n evil, they
will not molest it in the States where it exists, they will not overlook
the constitutional guards which our fathers placed around it; they will
do nothing that can give proper offence to those who hold slaves by legal
sanction; but they will use every constitutional method to prevent the
evil from becoming larger and involving more negroes, more white men,
more soil, and more States in its deplorable consequences. They will, if
possible, place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in course of ultimate peaceable extinction in God's own good time. And
to this end they will, if possible, restore the government to the policy
of the fathers, the policy of preserving the new Territories from the
baneful influence of human bondage, as the Northwestern Territories were
sought to be preserved by the Ordinance of 1787, and the Compromise Act
of 1820. They will oppose, in all its length and breadth, the modern
Democratic idea, that slavery is as good as freedom, and ought to have
room for expansion all over the continent, if people can be found to carry
it. All, or nearly all, of Judge Douglas's arguments are logical, if you
admit that slavery is as good and as right as freedom, and not one of them
is worth a rush if you deny it. This is the difference, as I understand
it, between the Republican and Democratic parties.

My friends, I have endeavored to show you the logical consequences of the
Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people of a Territory cannot
prevent the establishment of slavery in their midst. I have stated what
cannot be gainsaid, that the grounds upon which this decision is made are
equally applicable to the free States as to the free Territories, and
that the peculiar reasons put forth by Judge Douglas for indorsing this
decision commit him, in advance, to the next decision and to all other
decisions corning from the same source. And when, by all these means, you
have succeeded in dehumanizing the negro; when you have put him down and
made it impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you
have extinguished his soul in this world and placed him where the ray of
hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned, are you quite
sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you? What
constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not
our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy.
These are not ou