one of those great laws by which human affairs right themselves, to operate. It is the law that a great abuse, urged on by its necessities, must render itself insupportable and defy destruction. Slavery grew up under your fostering care; with its dimensions grew its necessities. It asked for security at home, and what it asked was given. It asked for its share in what we held in common, and what it asked was given. It asked for the lion’s share, and accompanied its demand with a threat, and what it asked was given. Then it asked all we held in common. It asked for a dictatorship, and the accompanying threat became a defiance. The people of the North rose up and said: “So far and no farther.” Then slavery, with fatal madness, raised its arm against the palladium which cannot be touched with impunity; it urged into our hands the sword of self-defence; with blind insolence it threw into the face of the nation the final challenge: “Kill me or I will kill thee!” The challenge could not be declined; the nation refused to be killed, and slavery had the full benefit of its defiance. [Enthusiastic cheering.] Do you not see that this decree of self-destruction was written by a hand mightier than that of mortal man?
And you will stand up against it? What are you about to do? Stop and consider! Slavery is dying fast. Its life is ebbing out of a thousand mortal wounds. Even its nearest friends in rebeldom are standing around its deathbed in utter despair; even they give it up. Hardly anything remains to be done but to close its eyelids, and to write the coroner's verdict: “Slavery having challenged the American nation to mortal combat, killed itself by running madly into the sword of its antagonist.” {Applause.] There it lies. And you—you will revive it? What? That you should have served it when it was in the fulness of its power, that, with a violent stretch of
