He will open districts of our country for
them; if my political party refuses to be the instrument in doing this,
from benevolent motives, or from any other cause, He will make that
party to be defeated, it may be by a party below us in moral principle,
as we view it. This question of slavery, its extension and continuance,
is therefore among the great problems of God's providence. I shall do
all that I properly can to prevent it, and to encourage, and, if called
upon, to aid my brethren now in immediate charge of the slaves, to
fulfil their solemn trust; but anything like impatience and passion at
the existence of slavery, I hold to be a sin against God. I pity those
good men whose minds are so inflamed by the consideration of individual
cases of suffering as not to perceive the great and steadfast march of
the divine administration. Politicians and others who get their places,
or their bread, by easy appeals to sympathy for individual cases of
suffering, are the causes of much misplaced commiseration and of a low,
uninstructed view of the great interests involved in slavery. Yet these
very men who, for selfish purposes, stir up the passions of our people,
by dwelling on cases of hardship in slavery, are greatly disappointed
when Napoleon III.
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