...
... Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, I ask you to note that
fact (the popular-sovereignty of Judge Douglas), and the like of which
is to follow, to be plastered on, layer after layer, until very soon you
are prepared to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute. If
public sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new
turn of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is
constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular
sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further, until your minds,
now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all these things,
and you will receive and support or submit to the slave-trade, revived
with all its horrors,--a slave-code enforced in our Territories,--and a
new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up into the very heart of the
free North.
... I ask attention to the fact that in a pre-eminent degree these
popular sovereigns are at this work: blowing out the moral lights around
us; teaching that the negro is no longer a man, but a brute; that the
Declaration has nothing to do with him; that he ranks with the crocodile
and the reptile; that man with body and soul is a matter of dollars and
cents.
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