7
thoroughly. It must be exhibited as it is; alike in its influence and in its animating character, so that not only its outside but its inside may be seen.
This is no time for soft words or excuses. All such are out of place. They may turn away wrath; but what is the wrath of man? ‘This is no time to abandon any advantage in the argument. Senators sometimes announce that they resist Slavery on political grounds only, and remind us that they say nothing of the moral question. This is wrong. Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest; nor is it any strife of rival factions; of White and Red Roses; of theatric Neri and Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong; between Good and Evil. Such a battle can not be fought with excuses or with rose-water. There is austere work to be done, and Freedom can not consent to fling away any of her weapons.
If I were disposed to shrink from this discussion, the boundless assumptions now made by Senators on the other side would not allow me. The whole character of Slavery as a pretended form of civilization is put directly in issue, with a pertinacity and a hardihood which banish all reserve on this side. In these assumptions, Senators from South-Carolina naturally take the lead. Following Mr. Calhoun, who pronounced "Slavery the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world," and Mr. McDuffie, who did not shrink from calling it "the cornerstone of the republican edifice," the Senator from South-Carolina [Mr. Hammond] insists that "its forms of society are the best in the world;" and his colleague [Mr. Chesnut] takes up the strain. One Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Davis] adds, that Slavery "is but a form of civil government for those who are not fit to govern themselves;" and his colleague [Mr. Brown] openly vaunts that it "is a great moral, social, and political blessing — a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master." One Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Hunter,] in a studied vindication of what he is pleased to call "the social system of the slaveholding States," exalts Slavery as "the normal condition of human society," "beneficial to the non-slave-owner as it is to the slave-owner," "best for the happiness of both races;" and, in enthusiastic advocacy, declares, "that the very keystone of the
