s made
it, forever? In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make
this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I
insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did
not make it so but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid
of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter
of choice, the fathers of the government made this nation part slave and
part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that:
when the fathers of the government cut off the source of slavery by the
abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from
the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed
it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in
the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it
cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends
could not let it remain as our fathers made it?

It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the institution of
slavery, that it shall be placed upon the basis that our fathers placed it
upon. Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, once said, and truly said, that
when this government was established, no one expected the institution
of slavery to last until this day, and that the men who formed this
government were wiser and better than the men of these days; but the
men of these days had experience which the fathers had not, and that
experience had taught them the invention of the cotton-gin, and this had
made the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a necessity in this
country. Judge Douglas could not let it stand upon the basis which our
fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it upon the cotton-gin basis.
It is a question, therefore, for him and his friends to answer, why they
could not let it remain where the fathers of the government originally
placed it. I hope nobody has understood me as trying to sustain the
doctrine that we have a right to quarrel with Kentucky, or Virginia, or
any of the slave States, about the institution of slavery,--thus giving
the Judge an opportunity to be eloquent and valiant against us in fighting
for their rights. I expressly declared in my opening speech that I had
neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence of,
the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in doing
as they pleased with slavery Or any other