c mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction. I say when this government was first established it was the
policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new
Territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge
Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and placed it upon
a new basis, by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have
asked or desired anywhere is that it should be placed back again upon the
basis that the fathers of our government originally placed it upon. I have
no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but
readopted the policy of the fathers, by restricting it to the limits it
has already covered, restricting it from the new Territories.

I do not wish to dwell at great length on this branch of the subject at
this time, but allow me to repeat one thing that I have stated before.
Brooks--the man who assaulted Senator Sumner on the floor of the
Senate, and who was complimented with dinners, and silver pitchers, and
gold-headed canes, and a good many other things for that feat--in one
of his speeches declared that when this government was originally
established, nobody expected that the institution of slavery would last
until this day. That was but the opinion of one man, but it was such an
opinion as we can never get from Judge Douglas or anybody in favor of
slavery, in the North, at all. You can sometimes get it from a Southern
man. He said at the same time that the framers of our government did not
have the knowledge that experience has taught us; that experience and
the invention of the cotton-gin have taught us that the perpetuation of
slavery is a necessity. He insisted, therefore, upon its being changed
from the basis upon which the fathers of the government left it to the
basis of its perpetuation and nationalization.

I insist that this is the difference between Judge Douglas and
myself,--that Judge Douglas is helping that change along. I insist upon
this government being placed where our fathers originally placed it.

I remember Judge Douglas once said that he saw the evidences on the
statute books of Congress of a policy in the origin of government
to divide slavery and freedom by a geographical line; that he saw an
indisposition to maintain that policy, and therefore he set about studying
up a way to settle the institution on the right basis,--the basis which he
thought it ought to