[The speaker proceeded to argue that the hired laborer, with his ability to become an employer, must have every precedence over him who labors under the inducement of force.  He continued:]

I have taken upon myself in the name of some of you to say that we expect upon these principles to ultimately beat them.  In order to do so, I think we want and must have a national policy in regard to the institution of slavery that acknowledges and deals with that institution as being wrong.  Whoever desires the prevention of the spread of slavery and the nationalization of that institution yields all when he yields to any policy that either recognizes slavery as being right or as being an indifferent thing.  Nothing will make you successful but setting up a policy which shall treat the thing as being wrong:  When I say this, I do not mean to say that this General Government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world, but I do think that it is charged with preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.  This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing for the general welfare.  We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare.  We believe—­nay, we know—­that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.  The only thing which has ever menaced the destruction of the government under which we live is this very thing.  To repress this thing, we think, is, Providing for the general welfare.  Our friends in Kentucky differ from us.  We need not make our argument for them, but we who think it is wrong in all its relations, or in some of them at least, must decide as to our own actions and our own course, upon our own judgment.

I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so.  We must not withhold an efficient Fugitive Slave law, because the Constitution requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law.  But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor general welfare requires us to extend it.  We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code.  We must prevent each of these things being done by either Congresses or courts.  The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

To do these things we must employ instrumentalities.  We must hold conventions; we must adopt platforms, if we conform to ordinary custom; we must nominate candidates; and we must carry elections.  In all these things, I think that we ought to keep in view our real purpose, and in none do anything that stands adverse to our purpose.  If we shall adopt a platform that fails to recognize or express our purpose, or elect a man that declares himself inimical to our purpose, we not only take nothing by our success, but we tacitly admit that we act upon no other principle than a desire to have “the loaves and fishes,” by which, in the end, our apparent success is really an injury to us.