It is easy to read and copy:
- "If we translate these communications into plain English, they seem to amount to this, -- that, in order to preserve the institution of Slavery, the United States are bound to renounce the freedom of the platform, the assembly, the pulpit, and the newspaper.
In the South we all know freedom of discussion on the subject of Slavery has long been prohibited under penalties, amounting in many instances to death, preceded by torture; and we are now told, on the authority of the President of the United States, that the Union cannot be preserved unless the North not merely abstains from active interference with the domestic institutions of the South, but imposes upon itself an eternal silence on the subject.
It is a significant symptom of the true nature of Slavery that it draws after it, by the admission of its warmest advocates the prescription of that freedom of tongue and pen which we are in the habit of connecting with popular sovereignty, and seeks to establish in the midst of democracy a censorship on what is written and an espionage on what is spoken, for fear that the very echo of free discussion should generate in the minds of bondsmen "vague notions of freedom." "