Now, I deny that the public ever demanded any such thing—­ever repudiated the Missouri Compromise, ever commanded its repeal.  I deny it, and call for the proof.  It is not contended, I believe, that any such command has ever been given in express terms.  It is only said that it was done in principle.  The support of the Wilmot Proviso is the first fact mentioned to prove that the Missouri restriction was repudiated in principle, and the second is the refusal to extend the Missouri line over the country acquired from Mexico.  These are near enough alike to be treated together.  The one was to exclude the chances of slavery from the whole new acquisition by the lump, and the other was to reject a division of it, by which one half was to be given up to those chances.  Now, whether this was a repudiation of the Missouri line in principle depends upon whether the Missouri law contained any principle requiring the line to be extended over the country acquired from Mexico.  I contend it did not.  I insist that it contained no general principle, but that it was, in every sense, specific.  That its terms limit it to the country purchased from France is undenied and undeniable.  It could have no principle beyond the intention of those who made it.  They did not intend to extend the line to country which they did not own.  If they intended to extend it in the event of acquiring additional territory, why did they not say so?  It was just as easy to say that “in all the country west of the Mississippi which we now own, or may hereafter acquire, there shall never be slavery,” as to say what they did say; and they would have said it if they had meant it.  An intention to extend the law is not only not mentioned in the law, but is not mentioned in any contemporaneous history.  Both the law itself, and the history of the times, are a blank as to any principle of extension; and by neither the known rules of construing statutes and contracts, nor by common sense, can any such principle be inferred.

Another fact showing the specific character of the Missouri law—­showing that it intended no more than it expressed, showing that the line was not intended as a universal dividing line between Free and Slave territory, present and prospective, north of which slavery could never go—­is the fact that by that very law Missouri came in as a slave State, north of the line.  If that law contained any prospective principle, the whole law must be looked to in order to ascertain what the principle was.  And by this rule the South could fairly contend that, inasmuch as they got one slave State north of the line at the inception of the law, they have the right to have another given them north of it occasionally, now and then, in the indefinite westward extension of the line.  This demonstrates the absurdity of attempting to deduce a prospective principle from the Missouri Compromise line.

When we voted for the Wilmot Proviso we were voting to keep slavery out of the whole Mexican acquisition, and little did we think we were thereby voting to let it into Nebraska lying several hundred miles distant.  When we voted against extending the Missouri line, little did we think we were voting to destroy the old line, then of near thirty years’ standing.