tution prohibiting the further introduction of slavery, with
a sort of guaranty to the owners of the few indentured servants, giving
freedom to their children to be born thereafter, and making no mention
whatever of any supposed slave for life. Out of this small matter the
Judge manufactures his argument that Illinois came into the Union as a
slave State. Let the facts be the answer to the argument.

The principles of the Nebraska Bill, he says, expelled slavery from
Illinois. The principle of that bill first planted it here--that is, it
first came because there was no law to prevent it, first came before we
owned the country; and finding it here, and having the Ordinance of '87 to
prevent its increasing, our people struggled along, and finally got rid of
it as best they could.

But the principle of the Nebraska Bill abolished slavery in several of the
old States. Well, it is true that several of the old States, in the last
quarter of the last century, did adopt systems of gradual emancipation by
which the institution has finally become extinct within their limits; but
it may or may not be true that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was
the cause that led to the adoption of these measures. It is now more
than fifty years since the last of these States adopted its system of
emancipation.

If the Nebraska Bill is the real author of the benevolent works, it
is rather deplorable that it has for so long a time ceased working
altogether. Is there not some reason to suspect that it was the principle
of the Revolution, and not the principle of the Nebraska Bill, that led
to emancipation in these old States? Leave it to the people of these old
emancipating States, and I am quite certain they will decide that neither
that nor any other good thing ever did or ever will come of the Nebraska
Bill.

In the course of my main argument, Judge Douglas interrupted me to say
that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was very old; that it originated
when God made man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to
choose for himself, being responsible for the choice he should make. At
the time I thought this was merely playful, and I answered it accordingly.
But in his reply to me he renewed it as a serious argument. In
seriousness, then, the facts of this proposition are not true as stated.
God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his
choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree of the fruit
o