His beginning foreshadowed a dry argument using as a text Douglas's
phrase that "our fathers, when they framed the government under which we
live, understood this question just as well and even better than we do
now," But the concise statements, the strong links of reasoning, and the
irresistible conclusions of the argument with which the speaker followed
his close historical analysis of how "our fathers" understood "this
question," held every listener as though each were individually merged
in the speaker's thought and demonstration.
"It is surely safe to assume," said he, with emphasis, "that the
thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution and the seventy-six
members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken
together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called 'our
fathers who framed the government under which we live.' And, so
assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole
life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local
from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories."
With equal skill he next dissected the complaints, the demands, and the
threats to dissolve the Union made by the Southern States, pointed out
their emptiness, their fallacy, and their injustice, and defined the
exact point and center of the agitation.
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