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 undergoing 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