ions their several constituencies shall clearly
express their will against Nebraska, will these senators disregard their
will? Will they neither obey nor make room for those who will?

But even if we fail to technically restore the compromise, it is still a
great point to carry a popular vote in favor of the restoration. The
moral weight of such a vote cannot be estimated too highly. The authors
of Nebraska are not at all satisfied with the destruction of the
compromise--an indorsement of this principle they proclaim to be the
great object. With them, Nebraska alone is a small matter--to establish a
principle for future use is what they particularly desire.

The future use is to be the planting of slavery wherever in the wide world
local and unorganized opposition cannot prevent it. Now, if you wish to
give them this indorsement, if you wish to establish this principle, do
so. I shall regret it, but it is your right. On the contrary, if you are
opposed to the principle,--intend to give it no such indorsement, let no
wheedling, no sophistry, divert you from throwing a direct vote against
it.

Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they be thrown in
company with the abolitionists. Will they allow me, as an old Whig, to
tell them, good-humoredly, that I think this is very silly? Stand with
anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part
with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the abolitionist in restoring the
Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal
the Fugitive Slave law. In the latter case you stand with the Southern
disunionist. What of that? You are still right. In both cases you are
right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand
on middle ground, and hold the ship level and steady. In both you are
national, and nothing less than national. This is the good old Whig
ground. To desert such ground because of any company is to be less than a
Whig--less than a man--less than an American.

I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of
this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it
because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of
one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free
people--a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that
liberty, as a princi