You say we are sectional.  We deny it.  That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you.  You produce your proof; and what is it?  Why, that our party has no existence in your section—­gets no votes in your section.  The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue?  If it does, then, in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional.  You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it?  If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year.  You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue.  The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours.

And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice.  If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started—­to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle.  If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such.  Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet us as if it were possible that something may be said on our side.  Do you accept the challenge?  No!  Then you really believe that the principle which “our fathers who framed the government under which we live” thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment’s consideration.

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address.  Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you?  Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it?  We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.