At Springfield, twelve days ago, where I had spoken substantially as I have here, Judge Douglas replied to me; and as he is to reply to me here, I shall attempt to anticipate him by noticing some of the points he made there.  He commenced by stating I had assumed all the way through that the principle of the Nebraska Bill would have the effect of extending slavery.  He denied that this was intended or that this effect would follow.

I will not reopen the argument upon this point.  That such was the intention the world believed at the start, and will continue to believe.  This was the countenance of the thing, and both friends and enemies instantly recognized it as such.  That countenance cannot now be changed by argument.  You can as easily argue the color out of the negro’s skin.  Like the “bloody hand,” you may wash it and wash it, the red witness of guilt still sticks and stares horribly at you.

Next he says that Congressional intervention never prevented slavery anywhere; that it did not prevent it in the Northwestern Territory, nor in Illinois; that, in fact, Illinois came into the Union as a slave State; that the principle of the Nebraska Bill expelled it from Illinois, from several old States, from everywhere.

Now this is mere quibbling all the way through.  If the Ordinance of ’87 did not keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory, how happens it that the northwest shore of the Ohio River is entirely free from it, while the southeast shore, less than a mile distant, along nearly the whole length of the river, is entirely covered with it?

If that ordinance did not keep it out of Illinois, what was it that made the difference between Illinois and Missouri?  They lie side by side, the Mississippi River only dividing them, while their early settlements were within the same latitude.  Between 1810 and 1820 the number of slaves in Missouri increased 7211, while in Illinois in the same ten years they decreased 51.  This appears by the census returns.  During nearly all of that ten years both were Territories, not States.  During this time the ordinance forbade slavery to go into Illinois, and nothing forbade it to go into Missouri.  It did go into Missouri, and did not go into Illinois.  That is the fact.  Can any one doubt as to the reason of it?  But he says Illinois came into the Union as a slave State.  Silence, perhaps, would be the best answer to this flat contradiction of the known history of the country.  What are the facts upon which this bold assertion is based?  When we first acquired the country, as far back as 1787, there were some slaves within it held by the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia.  The territorial legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave States as indentured servants.  One year after the adoption of the first State constitution, the whole number of them was—­what do you think?  Just one hundred and seventeen, while the aggregate free population was 55,094,—­about