braska Bill in
January. In February afterward there was a called session of the Illinois
Legislature. Of the one hundred members composing the two branches of that
body, about seventy were Democrats. These latter held a caucus in which
the Nebraska Bill was talked of, if not formally discussed. It was thereby
discovered that just three, and no more, were in favor of the measure. In
a day or two Douglas's orders came on to have resolutions passed approving
the bill; and they were passed by large majorities!!!! The truth of this
is vouched for by a bolting Democratic member. The masses, too, Democratic
as well as Whig, were even nearer unanimous against it; but, as soon
as the party necessity of supporting it became apparent, the way the
Democrats began to see the wisdom and justice of it was perfectly
astonishing.

You say that if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a Christian
you will rejoice at it. All decent slaveholders talk that way, and I
do not doubt their candor. But they never vote that way. Although in
a private letter or conversation you will express your preference that
Kansas shall be free, you would vote for no man for Congress who would say
the same thing publicly. No such man could be elected from any district
in a slave State. You think Stringfellow and company ought to be hung; and
yet at the next Presidential election you will vote for the exact type and
representative of Stringfellow. The slave-breeders and slave-traders are
a small, odious, and detested class among you; and yet in politics they
dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters as
you are the master of your own negroes. You inquire where I now stand.
That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are
no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist. When I was at Washington, I voted
for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times; and I never heard of any
one attempting to un-Whig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the
extension of slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain. How could
I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of
degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to
me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men
are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal,
except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men
are created equal, except negroes and