This is the good old Whig ground. To desert such ground because of any
company is to be less than a Whig, less than a man, less than an
American.
I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of
this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it
because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one
man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for free
people--a sad evidence that, feeling over-prosperity, we forget right;
that liberty as a principle we have ceased to revere. I object to it
because the Fathers of the Republic eschewed and rejected it. The
argument of "necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in
favour of slavery, and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did
they ever go. They found the institution existing among us, which they
could not help, and they cast the blame on the British king for having
permitted its introduction. Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit
of their age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and
toleration only by necessity.
But now it is to be transformed into a _sacred right_.
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