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 peace. But let me ask Judge Douglas how he is going to get the
people to do that? They have been wrangling over this question for forty
years. This was the cause of the agitation resulting in the Missouri
Compromise; this produced the troubles at the annexation of Texas, in
the acquisition of the territory acquired in the Mexican War. Again,
this was the trouble quieted by the Compromise of 1850, when it was
settled "for ever," as both the great political parties declared in
their national conventions. That "for ever" turned out to be just four
years, when Judge Douglas himself reopened it.
When is it likely to come to an end? He introduced the Nebraska bill in
1854, to put another end to the slavery agitation. He promised that it
would finish it all up immediately, and he has never made a speech
since, until he got into a quarrel with the President about the
Lecompton constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at
the end of the slavery agitation.
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