Noted Speeches of Abraham Lincoln — Lincoln's Reply, Part 1

Senator Douglas died on the 3d of June, 1861. [Illustration: STEPHEN A.

DOUGLAS]

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE

FIRST JOINT DEBATE, DELIVERED AT OTTAWA, ILL.

, AUGUST 21, 1858

_Douglas’s Opening Speech_ LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I appear before you to-day for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind.

By an arrangement between Mr. Lincoln and myself, we are present here to-day for the purpose of having a joint discussion, as the representatives of the two great political parties of the State and Union, upon the principles in issue between those parties; and this vast concourse of people shows the deep feeling which pervades the public mind in regard to the questions dividing us.

Prior to 1854, this country was divided into two great political parties, known as the Whig and Democratic parties.

Both were national and patriotic, advocating principles that were universal in their application.

An old-line Whig could proclaim his principles in Louisiana and Massachusetts alike.

Whig principles had no boundary sectional line; they were not limited by the Ohio river, nor by the Potomac, nor by the line of the free and slave States, but applied and were proclaimed wherever the Constitution ruled or the American flag waved over the American soil.

So it was and so it is with the great Democratic party, which from the days of Jefferson until this period has proven itself to be the historic party of this nation.

While the Whig and Democratic parties differed in regard to a bank, the tariff, distribution, the specie circular, and the sub-treasury, they agreed on the great slavery question which now agitates the Union.

I say that the Whig party and the Democratic party agreed on the slavery question, while they differed on those matters of expediency to which I have referred.

The Whig party and the Democratic party jointly adopted the compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of a proper and just solution of the slavery question in all its forms.

Clay was the great leader, with Webster on his right and Cass on his left and sustained by the patriots in the Whig and Democratic ranks, who had devised and enacted the compromise measures of 1850. * * * * * During the session of Congress of 1853-54, I introduced into the Senate of the United States a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that principle which had been adopted in the compromise measures of 1850, approved by the Whig party and the Democratic party in Illinois in 1851, and indorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic party in national convention in 1852. In order that there might be no misunderstanding in relation to the principle involved in the Kansas and Nebraska bill, I put forth the true intent and meaning of the act in these words: “It is the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Federal Constitution.

” Thus you see that up to 1854, when the Kansas and Nebraska bill was brought into Congress for the purpose of carrying out the principles which both parties had up to that time indorsed and approved, there had been no division in this country in regard to that principle, except the opposition of the Abolitionists....

In 1854 Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Mr. Lyman Trumbull entered into an arrangement, one with the other, and each with his respective friends, to dissolve the old Whig party on the one hand, and to dissolve the old Democratic party on the other, and to connect the members of both into an Abolition party, under the name and disguise of a Republican party.

The terms of that arrangement between Lincoln and Trumbull have been published by Lincoln’s special friend, James H. Matheny, Esq.

;

and they were that Lincoln should have General Shields’ place in the United States Senate, which was then about to become vacant, and that Trumbull should have my seat when my term expired.

Lincoln went to work to Abolitionize the old Whig party all over the State, pretending that he was then as good a Whig as ever; and Trumbull went to work in his part of the State preaching Abolitionism in its milder and lighter form, and trying to Abolitionize the Democratic party and bring old Democrats handcuffed and bound hand and foot into the Abolition camp.

In pursuance of the arrangement, the parties met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed their new platform.

Lincoln was to bring into the Abolition camp the old-line Whigs and transfer them over to Giddings, Chase, Fred Douglass, and Parson Lovejoy, who were ready to receive them and christen them in their new faith.

They laid down on that occasion a platform for their new Republican party, which was thus to be constructed.

I have the resolutions of the State convention then held, which was the first mass State convention ever held in Illinois by the Black Republican party; and I now hold them in my hands and will read a part of them, and cause the others to be printed.

Here are the most important and material resolutions of this Abolition platform:-- _Resolved_, “That we believe this truth to be self-evident, that when parties become subversive of the ends for which they are established, or incapable of restoring the government to the true principles of the Constitution, it is the right and duty of the people to dissolve the political bands by which they may have been connected therewith, and to organize new parties upon such principles and with such views as the circumstances and exigencies of the nation may demand.

