might enumerate more of these
acts; but enough. What were they but a clear indication that the framers
of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of
that institution? And now, when I say, as I said in my speech that Judge
Douglas has quoted from, when I say that I think the opponents of slavery
will resist the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind
shall rest with the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,
I only mean to say that they will place it where the founders of this
government originally placed it.

I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it
back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination, in
the people of the free States to enter into the slave States and interfere
with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always; Judge
Douglas has heard me say it, if not quite a hundred times, at least
as good as a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of
interfering with slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by
anything I have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever
said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so
construed (as, however, I believe I never have), I now correct it.

So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in
favor of setting the sections at war with one another. I know that I never
meant any such thing, and I believe that no fair mind can infer any such
thing from anything I have ever said.

Now, in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general
consolidation of all the local institutions of the various States. I will
attend to that for a little while, and try to inquire, if I can, how on
earth it could be that any man could draw such an inference from anything
I said. I have said, very many times, in Judge Douglas's hearing, that no
man believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies
at the bottom of all my ideas of just government, from beginning to end. I
have denied that his use of that term applies properly. But for the thing
itself, I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his devotion to
the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency in advocating it. I
think that I have said it in your hearing, that I believe each individual
is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of
his labor, so far as it in no wise interfer