Now consider the effect of this policy.  We in the States are not to care whether freedom or slavery gets the better, but the people in the Territories may care.  They are to decide, and they may think what they please; it is a matter of dollars and cents!  But are not the people of the Territories detailed from the States?  If this feeling of indifference this absence of moral sense about the question prevails in the States, will it not be carried into the Territories?  Will not every man say, “I don’t care, it is nothing to me”?  If any one comes that wants slavery, must they not say, “I don’t care whether freedom or slavery be voted up or voted down”?  It results at last in nationalizing the institution of slavery.  Even if fairly carried out, that policy is just as certain to nationalize slavery as the doctrine of Jeff Davis himself.  These are only two roads to the same goal, and “popular sovereignty” is just as sure and almost as short as the other.

What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think slavery wrong.  But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed to it, but yet act with the Democratic party—­where are they?  Let us apply a few tests.  You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it.  Is there anything else that you think wrong that you are not willing to deal with as wrong?  Why are you so careful, so tender, of this one wrong and no other?  You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will even allow it to be called wrong!  We must not call it wrong in the free States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the slave States, because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such unsuitable places—­and there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong!

Perhaps you will plead that if the people of the slave States should themselves set on foot an effort for emancipation, you would wish them success, and bid them God-speed.  Let us test that:  In 1858 the emancipation party of Missouri, with Frank Blair at their head, tried to get up a movement for that purpose, and having started a party contested the State.  Blair was beaten, apparently if not truly, and when the news came to Connecticut, you, who knew that Frank Blair was taking hold of this thing by the right end, and doing the only thing that you say can properly be done to remove this wrong—­did you bow your heads in sorrow because of that defeat?  Do you, any of you, know one single Democrat that showed sorrow over that result?  Not one!  On the contrary every man threw up his hat, and hallooed at the top of his lungs, “Hooray for Democracy!”