_Resolved_, “That the times imperatively demand the reorganization of parties, and, repudiating all previous party attachments, names, and predilections, we unite ourselves together in defense of the liberty and Constitution of the country, and will hereafter co-operate as the Republican party, pledged to the accomplishment of the following purposes: to bring the administration of the government back to the control of first principles; to restore Nebraska and Kansas to the position of free Territories; that, as the Constitution of the United States vests in the States and not in Congress the power to legislate for the extradition of fugitives from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive-slave law;

to restrict slavery to those States in which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all the Territories over which the general government has exclusive jurisdiction; and to resist the acquirement of any more Territories unless the practice of slavery therein forever shall have been prohibited.

_Resolved_, “That in furtherance of these principles we will use such constitutional and lawful means as shall seem best adapted to their accomplishment, and that we will support no man for office, under the general or State government, who is not positively and fully committed to the support of these principles, and whose personal character and conduct is not a guarantee that he is reliable, and who shall not have abjured old party allegiance and ties.

” Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered every one of those propositions, and yet I venture to say that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln to come out and say that he is now in favor of each one of them.

That these propositions, one and all, constitute the platform of the Black Republican party of this day, I have no doubt; and when you were not aware for what purpose I was reading them, your Black Republicans cheered them as good Black Republican doctrines.

My object in reading these resolutions was to put the question to Abraham Lincoln this day, whether he now stands and will stand by each article in that creed, and carry it out.

[1] I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln to-day stands as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law.

[2] I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the people want them.

[3] I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make.

[4] I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

[5] I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States.

[6] I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States, north as well as south of the Missouri Compromise line.

[7] I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any more territory unless slavery is prohibited therein.

I want his answer to these questions.

Your affirmative cheers in favor of this Abolition platform are not satisfactory.

I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions, in order that, when I trot him down to lower Egypt [Southernmost Illinois] I may put the same questions to him.

My principles are the same everywhere.

I can proclaim them alike in the North, the South, the East, and the West.

My principles will apply wherever the Constitution prevails and the American flag waves.

I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln’s principles will bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro?

I put these questions to him to-day distinctly, and ask an answer.

I have a right to an answer; for I quote from the platform of the Republican party, made by himself and others at the time that party was formed, and the bargain made by Lincoln to dissolve and kill the old Whig party and transfer its members, bound hand and foot, to the Abolition party under the direction of Giddings and Fred Douglass.

In the remarks I have made on this platform, and the position of Mr. Lincoln upon it, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman.

I have known him for nearly twenty-five years.

There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted.

We were both comparatively boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land.

I was a school-teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of Salem.

He was more successful in his occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world’s goods.

Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill everything which they undertake.

I

made as good a school-teacher as I could, and, when a cabinet-maker, I made a good bedstead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than with anything else; but I believe that Lincoln was always more successful in business than I, for his business enabled him to get into the legislature.

I met him there, however, and had sympathy with him, because of the up-hill struggle we both had in life.

He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now.

He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a footrace, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor than all the boys together; and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse-race or fist-fight excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody that was present and participated.

I sympathized with him because he was struggling with difficulties, and so was I. Mr. Lincoln served with me in the legislature in 1836, when we both retired; and he subsided or became submerged, and he was lost sight of as a public man for some years.

In 1846, when Wilmot introduced his celebrated proviso, and the Abolition tornado swept over the country, Lincoln again turned up as a member of Congress from the Sangamon district.

I was then in the Senate of the United States, and was glad to welcome my old friend and companion.

Whilst in Congress, he distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican War, taking the side of the common enemy against his own country; and when he returned home he found that the indignation of the people followed him everywhere, and he was again submerged or obliged to retire into private life, forgotten by his former friends.

He came up again in 1854, just in time to make this Abolition or Black Republican platform,--in company with Giddings, Lovejoy, Chase, and Fred Douglass,--for the Republican party to stand upon.

* * * * * Having formed this new party for the benefit of deserters from Whiggery and deserters from Democracy, and having laid down the Abolition platform which I have read, Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims his Abolition doctrines.

Let me read a part of them.

In his speech at Springfield to the convention which nominated him for the Senate he said: “In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.

‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.

