Why, then, in the absence of all control over the subject of African slavery, are you agitated in relation to it?  With Pharisaical pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for other men’s sins. [Laughter.] Who gave them a right to decide that it is a sin?  By what standard do they measure it?  Not the Constitution; the Constitution recognizes the property in many forms, and imposes obligations in connection with that recognition.  Not the Bible; that justifies it.  Not the good of society; for if they go where it exists, they find that society recognizes it as good.  What, then, is their standard?  The good of mankind?  Is that seen in the diminished resources of the country?  Is that seen in the diminished comfort of the world?  Or is not the reverse exhibited?  Is it in the cause of Christianity?  It cannot be, for servitude is the only agency through which Christianity has reached that degraded race, the only means by which they have been civilized and elevated.  Or is their charity manifested in denunciation of their brethren who are restrained from answering by the contempt which they feel for a mere brawler, whose weapons are empty words? [Applause.]

What, my friends, must be the consequences of this agitation?  Good or evil?  They have been evil, and evil they must be only, to the end.  Not one particle of good has been done to any man, of any color, by this agitation.  It has been insidiously working the purpose of sedition, for the destruction of that Union on which our hopes of future greatness depend.

On the one side, then you see agitation, tending slowly and steadily to that separation of the states, which, if you have any hope connected with the liberty of mankind, if you have any national pride in making your country the greatest of the earth, if you have any sacred regard for the obligation which the acts of your fathers entailed upon you,—­by each and all of these motives you are prompted to united and earnest effort to promote the success of that great experiment which your fathers left it to you to conclude. [Applause.] On the other hand, if each community, in accordance with the principles of our government, whilst controlling its own domestic institutions, faithfully struggles as a part of the united whole, for the common benefit of all, the future points us to fraternity, to unity, to co-operation, to the increase of our own happiness, to the extension of our useful example over mankind, and the covering of that flag, whose stars have already more than doubled their original number, [applause,] with a galaxy to light the ample folds which then shall wave either the recognized flag of every state, or the recognized protector of every state upon the continent of America. [Applause.]