Stronger to set its
pillars deep into the structure of our nation's life; sterner to execute
the justice of the Lord upon his enemies. Stronger to spread its arms
and grasp our whole land into freedom; sterner to sweep the last poor
ghost of Slavery out of our haunted homes. But while we feel the folly
of this act, let not its folly hide its wickedness. It was the
wickedness of Slavery putting on a foolishness for which its wickedness
and that alone is responsible, that robbed the nation of a President and
the people of a father. And remember this, that the folly of the Slave
power in striking the representative of Freedom, and thinking that
thereby it killed Freedom itself, is only a folly that we shall echo if
we dare to think that in punishing the representatives of Slavery who
did this deed, we are putting Slavery to death. Dispersing armies and
hanging traitors, imperatively as justice and necessity may demand them
both, are not killing the spirit out of which they sprang. The traitor
must die because he has committed treason. The murderer must die because
he has committed murder. Slavery must die, because out of it, and it
alone, came forth the treason of the traitor and the murder of the
murderer. Do not say that it is dead. It is not, while its essential
spirit lives. While one man counts another man his born inferior for the
color of his skin, while both in North and South prejudices and
practices, which the law cannot touch, but which God hates, keep alive
in our people's hearts the spirit of the old iniquity, it is not dead.
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