Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/275

 STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS them vote for Lincoln, which obliged the rest of the Abolitionists to support him in order to secure an Abolition senator. There are a num- ber of authorities for the truth of this besides Matheny, and I suppose that even Mr. Lincoln will not deny it. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Jay and the great men of that day made this government divided into free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject of slavery. Why can it not exist on the same principles on which our fathers made it ? They knew when they framed the Constitution that iu a countrj^ as wide and broad as this, with such a variety of climate, production, and interest, the people necessarily required different laws and regulations; what would suit the granite-hills of New Hampshire would be unsuited to the rice-plantations of South Carolina, and they therefore provided that each State should retain its own Legislature and its own sovereignty, with the full and com- plete power to do as it pleased within its own limits, in all that was local and not national. One of the reserved rights of the States was the right to regulate the relations between mas- ter and servant, on the slavery question. At the time the Constitution was framed, there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of which were slaveholding States and one a free State. Suppose this doctrine of uniformity preached by Mr. Lincoln, that the States should all be free 265