. You all know that Frank Blair
and Gratz Brown, down there in St. Louis, undertook to introduce that
system in Missouri. They fought as valiantly as they could for the
system of gradual emancipation, which you pretend you would be glad to
see succeed. Now I will bring you to the test. After a hard fight they
were beaten; and when the news came over here, you threw up your hats
and hurrahed for Democracy! More than that; take all the argument made
in favour of the system you have proposed, and it carefully excludes the
idea that there is anything wrong in the institution of slavery. The
arguments to sustain that policy carefully exclude it. Even here to-day,
you heard Judge Douglas quarrel with me, because I uttered a wish that
it might sometime come to an end. Although Henry Clay could say he
wished every slave in the United States was in the country of his
ancestors, I am denounced by those who pretend to respect Henry Clay,
for uttering a wish that it might sometime, in some peaceful way, come
to an end.

The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not tolerate
the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least degree of wrong
about it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas's arguments. He says he "don't
care whether it is voted up or voted down in the Territories." I do not
care myself in dealing with that expression whether it is intended to be
expressive of his individual sentiments on the subject or only of the
national policy he desires to have established.

But no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in it; because no
man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted
down.... Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in
slavery.... But if it is a wrong, he cannot say that people have a right
to do wrong. He says that, upon the score of equality, slaves should be
allowed to go into a new Territory like other property. This is strictly
logical if there is no difference between it and other property.... But
if you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to
institute a comparison between right and wrong.... The Democratic policy
everywhere carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in
it.

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be
silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--right
and wrong--throughout the world.