elling out and Abolitionizing the old Whig
party, I hope you will permit me to read a part of a printed speech that
I made then at Peoria, which will show altogether a different view of the
position I took in that contest of 1854.

[Voice: "Put on your specs."]

Mr. LINCOLN: Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer a young man.

"This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history
may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I am sure it is
sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in
it we have before us the chief materials enabling us to correctly judge
whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.

"I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its direct
effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its
prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the
wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.

"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal
for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives
our republican example of its just influence in the world,--enables
the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as
hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity,
and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves
into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,
criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is
no right principle of action but self-interest.

"Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the
Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If
slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it
did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe
of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals on both
sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who
would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know
that some Southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top
Abolitionists; while some Northern ones go south and become most cruel
slave-masters.

"When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin
of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the
institu