Alton, Illinois. October 15, 1858_
... But is it true that all the difficulty and agitation we have in
regard to this institution of slavery springs from office-seeking,--from
the mere ambition of politicians? Is that the truth? How many times have
we had danger from this question? Go back to the day of the Missouri
Compromise. Go back to the nullification question, at the bottom of
which lay this same slavery question. Go back to the time of the
annexation of Texas. Go back to the troubles that led to the Compromise
of 1850. You will find that every time, with the single exception of the
nullification question, they sprung from an endeavour to spread this
institution. There never was a party in the history of this country, and
there probably never will be, of sufficient strength to disturb the
general peace of the country. Parties themselves may be divided and
quarrel on minor questions, yet it extends not beyond the parties
themselves. But does not this question make a disturbance outside of
political circles? Does it not enter into the churches and rend them
asunder? What divided the great Methodist Church into two parts, North
and South? What has raised this constant disturbance in every
Presbyterian General Assembly that meets? What disturbed the Unitarian
Church in this very city two years ago? What has jarred and shaken the
great American Tract Society recently,--not yet splitting it, but sure
to divide it in the end? Is it not this same mighty, deep-seated power,
that somehow operates on the minds of men, exciting and stirring them up
in every avenue of society, in politics, in religion, in literature, in
morals, in all the manifold relations of life? Is this the work of
politicians? Is that irresistible power which for fifty years has shaken
the government and agitated the people, to be stilled and subdued by
pretending that it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought not to
talk about it? If you will get everybody else to stop talking about it,
I assure you that I will quit before they have half done so.
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