all their domestic concerns I am in favor of making them entirely
uniform. He draws this inference from the language I have quoted to you.
He says that I am in favor of making war by the North upon the South for
the extinction of slavery; that I am also in favor of inviting (as he
expresses it) the South to a war upon the North for the purpose of
nationalizing slavery. Now, it is singular enough, if you will carefully
read that passage over, that I did not say that I was in favor of
anything in it. I only said what I expected would take place. I made a
prediction only,--it may have been a foolish one, perhaps. I did not even
say that I desired that slavery should be put in course of ultimate
extinction. I do say so now, however, so there need be no longer any
difficulty about that. It may be written down in the great speech.

Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine was
probably carefully prepared. I admit that it was. I am not master of
language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into
a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not
believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge
Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to
words. I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if
I can explain it to them, what I really meant in the use of that
paragraph.

I am not, in the first place, unaware that this government has endured
eighty-two years half slave and half free. I know that. I am tolerably
well acquainted with the history of the country, and I know that it has
endured eighty-two years half slave and half free. I believe--and that is
what I meant to allude to there--I believe it has endured because during
all that time, until the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, the public
mind did rest all the time in the belief that slavery was in course of