ish the wrong may have
an end. And whenever we can get rid of the fog which obscures the real
question, when we can get Judge Douglas and his friends to avow a policy
looking to its perpetuation,--we can get out from among that class of men
and bring them to the side of those who treat it as a wrong. Then there
will soon be an end of it, and that end will be its "ultimate extinction."
Whenever the issue can be distinctly made, and all extraneous matter
thrown out so that men can fairly see the real difference between the
parties, this controversy will soon be settled, and it will be done
peaceably too. There will be no war, no violence. It will be placed again
where the wisest and best men of the world placed it. Brooks of South
Carolina once declared that when this Constitution was framed its framers
did not look to the institution existing until this day. When he said
this, I think he stated a fact that is fully borne out by the history of
the times. But he also said they were better and wiser men than the men of
these days, yet the men of these days had experience which they had not,
and by the invention of the cotton-gin it became a necessity in this
country that slavery should be perpetual. I now say that, willingly or
unwillingly--purposely or without purpose, Judge Douglas has been the
most prominent instrument in changing the position of the institution of
slavery,--which the fathers of the government expected to come to an end
ere this, and putting it upon Brooks's cotton-gin basis; placing it where
he openly confesses he has no desire there shall ever be an end of it.

I understand I have ten minutes yet. I will employ it in saying something
about this argument Judge Douglas uses, while he sustains the Dred Scott
decision, that the people of the Territories can still somehow exclude
slavery. The first thing I ask attention to is the fact that Judge Douglas
constantly said, before the decision, that whether they could or not,
was a question for the Supreme Court. But after the court had made the
decision he virtually says it is not a question for the Supreme Court, but
for the people. And how is it he tells us they can exclude it? He says it
needs "police regulations," and that admits of "unfriendly legislation."
Although it is a right established by the Constitution of the United
States to take a slave into a Territory of the United States and hold him
as property, yet unless the Territorial Legislature will giv