There was a way also for a third system to be established-the don't know and don't care system-that is, that it shall be a republic of freedom or slavery, just as time and chance and accident shall determine. How was that to be done? Why, if there had been any statesman of the order of Mr. Douglas at that time, he would have taken great care that the congress of the United States should have no power to abolish the African slave trade, but it should have power to admit at the same time foreign emigrants and naturalize them, and that congress should be pledged by the constitution to admit a state, slave or free, just as it should come when it offered itself, without resistance, and he would have taken good care to have the supreme court bound up so it should not interfere with the question, and when that was done, and when that course had been adopted, then the slaveholders would have been invited to carry as many slaves into the territories-new territories-as they could, and the foreign laborers to go in as freely as they could, and as soon as they got into the territory begin to vote it up or vote it down, or vote both ways, as they chose; or, when they were to vote it up or down, then invite the slaveholders of other states to interfere on the side of slavery, and then, failing to be able to settle it at the ballot box, just resort to cannon and rifle, and what they could not vote up or vote down, they would fight up or fight down.

It is not needful for me to say, that such a republic as would have been adopted upon either of these three principles could not have existed seventy years. It is not necessary to prove that it could not, and therefore I pass it by, although it is my own opinion that a republican government that can stand at all, must stand upon the principle of liberty paramount to slavery. The people of the country, then, having these three systems before them, adopted one entirely different from them all, and that was the principle of making freedom paramount in the federal government, everywhere, so far as they could, to the principle of slavery. We have grown to our present growth upon this principle, and it has become the fixed and settled habit of our national life-we live, hereafter, if we continue in the habit of preserving freedom of labor paramount to slavery, and we perish whenever we change that habit;-for it is with nations as it is with individuals-the nation that forsakes and abandons the habit of health which is essential in its very constitution, declines and perishes as the consequence of the departure. How was this

principle of freedom paramount to slavery established? The fathers encouraged every one of the thirteen original slave states to emancipate their slaves just so soon as they could consistently with the interest and the comfort of society then existing. It proposed to nobody to abolish slavery all at once, to substitute freedom all at once ; it is neither the course of nature nor the course of human wisdom to do anything of a sudden; but time enters and is an essential element in all human transactions which are wise. Then they prohibited the African slave trade, not all at once, because that might produce a shock if suddenly done. But they prohibited it after twenty years, and said to the slaveholders and those in the slaveholding interest, "Make good use of your time; twenty years you may import the black bondman into the country, and hold him there, but after that period there shall never be another slave imported into this Union, whether its institutions be free or slave institutions." They took one further step, and that is, they invited the foreigners of all lands, the free men of all lands, of all conditions. and all climates, into the country to fill up the vacuum or void which was to be made by preventing the importation of slaves, and declared that on giving evidence of character and loyalty, they should all become citizens of the United States equal with the native; aye, even with the first-born of the republic. They took one further step, and that was, to make all the future states that should be admitted into the Union become, not slave, but free states, by just building a wall along the bank of the Ohio river, where all these new states were to be erected, and said, this shall be free soil, and it shall never be trodden by the foot of the slave, and every state that shall be erected here shall not be a slave but a free state.

Having just accepted these few simple measures, the fathers sat themselves down contentedly and said to themselves: "It has been well and wisely done. True, we have not all free states and universal freedom, and for the present we have more slave states than free; but we have so arranged the forces of freedom and slavery in the balance that in sixty years there will be more free states than slave states; in eighty years there will be twice as many free states as slave states, and in one hundred years there will scarcely be a slave state; and at some period, within a hundred or five hundred or a thousand years, every man under the government of the United States will be a freeman, and slavery anywhere will exist only as a

state now.

relic of barbarism and inhumanity." Does any man deny now that this was well and wisely done? If he does, then he must wish that it had never been done—he must wish that this wise and judicious arrangement had never been made. Let us see, then, what would have been the consequence. Take a single state. If this arrangement which I have related to you had not been made, this state of New York, which, in the beginning, when the system was adopted, held every seventeenth person a slave, would have been a slave Does any man living in this state, or out of it, in any slave state, in any foreign country, is there a man who so hates the state of New York, and so much hates the human race that he would be willing to have this, not as it is now, a free state, but a slave state? There is not one wheel on this river that would be in motion if this were a slave state; there is not one mine of salt or iron—and we are not wealthy in mineral resources-that would not have closed up. The city of New York, a metropolis worthy of a great state, a metropolis worthy of a great nation, a metropolis worthy of a great continent, rapidly advancing to be the first and greatest city of modern times, and first, therefore and greatest, of all the cities that ever existed in the great tide of time-what would it have been now if this had been left to be a slave state instead of a free state? Strange inconsistency! You are all contented. Everybody is contented with society as they find it in the state of New York. We would not be changed backward for anything We must be free. But if there are any who think this condition is confined to the state of New York, go then, through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connec ticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and even Kansas, after the controversy is ended, and I ask where is the human being on the face of this earth that is so hateful of human happiness, so hateful of the good and welfare of his country and of his race, that he would be willing to have freedom excluded from that state, and slavery introduced in its place.

