Two years ago, at Springfield, Judge Douglas avowed that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State, and that slavery was weeded out by the operation of his great, patent, everlasting principle of “popular sovereignty.” [Laughter.] Well, now, that argument must be answered, for it has a little grain of truth at the bottom.  I do not mean that it is true in essence, as he would have us believe.  It could not be essentially true if the Ordinance of ’87 was valid.  But, in point of fact, there were some degraded beings called slaves in Kaskaskia and the other French settlements when our first State constitution was adopted; that is a fact, and I don’t deny it.  Slaves were brought here as early as 1720, and were kept here in spite of the Ordinance of 1787 against it.  But slavery did not thrive here.  On the contrary, under the influence of the ordinance the number decreased fifty-one from 1810 to 1820; while under the influence of squatter sovereignty, right across the river in Missouri, they increased seven thousand two hundred and eleven in the same time; and slavery finally faded out in Illinois, under the influence of the law of freedom, while it grew stronger and stronger in Missouri, under the law or practice of “popular sovereignty.”  In point of fact there were but one hundred and seventeen slaves in Illinois one year after its admission, or one to every four hundred and seventy of its population; or, to state it in another way, if Illinois was a slave State in 1820, so were New York and New Jersey much greater slave States from having had greater numbers, slavery having been established there in very early times.  But there is this vital difference between all these States and the Judge’s Kansas experiment:  that they sought to disestablish slavery which had been already established, while the Judge seeks, so far as he can, to disestablish freedom, which had been established there by the Missouri Compromise. [Voices:  “Good!”]

The Union is under-going a fearful strain; but it is a stout old ship, and has weathered many a hard blow, and “the stars in their courses,” aye, an invisible Power, greater than the puny efforts of men, will fight for us.  But we ourselves must not decline the burden of responsibility, nor take counsel of unworthy passions.  Whatever duty urges us to do or to omit must be done or omitted; and the recklessness with which our adversaries break the laws, or counsel their violation, should afford no example for us.  Therefore, let us revere the Declaration of Independence; let us continue to obey the Constitution and the laws; let us keep step to the music of the Union.  Let us draw a cordon, so to speak, around the slave States, and the hateful institution, like a reptile poisoning itself, will perish by its own infamy. [Applause.]

But we cannot be free men if this is, by our national choice, to be a land of slavery.  Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.[Loud applause.]