consolidated and uniform. What is there in the language of that speech
which expresses such purpose or bears such construction? I have again and
again said that I would not enter into any of the States to disturb the
institution of slavery. Judge Douglas said, at Bloomington, that I used
language most able and ingenious for concealing what I really meant; and
that while I had protested against entering into the slave States, I
nevertheless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio and throw missiles
into Kentucky, to disturb them in their domestic institutions.

I said in that speech, and I meant no more, that the institution of
slavery ought to be placed in the very attitude where the framers of this
government placed it and left it. I do not understand that the framers of
our Constitution left the people of the free States in the attitude of
firing bombs or shells into the slave States. I was not using that
passage for the purpose for which he infers I did use it. I said:

"We are now far advanced into the fifth year since a policy was created
for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to
slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has
not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will
not cease till a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house
divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe that this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free; it will become all
one thing or all the other. 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 the 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."

Now, you all see, from that quotation, I did not express my wish on