in the sincerity of our democratic professions. The policy of our political parties will no longer be determined by a sectional minority, and the most venal of our politicians no longer sell themselves to an anti-democratic interest, which will have ceased to be a ruling political power. [Cheers.]
This state of things will, according to my profound conviction, be the consequence of a consistent, peaceable, and successful anti-slavery policy. It will stop extravagant and unwarrantable claims, without interfering with constitutional rights. It will respect the privileges of the States, but it will enforce them in favor of freedom also. It will not try to abolish slavery in the States by Congressional interference, or by the force of arms. But it will give strong encouragement and moral support to progressive reforms within them, and will sap the roots of the institution by reducing it to live on its own merits. It will not endanger the safety of the Union, but it will perpetuate it by strengthening its true foundations. [Applause.]
I love this Union, and no man can be more opposed to its dissolution; not as though the free North depended upon her bankrupt partner, but because I think that the connection of the Slave States with the free North is the only thing which prevents the former from entirely losing the last remnant of democratic spirit, and from abandoning themselves without restraint to the current of a despotic tendency. [Cheers.] Let our opponents fret and threaten—I fear nothing. The question, how the Union can be preserved, may, indeed, seem a difficult one to them. But did they ever consider how infinitely more difficult is the question how to dissolve it? And yet, there is one great and real danger to the Union; it is, that by abandoning the great principles of the Revolution, it might miss the very aims and ends for which it was instituted. [Cheers.]
