It is, I believe, a principle in law that when one party to a contract violates it so grossly as to chiefly destroy the object for which it is made, the other party may rescind it.  I will ask Browning if that ain’t good law. [Voices:  “Yes!”] Well, now if that be right, I go for rescinding the whole, entire Missouri Compromise and thus turning Missouri into a free State; and I should like to know the difference—­should like for any one to point out the difference—­between our making a free State of Missouri and their making a slave State of Kansas. [Great applause.] There ain’t one bit of difference, except that our way would be a great mercy to humanity.  But I have never said, and the Whig party has never said, and those who oppose the Nebraska Bill do not as a body say, that they have any intention of interfering with slavery in the slave States.  Our platform says just the contrary.  We allow slavery to exist in the slave States, not because slavery is right or good, but from the necessities of our Union.  We grant a fugitive slave law because it is so “nominated in the bond”; because our fathers so stipulated—­had to—­and we are bound to carry out this agreement.  But they did not agree to introduce slavery in regions where it did not previously exist.  On the contrary, they said by their example and teachings that they did not deem it expedient—­did n’t consider it right—­to do so; and it is wise and right to do just as they did about it. [Voices:  “Good!”] And that it what we propose—­not to interfere with slavery where it exists (we have never tried to do it), and to give them a reasonable and efficient fugitive slave law. [A voice:  “No!”] I say yes! [Applause.] It was part of the bargain, and I ’m for living up to it; but I go no further; I’m not bound to do more, and I won’t agree any further. [Great applause.]

We, here in Illinois, should feel especially proud of the provision of the Missouri Compromise excluding slavery from what is now Kansas; for an Illinois man, Jesse B. Thomas, was its father.  Henry Clay, who is credited with the authorship of the Compromise in general terms, did not even vote for that provision, but only advocated the ultimate admission by a second compromise; and Thomas was, beyond all controversy, the real author of the “slavery restriction” branch of the Compromise.  To show the generosity of the Northern members toward the Southern side:  on a test vote to exclude slavery from Missouri, ninety voted not to exclude, and eighty-seven to exclude, every vote from the slave States being ranged with the former and fourteen votes from the free States, of whom seven were from New England alone; while on a vote to exclude slavery from what is now Kansas, the vote was one hundred and thirty-four for, to forty-two against.  The scheme, as a whole, was, of course, a Southern triumph.  It is idle to contend otherwise, as is now being done by the Nebraskites; it was so shown by the votes and quite as emphatically by the