borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time,
the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government
upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably
fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in
ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will
have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically
resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor
is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is
a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought
before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their
decisions to political purposes.

One section of our country believes slavery is _right_ and ought to be
extended, while the other believes it is _wrong_ and ought not to be
extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave
clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the
foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can
ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly
supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry
legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I
think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases
_after_ the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave
trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without
restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially
surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our
respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between
them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and
beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country