“Some of the Northern Republicans affect to think that your speech was ill-timed; but I think it was just in time, and not a moment too soon. The Southern party demand that the area of Slavery shall be extended,--that the system shall be protected by Congressional legislation backed by the whole power of the Government; is it not, therefore, right and proper that the people of the Free States should know what that system is which they are required to perpetuate and protect? You have torn off its mask and exhibited to them its hideous features, and now let them say whether they will crush it beneath their feet, or foster, caress, and protect it.” William Rabé, Secretary of the Republican Central Committee of California, wrote from San Francisco:-- “We have republished your speech.… I have the honor to hail from Mr. Chesnut’s State, but am extremely sorry to be obliged to disagree with him, and to be obliged to indorse the reasoning of your speech, notwithstanding, or, in fact, in consequence of, my having been a planter in South Carolina for years.… It may not be for me to eulogize you and your speeches; but that you have created an enthusiasm and opened the door for free talk on the subject of Slavery no one will deny, and the effect has already been electric.” * * * * * From the press, and from correspondence, it is plain, that, whatever the efforts or desires of politicians, the question of Slavery had reached a crisis. Nothing touched the universal heart so strongly, and the interest extended abroad. For years the South had been growing passionate for this Barbarism, and determined on its extension. It now appeared that in the North there was a passion the other way. The Presidential election turned on Slavery, and nothing else. The precise point in issue was its limitation by preventing its spread into the Territories; but this issue, even in its moderate form, involved the whole character of Slavery, and the supremacy of the Slave Power in the National Government.