of the fathers by restricting it to the limits it has already
covered--restricting it from the new Territories.

I do not wish to dwell on this branch of the subject at great length at
this time, but allow me to repeat one thing that I have stated before.
Brooks, the man who assaulted Senator Sumner on the floor of the Senate,
and who was complimented with dinners and silver pitchers and
gold-headed canes, and a good many other things for that feat, in one of
his speeches declared that when this government was originally
established, nobody expected that the institution of slavery would last
until this day. That was but the opinion of one man, but it is such an
opinion as we can never get from Judge Douglas or anybody in favour of
slavery in the North at all. You can sometimes get it from a Southern
man. He said at the same time that the framers of our government did not
have the knowledge that experience has taught us--that experience and
the invention of the cotton gin have taught us that the perpetuation of
slavery is a necessity. He insisted therefore upon its being changed
from the basis upon which the fathers of the government left it to the
basis of perpetuation and nationalization.

I insist that this is the difference between Judge Douglas and
myself--that Judge Douglas is helping the change along. I insist upon
this government being placed where our fathers originally placed it.

... When he asks me why we cannot get along with it [slavery] in the
attitude where our fathers placed it, he had better clear up the
evidences that he has himself changed it from that basis; that he has
himself been chiefly instrumental in changing the policy of the fathers.
Any one who will read his speech of the twenty-second of March last,
will see that he there makes an open confession, showing that he set
about fixing the institution upon an altogether different set of
principles....

Now, fellow-citizens, in regard to this matter about a contract between
myself and Judge Trumbull, and myself and all that long portion of Judge
Douglas's speech on this subject. I wish simply to say, what I have said
to him before, that he cannot know whether it is true or not, and I do
know that there is not a word of truth in it. And I have told him so
before. I don't want any harsh language indulged in, but I do not know
how to deal with this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be
utterly without truth. It used to be the fashion a