Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, free men everywhere, judge ye
between him and me upon this issue.

He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,--that it has
no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is
but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which
determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than
abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty
depended upon it, and so would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended
upon it. But suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the
new Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract matter,
and one of no practical importance. How has the planting of slavery in
new countries always been effected? It has now been decided that slavery
cannot be kept out of our new Territories by any legal means. In what do
our new Territories now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when
slavery was first planted within them? It was planted, as Mr. Clay once
declared, and as history proves true, by individual men, in spite of the
wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to prohibit it, and
withholding from the people of the Colonies the authority to prohibit it
for themselves. Mr. Clay says this was one of the great and just causes
of complaint against Great Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology
we can now make for having the institution amongst us. In that precise
condition our Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our
own new Territories; the government will not prohibit slavery within
them, nor allow the people to prohibit it.

I defy any man to find any difference between the policy which originally
planted slavery in these Colonies and that policy which now prevails in
our new Territories. If it does not go into them, it is only because no