ne government then)
tried to get Congress to allow slavery temporarily, and petitions to
that end were sent from Kaskaskia, and General Harrison, the Governor,
urged it from Vincennes the capital. If that had succeeded, good-bye to
liberty here. But John Randolph of Virginia made a vigorous report
against it; and although they persevered so well as to get three
favourable reports for it, yet the United States Senate, with the aid of
some slave States, finally _squelched_ it for good. [Applause.] And that
is why this hall is to-day a temple for free men instead of a negro
livery stable. [Great applause and laughter.] Once let slavery get
planted in a locality, by ever so weak or doubtful a title, and in ever
so small numbers, and it is like the Canada thistle or Bermuda
grass--you can't root it out. You yourself may detest slavery; but your
neighbour has five or six slaves, and he is an excellent neighbour, or
your son has married his daughter, and they beg you to help save their
property, and you vote against your interest and principles to
accommodate a neighbour, hoping that your vote will be on the losing
side. And others do the same; and in those ways slavery gets a sure
foothold. And when that is done the whole mighty Union--the force of the
nation--is committed to its support. And that very process is working in
Kansas to-day. And you must recollect that the slave property is worth a
billion of dollars ($1,000,000,000); while free-State men must work for
sentiment alone. Then there are "blue lodges"--as they call
them--everywhere doing their secret and deadly work.

It is a very strange thing, and not solvable by any moral law that I
know of, that if a man loses his horse, the whole country will turn out
to help hang the thief; but if a man but a shade or two darker than I am
is himself stolen, the same crowd will hang one who aids in restoring
him to liberty. Such are the inconsistencies of slavery, where a horse
is more sacred than a man; and the essence of _squatter_ or popular
sovereignty--I don't care how you call it--is that if one man chooses to
make a slave of another, no third man shall be allowed to object. And if
you can do this in free Kansas, and it is allowed to stand, the next
thing you will see is ship-loads of negroes from Africa at the wharf at
Charleston; for one thing is as truly lawful as the other; and these
are the bastard notions we have got to stamp out, else they will stamp
us out. [Sensa