Nebraska bill provided that the legislative power and authority of the said Territory should extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the organic act and the Constitution of the United States.  It did not make any exception as to slavery, but gave all the power that it was possible for Congress to give, without violating the Constitution, to the Territorial Legislature, with no exception or limitation on the subject of slavery at all.  The language of that bill, which I have quoted, gave the full power and the fuller authority over the subject of slavery, affirmatively and negatively, to introduce it or exclude it, so far as the Constitution of the United States would permit.  What more could Mr. Chase give by his amendment?  Nothing!  He offered his amendment for the identical purpose for which Mr. Lincoln is using it, to enable demagogues in the country to try and deceive the people.  His amendment was to this effect.  It provided that the Legislature should have power to exclude slavery; and General Cass suggested:  “Why not give the power to introduce as well as to exclude?” The answer was—­they have the power already in the bill to do both.  Chase was afraid his amendment would be adopted if he put the alternative proposition, and so made it fair both ways, and would not yield.  He offered it for the purpose of having it rejected.  He offered it, as he has himself avowed over and over again, simply to make capital out of it for the stump.  He expected that it would be capital for small politicians in the country, and that they would make an effort to deceive the people with it; and he was not mistaken, for Lincoln is carrying out the plan admirably. * * *

The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is—­If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that a State of this Union cannot exclude slavery from its own limits, will I submit to it?  I am amazed that Mr. Lincoln should ask such a question.  Mr. Lincoln’s object is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court.  He knows that there never was but one man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency, who ever for a moment pretended such a thing.  It is true that the Washington Union, in an article published on the 17th of last December, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article on the floor of the Senate. * * * Lincoln’s friends, Trumbull, and Seward, and Hale, and Wilson, and the whole Black Republican side of the Senate were silent.  They left it to me to denounce it.  And what was the reply made to me on that occasion?  Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up and undertook to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to have deemed the article worthy of notice, and ought not to have replied to it; that there was not one man, woman, or child south of the Potomac, in any slave State, who did not repudiate any such pretension.  Mr. Lincoln knows that reply was made on the spot, and yet now he asks this question!  He might as well ask me—­Suppose