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Show 90 nati. She will have n1ore miles of railroad than Maryland, Virginia, and both the Carolinas, can now boast. Her land will be worth $20 an acre, and her total wealth will be $500,000,000 of money; 600,000 children will learn in her schools. 5. There will be a ring of Freedom all round the Slave States, and in them slavery itself will decline. The Theory of Bondage will be given up, like the theory of theocracy and monarchy; and attempts will be made to get rid of the Fact. Then the North will help the Southern States in that noble work. There will never be another Slave State nor another Slave President; no more kidnapping in the North ; no more chains round the Court House in Boston ; no more preaching against the first Principles of all l-Iumanity. Three hundred years ago, our fathers in Europe were contending for liberty. Then it was Freedom of Conscience which the Progressive Force of the people demanded. Julius the Third had just been Pope, who gave the Cardinalship, vacated at his election, to the keeper of his monlwys; and Paul IV. sat in his stead in St. Peter's chair, and represented in general for all Europe the Regressive Power; while bloody Mary and bloodier Philip sat on England's throne, and, incited thereto by the Pontiff~ smote at the rights of man. Two hundred years ago, our fathers in the two Englands -Old and New- did grim battle against monarchic despotism : one Charles slept in his bloody grave, another wandered through the elegant debaucheries of the Continent; while Cromwell and Milton made liberal England abidingly famous and happy. One hundred years ago, other great battling for the Rights of Man was getting begun. Ah me ! the long-continued 91 ~trife. is not ended. The question laid over by our fathers Is adJourned to us for settlement. It is the old question between the Substance of man and his Accidents Labor . ' and Capital, the People and a Caste. Shall the 350,000 slaveholders own all the 1,400,000 square miles of territory not yet made States, and drive all Northern men away from it, or shall it belona to the b People; shall this vast area be like Arkansas and South Carolina, or like Michigan and Connecticut? That is the immediate question. Shall Slavery spread over all the United States, and root out Freedom from the land? or shall Freedom spread wide her blessed boughs till the whole continent is fed by her fruit, and lodged beneath her arms,- her very leaves for the healing of the nations? That is the ultimate question. Now is the time for America to choose between these two alternatives, and choose quick. For America? No, for the North. You and I are to decide this mighty question. I take it, the Anglo-Saxon will not forego his Ethnological Instinct for freedom; will not now break the Historic Habit of two thousand years : he will progressively tend to Christianity and Democracy; will put slavery down, peaceably if he can, forcibly if he must. We may now end this Crime against Humanity by ballots; wait a little, and only with swords and with blood can this deep and widening blot of shame be scoured out from the Continent. No election, since that first and unopposed of Washington, has been so important to America as this now before us. Once the nation chose between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson. When the choice is between Slavery and Freedom, will the North choose wrong? Any railroad company may, by accident, elect a knave for President; but when he has been convicted of squandering their substance on himself, and blowing up their engines,- nay, destroying their sons and daughters,- will the stockholders choose a swindler for ever ? |
