The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution—­the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.

John Brown’s effort was peculiar.  It was not a slave insurrection.  It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate.  In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed.  That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors.  An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them.  He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than in his own execution.  Orsini’s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the same.  The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization?  Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.  There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes.  You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling—­that sentiment—­by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it.  You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box into some other channel?  What would that other channel probably be?  Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution.  But we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations you have a specific and well understood allusion to an assumed constitutional right of yours to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property.  But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution.  That instrument is literally silent about any such right.  We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and force the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us.  You will rule or ruin in all events.