mongst men that when a
charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to establish it,
and if no proof was found to exist, it was dropped. I don't know how to
meet this kind of an argument. I don't want to have a fight with Judge
Douglas, and I have no way of making an argument up into the consistency
of a corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it. All I can do is
good-humouredly to say, that from the beginning to the end of all that
story about a bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a
word of truth in it....

When that compromise [of 1850] was made, it did not repeal the old
Missouri Compromise. It left a region of United States territory half as
large as the present territory of the United States, north of the line
of 36 deg. 30', in which slavery was prohibited by act of Congress. This
compromise did not repeal that one. It did not affect nor propose to
repeal it. But at last it became Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought
(and I find no fault with him), as chairman of the Committee on
Territories, to bring in a bill for the organization of a territorial
government--first of one, then of two Territories north of that line.
When he did so, it ended in his inserting a provision substantially
repealing the Missouri Compromise. That was because the Compromise of
1850 had not repealed it. And now I ask why he could not have left that
compromise alone? We were quiet from the agitation of the slavery
question. We were making no fuss about it. All had acquiesced in the
compromise measures of 1850. We never had been seriously disturbed by
any Abolition agitation before that period.... I close this part of the
discussion on my part by asking him the question again, Why, when we had
peace under the Missouri Compromise, could you not have let it alone?

* * * * *

He tries to persuade us that there must be a variety in the different
institutions of the States of the Union; that that variety necessarily
proceeds from the variety of soil, climate, of the face of the country,
and the difference of the natural features of the States. I agree to all
that. Have these very matters ever produced any difficulty amongst us?
Not at all. Have we ever had any quarrel over the fact that they have
laws in Louisiana designed to regulate the commerce that springs from
the production of sugar, or because we have a different class relative
to the production of flour in this State? Have they