shall bring forth, but we know that God is on the side of right and justice, and that they will prevail so long as God is God.