Under the
operation of that policy, that agitation not only has not ceased, but
has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a
crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against
itself cannot stand." I believe this Government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the
other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of
it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it
forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as
well as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter
condition? Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost
complete legal combination piece of machinery, so to speak--compounded
of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider
not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted,
but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if
he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and
concert of action among its chief architects from the beginning.
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