strong and guarded language, from establishing banks or borrowing money on
the faith of the Territory. Is this the sacred right of self-government
we hear vaunted so much? No, sir; the Nebraska Bill finds no model in the
acts of '50 or the Washington act. It finds no model in any law from Adam
till to-day. As Phillips says of Napoleon, the Nebraska act is grand,
gloomy and peculiar, wrapped in the solitude of its own originality,
without a model and without a shadow upon the earth.

In the course of his reply Senator Douglas remarked in substance that he
had always considered this government was made for the white people and
not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too. But in
this remark of the Judge there is a significance which I think is the key
to the great mistake (if there is any such mistake) which he has made
in this Nebraska measure. It shows that the Judge has no very vivid
impression that the negro is human, and consequently has no idea that
there can be any moral question in legislating about him. In his view the
question of whether a new country shall be slave or free is a matter of as
utter indifference as it is whether his neighbor shall plant his farm with
tobacco or stock it with horned cattle. Now, whether this view is right
or wrong, it is very certain that the great mass of mankind take a totally
different view. They consider slavery a great moral wrong, and their
feeling against it is not evanescent, but eternal. It lies at the very
foundation of their sense of justice, and it cannot be trifled with. It
is a great and durable element of popular action, and I think no statesman
can safely disregard it.

Our Senator also objects that those who oppose him in this matter do not
entirely agree with one another. He reminds me that in my firm adherence
to the constitutional rights of the slave States I differ widely from
others who are cooperating with me in opposing the Nebraska Bill, and he
says it is not quite fair to oppose him in this variety of ways. He should
remember that he took us by surprise--astounded us by this measure. We
were thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion.
But we rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach--a
scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping-ax, or a butcher's cleaver. We struck in
the direction of the sound, and we were rapidly closing in upon him. He
must not think to divert us from our purpose by showing us that our