I sent the late edition of my--things (works, they call 'em) to the Harvard College Library, and if you will take the second volume, you will see, in a sermon "On the Slavery Question," how entirely I agree with you hat this is the great trial question of the country. And I think it will press upon the country this coming winter is it never has before. It certainly will if the Californias are ceded to us, and the Wilmot Proviso is brought before Congress, not for hypothetical, but for practical, actual decision. If it should be, I entertain the most painful apprehensions for the result. We have lost a host by the death of Silas Wright. A sagacious politician said to a friend of mine the other day, "It is a special providence, for it has saved us from a dissolution of the Union." His opinion was that Silas Wright, if he lad lived, would have been President; and you know that he would have taken his stand on the Proviso. The judgment of the individual to whom I have just referred presents the true issue. It is Policy against Right. I suppose there is not a man in New England who does not wish for the extinction of Slavery. I suppose there is hardly a man at the North who does not feel that the system is wrong, that it ought to be abolished, and must eventually be abolished; and that the only question about its abolition is a question of time. [192] But here is the peril,--that a good many persons in Congress and out of Congress will falter in their conviction before the determined stand of the South,--the determination, that is to say, to break off from the Union rather than submit to the Wilmot Proviso. And I do most seriously fear, for my part, that they would hold to that determination. But I am prepared, for myself, to say that, rather than yield the national sanction to this huge and monstrous wrong, I would take the risk of any consequences whatever. I reason for the nation as I would for myself. I say, rather than tell a lie, I would die. I cannot deliberately do wrong, and I cannot consent that my people shall. I would rather consent to the dismemberment of my right hand than to lay it in solemn mockery on the altar of injustice. As I have said in the sermon to which I have referred you, suppose that we were called upon to legalize polygamy or no marriage in California; would we do it? Certainly we would not, though all the Southern States should threaten to break off from us for our refusal, and should actually do it. I asked a similar question with regard to legalizing theft, in my sermon on the Annexation of Texas; and one of the stanchest opposers of the Wilmot Proviso once told me that that was the hardest instance he had ever been called upon to answer.