Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there.  The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories.  We want them for homes of free white people.  This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them.  Slave States are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to.  New free States are the places for poor people to go to, and better their condition.  For this use the nation needs these Territories.

Still further:  there are constitutional relations between the slave and free States which are degrading to the latter.  We are under legal obligations to catch and return their runaway slaves to them:  a sort of dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, as a general rule, the slaveholders will not perform for one another.  Then again, in the control of the government—­the management of the partnership affairs—­they have greatly the advantage of us.  By the Constitution each State has two senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to the number of its people, and each has a number of Presidential electors equal to the whole number of its senators and representatives together.  But in ascertaining the number of the people for this purpose, five slaves are counted as being equal to three whites.  The slaves do not vote; they are only counted and so used as to swell the influence of the white people’s votes.  The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a comparison of the States of South Carolina and Maine.  South Carolina has six representatives, and so has Maine; South Carolina has eight Presidential electors, and so has Maine.  This is precise equality so far; and of course they are equal in senators, each having two.  Thus in the control of the government the two States are equals precisely.  But how are they in the number of their white people?  Maine has 581,813, while South Carolina has 274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina, and 32,679 over.  Thus, each white man in South Carolina is more than the double of any man in Maine.  This is all because South Carolina, besides her free people, has 384,984 slaves.  The South Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over the white man in every other free State as well as in Maine.  He is more than the double of any one of us in this crowd.  The same advantage, but not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens of the slave States over those of the free; and it is an absolute truth, without an exception, that there is no voter in any slave State but who has more legal power in the government than any voter in any free State.  There is no instance of exact equality; and the disadvantage is against us the whole chapter through.  This principle, in the aggregate, gives the slave States in the present Congress twenty additional representatives, being seven more than the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska Bill.