It yields nothing itself; it keeps all it has, and gets all it can besides.  It really came dangerously near securing Illinois in 1824; it did get Missouri in 1821.  The first proposition was to admit what is now Arkansas and Missouri as one slave State.  But the territory was divided and Arkansas came in, without serious question, as a slave State; and afterwards Missouri, not, as a sort of equality, free, but also as a slave State.  Then we had Florida and Texas; and now Kansas is about to be forced into the dismal procession. [Sensation.] And so it is wherever you look.  We have not forgotten—­it is but six years since—­how dangerously near California came to being a slave State.  Texas is a slave State, and four other slave States may be carved from its vast domain.  And yet, in the year 1829, slavery was abolished throughout that vast region by a royal decree of the then sovereign of Mexico.  Will you please tell me by what right slavery exists in Texas to-day?  By the same right as, and no higher or greater than, slavery is seeking dominion in Kansas:  by political force—­peaceful, if that will suffice; by the torch (as in Kansas) and the bludgeon (as in the Senate chamber), if required.  And so history repeats itself; and even as slavery has kept its course by craft, intimidation, and violence in the past, so it will persist, in my judgment, until met and dominated by the will of a people bent on its restriction.

We have, this very afternoon, heard bitter denunciations of Brooks in Washington, and Titus, Stringfellow, Atchison, Jones, and Shannon in Kansas—­the battle-ground of slavery.  I certainly am not going to advocate or shield them; but they and their acts are but the necessary outcome of the Nebraska law.  We should reserve our highest censure for the authors of the mischief, and not for the catspaws which they use.  I believe it was Shakespeare who said, “Where the offence lies, there let the axe fall”; and, in my opinion, this man Douglas and the Northern men in Congress who advocate “Nebraska” are more guilty than a thousand Joneses and Stringfellows, with all their murderous practices, can be. [Applause.]

We have made a good beginning here to-day.  As our Methodist friends would say, “I feel it is good to be here.”  While extremists may find some fault with the moderation of our platform, they should recollect that “the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift.”  In grave emergencies, moderation is generally safer than radicalism; and as this struggle is likely to be long and earnest, we must not, by our action, repel any who are in sympathy with us in the main, but rather win all that we can to our standard.  We must not belittle nor overlook the facts of our condition—­that we are new and comparatively weak, while our enemies are entrenched and relatively strong.  They have the administration and the political power; and, right or wrong, at present they have the numbers.  Our friends who urge an appeal to arms with so much force