I said we were now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the slavery agitation.  Is it not so?  When that Nebraska Bill was brought forward four years ago last January, was it not for the “avowed object” of putting an end to the slavery agitation?  We were to have no more agitation in Congress; it was all to be banished to the Territories.  By the way, I will remark here that, as Judge Douglas is very fond of complimenting Mr. Crittenden in these days, Mr. Crittenden has said there was a falsehood in that whole business, for there was no slavery agitation at that time to allay.  We were for a little while quiet on the troublesome thing, and that very allaying plaster of Judge Douglas’s stirred it up again.  But was it not understood or intimated with the “confident promise” of putting an end to the slavery agitation?  Surely it was.  In every speech you heard Judge Douglas make, until he got into this “imbroglio,” as they call it, with the Administration about the Lecompton Constitution, every speech on that Nebraska Bill was full of his felicitations that we were just at the end of the slavery agitation.  The last tip of the last joint of the old serpent’s tail was just drawing out of view.  But has it proved so?  I have asserted that under that policy that agitation “has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.”  When was there ever a greater agitation in Congress than last winter?  When was it as great in the country as to-day?

There was a collateral object in the introduction of that Nebraska policy, which was to clothe the people of the Territories with a superior degree of self-government, beyond what they had ever had before.  The first object and the main one of conferring upon the people a higher degree of “self-government” is a question of fact to be determined by you in answer to a single question.  Have you ever heard or known of a people anywhere on earth who had as little to do as, in the first instance of its use, the people of Kansas had with this same right of “self-government “?  In its main policy and in its collateral object, it has been nothing but a living, creeping lie from the time of its introduction till to-day.

I have intimated that I thought the agitation would not cease until a crisis should have been reached and passed.  I have stated in what way I thought it would be reached and passed.  I have said that it might go one way or the other.  We might, by arresting the further spread of it, and placing it where the fathers originally placed it, put it where the public mind should rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.  Thus the agitation may cease.  It may be pushed forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.  I have said, and I repeat, my wish is that the further spread of it may be arrested, and that it may be where