, his reasoning so convincing, his language so strong and eloquent
by turns, that the wonderful power he manifested in the discussions and
debates of the six succeeding years does not surpass, but only amplifies
this, his first examination of the whole brood of questions relating to
slavery precipitated upon the country by Douglas's repeal. After a
searching history of the Missouri Compromise, he attacks the
demoralizing effects and portentous consequences of its repeal.

"This declared indifference," he says, "but, as I must think, covert
real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it
because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because
it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world;
enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us
as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our
sincerity; and especially because it forces so many good men among
ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil
liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that
there is no right principle of action but self-interest.... Slavery is
founded in the selfishness of man's nature--opposition to it in his love
of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought
into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and
throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri
Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the Declaration of
Independence, repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human
nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery
extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth
will continue to speak."

With argument as impetuous, and logic as inexorable, he disposes of
Douglas's plea of popular sovereignty:

"Here, or at Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws
of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of
self-government is right--absolutely and eternally right--but it has no
just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say, that
whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or
is a man. If he is not a man, in that case, he who is a man may, as a
matter of self-government, do just what he pleases with him. But if the
negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of
self-government to say that he too shall n