to guarantee a right which you say is very important and
very dear to you. You ask that your children may enter into and
possess these new Territories. We know it. But the North asks the same
privilege. We want our children to go there, and live on the labor of
their own free hands. They are excluded if slavery goes there before
us.

Mr. PRESIDENT, the people of the North do understand, that we are in a
contest--a great and important contest. Yet it is one that can be
carried on without trampling upon each other's rights--without
attempting to secure any unfair advantage. That is the way the North
proposes to carry on this contest in relation to the _extension_ of
slavery. This contest is between the owners of slaves on the one side,
and all the _free men_ of this great nation on the other.

There is another fact that should be kept in view. The Territories are
the property not of the individual States, but of the General
Government. They are held by the Government in trust, I grant. But in
trust for whom? For the whole _people_ of the Union; not in trust for
thirty-four distinct States. The idea that these Territories are
subject to partition--that South Carolina has the right to demand her
thirty-fourth part of them in severalty, is one that by the North
cannot be entertained. It is this idea which has produced that other
more mischievous one--that an equilibrium must be maintained between
the free and the slave States; in other words, between freedom and
slavery. Where did this idea creep into the Constitution? It never
has found, and it never will find, favor with the people of the North.

We may talk around this question--we may discuss its incidents, its
history, and its effects, as much and as long as we please. And after
all is said--disguise it as we may--it is a contest between the great
opposing elements of civilization--whether the country shall be
possessed and developed and ruled by the labor of slaves or of
freemen.

Leave it where it is, and all is well. We can live in peace while it
is a State institution; extend it, and who can answer for the
consequences? Leave it where it is! I humbly suggest that in that
direction lays the only path of peace. So long as the Territories are
common property, so long will the people insist upon protecting their
interests in them. In a Government like ours, conflicts will ensue.
The Constitution provides the proper and peaceful way of settling
them; and it is not b