But now it is to be transformed into a “sacred right.”  Nebraska brings it forth, places it on the highroad to extension and perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says to it, “Go, and God speed you.”  Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation the very figure-head of the ship of state.  Little by little, but steadily as man’s march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith.  Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a “sacred right of self-government.”  These principles cannot stand together.  They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and who ever holds to the one must despise the other.  When Pettit, in connection with his support of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declaration of Independence “a self-evident lie,” he only did what consistency and candor require all other Nebraska men to do.  Of the forty-odd Nebraska senators who sat present and heard him, no one rebuked him.  Nor am I apprised that any Nebraska newspaper, or any Nebraska orator, in the whole nation has ever yet rebuked him.  If this had been said among Marion’s men, Southerners though they were, what would have become of the man who said it?  If this had been said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said it would probably have been hung sooner than Andre was.  If it had been said in old Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the very doorkeeper would have throttled the man and thrust him into the street.  Let no one be deceived.  The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska are utter antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter.

Fellow-countrymen, Americans, South as well as North, shall we make no effort to arrest this?  Already the liberal party throughout the world express the apprehension that “the one retrograde institution in America is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw.”  This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends.  Is it quite safe to disregard it—­to despise it?  Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding the earliest practice and first precept of our ancient faith?  In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we “cancel and tear in pieces” even the white man’s charter of freedom.

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust.  Let us repurify it.  Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution.  Let us turn slavery from its claims of “moral right,” back upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of “necessity.”  Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace.  Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it.  Let North and South, let all Americans—­let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great and good work.  If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving.  We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free happy people the world over shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest generations.