This same generation of men, and mostly the same individuals of the generation who declared this principle, who declared independence, who fought the war of the Revolution through, who afterward made the Constitution under which we still live—­these same men passed the Ordinance of ’87, declaring that slavery should never go to the Northwest Territory.

I have no doubt Judge Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent in this.  It is a question of discrimination between them and him.  But there is not an inch of ground left for his claiming that their opinions, their example, their authority, are on his side in the controversy.

Again, is not Nebraska, while a Territory, a part of us?  Do we not own the country?  And if we surrender the control of it, do we not surrender the right of self-government?  It is part of ourselves.  If you say we shall not control it, because it is only part, the same is true of every other part; and when all the parts are gone, what has become of the whole?  What is then left of us?  What use for the General Government, when there is nothing left for it to govern?

But you say this question should be left to the people of Nebraska, because they are more particularly interested.  If this be the rule, you must leave it to each individual to say for himself whether he will have slaves.  What better moral right have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to say that the thirty-second shall not hold slaves than the people of the thirty-one States have to say that slavery shall not go into the thirty-second State at all?

But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy them where they can buy them cheapest; and that, undoubtedly, will be on the coast of Africa, provided you will consent not to hang them for going there to buy them.  You must remove this restriction, too, from the sacred right of self-government.  I am aware you say that taking slaves from the States to Nebraska does not make slaves of freemen; but the African slave-trader can say just as much.  He does not catch free negroes and bring them here.  He finds them already slaves in the hands of their black captors, and he honestly buys them at the rate of a red cotton handkerchief a head.  This is very cheap, and it is a great abridgment of the sacred right of self-government to hang men for engaging in this profitable trade.

Another important objection to this application of the right of self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the succeeding many of a free exercise of the right of self-government.  The first few may get slavery in, and the subsequent many cannot easily get it out.  How common is the remark now in the slave States, “If we were only clear of our slaves, how much better it would be for us.”  They are actually deprived of the privilege of governing themselves as they would, by the action of a very few in the beginning.  The same thing was true of the whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed.