Owen Lovejoy

We thank thee for the wisdom of the fathers in the formation of this government, and for the assistance thou didst render them in arriving at the great principles relating to the equality of man. We thank thee for the glorious declaration.

The equality of the human race is the pivot upon which our government rests and resolves.

I love the Constitution. It is enshrined in my heart. I love it better than any dozen Democrats in the land do tonight.

The doors will be forever barred and bolted against those miserable Democrats who scoff the rights of man.

Now comes the objection which you hear in the mouths of Democrats everywhere. Negro equality! Negro equality! The "Black Republicans" are in favor of negro equality!

So far as my right to life and liberty is concerned, I did not get it from Congress or Parliament. I did not get it from the Democratic Party. I did not get it from any evil spirits whose names commence with the same initials as the …

The Republican Party is for positive intervention. They propose, as our fathers did, to erect a wall of intervention, of prohibition, and station an angel of liberty at the gates in that wall, who shall keep watch and ward there day and …

The estimation of the Democratic Party is iniquity!

I warn you, be careful and consider the consequences of your vote.

I always defended it and always will, whether it be against the Democrats who pervert it, or the dis-unionists who trample on it.

In truth, I swore to support the Constitution because I believe in it. I do not believe in their construction of it. It is as well known as any historical fact can be known, that the framers of the Constitution so worded it as that it …

The testimony of all religious societies in the slave states is that the slaves are heathen and it is an utter impossibility to Christianize them and civilize them by this process.

You say this is horrid. I know it is horrid. I know it is horrid to hold men in slavery. I know it is horrid to doom four million human beings to condition of chattels.

Nobody can intimidate me.

I am speaking in dead earnest, before God. God's own truth. It has the violence of robbery, the blood and cruelty of piracy. It has the offensive and brutal lusts of polygamy, all combined and concentrated in itself, with aggravations that …

Sir, than robbery, than piracy, than polygamy, slaveholding is worse. More criminal, more injurious to man, and consequently more offensive to God. Slaveholding has been justly designated as the sum of all villainy. Put every crime …

The Republican Party, of which I am a member, stands pledged since 1856 to the extermination, so far as the federal government has the power, the twin relics of barbarism, slavery, and polygamy. They have this power in the territories of …

I poured on a rainstorm of fire and brimstone as hot as I could, and you know something of what that is. I believe that I never said anything more savage in the pulpit or on the stump.

I know that this is a pro-slavery rebellion, for it is nothing else. Slavery and rebellion are identical and freedom and loyalty are identical, and those slave-holders who are truly loyal will soon become abolitionists, for that is the …

I will stand where I please.

I will never degrade my manhood, and stifle the sympathies of human nature. It is an insult to claim it. I wish I had nothing worse to meet at the judgement day than that. I would not have the guilt of causing that wail of man's despair or …

No human being, black or white, bond or free, native or foreign, infidel or Christian, ever came to my door, and asked for food and shelter, in the name of a common humanity, or of a pitying Christ, who did not receive it. This I have …

If the Bible sanctions slavery at all, it is the enslavement of white men. No one pretends that the servants spoken of in the Bible were blacks. The Roman slave was not a black man, the Hebrew slave was not a black man. The question is, …

I believe that the love of freedom and the hatred of oppression under-girds and vitalizes the whole republican movement. The principles of our fathers in regard to human liberty and equality still live in the hearts of their descendants, …