Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v6.djvu/71

1860]     AT HARTFORD      49 strike — probably knew as little about it as Senator Douglas himself. Shall we stop making war upon the South ? We never have made war upon them. If any one has, he had better go and hang himself and save Virginia the trouble. If you give up your convictions and call slavery right, as they do, you let slavery in upon you — instead of white laborers who can strike, you'll soon have black laborers who can't strike.

I have heard that in consequence of this "sectional warfare," as Douglas calls it, Senator Mason, of Virginia, had appeared in a suit of homespun. Now, up in New Hampshire, the woolen and cotton mills are all busy, and there is no strike — they are busy making the very goods Senator Mason has quit buying! To carry out his idea, he ought to go barefoot! If that's the plan, they should begin at the foundation, and adopt the well-known "Georgia costume," of a shirt-collar and pair of spurs.

It reminded him of the man who had a poor, old, lean, bony, spavined horse, with swelled legs. He was asked what he was going to do with such a miserable beast — the poor creature would die. "Do?" said he. "I'm going to fat him up; don't you see that I have got him seal-fat as high as the knees?" Well they have got the Union dissolved up to the ankle, but no further!

All portions of this Confederacy should act in harmony and with careful deliberation. The Democrats cry "John Brown invasion." We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield