which exists between the principles of liberty and
slavery. You see we are multiplying. Now, while I am speaking of
Hickman, let me say, I know but little about him. I have never seen him,
and know scarcely anything about the man; but I will say this much about
him: of all the anti-Lecompton Democracy that have been brought to my
notice, he alone has the true, genuine ring of the metal.

... Judge Douglas ... proceeds to assume, without proving it, that
slavery is one of those little, unimportant, trivial matters which are
of just about as much consequence as the question would be to me,
whether my neighbour should raise horned cattle or plant tobacco; that
there is no moral question about it, but that it is altogether a matter
of dollars and cents; that when a new Territory is opened for
settlement, the first man who goes into it may plant there a thing
which, like the Canada thistle or some other of those pests of the soil,
cannot be dug out by the millions of men who will come thereafter; that
it is one of those little things that is so trivial in its nature that
it has no effect upon anybody save the few men who first plant upon the
soil; that it is not a thing which in any way affects the family of
communities composing these States, nor any way endangers the general
government. Judge Douglas ignores altogether the very well-known fact
that we have never had a serious menace to our political existence
except it sprang from this thing, which he chooses to regard as only
upon a par with onions and potatoes.

... Did you ever, five years ago, hear of anybody in the world saying
that the negro had no share in the Declaration of National Independence;
that it did not mean negroes at all; and when "all men" were spoken of,
negroes were not included?

... Then I suppose that all now express the belief that the Declaration
of Independence never did mean negroes. I call upon one of them to say
that he said it five years ago. If you think that now, and did not think
it then, the next thing that strikes me is to remark that there has been
a _change_ wrought in you, and a very significant change it is, being no
less than changing the negro, in your estimation, from the rank of a man
to that of a brute....

Is not this change wrought in your minds a very important change? Public
opinion in this country is everything. In a nation like ours this
popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have already wrought a
change in the