for themselves. I
agree with him very readily that the different States have that right.
He is but fighting a man of straw when he assumes that I am contending
against the right of the States to do as they please about it. Our
controversy with him is in regard to the new Territories. We agree that
when the States come in as States they have the right and the power to do
as they please. We have no power as citizens of the free-States, or in
our Federal capacity as members of the Federal Union through the General
Government, to disturb slavery in the States where it exists. We profess
constantly that we have no more inclination than belief in the power
of the government to disturb it; yet we are driven constantly to defend
ourselves from the assumption that we are warring upon the rights of the
Sates. What I insist upon is, that the new Territories shall be kept free
from it while in the Territorial condition. Judge Douglas assumes that we
have no interest in them,--that we have no right whatever to interfere. I
think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Do we not
wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express
myself? Do we not feel an interest in getting to that outlet with such
institutions as we would like to have prevail there? If you go to the
Territory opposed to slavery, and another man comes upon the same ground
with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are equal, it turns
out that he has the equal right all his way, and you have no part of it
your way. If he goes in and makes it a slave Territory, and by consequence
a slave State, is it not time that those who desire to have it a free
State were on equal ground? Let me suggest it in a different way. How many
Democrats are there about here ["A thousand"] who have left slave States
and come into the free State of Illinois to get rid of the institution
of slavery? [Another voice: "A thousand and one."] I reckon there are a
thousand and one. I will ask you, if the policy you are now advocating had
prevailed when this country was in a Territorial condition, where would
you have gone to get rid of it? Where would you have found your free State
or Territory to go to? And when hereafter, for any cause, the people in
this place shall desire to find new homes, if they wish to be rid of the
institution, where will they find the place to go to?

Now, irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there
is a r