Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong.

When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that…

The Republican party think it wrong--we think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong.

That controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion, and if we can learn exactly--can reduce to the lowest elements--what that difference of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the different systems…

I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong.

Give to him that is needy" is the Christian rule of charity; but "Take from him that is needy" is the rule of slavery.

The other way is for us to surrender, and let Judge Douglas and his friends have their way, and plant slavery over all the States,--cease speaking of it as in any way a wrong--regard slavery as one of the common matters of property, and…

To be sure, if we will all stop and allow Judge Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career until they plant the institution all over the nation, here and wherever else our flag waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be…

If Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the earth's surface, this vexed question would still be among us.

I say, then, there is no way of putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us, but to put it back upon the basis where our fathers placed it; no way but to keep it out of our new Territories,--to restrict it for ever to the old States…

Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.

I will not charge upon Judge Douglas that he wilfully misrepresents me, but I call upon every fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him to point out any difference between my speeches north and south.

All the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to spread it over more territory.

They don't make the house a house divided against itself.

Another form of his question is, "Why can't we let it stand as our fathers placed it?" That is the exact difficulty between us.

I hold myself under constitutional obligations to allow the people in all the States, without interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as they please, and I deny that I have any inclination to interfere with them, even if there were…

I hold that the history of this country shows that the institution of slavery was originally planted upon this continent without these "police regulations" which the Judge now thinks necessary for the actual establishment of it.

This shows that there is vigour enough in slavery to plant itself in a new country, even against unfriendly legislation.

They are the props that hold up the house and sustain the Union.

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 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.

Whenever there has been an effort to spread it, there has been agitation and resistance.

I have no doubt that it would become extinct for all time to come, if we had but readopted the policy of the fathers by restricting it to the limits it has already covered--restricting it from the new Territories.

I say in the way our fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction.

I say that Judge Douglas and his friends have changed it from the position in which our fathers originally placed it.