Slavery as the Fathers Viewed It.
Address at Cooper Union, New York. February 27, 1860.
Mr. President and Fellow-citizens of New York: The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar ; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the in- ferences and observations following that pres- entation. In his speech last autumn at Colum- bus, Ohio, as reported in the New York Times, Senator Douglas said :
Our fathers, when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.
I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it fur- nishes a precise and an agreed starting-point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry : What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned ?
What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must be, "The Constitu- tion of the United States." That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, and under which the present government first went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789.
Who were our fathers that framed the Con- stitution? I suppose the "thirty-nine" who