Suppose for a moment, that in this state, instead of adopting the policy of the fathers, making this free, and seeking to make all the other states free within the range of its constitutional powers,-suppose it had been a slave state, what kind of freedom would the free men in it enjoy? What would they be enjoying to-day? Not freedom of speaking just what they think, or writing just what they

think, or thinking just as they please, of worshiping God in every form, with every ritual that suits their own conscience; but they would have liberty to write, to speak, to think, to vote, to pray just exactly what the slaveholders desire them to write, speak, print, vote and pray. Is anybody then discontented or dissatisfied with the existing condition of things in the country? Not a man. Everybody is satisfied that it was rightly and wisely ordered in the beginning. If there be anybody who is discontented, I pray him to speak. Is this country all too free for you? Is there any danger of its ever going to be so much more free as to be too free for you? Is the republic already too great for you, and you would have it less, or contract it in its dimensions? Is the republic too rich, too prosperous, our people too happy for you? Its commerce, the second of any nation in the whole world, is it too broad, is it too enriching, is it too refining, that you would have it reduced? Not at all. Shall the influence of this nation be broken up, and aristocratic and despotic systems extended over the whole world? Do you dislike this, would you have this a miserable slave republic which would be mentioned in the councils of kings and emperors and the conclaves of aristocrats, not with respect and honor, and fear, as it is now, but with scorn, contempt and reproach? No! No! There is nobody wants the country less prosperous, less great, less free, less powerful than it is now.

But, going on just exactly in the track which was laid out for it by the fathers, it is going to be so much greater than it is now, SO much broader, so much wiser and happier, aye, and even so much more free, that those who come fifty years after us, will wonder at our contentment with being satisfied with such a country as we then had. Now, does anybody want to arrest it? The way that all this is to happen is by multiplying the free states in the west, and taking care, as fast as possible, to see that slavery is reduced and diminished in the old states, not by any force that anybody is to apply, for there never was force contemplated nor used, but simply by teaching, by example, that compensated labor is more productive of wealth and happiness in a society, than slave labor, that morality is better than crime, and humanity is better than inhumanity, and that virtue is the surest and safest guide to national prosperity and greatness. But if anybody does want anywhere to arrest the growing prosperity and greatness of the republic, there is one simple way to do

it. I can show him exactly how to do it. Encourage all the slave states to continue and to perpetuate slavery forever, reöpen the African slave trade, and open the public domain to slave states instead of free, and the whole thing is done, secured to be done at least, in the twinkling of an eye. I am sure that you do not want such a sad perverseness to come over the people of this country as to produce such a shock and such a change. Rather with me you would continue contented, and with the fathers reducing and circumscribing slavery just as they did, and as vigilantly as they did, and then wait to see Canada and all British America to the shores of Hudson Bay, and Russian America to Behrings Straits, and Spanish America to the Isthmus of Panama, and perhaps to Cape Horn, all coming into this republic as they would come, voluntarily, as they could not be kept from coming,-it would require the sword to prevent,-if you would only admit them as equal states and carry to them the blessings of your free states, but not the curse of slave states.

Well, it is sad to confess that just what I have been stating to you as the great problem of our government, is the very question in this canvass. The question in this canvass is, whether we shall keep this nation a republic of freedom, or reverse all its policy and henceforth make it a republic of slavery. It were better if it were to be a slave republic, better that it were made so in the beginning, than that it should have been deferred to us to have committed such a crime against mankind, and change now from freedom to slavery. When the national pulse is healthiest, when the whole form of the nation is rounded out and full, and when its habit of existence is freedom, to change that by injecting slavery into its veins, would be to smite it immediately with a poison under which it would languish for a time, and dissolve and die. It could have been made a slave republic in the beginning peacefully. It could be made a slave republic now only by revolution, resulting in civil war and anarchy.

But how does this question arise? It arises in this way. There is nobody discontented among us; but south of Mason and Dixon's line there is discontentment, and unhappiness, and despondency, and a feeling amounting almost to despair. South of the Delaware river, I should have said, are six states which, like the other seven, at the beginning were slave states, which declined to take the advice and counsel of the fathers, as the seven did, and kept and continued slavery, and they retain it yet. They are discontented, they are