ramers of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate
extinction of that institution? And now when I say,--as I said in my
speech that Judge Douglas has quoted from,--when I say that I think the
opponents of slavery will resist the further spread of it, and place it
where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course
of ultimate extinction, I only mean to say that they will place it where
the founders of this government originally placed it.

I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it
back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination
in the people of the free States, to enter into the slave States and
interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always;
Judge Douglas has heard me say it. And when it is said that I am in
favour of interfering with slavery where it exists, I know it is
unwarranted by anything I have ever intended, and, as I believe, by
anything I have ever said. If by any means I have ever used language
which could fairly be so construed (as, however, I believe I never
have), I now correct it.

So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in
favour of setting the sections at war with one another. I know that I
never meant any such thing, and I believe that no fair mind can infer
any such thing from anything I have said.

Now, in relation to his inference that I am in favour of a general
consolidation of all the local institutions of the various States.... I
have said very many times in Judge Douglas's hearing that no man
believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies
at the bottom of all my ideas of just government from beginning to end.
I have denied that his use of that term applies properly. But for the
thing itself I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his
devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency in
advocating it. I think that I have said it in your hearing, that I
believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with
himself and the fruit of his labour, so far as it in no wise interferes
with any other man's rights; that each community, as a State, has a
right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that
State that interfere with the right of no other State; and that the
general government upon principle has no right to interfere with
anything other than that general class of things that