done. Henry Clay, my beau-ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I
fought all my humble life,--Henry Clay once said of a class of men who
would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation,
that they must, if they would do this, go back to the era of our
independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous
return; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must
penetrate the human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty; and
then, and not till then, could they perpetuate slavery in this country!
To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by his example and vast influence,
doing that very thing in this community when he says that the negro
has nothing in the Declaration of Independence. Henry Clay plainly
understood the contrary. Judge Douglas is going back to the era of
our Revolution, and to the extent of his ability muzzling the cannon
which thunders its annual joyous return. When he invites any people,
willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is blowing out the moral
lights around us. When he says he “cares not whether slavery is voted
down or voted up,”--that it is a sacred right of self-government,--he
is, in my judgment, penetrating the human soul, and eradicating the
light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people. And
now I will only say that when, by all these means and appliances,
Judge Douglas shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to an exact
accordance with his own views,--when these vast assemblages shall echo
back all these sentiments,--when they shall come to repeat his views
and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says on these mighty
questions,--then it needs only the formality of the second Dred Scott
decision, which he indorses in advance, to make slavery alike lawful in
all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unpaired
quotation marks were retained.
Inconsistent hyphenation and ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines
have been retained.
Page 89: “wofully” was printed that way.
Page 92: “in which is now is” was printed that way, probably was a
misprint for “in which it now is”.