expectation
was that the slave trade would be abolished, but no more so than the
spread of slavery in the Territories should be restrained. They stand
alike, except that in the Ordinance of '87 there was a mark left by public
opinion, showing that it was more committed against the spread of slavery
in the Territories than against the foreign slave trade.

Compromise! What word of compromise was there about it? Why, the public
sense was then in favor of the abolition of the slave trade; but there was
at the time a very great commercial interest involved in it, and extensive
capital in that branch of trade. There were doubtless the incipient stages
of improvement in the South in the way of farming, dependent on the slave
trade, and they made a proposition to Congress to abolish the trade after
allowing it twenty years,--a sufficient time for the capital and commerce
engaged in it to be transferred to other channel. They made no provision
that it should be abolished in twenty years; I do not doubt that they
expected it would be, but they made no bargain about it. The public
sentiment left no doubt in the minds of any that it would be done away.
I repeat, there is nothing in the history of those times in favor of
that matter being a compromise of the constitution. It was the public
expectation at the time, manifested in a thousand ways, that the spread of
slavery should also be restricted.

Then I say, if this principle is established, that there is no wrong
in slavery, and whoever wants it has a right to have it, is a matter
of dollars and cents, a sort of question as to how they shall deal with
brutes, that between us and the negro here there is no sort of question,
but that at the South the question is between the negro and the crocodile,
that is all, it is a mere matter of policy, there is a perfect right,
according to interest, to do just as you please,--when this is done, where
this doctrine prevails, the miners and sappers will have formed public
opinion for the slave trade. They will be ready for Jeff. Davis and
Stephens and other leaders of that company to sound the bugle for the
revival of the slave trade, for the second Dred Scott decision, for the
flood of slavery to be poured over the free States, while we shall be here
tied down and helpless and run over like sheep.

It is to be a part and parcel of this same idea to say to men who want to
adhere to the Democratic party, who have always belonged to that
par