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 enforce the Constitution as you please on all points in dispute between you and us.  You will rule or ruin, in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language.  Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in your favor.  Not quite so.  But, waiving the lawyer’s distinction between dictum and decision, the court have decided the question for you in a sort of way.  The court have substantially said it is your constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property.  When I say, the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact—­the statement in the opinion that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.”

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not “distinctly and expressly affirmed” in it.  Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it is “distinctly and expressly” affirmed there—­“distinctly,” that is, not mingled with anything else; “expressly,” that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.