s and unrequited toil; but I bite my lip and keep
quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a
steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well
do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on
board ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That
sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it
every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave border. It is not
fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which
has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable.
You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the
people of the North do crucify their feelings in order to maintain
their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union.

I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and
feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligations to the
contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You
say, if you were President you would send an army and hang the
leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still,
if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave State, she must be admitted,
or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a
slave State unfairly--that is, by the very means for which you
would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union dissolved?
That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a
practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair decision
of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would
differ about the Nebraska law. I look upon that enactment not as a
law but a violence from the beginning. It was conceived in
violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is
being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence,
because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise under the
Constitution was nothing less than violence. It was passed in
violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes
of many members in violent disregard of the known will of their
constituents. It is maintained in violence, because the elections
since clearly demand its repeal; and the demand is openly
disregarded. That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with
it will ask to be admitted into the Union, I take to be alre