Annotation
[1] Bloomington Weekly Pantagraph, September 20, 1854.
[2] An additional paragraph notes that lack of space prevents the Pantagraph from giving ``the Speaker's lucid arguments against the bill.'' In another column a communication from ``A Hearer'' takes exception to a portion of Lincoln's speech which is not covered by the report, observing, ``He recommends that the people should unite energetically for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, but enjoined upon them not to oppose the Fugitive Slave Law, which would be repelling wrong with wrong. It was a compromise, and as citizens we were bound to stand up to it, and enforce it. Afterwards he added: `I own, if I were called upon by a Marshal, to assist in catching a fugitive slave, I should suggest to him that others could run a great deal faster than I could.' . . .
``He said he would go in for sustaining any Fugitive Slave Law, that did not expose a free negro to any more danger of being carried into slavery, than our present criminal laws do an innocent person to the danger of being hung. But can this be said of the present Fugitive Slave Law . . . ? The fact is it does not. . . . ''