cans on
the contrary, is, that the Judge is not in favor of making any difference
between slavery and liberty; that he is in favor of eradicating, of
pressing out of view, the questions of preference in this country for free
or slave institutions; and consequently every sentiment he utters discards
the idea that there is any wrong in slavery. Everything that emanates from
him or his coadjutors in their course of policy carefully excludes the
thought that there is anything wrong in slavery. All their arguments, if
you will consider them, will be seen to exclude the thought that there is
anything whatever wrong in slavery. If you will take the Judge's speeches,
and select the short and pointed sentences expressed by him,--as his
declaration that he "don't care whether slavery is voted up or down,"--you
will see at once that this is perfectly logical, if you do not admit that
slavery is wrong. If you do admit that it is wrong, Judge Douglas cannot
logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down.
Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a
right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no
wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot
logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong. He insists that upon
the score of equality the owners of slaves and owners of property--of
horses and every other sort of property--should be alike, and hold them
alike in a new Territory. That is perfectly logical if the two species of
property are alike and are equally founded in right. But if you admit that
one of them is wrong, you cannot institute any equality between right and
wrong. And from this difference of sentiment,--the belief on the part of
one that the institution is wrong, and a policy springing from that belief
which looks to the arrest of the enlargement of that wrong, and this other
sentiment, that it is no wrong, and a policy sprung from that sentiment,
which will tolerate no idea of preventing the wrong from growing larger,
and looks to there never being an end to it through all the existence of
things,--arises the real difference between Judge Douglas and his friends
on the one hand and the Republicans on the other. Now, I confess myself as
belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral,
social, and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence
amongst us and the difficulties of getting