If the consequences of slave-holding did not flow beyond the limits of the slave section, the right would still exist, on the principle that what affected injuriously one part must ultimately hurt the whole body politic.

But it was not true that slavery concerned only the States where it existed--the parts where it did not exist were involved by their constitutional liability to be called on for aid in case of a slave insurrection, as they were in the slave representation clause of the national compact, through which the North was deprived of its "just influence in the councils of the nation." And, furthermore, the right of the free States to agitate the question inhered in the principle of majority rule--the white population of the free States being almost double that of the slave States, "and the voice of this overwhelming majority should be potential." He repelled in strong language the wrongfulness of allowing the South to multiply the votes of those freemen by the master's right to count three for every five slaves, "because it is absurd and anti-republican to suffer property to be represented as men, and _vice versa_, because it gives the South an unjust ascendancy over other portions of territory, and a power which may be perverted on every occasion." He looked without shrinking upon the possibility of disunion even then.
"Now I say that, on the broad system of equal rights," he declared, "this inequality should no longer be tolerated.

If it cannot be speedily put down--not by force but by fair persuasion--if we are always to remain shackled by unjust, constitutional provisions, when the emergency that imposed them has long since passed away; if we must share in the guilt and danger of destroying the bodies and souls of men _as the price of our Union_; if the slave States will haughtily spurn our assistance, and refuse to consult the general welfare, then the fault is not ours if a separation eventually takes place." Considering that he was in his twenty-fourth year, and that the Abolition movement had then no actual existence, the orator evinced surprising prescience in his forecast of the future, and of the strife and hostility which the agitation was destined to engender.
"But the plea is prevalent," he said, "that any interference by the free States, however benevolent or cautious it might be, would only irritate and inflame the jealousies of the South, and retard the cause of emancipation.

If any man believes that slavery can be abolished without a struggle with the worst passions of human nature, quietly, harmoniously, he cherishes a delusion.

It can never be done, unless the age of miracles returns.