It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." Then followed his demonstration, through the incidents of the Nebraska legislation, the Dred Scott decision, and present political theories and issues, which would by and by find embodiment in new laws and future legal doctrines.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the language of the Nebraska bill, which declared slavery "subject to the Constitution," the Dred Scott decision, which declared that "subject to the Constitution" neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature could exclude slavery from a Territory--the argument presented point by point and step by step with legal precision the silent subversion of cherished principles of liberty.

"Put this and that together," said he, "and we have another nice little niche, which we may ere long see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits....

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States....