Territories, and that he is a truer champion of free labor, and, besides, a greater statesman, than any living individual. Thus a personal issue is urged upon us, and we are ready to accept it. This will be the subject of my remarks to-night. I shall not transgress the limits of propriety, but I am determined to call things by their right names. [Applause.]
What is it that entitles Judge Douglas to the high-sounding appellation: “the champion of freedom,” or “the greatest of living statesmen?” Is it his past career, or is it his present position? You can survey the history of this “champion of freedom” at a single glance. The Judge has his free-soil record—what Northern pro-slavery man has not? But there is hardly a prominent man in political life who has taken more pains than he to disclaim and apologize for his early anti-slavery sentiments. So we may drop this subject. What follows is more instructive.
In 1820, the Missouri Compromise was framed as a sacred compact between the two sections of the Union. By virtue of that compromise Missouri was admitted as a Slave State, and Arkansas as a Slave State; and thus the Free North, as one party to the compact, paid down its price for the slavery prohibition North of 36° 30′. Was Mr. Douglas ever heard to express any doubt as to the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, so long as it served to augment the number of Slave States? It was to him, as to all others, “a sacred and inviolable compact”—as sacred and inviolable as the Constitution itself; and he cursed the “ruthless hand” that should dare to break it down. When, after the Mexican war, the Territories acquired for this Union were to be organized, he was among the first and foremost who advocated the extension of the Missouri line across the whole continent. What would have been the result of that measure? In
