Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Speech of Hon. S. A. Douglas, of Illinois, Against the Admission of Kansas Under the Lecompton Constitution
Mr. President: I know not that my strength is sufficient to eu able me to present to-night the views which I should like to submit upon the question now under consideration. My sickness for the last two weeks has deprived me of the pleasure of listening to the debates, and of an opportunity of reading the speeches that have been made hence I shall not be able to perform the duty which might naturally have been expected of me, of replying to any criticisms that may have been presented upon my course, or upon my speeches, or upon my re port. I must content myself with presenting my views upon the questions that are naturally brought up by the bill under considera tion. I trust, however, that I may be pardoned for referring brie?y, in the first instance, to my course upon the slavery question during the period that I have had a seat in the two Houses of Congress.
When I entered Congress, in 1843, I found upon the statute-book the evidence of a policy to adjust the slavery question and avoid sec tional agitation by a geographical line drawn across the continent, separating free territory from slave territory. That policy had its origin at the beginning of this government, and had prevailed up to that time. In 1787, while the convention was in session, forming the Constitution of the United States, the Congress of the Confederation adopted the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery in all the territory northwest of the Ohio river. The first Congress that assembled under the Constitution extended all the provisions of that ordinance, with the exception of the clause prohibiting slavery, to the territory south of that river, thus making the Ohio river the dividing line between free territory and slave territory, free labor and slave labor.
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