eople of Nebraska are and will continue to
be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the
contrary. What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another
man without that other's consent. I say this is the leading
principle,--the sheet-anchor of American republicanism.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it
in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism, and
when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings
them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal
the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration
of Independence; repeal all past history,--you still cannot repeal human
nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery
extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will
continue to speak....

The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored. Slavery may or may not be
established in Nebraska. But whether it be or not, we shall have
repudiated--discarded from the councils of the nation--the spirit of
compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national
compromise? The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which first
gave us the Constitution, and has thrice saved the Union--we shall have
strangled and cast from us for ever. And what shall we have in lieu of
it? The South flushed with triumph and tempted to excess; the North
betrayed, as they believed, brooding on wrong and burning for revenge.
One side will provoke, the other resent. The one will taunt, the other
defy; one aggresses, the other retaliates. Already a few in the North
defy all constitutional restraints, resist the execution of the Fugitive
Slave Law, and even menace the institution of slavery in the States
where it exists. Already a few in the South claim the constitutional
right to take and hold slaves in the free States, demand the revival of
the slave-trade, and demand a treaty with Great Britain by which
fugitive slaves may be reclaimed from Canada. As yet they are but few on
either side. It is a grave question for lovers of the Union, whether the
final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of
all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these,
and fatally increase the number of both.

... Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest t