the white man's charter of freedom.

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify
it. Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not the blood, of the
Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of "moral right," back
upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of "necessity." Let us
return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in
peace. Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the
practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South, let all
Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great and good
work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall
have so saved it as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving.
We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free happy
people the world over shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest
generations.

At Springfield, twelve days ago, where I had spoken substantially as I
have here, Judge Douglas replied to me; and as he is to reply to me here,
I shall attempt to anticipate him by noticing some of the points he made
there. He commenced by stating I had assumed all the way through that the
principle of the Nebraska Bill would have the effect of extending slavery.
He denied that this was intended or that this effect would follow.

I will not reopen the argument upon this point. That such was the
intention the world believed at the start, and will continue to believe.
This was the countenance of the thing, and both friends and enemies
instantly recognized it as such. That countenance cannot now be changed by
argument. You can as easily argue the color out of the negro's skin. Like
the "bloody hand," you may wash it and wash it, the red witness of guilt
still sticks and stares horribly at you.

Next he says that Congressional intervention never prevented slavery
anywhere; that it did not prevent it in the Northwestern Territory, nor
in Illinois; that, in fact, Illinois came into the Union as a slave State;
that the principle of the Nebraska Bill expelled it from Illinois, from
several old States, from everywhere.

Now this is mere quibbling all the way through. If the Ordinance of '87
did not keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory, how happens it that
the northwest shore of the Ohio River is entirely free from it, while the
southeast shore, less than a mile distant, along nearly the whole length
of the river, is