f excluding slavery, it all
went to pot as soon as Toombs got up and told him it was not true.
It reminds me of the story that John Phoenix, the California railroad
surveyor, tells. He says they started out from the Plaza to the Mission
of Dolores. They had two ways of determining distances. One was by a chain
and pins taken over the ground. The other was by a "go-it-ometer,"--an
invention of his own,--a three-legged instrument, with which he computed
a series of triangles between the points. At night he turned to the
chain-man to ascertain what distance they had come, and found that by some
mistake he had merely dragged the chain over the ground, without keeping
any record. By the "go-it-ometer," he found he had made ten miles. Being
skeptical about this, he asked a drayman who was passing how far it was to
the Plaza. The drayman replied it was just half a mile; and the surveyor
put it down in his book,--just as Judge Douglas says, after he had made
his calculations and computations, he took Toombs's statement. I have
no doubt that after Judge Douglas had made his charge, he was as easily
satisfied about its truth as the surveyor was of the drayman's statement
of the distance to the Plaza. Yet it is a fact that the man who put forth
all that matter which Douglas deemed a "fatal blow" at State sovereignty
was elected by the Democrats as public printer.

Now, gentlemen, you may take Judge Douglas's speech of March 22, 1858,
beginning about the middle of page 21, and reading to the bottom of page
24, and you will find the evidence on which I say that he did not make his
charge against the editor of the Union alone. I cannot stop to read it,
but I will give it to the reporters. Judge Douglas said:

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and apparently
authoritatively, and every man who questions any of them is denounced as
an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first,
that the primary object of all government at its original institution is
the protection of persons and property; second, that the Constitution
of the United States declares that the citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether organic
or otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State from settling in
another with their slave property, a