? If they wanted it amended, why did they not
offer the amendment? Why did they not put it in themselves? But to put it
on the other ground: suppose that there was such an amendment offered,
and Chase's was an amendment to an amendment; until one is disposed of by
parliamentary law, you cannot pile another on. Then all these gentlemen
had to do was to vote Chase's on, and then, in the amended form in which
the whole stood, add their own amendment to it, if they wanted to put it
in that shape. This was all they were obliged to do, and the ayes and noes
show that there were thirty-six who voted it down, against ten who voted
in favor of it. The thirty-six held entire sway and control. They could in
some form or other have put that bill in the exact shape they wanted. If
there was a rule preventing their amending it at the time, they could pass
that, and then, Chase's amendment being merged, put it in the shape they
wanted. They did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with
Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he
would not, they stand upon the flimsy pretext for voting down what they
argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left room
thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make slavery
national throughout the United States.

I pass one or two points I have, because my time will very soon expire;
but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he
did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln, an
insignificant individual like Lincoln,--upon his ipse dixit charging a
conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court,
and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery. I want to say that, in the
first place, I have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse dixit. I have
only arrayed the evidence tending to prove it, and presented it to the
understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but giving you
the means of judging whether it proves it or not. This is precisely what
I have done. I have not placed it upon my ipse dixit at all. On this
occasion, I wish to recall his attention to a piece of evidence which
I brought forward at Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made
substantially the same charge against substantially the same persons,
excluding his dear self from the category. I ask him to give some
attention to the evidence which I brought forward that he himself had
discovered a "