Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v6.djvu/62

 40 SPEECHES IFeb. 27

abstaining does not exempt us from the charge P;nd the denunciation.

The question recurs, What will satisfy them? Simply this : we must not only let them alone, hut we must somehow convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to con- vince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly pro- tested our purpose to let them alone ; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them ? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place our- selves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone ; do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But