quarrel with the President about the Lecompton Constitution, in which he
has not declared that we are just at the end of the slavery agitation.
But in one speech, I think last winter, he did say that he did n't quite
see when the end of the slavery agitation would come. Now he tells us
again that it is all over and the people of Kansas have voted down the
Lecompton Constitution. How is it over? That was only one of the attempts
at putting an end to the slavery agitation--one of these "final
settlements." Is Kansas in the Union? Has she formed a constitution that
she is likely to come in under? Is not the slavery agitation still an
open question in that Territory? Has the voting down of that constitution
put an end to all the trouble? Is that more likely to settle it than
every one of these previous attempts to settle the slavery agitation?
Now, at this day in the history of the world we can no more foretell
where the end of this slavery agitation will be than we can see the end
of the world itself. The Nebraska-Kansas Bill was introduced four years
and a half ago, and if the agitation is ever to come to an end we may say
we are four years and a half nearer the end. So, too, we can say we are
four years and a half nearer the end of the world, and we can just as
clearly see the end of the world as we can see the end of this agitation.
The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If Kansas should sink to-day,
and leave a great vacant space in the earth's surface, this vexed
question would still be among us. I say, then, there is no way of putting
an end to the slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back upon the
basis where our fathers placed it; no way but to keep it out of our new
Territories,--to restrict it forever to the old States where it now
exists. Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction. That is one way of putting an end to the
slavery agitation.

The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his