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Upon the subjects of which I have treated,
I have spoken as I have thought.
I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but,
holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be
right than at all times to be wrong,
so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous,
I shall be ready to renounce them.
Why was the amendment,
expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery,
voted down?
Plainly enough now,
the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche
for the Dred Scott decision.
Being elected to Congress,
though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it,
has not pleased me as much as I expected.
If the great American people will only keep their temper,
on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end,
and the question which now distracts the country
will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of
like character which have originated in this government
have been adjusted.
I have always hated slavery, I think,
as much as any abolitionist.
I have been an Old Line Whig.
I have always hated it,
but I have always been quiet about it until
this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.
Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent
upon the face of the globe in fertility of soil
and in the proportionable amount of the same
which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.
You may think it was a very little thing,
and in these days it seems to me like a trifle,
but it was a most important incident in my life.
I could scarcely credit that I,
the poor boy,
had earned a dollar in less than a day;
that by honest work,
I had earned a dollar.
I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.
It is a great piece of folly to attempt to
make anything out of my early life.
In so far as the government lands can be disposed of,
I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so
that every poor man may have a home.
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to
keep a young man down; and they will succeed,
too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from
its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.
It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task
remaining before us, that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,
or its advocates will push it forward,
till it shall become alike lawful in all the States
old as well as new
North as well as South.
I can express all my views on the slavery question
by quotations from Henry Clay.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance
with the will of God.
Both may be, and one must be wrong.
To give victory to the right,
not bloody bullets,
but peaceful ballots only,
are necessary.
That our government should have been maintained in its original
form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at.
It had many props to support it through that period,
which now are decayed and crumbled away.
Through that period,
it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now,
it is understood to be a successful one.
Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska,
or other new territories,
is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there.
The whole nation is interested that the best
use shall be made of these territories.
We want them for the homes of free white people.
Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated.
It is the lawyer's avenue to the public.
However able and faithful he may be in other respects,
people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.
Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by
all and thought to include all; but now,
to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal,
it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till,
if its framers could rise from their graves,
they could not at all recognize it.
I believe this government cannot endure permanently,
half slave and half free.