are not themselves interested, you
would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you
yield that right; very certainly I am not. I leave that matter entirely
to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations under the
Constitution in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor
creatures hunted down and caught and carried back to their stripes and
unrequited toil; but I bite my lips and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had
together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St.
Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth
of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together
with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me, and I see something
like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not
fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and
continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather
to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify
their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and
the Union. I do oppose the extension of slavery because my judgment and
feeling so prompt me, and I am under no obligations to the contrary.
If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say, if you were
President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri
outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself
a slave State she must be admitted or the Union must be dissolved. But how
if she votes herself a slave State unfairly, that is, by the very means
for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the
Union dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first
becomes a practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair
decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would
differ about the Nebraska law. I look upon that enactment not as a law,
but as a violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, is
maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was
conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise,
under the circumstances, was nothing less than violence. It was passed in
violence because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of
many members in violence of the known will of their constituents. It is
maintained in violence, because the elec