’ I believe this government _cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free_.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,--I do not expect the house to fall,--_but I do expect it will cease to be divided_.

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 the 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.

” [_“Good,” “Good,” and cheers.

_] I am delighted to hear you Black Republicans say, “Good.

” I have no doubt that doctrine expresses your sentiments; and I will prove to you now, if you will listen to me, that it is revolutionary and destructive of the existence of this government.

Mr. Lincoln, in the extract from which I have read, says that this government cannot endure permanently in the same condition in which it was made by its framers--divided into free and slave States.

He says that it has existed for about seventy years thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot endure permanently on the same principles and in the same relative condition in which our fathers made it.

Why can it not exist divided into free and slave States?

Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day made this government divided into free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject of slavery.

Why can it not exist on the same principles on which our fathers made it?

They knew when they framed the Constitution that in a country as wide and broad as this, with such a variety of climate, production, and interest, the people necessarily required different laws and institutions in different localities.

They knew that the laws and regulations which would suit the granite hills of New Hampshire would be unsuited to the rice plantations of South Carolina; and they therefore provided that each State should retain its own legislature and its own sovereignty, with the full and complete power to do as it pleased within its own limits, in all that was local and not national.

One of the reserved rights of the States was the right to regulate the relations between master and servant, on the slavery question.

At the time the Constitution was framed there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of which were slaveholding States and one a free State.

Suppose this doctrine of uniformity preached by Mr. Lincoln, that the States should all be free or all be slave, had prevailed; and what would have been the result?

Of course, the twelve slaveholding States would have overruled the one free State; and slavery would have been fastened by a constitutional provision on every inch of the American republic, instead of being left, as our fathers wisely left it, to each State to decide for itself.

Here I assert that uniformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possible nor desirable.

If uniformity had been adopted when the government was established, it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere.

We are told by Lincoln that he is utterly opposed to the Dred Scott decision, and will not submit to it, for the reason that he says it deprives the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship.

That is the first and main reason which he assigns for his warfare on the Supreme Court of the United States and its decision.

I ask you, Are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship?

Do you desire to strike out of our State constitution that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State, and allow the free negroes to flow in, and cover your prairies with black settlements?

Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony, in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and voters, on an equality with yourselves?

If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro.

For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form.

I believe this government was made on the white basis.

I believe it was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever; and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races.

Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition orators who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal, and then asks, How can you deprive a negro of that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence award to him?

He and they maintain that negro equality is guaranteed by the laws of God, and that it is asserted in the Declaration of Independence.

If they think so, of course they have a right to say so, and so vote.

I do not question Mr. Lincoln’s conscientious belief that the negro was made his equal, and hence is his brother; but, for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother or any kin to me whatever....

I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended the negro to be the equal of the white man.

If he did, he has been a long time demonstrating the fact.

For thousands of years the negro has been a race upon the earth; and during all that time, in all latitudes and climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to the race which he has there met.

He belongs to an inferior race, and must always occupy an inferior position.

I do not hold that, because the negro is our inferior, therefore he ought to be a slave.

By no means can such a conclusion be drawn from what I have said.

On the contrary, I hold that humanity and Christianity both require that the negro shall have and enjoy every right, every privilege, and every immunity consistent with the safety of the society in which he lives.

On that point, I presume, there can be no diversity of opinion.

You and I are bound to extend to our inferior and dependent beings every right, every privilege, every facility and immunity consistent with the public good.

The question then arises, What rights and privileges are consistent with the public good?

This is a question which each State and each Territory must decide for itself.

Illinois has decided it for herself.

We have provided that the negro shall not be a slave; and we have also provided that he shall not be a citizen, but protect him in his civil rights, in his life, his person, and his property, only depriving him of all political rights whatsoever and refusing to put him on an equality with the white man.

That policy of Illinois is satisfactory to the Democratic party and to me, and if it were to the Republicans there would then be no question upon the subject; but the Republicans say that he ought to be made a citizen, and when he becomes a citizen he becomes your equal, with all your rights and privileges.

They assert the Dred Scott decision to be monstrous because it denies that the negro is or can be a citizen under the Constitution.

Now, I hold that Illinois had a right to abolish and prohibit slavery as she did, and I hold that Kentucky has the same right to continue and protect slavery that Illinois had to abolish it.

