answering an objection to the Colonization Society, that it had a
tendency to the ultimate emancipation of the slaves, said that:

"Those who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate
emancipation must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of the
Colonization Society: they must go back to the era of our liberty and
independence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its annual joyous
return; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must penetrate
the human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the love of
liberty!"

And I do think--I repeat, though I said it on a former occasion--that
Judge Douglas and whoever, like him, teaches that the negro has no share,
humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back
to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far as in him lies,
muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is
blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever
wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as
lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and
the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the
public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery
perpetual and national.

There is, my friends, only one other point to which I will call your
attention for the remaining time that I have left me, and perhaps I shall
not occupy the entire time that I have, as that one point may not take me
clear through it.

Among the interrogatories that Judge Douglas propounded to me at Freeport,
there was one in about this language:

"Are you opposed to the acquisition of any further territory to the United
States, unless slavery shall first be prohibited therein?"

I answered, as I thought, in this way: that I am not generally opposed
to the acquisition of additional territory, and that I would support a
proposition for the acquisition of additional territory according as my
supporting it was or was not calculated to aggravate this slavery question
amongst us. I then proposed to Judge Douglas another interrogatory,
which was correlative to that: "Are you in favor of acquiring additional
territory, in disregard of how it may affect us upon the slavery
question?" Judge Douglas answered,--that is, in his own way he answered
it. I believe that, although he took a good many words to answer it, it
was a little more fully answer