Slavery Is Founded In The Selfishness Of

We Have Been Preserved, These Many Years, In Peace And Prosperity. We Have Grown In Numbers, Wealth And Power, As No Other Nation Has Ever Grown. But We Have Forgotten God. We Have Forgotten The Gracious Hand Which Preserved Us In Peace, And Multiplied And Enriched And Strengthened Us; And We Have Vainly Imagined, In The Deceitfulness Of Our Hearts, That All These Blessings Were Produced By Some Superior Wisdom And Virtue Of Our Own. Intoxicated With Unbroken Success, We Have Become Too Self Sufficient To Feel The Necessity Of Redeeming And Preserving Grace, Too Proud To Pray To The God That Made Us!

[i]f The Policy Of The Government, Upon Vital Questions Affecting, The Whole People Is To Be Irrevocably Fixed By Decisions Of The Supreme Court, The Instant They Are Made, In Ordinary Litigation Between Parties In Personal Actions, The People Will Have Ceased, To Be Their Own Rulers, Having, To That Extent, Practically Resigned Their Government, Into The Hands Of That Eminent Tribunal.

Peace Will Come Soon To Stay, And So Come As To Be Worth Keeping In All Future Time. It Will Then Have Proved That Among Free Men There Can Be No Successful Appeal From The Ballot To The Bullet, And That They Who Take Such Appeal Are Sure Their Cases And Pay The Costs.

Now I Confess Myself As Belonging To That Class In The Country Who Contemplate Slavery As A Moral, Social And Political Evil.

We Cannot Ask A Man What He Will Do, And If We Should, And He Should Answer Us, We Should Despise Him For It. Therefore We Must Take A Man Whose Opinions Are Known.