y compromises.
You ought to remember that by the time you yourselves think you are ready
to inaugurate measures for the revival of the African slave trade, that
sufficient time will have arrived, by precedent, for Judge Douglas to
break through, that compromise. He says now nothing more strong than
he said in 1849 when he declared in favor of Missouri Compromise,--and
precisely four years and a quarter after he declared that Compromise to
be a sacred thing, which "no ruthless hand would ever daze to touch," he
himself brought forward the measure ruthlessly to destroy it. By a mere
calculation of time it will only be four years more until he is ready to
take back his profession about the sacredness of the Compromise abolishing
the slave trade. Precisely as soon as you are ready to have his services
in that direction, by fair calculation, you may be sure of having them.

But you remember and set down to Judge Douglas's debt, or discredit, that
he, last year, said the people of Territories can, in spite of the Dred
Scott decision, exclude your slaves from those Territories; that he
declared, by "unfriendly legislation" the extension of your property into
the new Territories may be cut off, in the teeth of the decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States.

He assumed that position at Freeport on the 27th of August, 1858. He said
that the people of the Territories can exclude slavery, in so many words:
You ought, however, to bear in mind that he has never said it since. You
may hunt in every speech that he has since made, and he has never used
that expression once. He has never seemed to notice that he is stating his
views differently from what he did then; but by some sort of accident, he
has always really stated it differently. He has always since then declared
that "the Constitution does not carry slavery into the Territories of the
United States beyond the power of the people legally to control it, as
other property." Now, there is a difference in the language used upon
that former occasion and in this latter day. There may or may not be a
difference in the meaning, but it is worth while considering whether there
is not also a difference in meaning.

What is it to exclude? Why, it is to drive it out. It is in some way to
put it out of the Territory. It is to force it across the line, or change
its character so that, as property, it is out of existence. But what is
the controlling of it "as other property"? Is cont