Abraham Lincoln, a History Volume 02

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Excerpt: ...never disturbed them, so that, after all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing until we cease saying. I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our free-State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it, and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a social blessing. Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground, save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality-its universality! if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension-its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right, all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right, but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own! In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual...