than that general class of things that does concern the whole. I have
said that at all times. I have said, as illustrations, that I do not
believe in the right of Illinois to interfere with the cranberry laws of
Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia, or the liquor laws of Maine. I have
said these things over and over again, and I repeat them here as my
sentiments.

How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see slavery
put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction, that I am in favor of Illinois going over
and interfering with the cranberry laws of Indiana? What can authorize
him to draw any such inference?

I suppose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to draw such
an inference that would not be true with me or many others: that is,
because he looks upon all this matter of slavery as an exceedingly little
thing,--this matter of keeping one sixth of the population of the whole
nation in a state of oppression and tyranny unequaled in the world. He
looks upon it as being an exceedingly little thing,--only equal to the
question of the cranberry laws of Indiana; as something having no moral
question in it; as something on a par with the question of whether a man
shall pasture his land with cattle, or plant it with tobacco; so little
and so small a thing that he concludes, if I could desire that anything
should be done to bring about the ultimate extinction of that little
thing, I must be in favor of bringing about an amalgamation of all the
other little things in the Union. Now, it so happens--and there, I
presume, is the foundation of this mistake--that the Judge thinks thus;
and it so happens that there is a vast portion of the American people
that do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They
look upon it as a vast moral evil; they can prove it as such by the