ot to such men I would commit the welfare of the territories of
the United States. Rather let freeborn white men govern them _in their
own way_, unawed by Federal armies sustaining Lecompton Constitutions,
and I have no fear of the domestic institutions that will be formed in
the territories, nor any fears for the Union and the Constitution.

To sum up what I have said on this part of my argument, the proposition
is simply this: The Constitution, considered as a whole, and interpreted
as it should be, as the act of a moral person, made for great moral and
political ends, and not by the mere technical rules which lawyers or
impracticable theorists would apply to it, requires that the people of a
territory or inchoate State of the United States, preparatory to their
admission to the rank of a full grown State within the Union, shall have
as full power, through a legislature of their own choosing, to deal with
the subject of domestic slavery, and with other subjects of domestic
concern, as is possessed by the people of States in the Union. In other
words, I say, that whatever may be the right and duty of Congress under
the Constitution to guard and protect the territories from internal or
foreign violence, and to maintain their allegiance to the Union, it is
neither the right nor duty of Congress, under the Constitution, to
interfere with the question of slavery or any other domestic question,
so long as the people of the territories are faithful to their
allegiance to the Constitution and the Federal Republic.

I now proceed to state and confirm by brief historic evidence a
proposition already implied in what I have said upon the compromise
character of the Constitution and the ordinance of 1787. It is this: The
action of the Federal government on the subject of slavery has been
essentially compromise action. It recognizes the principle of the
co-existence and extension of Free States and Slave States, under and
within the confederacy, leaving the ultimate of the question of
abolition or extension, not with the Congress, but with the people of
the several States. Congress has never rightfully taken sides on this
question; for while on the one hand slavery has been forbidden in some
territories, it has been permitted in others. Slave territory and free
territory have alike been acquired by treaty, and Slave States and Free
States alike admitted to the Union. The action of Congress is therefore
no precedent for absolute sla