"How is Lincoln, if elected Senator, going to carry out that principle
which he says is essential to the existence of this Union; that
slavery must be abolished in all the States, or must be established
in all? * * * * He invites, by his proposition, a war between
Illinois and Kentucky, a war between the free States and the slave
States, a war between the North and the South, for the purpose of
either exterminating slavery in every Southern State, or planting
it in every Northern State. * * * * * What man in Illinois would
not lose the last drop if his heart's blood before he would submit
to the institution of slavery being forced upon us by the other
States against our will? * * * What Southern man would not shed
the last drop of his heart's blood to prevent Illinois or any other
Northern State from interfering to abolish slavery in his State? *
* * * I am opposed to organizing a sectional party which appeals to
Northern pride and Northern passion and prejudice against Southern
institutions, thus stirring up ill feeling and hot blood between
brethren of the same Republic. * * * * How is he to carry out his
principles when he gets to the Senate? Does he intend to introduce
a bill to abolish slavery in Kentucky? Does he intend to introduce
a bill to interfere with slavery in Virginia? How is he to accomplish
what he professes must be done to save the Union?
"There would be but one way to carry out his ideas. That would be
to establish a consolidated empire as destructive to the liberties
of the people and the rights of the citizen as that of Austria
or Russia or any other despotism that rests upon the necks of the
people * * * *. Who among you expects to live or have his children
live until slavery shall be established in Illinois or abolished in
South Carolina? * * * * There is but one possible way in which
slavery can be abolished and that is by leaving a State * * *
* perfectly free to form and regulate its institutions in its own
way. That was the principle upon which this Republic was founded.
* * * * Under its operation slavery disappeared from New Hampshire,
from Rhode Island, from Connecticut, from New York, from New Jersey,
from Pennsylvania, from six of the twelve original slave holding
States; and this gradual emancipation went on so long as we in the
free states minded our own business and left our neighbors alone,
* * * * so long as the free States were content with managing their
own affairs and leaving the South perfectly free to do as they
pleased. But the moment the North said, 'We are powerful enough to
control you of the South,' * * * * that moment the South combined
to resist the attack and thus sectional parties were formed and
gradual emancipation ceased in all the Northern slave holding States
* * *.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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