| Whoever, in the present juncture of our affairs, can proclaim his entire political creed as frankly in Charleston as in Boston, can do it only because he has stricken from the list our distinctive national principle, without which we are not Americans at all — the natural equal rights of men. If Washington or Jefferson or Madison should utter upon his native soil today the opinions he entertained and expressed upon this question, he would be denounced as a fanatical abolitionist. To declare the right of all men to liberty is sectional, because slavery is afraid of liberty and strikes the mouth that speaks the word.
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