The
arguments to sustain that policy carefully exclude it. Even here to-day,
you heard Judge Douglas quarrel with me, because I uttered a wish that
it might sometime come to an end. Although Henry Clay could say he
wished every slave in the United States was in the country of his
ancestors, I am denounced by those who pretend to respect Henry Clay,
for uttering a wish that it might sometime, in some peaceful way, come
to an end.
The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not tolerate
the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least degree of wrong
about it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas's arguments. He says he "don't
care whether it is voted up or voted down in the Territories." I do not
care myself in dealing with that expression whether it is intended to be
expressive of his individual sentiments on the subject or only of the
national policy he desires to have established.
But no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in it; because no
man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted
down.... Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in
slavery.
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