, or exclude it, as they may see fit. In this shape the
bill passed both branches of Congress and became a law.

This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history
may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I am sure it is
sufficiently so for all the use I shall attempt to make of it, and in
it we have before us the chief material enabling us to judge correctly
whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong. I think,
and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its direct effect,
letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective
principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world
where men can be found inclined to take it.

This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal,
for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our
republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies
of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes
the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because
it forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the very
fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of
Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but
self-interest.

Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudice against the
Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If
slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it
did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe
of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on both
sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances, and others who
would gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of existence. We know
that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North and become tip-top
abolitionists, while some Northern ones go South and become most cruel
slave masters.

When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the
origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said
that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of
it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I
surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do
myself. If all earthly power wer