be left to the people of Nebraska,
because they are more particularly interested. If this be the rule, you
must leave it to each individual to say for himself whether he will have
slaves. What better moral right have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to
say that the thirty-second shall not hold slaves than the people of
the thirty-one States have to say that slavery shall not go into the
thirty-second State at all?

But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take and hold
slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy them where they can
buy them cheapest; and that, undoubtedly, will be on the coast of Africa,
provided you will consent not to hang them for going there to buy
them. You must remove this restriction, too, from the sacred right of
self-government. I am aware you say that taking slaves from the States to
Nebraska does not make slaves of freemen; but the African slave-trader can
say just as much. He does not catch free negroes and bring them here.
He finds them already slaves in the hands of their black captors, and he
honestly buys them at the rate of a red cotton handkerchief a head.
This is very cheap, and it is a great abridgment of the sacred right of
self-government to hang men for engaging in this profitable trade.

Another important objection to this application of the right of
self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the succeeding
many of a free exercise of the right of self-government. The first few
may get slavery in, and the subsequent many cannot easily get it out. How
common is the remark now in the slave States, "If we were only clear
of our slaves, how much better it would be for us." They are actually
deprived of the privilege of governing themselves as they would, by the
action of a very few in the beginning. The same thing was true of the
whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed.

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories, is not
a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole
nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories.
We want them for homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any
considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States
are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to. New
free States are the places for poor people to go to, and better their
condition. For this use the nation needs these Territories