“Who does not remember that thirty years ago—a short period in the life of a nation—but little could be said with impunity in these halls on the subject of slavery? We can hardly realize that this is the same people and these the same halls, where now scarcely a man can be found who will venture to do more than falter out an apology for slavery, protesting in the same breath that he has no love for the dying tyrant. None, I believe, but that man of more than supernal boldness, from the city of New York [Mr. Fernando Wood], has ventured, this session, to raise his voice in favor of slavery for its own sake. He still sees in its features the reflection of beauty and divinity, and only he. ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!’ Many mighty men have been slain by thee; many proud ones have humbled themselves at thy feet! All along the coast of our political sea these victims of slavery lie like stranded wrecks, broken on the headlands of freedom. How lately did its advocates, with impious boldness, maintain it as God’s own, to be venerated and cherished as divine? It was another and higher form of civilization. It was the holy evangel of America, dispensing its mercies to a benighted race, and destined to bear countless blessings to the wilderness of the West. In its mad arrogance it lifted its hand to strike down the fabric of the Union, and since that fatal day it has been a ‘fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth.’ Like the spirit that Jesus cast out, it has, since then, ‘been seeking rest and finding none.’ “It has sought in all the corners of the Republic to find some hiding-place in which to shelter itself from the death it so richly deserves. “It sought an asylum in the untrodden territories of the west, but, with a whip of scorpions, indignant freemen drove it thence. I do not believe that a loyal man can now be found who would consent that it should again enter them. It has no hope of harbor there. It found no protection or favor in the hearts or consciences of the freemen of the Republic, and has fled for its last hope of safety behind the shield of the Constitution. We propose to follow it there, and drive it thence, as Satan was exiled from heaven. But now, in the hour of its mortal agony, in this hall, it has found a defender.