the States, one and inseparable, now and forever, as the high- est duty of the American people to themselves, to posterity, to mankind," etc. In the free States, the Union sentiment expressed by Mr. Seward amounted to a passion. None but a few of the despised abolitionists were free from it. To pre- serve the Union, the people would make great sacrifices— their peace, their property— and would even go so far as to trench upon their personal liberties by limiting the freedom of speech and the press and becoming slave-catchers upon free soil. In the South, slavery was their bond and their passion, for which the people would sacrifice the Union. Indeed, to the thorough- going slavocracy, the Union was valueless except as the highest trump card in the game of government whose high honors it had so far won. It was this condition that made possible the dominance of slavery in the government for so many years. Not because disunion was continually threat- ened by the Southern people, but because it was known to be their remedy against any form of anti-slavery agitation.
There was, however, a limit to Northern subserviency. The people of the free States could not wholly satisfy their Southern brethren without abandoning their system of gov- ernment. It was not enough that they must be slave-catchers by constitutional duress ; they must do the work with alacrity, as Mr. Webster expressed it. Not only so, they must cease talking against chattel slavery. The pride of Southern gentle- men revolted at the idea of being looked upon as engaged in a nefarious business, and therefore under the moral ban. So anti-slavery agitation must cease at the North as it had at the South.
Mr. Lincoln, who has never been accused of being untruth- ful or extravagant, in answer to the query, what must we do to convmce our Southern brethren that we intend no interfer- ence with slavery where it exists, said in his Cooper Institute speech, in New York City, February 27th, 1860: This and this only : cease to call slavery wrong and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly— done in acts as well in words. Silence will not be tolerated— we must place
