The Slavery Question

although they objected to the slave trade, more good would be accomplished than by prohibiting the slave trade and losing those two States.

That is the policy which guided our ancestors; and now, what do we ask? What does the Democratic party ask? Do we ask this Government to legislate slavery into the Territories? We have never made any such demand. We have never yet asked anything of this Government but to let it alone. And I assure you, that New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, voted to perpetuate the slave trade, and to give her citizens the right to engage in it from 1800 to 1808, by that clause in the Constitution which gives the citizens of each State the rights of the citizens of every other State. She relinquished the power which they had to forbid her own citizens from participating in the slave trade, and opened the door to them. That is what your ancestors did in the Constitution under which this Government was formed, and which is the basis of all its legislation. And ye