Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.

Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them?
Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own! In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?
Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in the free-States?
If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively.

Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored, contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man, such as a policy of "don't care," on a question about which all true men do care, such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists; reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
[Sidenote] "New York Tribune," February 28, 1860.
The smiles, the laughter, the outburst of applause which greeted and emphasized the speaker's telling points, showed Mr.Lincoln that his arguments met ready acceptance.

The next morning the four leading New York dailies printed the speech in full, and bore warm testimony to its merit and effect.