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do not vote; they are only counted and so used as to swell the influence of the white people's votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a comparison of the States of South Carolina and Maine. South Carolina has six Representatives, and so has Maine; South Carolina eight Presidential electors, and so has Maine. But how are they in the number of their white people? Maine has 581,813, while South Carolina has 274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina, and 32,679 over. Thus each white man in South Carolina is more than double of any man in Maine. This is all because South Carolina, besides her free people, has 384,984 slaves. The South Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over the white man in every other free State as in Maine. He is more than the double of any one of us in this crowd. . . This principle in the aggregate gives the slave States in the present Congress twenty additional representatives, being seven more than the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska bill.

Now, all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention it to complain of it, in so far as it is already settled. It is in the Constitution, and I do not, for that cause or any other cause, propose to destroy, or alter, or disregard the Constitution. I stand to it fairly, fully and firmly. But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other people to say whether new partners are to be bred up and brought into the firm, on the same degrading terms against me, I respectfully demur. .

Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions. And if they shall think, as I do, that the extension of slavery endangers them, more than any or all other causes, how recreant to themselves if they submit the question, and with it the fate of their country, to a mere handful of men, bent only on temporary selfinterest! .

But Nebraska is urged as a Union-saving measure. Well, I too go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a greater one. But when I go to Union-saving, I

must believe, at least, that the means I employ have some adaptation to the end. To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation.

"It hath no relish of salvation in it."

It is an aggravation, rather, of the only thing which ever endangered the Union. When it came upon us, all was peace and quiet. The nation was looking to the forming of new bonds of union, and a long course of peace and prosperity seemed to lie before us. In the whole range of possibility, there scarcely appears to me to have been anything out of which the slavery agitation could have been revived, except the very project of repealing the Missouri Compromise. Every inch of territory we owned already had a definite settlement of the slavery question, by which all parties were pledged to abide. Indeed, there was no uninhabited country on the continent which we could acquire, if we except some extreme Northern regions which are wholly out of the question.*

In this state of affairs, the Genius of Discord himself could scarcely have invented a way of again getting us by the ears, but by turning back and destroying the peace measures of the past. . . . It could not but be expected by its author that it would be looked upon as a measure for the extension of slavery, aggravated by a gross breach of faith. Argue as you will, and long as you will, this is the naked front and aspect of the measure. And in this aspect, it could not but produce agitation.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery-extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.† Repeal the Missouri Compromise-repeal all compromise- repeal the Declaration of Independence repeal all past history - you

*And yet-then least of all in Lincoln's mind-remote Alaska was soon to be ours!

This sentence is certainly as explicit as the later "housedivided" passage, or as the "irrepressible conflict" of Seward.

still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery-extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak..

Some Yankees in the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska to exclude slavery from it; and, so far as I can judge, they expect the question to be decided by voting in some way or other. But the Missourians are awake, too. They are within a stone's throw of the contested ground. They hold meetings, and pass resolutions in which not the slightest allusion to voting is made. They resolve that slavery already exists in the Territory; that more shall go there; that they, remaining in Missouri, will protect it; and that Abolitionists shall be hung or driven away. Through all this, bowieknives and six-shooters are seen plainly enough; but never a glimpse of the ballot-box. . .

Could there be a more apt invention to bring about collision and violence on the slavery question than this Nebraska project is? I do not charge or believe that such was intended by Congress; but if they had literally formed a ring, and placed champions within it to fight out the controversy, the fight could be no more likely to come off than it is. And if this fight should begin, is it likely to take a very peaceful Union-saving turn? Will not the first drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the Union? . .

I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. . . . Near eighty years ago we began by declaring all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of selfgovernment." These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other. . . . In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware how we "cancel and tear to pieces" even the white man's charter of freedom.

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. . . . Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South, let all Americans,

let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make it and keep it forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free, happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed, to the latest generation.

The year, which opened with the proposed repeal of the Missouri restriction, closed with a divided and defeated Democratic party. The powerful organization, of which Douglas was master and manager in Illinois, was now, for the first time, broken and beaten. It failed to secure a working majority in the Legislature, which was to choose a Senator. The Whig members desired the election of Lincoln, to whom, as the leading champion of the Anti-Nebraska cause, the place seemed to be due; but five Democratic members opposed to Shields cast their votes for Judge Lyman Trumbull, an Anti-Nebraska Democrat, on the first ballot in joint assembly, (February 8, 1855.) so that Lincoln received only forty-five votes, fifty-one being necessary to a choice. After further balloting, with a gain of but two for Lincoln, a new candidate was presented on the Democratic side (Lieutenant-Governor Matteson), whose defeat seemed possible only by uniting on Trumbull. Lincoln promptly advised his friends accordingly - effacing himself and saving the cause.

CHAPTER XII.

1855-1858.

Anti-Nebraska Coalition - Kansas Conftier -- Republican Party Organized-Fremont Beaten by Buchanan-Dred Scott Decision - Utah Rebellion Cases in Court.

The Anti-Nebraska coalition was generally successful in the elections of 1855, though with somewhat diminished majorities. Meanwhile a new party, popularly called Know-Nothings, had grown into prominence in several of the Southern as well as Northern States. Its National Council met in secret session at Philadelphia in June of this year, and found itself hopelessly divided on the prevailing subject of discord. A break-up occurred, further preparing the way for a "union of all elements" in the North opposed to the Administration. Lincoln took no part in the KnowNothing movement, which had, however, a large following in his State. In some other parts of the country, and particularly in Massachusetts, it had completely revolutionized politics, carrying everything before it. This must have been due quite as much to the efficacy of its secret organization as to its ostensible objects · checking foreign influences and counteracting the compact power of naturalized voters. As an "American " party the organization was kept up for some years longer at the South, but in the North it soon dwindled and died.

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