Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/192

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unneces- sary, the work of interested or fanatical agita- tors, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton and rice-fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ulti- mately" be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to Slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is the failure to apprehend this great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final compromise between the slave and free States, and it is the existence of this great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you, fellow citizens, it is by no means an original or even a modem one. Our forefathers knew it to be true, and unanimously acted upon it when they framed the Constitution of the United States. They regard- ed the existence of the servile system in so many of the States with sorrow and shame, which 182