e amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly
include those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the
government under which we live." And so assuming, I defy any man to
show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in
his understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority,
or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to
control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further.
I defy any one to show that any living man, in the whole world ever
did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost
say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century),
declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from
Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal
Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. To
those who now so declare I give not only "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live," but with them all other living men
within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and
they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing
with them.

Now, and here let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do
not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our
fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current
experience--to reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is,
that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any
case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so
clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed,
cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves
declare they understood the question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of
local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids
the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal
Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all
truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right
to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to
study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live" were of the same opinion--thus
substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair
argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers who