ame
into the Union as a slave State, and that the people, upon the "great
principle" of popular sovereignty, have since made it a free State. Allow
me but a little while to state to you what facts there are to justify him
in saying that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State.

I have mentioned to you that there were a few old French slaves there.
They numbered, I think, one or two hundred. Besides that, there had been
a Territorial law for indenturing black persons. Under that law, in
violation of the Ordinance of '87, but without any enforcement of the
Ordinance to overthrow the system, there had been a small number of
slaves introduced as indentured persons. Owing to this, the clause for
the prohibition of slavery was slightly modified. Instead of running like
yours, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime,
of which the party shall have been duly convicted, should exist in the
State, they said that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should
thereafter be introduced; and that the children of indentured servants
should be born free; and nothing was said about the few old French slaves.
Out of this fact, that the clause for prohibiting slavery was modified
because of the actual presence of it, Douglas asserts again and again that
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. How far the facts sustain
the conclusion that he draws, it is for intelligent and impartial men
to decide. I leave it with you, with these remarks, worthy of being
remembered, that that little thing, those few indentured servants being
there, was of itself sufficient to modify a constitution made by a people
ardently desiring to have a free constitution; showing the power of the
actual presence of the institution of slavery to prevent any people,
however anxious to make a free State, from making it perfectly so.

I have been detaining you longer, perhaps, than I ought to do.

I am in some doubt whether to introduce another topic upon which I could
talk a while. [Cries of "Go on," and "Give us it."] It is this, then:
Douglas's Popular sovereignty, as a principle, is simply this: If one man
chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that man nor anybody else
has a right to object. Apply it to government, as he seeks to apply
it, and it is this: If, in a new Territory into which a few people are
beginning to enter for the purpose of making their homes, they choose
to either exclude slavery from their limits,