States to be in at the death of slavery, he pointed out that slavery was
not sectional but national in its influence. 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,