He used to say that, one way
or another, he had voted forty-two times for the Wilmot Proviso, which
Mr. Wilmot of Pennsylvania moved as an addition to every bill which
affected United States territory, "that neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude shall ever exist in any part of the said territory," and it is
evident that his condemnation of the system, on moral grounds as a crime
against the human race, and on political grounds as a cancer that was
sapping the vitals of the nation, and must master its whole being or be
itself extirpated, grew steadily upon him until it culminated in his
great speeches in the Illinois debate.
By the mere election of Lincoln to the Presidency, the further extension
of slavery into the Territories was rendered forever impossible--Vox
populi, vox Dei. Revolutions never go backward, and when founded on a
great moral sentiment stirring the heart of an indignant people their
edicts are irresistible and final. Had the slave power acquiesced in
that election, had the Southern States remained under the Constitution
and within the Union, and relied upon their constitutional and legal
rights, their favorite institution, immoral as it was, blighting and
fatal as it was, might have endured for another century.
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