made by me at Bangor, to sustain the position taken by him at
Freeport. He says:

"You will find in a recent speech, delivered by that able and eloquent
statesman, Hon. Jefferson Davis, at Bangor, Maine, that he took the
same view of this subject that I did in my Freeport speech. He there
said:"

"'If the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws
and police regulations as would give security to their property and
his, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to the
difficulty of holding it without such protection. In the case of
property in the labor of a man, or what is usually called slave
property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not
ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, the
remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be
practically debarred, by the circumstances of the case, from taking
slave property into a Territory where the sense of the inhabitants was
opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy of
forcing slavery upon any community.'"

It is fair to suppose, if the Senator had known where to find the
speech from which this extract was taken, that he would have examined
it before proceeding to make such use of it. And I can but believe, if
he had taken the paragraph free from the distortion which it had
undergone from others, that he must have seen it bore no similitude to
his position at Freeport, and could give no countenance to the
doctrine he then announced. He there said:

"The next question Mr. Lincoln propounded to me is: 'Can the people of