As if we could command others to do what we have no right to do ourselves, and prohibit others from doing what lies beyond our own jurisdiction!

Surely, to decree on what subjects a community shall legislate, and on what they shall not legislate, is the exercise of the highest power.

Does it not seem almost incredible that a defender and champion of slavery should deny the power of Congress to legislate on the subject of slavery in the territories?

If Congress has no such power, by what right can a master recapture a fugitive slave escaping into a territory?

By what other law than this can a runaway slave be retaken in a territory?

The knife wounds him who would use it to wound his fellow.

Cannot Congress make provision for the rights of the people, as well as for the language in which the laws and records defining those rights shall be expressed?

Look at this: Congress determines for the territory the qualifications of electors and elected,--at least in the first instance.

It is self-existent, like a god, and human power cannot prevent it.

From year to year, it goes on conquering and to conquer, and human power cannot dethrone it.

Government is one, but its functions are several.

Whoever denies one of these must deny them all.

If the government of the United States, therefore, has no right to legislate for the territories, it has no right to adjudicate for the territories; if it has no right to adjudicate, then it has no right to enforce the decisions of the…

He who takes from this government the law-making power, in regard to territories, strikes also the balances of justice from the hands of the judge, and the mace of authority from those of the executive.

If Congress has no power over territory, only as land, then what does this land want of judges and marshals?

Is it not obvious, then, that this new reading of the constitution sets aside the whole legislative, judicial, and executive administration of this government over territories, since the adoption of the constitution?

The Presidents, all members of Congress, all judges upon the bench, have been in a dream for the last sixty years, and are now waked up and recalled to their senses by the charm of a newly-discovered reading of the constitution.

I hazard nothing in saying that the ordinance of 1787 has been expressly referred to as valid, or expressly or impliedly reënacted, a dozen times, by the Congress of the United States; and, in the state courts of Ohio, Illinois, Louisiana…

How, then, is it possible for any mind, amenable to legal rules for the decision of legal questions, to say that Congress cannot legislate, or has not legislated, (except once or twice inadvertently,) on the subject of slavery in the…

All men have the right of self-government; and this principle holds true with regard to the inhabitants of territories, as well as the inhabitants of states.

Now, if these declarations were a sincere and honest affirmation of human rights, I should respect them and honor their authors.

Did this doctrine grow out of a jealousy for the rights of man, a fear of usurpation, an assertion of the principle of self-government, I should sympathize with it, while I denied its legality.

But, sir, it is the most painful aspect of this whole case, that the very object and purpose of claiming these ample and sovereign rights for the inhabitants of the territories is, that they may deny all rights to a portion of their…

Because, by so doing, you enable them to abolish all rights for a whole class of human beings.

So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.