uiet that
disturbing element in our society which has disturbed us for more than
half a century, which has been the only serious danger that has threatened
our institutions,--I say, where is the philosophy or the statesmanship
based on the assumption that we are to quit talking about it, and that the
public mind is all at once to cease being agitated by it? Yet this is the
policy here in the North that Douglas is advocating, that we are to care
nothing about it! I ask you if it is not a false philosophy. Is it not a
false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon
the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that everybody does care
the most about--a thing which all experience has shown we care a very
great deal about?

The Judge alludes very often in the course of his remarks to the exclusive
right which the States have to decide the whole thing for themselves. I
agree with him very readily that the different States have that right.
He is but fighting a man of straw when he assumes that I am contending
against the right of the States to do as they please about it. Our
controversy with him is in regard to the new Territories. We agree that
when the States come in as States they have the right and the power to do
as they please. We have no power as citizens of the free-States, or in
our Federal capacity as members of the Federal Union through the General
Government, to disturb slavery in the States where it exists. We profess
constantly that we have no more inclination than belief in the power
of the government to disturb it; yet we are driven constantly to defend
ourselves from the assumption that we are warring upon the rights of the
Sates. What I insist upon is, that the new Territories shall be kept free
from it while in the Territorial condition. Judge Douglas assumes that we
have no interest in them,--that we have no right whatever to interfere. I
think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Do we not
wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express
myself? Do we not feel an interest in getting to that outlet with such
institutions as we would like to have prevail there? If you go to the
Territory opposed to slavery, and another man comes upon the same ground
with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are equal, it turns
out that he has the equal right all his way, and you have no part of it
your way. If he goes in and makes it a slave Territor