I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

A house built on two opposite principles cannot hold indefinitely. Where one group’s freedom rests on another group’s bondage, the arrangement is not a stable compromise but a delay, and the reckoning arrives whether or not anyone is ready for it. Contradictions of that size do not soften with time; they harden until something gives. Naming the contradiction out loud is what makes resolving it possible.

Where you see an arrangement that only works because someone is carrying an unfair share, say so plainly rather than hoping it settles. The discomfort of naming it is smaller than the cost of letting it run.