And what has been the result? And allow me to admit right here, because I want to be fair, there are thousands and thousands of most excellent people in the South--thousands of them. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands there who would like to vote the Republican ticket. And whenever there is free speech there and whenever there is a free ballot there, they will vote the Republican ticket. I say again, there are hundreds of thousands of good people in the South; but the institution of human slavery prevented free speech, and it is a splendid fact in nature that you cannot put chains upon the limbs of others without putting corresponding manacles upon your own brain. When the South enslaved the negro, it also enslaved itself, and the result was an intellectual desert. No book has been produced, with one exception, that has added to the knowledge of mankind; no paper, no magazine, no poet, no philosopher, no philanthropist, was ever raised in that desert. Now and then some one protested against that infamous institution, and he came as near being a philosopher as the society in which he lived permitted. Why is it that New England, a rock-clad land, blossoms like a rose? Why is it that New York is the Empire State of the great Union? I will tell you. Because you have been permitted to trade in ideas. Because the lips of speech have been absolutely free for twenty years. We never had free speech in any State in this Union until the Republican party was born. That party was rocked in the cradle of intellectual liberty, and that is the reason I say it is the best party that ever existed in the wide, wide world. I want to preserve free speech, and, as an honest man, I look about me and I say, "How can I best preserve it?" By giving it to the South or North; to the Democracy or to the Republican party? And I am bound, as an honest man, to say free speech is safest with its earliest defenders. Where is there such a thing as a Republican mob to prevent the expression of an honest thought? Where? The people of the South are allowed to come to the North; they are allowed to express their sentiments upon every stump in the great East, the great West, and in the great Middle States; they go to Maine, to Vermont, and to all our States, and they are allowed to speak, and we give them a respectful hearing, and the meanest thing we do is to answer their arguments.