every fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him
to point out any difference between my speeches north and south. While I
am here perhaps I ought to say a word, if I have the time, in regard to
the latter portion of the Judge's speech, which was a sort of declamation
in reference to my having said I entertained the belief that this
government would not endure half slave and half free. I have said so, and
I did not say it without what seemed to me to be good reasons. It perhaps
would require more time than I have now to set forth these reasons in
detail; but let me ask you a few questions. Have we ever had any peace on
this slavery question? When are we to have peace upon it, if it is kept in
the position it now occupies? How are we ever to have peace upon it? That
is an important question. To be sure, if we will all stop, and allow Judge
Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career until they
plant the institution all over the nation, here and wherever else our flag
waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be peace. But let me ask Judge
Douglas how he is going to get the people to do that? They have been
wrangling over this question for at least forty years. This was the cause
of the agitation resulting in the Missouri Compromise; this produced the
troubles at the annexation of Texas, in the acquisition of the territory
acquired in the Mexican War. Again, this was the trouble which was quieted
by the Compromise of 1850, when it was settled "forever" as both the great
political parties declared in their National Conventions. That "forever"
turned out to be just four years, when Judge Douglas himself reopened it.
When is it likely to come to an end? He introduced the Nebraska Bill in
1854 to put another end to the slavery agitation. He promised that it
would finish it all up immediately, and he has never made a speech
since, until he got into a quarrel with the President about the Lecompton
Constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at the end of
the slavery agitation. But in one speech, I think last winter, he did
say that he did n't quite see when the end of the slavery agitation would
come. Now he tells us again that it is all over and the people of Kansas
have voted down the Lecompton Constitution. How is it over? That was only
one of the attempts at putting an end to the slavery agitation--one
of these "final settlements." Is Kansas in the Union? Has she formed