We hear its
echo, as it comes back from the Slave States themselves, in the
exceeding bitter cry of the whites for deliverance from the bondage
which the slavery of the blacks has brought upon them also. We
discern the confession of its might in the very extravagances and
violences of the Slave Power. It is its conscious and admitted
weakness that has made Texas and Mexico and Cuba, and our own
Northwestern territory, necessary to be devoured. It is desperation,
and not strength, that has made the bludgeon and the bowie-knife
integral parts of the national legislation. It has the American
Government, the American Press, and the American Church, in its
national organizations, on its side; but the Humanity and the
Christianity of the Nation and the World abhor and execrate it. They
that be against it are more than they that be for it.
It rages, for its time is short. And its rage is the fiercer because
of the symptoms of rebellion against its despotism which it discerns
among the white men of the South, who from poverty or from principle
have no share in its sway.
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