does concern the
whole. I have said that at all times; I have said as illustrations that
I do not believe in the right of Illinois to interfere with the
cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia, or the liquor
laws of Maine.

How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see
slavery put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
the course of ultimate extinction, that I am in favour of Illinois going
over and interfering with the cranberry laws of Indiana? What can
authorize him to draw any such inference? I suppose there might be one
thing that at least enabled him to draw such an inference, that would
not be true with me or many others; that is, because he looks upon all
this matter of slavery as an exceedingly little thing,--this matter of
keeping one-sixth of the population of the whole nation in a state of
oppression and tyranny unequalled in the world. He looks upon it as
being an exceedingly little thing, only equal to the question of the
cranberry laws of Indiana; as something having no moral question in it;
as something on a par with the question of whether a man shall pasture
his land with cattle or plant it with tobacco; so little and so small a
thing that he concludes, if I could desire that anything should be done
to bring about the ultimate extinction of that little thing, I must be
in favour of bringing about an amalgamation of all the other little
things in the Union. Now, it so happens--and there, I presume, is the
foundation of this mistake--that the Judge thinks thus; and it so
happens that there is a vast portion of the American people that do not
look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look upon it
as a vast moral evil; they can prove it as such by the writings of those
who gave us the blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and that they so
looked upon it, and not as an evil merely confining itself to the States
where it is situated; and while we agree that by the Constitution we
assented to, in the States where it exists we have no right to interfere
with it, because it is in the Constitution, we are both by duty and
inclination to stick by that Constitution in all its letter and spirit
from beginning to end.

So much, then, as to my disposition, my wish, to have all the State
legislatures blotted out and to have one consolidated government and a
uniformity of domestic regulations in all the States; by which I suppose
it is meant, i