on of
local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories.
To those who now so declare, I give not only "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live," but with them all other living men within
the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall
not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

Now and here let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not
mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers
did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current experience to
reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is that, if we would
supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should
do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their
great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most
surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the
question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that proper division of local
from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the
Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he
is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence
and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others who
have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false
belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live"
were of the same opinion thus substituting falsehood and deception for
truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely
believes "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,"
used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them
to understand that a proper division of local from Federal authority, or
some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control
as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But he
should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that,
in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did
themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by
asserting that they "understood the question just as well, and even better
than we do now."

But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the
Government under which we live, un