to which this newspaper, to the extent of its
ability, has drawn the public attention. In it you not only perceive, as a
probability, that in that contest I did not at any time say I was in favor
of negro suffrage, but the absolute proof that twice--once substantially,
and once expressly--I declared against it. Having shown you this, there
remains but a word of comment upon that newspaper article. It is this,
that I presume the editor of that paper is an honest and truth-loving man,
and that he will be greatly obliged to me for furnishing him thus early
an opportunity to correct the misrepresentation he has made, before it has
run so long that malicious people can call him a liar.

The Giant himself has been here recently. I have seen a brief report of
his speech. If it were otherwise unpleasant to me to introduce the subject
of the negro as a topic for discussion, I might be somewhat relieved by
the fact that he dealt exclusively in that subject while he was here. I
shall, therefore, without much hesitation or diffidence, enter upon this
subject.

The American people, on the first day of January, 1854, found the African
slave trade prohibited by a law of Congress. In a majority of the States
of this Union, they found African slavery, or any other sort of slavery,
prohibited by State constitutions. They also found a law existing,
supposed to be valid, by which slavery was excluded from almost all the
territory the United States then owned. This was the condition of the
country, with reference to the institution of slavery, on the first of
January, 1854. A few days after that, a bill was introduced into Congress,
which ran through its regular course in the two branches of the national
legislature, and finally passed into a law in the month of May, by which
the Act of Congress prohibiting slavery from going into the Territories of
the United States was repealed. In connection with the law itself, and, in
fact, in the terms of the law, the then existing prohibition was not only
repealed, but there was a declaration of a purpose on the part of Congress
never thereafter to exercise any power that they might have, real or
supposed, to prohibit the extension or spread of slavery. This was a very
great change; for the law thus repealed was of more than thirty years'
standing. Following rapidly upon the heels of this action of Congress,
a decision of the Supreme Court is made, by which it is declared that
Congress, if it desires