ve the same effect upon one as upon the other, and that in
the soil there is no material difference so far as bears upon the question
of slavery being settled upon one or the other,--there being none of those
natural causes to produce a difference in filling them, and yet there
being a broad difference to their filling up, we are led again to inquire
what was the cause of that difference.

It is most natural to say that in Missouri there was no law to keep that
country from filling up with slaves, while in Illinois there was the
Ordinance of The Ordinance being there, slavery decreased during that ten
years; the Ordinance not being in the other, it increased from a few to
ten thousand. Can anybody doubt the reason of the difference?

I think all these facts most abundantly prove that my friend Judge
Douglas's proposition, that the Ordinance of '87, or the national
restriction of slavery, never had a tendency to make a free State, is a
fallacy,--a proposition without the shadow or substance of truth about it.

Douglas sometimes says that all the States (and it is part of this same
proposition I have been discussing) that have become free have become so
upon his "great principle"; that the State of Illinois itself came
into the Union as a slave State, and that the people, upon the "great
principle" of popular sovereignty, have since made it a free State. Allow
me but a little while to state to you what facts there are to justify him
in saying that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State.

I have mentioned to you that there were a few old French slaves there.
They numbered, I think, one or two hundred. Besides that, there had been
a Territorial law for indenturing black persons. Under that law, in
violation of the Ordinance of '87, but without any enforcement of the
Ordinance to overthrow the system, there had been a small number of
slaves introduced as indentured persons. Owing to this, the clause for
the prohibition of slavery was slightly modified. Instead of running like
yours, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime,
of which the party shall have been duly convicted, should exist in the
State, they said that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should
thereafter be introduced; and that the children of indentured servants
should be born free; and nothing was said about the few old French slaves.
Out of this fact, that the clause for prohibiting slavery was modified
because of the a