and eloquence should recollect that the government is arrayed against us, and that the numbers are now arrayed against us as well; or, to state it nearer to the truth, they are not yet expressly and affirmatively for us; and we should repel friends rather than gain them by anything savoring of revolutionary methods.  As it now stands, we must appeal to the sober sense and patriotism of the people.  We will make converts day by day; we will grow strong by calmness and moderation; we will grow strong by the violence and injustice of our adversaries.  And, unless truth be a mockery and justice a hollow lie, we will be in the majority after a while, and then the revolution which we will accomplish will be none the less radical from being the result of pacific measures.  The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle.  Slavery is a violation of the eternal right.  We have temporized with it from the necessities of our condition; but as sure as God reigns and school children read, that black foul lie can never be consecrated into god’s hallowed truth! [Immense applause lasting some time.]

One of our greatest difficulties is, that men who know that slavery is a detestable crime and ruinous to the nation are compelled, by our peculiar condition and other circumstances, to advocate it concretely, though damning it in the raw.  Henry Clay was a brilliant example of this tendency; others of our purest statesmen are compelled to do so; and thus slavery secures actual support from those who detest it at heart.  Yet Henry Clay perfected and forced through the compromise which secured to slavery a great State as well as a political advantage.  Not that he hated slavery less, but that he loved the whole Union more.  As long as slavery profited by his great compromise, the hosts of proslavery could not sufficiently cover him with praise; but now that this compromise stands in their way—­

“....they never mention him, His name is never heard:  Their lips are now forbid to speak That once familiar word.”

They have slaughtered one of his most cherished measures, and his ghost would arise to rebuke them. [Great applause.]

Now, let us harmonize, my friends, and appeal to the moderation and patriotism of the people:  to the sober second thought; to the awakened public conscience.  The repeal of the sacred Missouri Compromise has installed the weapons of violence:  the bludgeon, the incendiary torch, the death-dealing rifle, the bristling cannon—­the weapons of kingcraft, of the inquisition, of ignorance, of barbarism, of oppression.  We see its fruits in the dying bed of the heroic Sumner; in the ruins of the “Free State” hotel; in the smoking embers of the Herald of Freedom; in the free-State Governor of Kansas chained to a stake on freedom’s soil like a horse-thief, for the crime of freedom. [Applause.] We see it in Christian statesmen, and