od Samaritan it pretended to be
let it give up its bank and its tariff, which took enough money out of
the mouths of the poor to feed all the niggers in the world. Let the
whiner about wrongs quit his own wrongs. Let the accusing sinner repent
his own sin. Let the people of New England pluck the pine logs from
their own eyes before talking of hickory splinters in the eyes of the
South.

And then Douglas took up the history of the formation of the Union. What
went into the Union? Sovereign states. Who concluded a treaty of peace
with Great Britain after the Revolution? The thirteen sovereign states
that had waged the war. Who formed themselves into the Confederate
States, each retaining its sovereignty? The same states. Who left that
union and formed the present Union? The same states. What did they do?
They retained all the sovereign powers that they did not expressly
grant. They never parted with their sovereignty, but only with sovereign
powers. Where does sovereignty reside under our system? With the people
of the states. What follows from all of this? Why, that each state is
left to decide for itself all questions save those which have been
expressly given over to Washington to decide. Who is trying to nullify
these inestimable principles and safeguards? That is the real
nullification. The humbug Whigs, who would like to centralize all
authority at Washington ... "and Mr. Wyatt here in this new country,
among people of plain speech and industrious lives, is the spokesman of
these encroaching despotisms, which he has vainly attempted to defend
to-night. He dares to assail the great name of Andrew Jackson. He would
like to overcome the state sovereignty which permits Connecticut to
raise cranberries and Virginia to have negro slaves, which leaves
Kentucky with whisky and Maine with water, if Maine ever chooses so. He
does not know that the French Revolution was waged for the great
principle of the people to rule; and he fails to see that the whole
world is coming to accept that doctrine. With the growing wealth and
power of the North, of Illinois, it is necessary that the rights of the
individual and local communities and of the small states as well as the
large states should have the effectual counterbalance of state
sovereignty to protect them against the ambition of centralists, who are
money grabbers wrapping themselves about with the folds of the flag and
with the garments of superior holiness."

He wished to s