I hold that New York had as much right to abolish slavery as Virginia has to continue it, and that each and every State of this Union is a sovereign power, with the right to do as it pleases upon this question of slavery and upon all its domestic institutions.

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy.

There is a far more important one to you, and that is, What shall be done with the free negro?...

In relation to the policy to be pursued toward the free negroes, we have said that they shall not vote; whilst Maine, on the other hand, has said that they shall vote.

Maine is a sovereign State, and has the power to regulate the qualifications of voters within her limits.

I

would never consent to confer the right of voting and of citizenship upon a negro, but still I am not going to quarrel with Maine for differing from me in opinion.

Let Maine take care of her own negroes, and fix the qualifications of her own voters to suit herself, without interfering with Illinois; and Illinois will not interfere with Maine.

So with the State of New York.

She allows the negro to vote provided he owns two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of property, but not otherwise.

While I would not make any distinction whatever between a negro who held property and one who did not, yet if the sovereign State of New York chooses to make that distinction it is her business, and not mine; and I will not quarrel with her for it.

She can do as she pleases on this question if she minds her own business, and we will do the same thing.

Now, my friends, if we will only act conscientiously and rigidly upon this great principle of popular sovereignty, which guarantees to each State and Territory the right to do as it pleases on all things local and domestic instead of Congress interfering, we will continue at peace one with another.

Why should Illinois be at war with Missouri, or Kentucky with Ohio, or Virginia with New York, merely because their institutions differ?

Our fathers intended that our institutions should differ.

They knew that the North and the South, having different climates, productions, and interests, required different institutions.

This doctrine of Mr. Lincoln, of uniformity among the institutions of the different States, is a new doctrine never dreamed of by Washington, Madison, or the framers of this government.

Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party set themselves up as wiser than these men who made this government, which has flourished for seventy years under the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing the right of each State to do as it pleased.

Under that principle, we have grown from a nation of three or four millions to a nation of about thirty millions of people.

We have crossed the Alleghany mountains and filled up the whole Northwest, turning the prairie into a garden, and building up churches and schools, thus spreading civilization and Christianity where before there was nothing but savage barbarism.

Under that principle we have become, from a feeble nation, the most powerful on the face of the earth; and, if we only adhere to that principle, we can go forward increasing in territory, in power, in strength, and in glory until the Republic of America shall be the north star that shall guide the friends of freedom throughout the civilized world.

And why can we not adhere to the great principle of self-government upon which our institutions were originally based?

I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds.

They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the Free States and the Slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE

FIRST JOINT DEBATE, DELIVERED AT OTTAWA, ILL.

, AUGUST 21, 1858

_Lincoln’s Reply_ MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him,--at least I find it so with myself; but when misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable it is more apt to amuse him.

The first thing I see fit to notice is the fact that Judge Douglas alleges, after running through the history of the old Democratic and the old Whig parties, that Judge Trumbull and myself made an arrangement in 1854 by which I was to have the place of General Shields in the United States Senate, and Judge Trumbull was to have the place of Judge Douglas.

Now all I have to say upon that subject is that I think no man--not even Judge Douglas--can prove it, _because it is not true_.

I have no doubt he is “conscientious” in saying it.

As to those resolutions that he took such a length of time to read, as being the platform of the Republican party in 1854, I say I never had anything to do with them; and I think Trumbull never had.

Judge Douglas cannot show that either of us ever did have anything to do with them.

I believe this is true about those resolutions: There was a call for a convention to form a Republican party at Springfield; and I think that my friend, Mr. Lovejoy, who is here upon this stand, had a hand in it.

I think this is true; and I think, if he will remember accurately, he will be able to recollect that he tried to get me into it and I would not go in.

I believe it is also true that I went away from Springfield, when the convention was in session, to attend court in Tazewell County.

It is true they did place my name, though without authority, upon the committee, and afterward wrote me to attend the meeting of the committee; but I refused to do so, and I never had anything to do with that organization.

This is the plain truth about all that matter of the resolutions.

Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells of Trumbull bargaining to sell out the old Democratic party, and Lincoln agreeing to sell out the old Whig party, I have the means of _knowing_ about that; