ue 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 entirely covered with it?

If that ordinance did not keep it out of Illinois, what was it that made
the difference between Illinois and Missouri? They lie side by side, the
Mississippi River only dividing them, while their early settlements were
within the same latitude. Between 1810 and 1820 the number of slaves in
Missouri increased 7211, while in Illinois in the same ten years they
decreased 51. This appears by the census returns. During nearly all of
that ten years both were Territories, not States. During this time the
ordinance forbade slavery to go into Illinois, and nothing forbade it to
go into Missouri. It did go into Missouri, and did not go into Illinois.
That is the fact. Can any one doubt as to the reason of it? But he says
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. Silence, perhaps, would
be the best answer to this flat contradiction of the known history of the
country. What are the facts upon which this bold assertion is based? When
we first acquired the country, as far back as 1787, there were some slaves
within it held by the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia. The territorial
legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave States as indentured
servants. One year after the adoption of the first State constitution,
the whole number of them was--what do you think? Just one hundred and
seventeen, while the aggregate free population was 55,094,--about four
hundred and seventy to one. Upon this state of facts the people framed
their consti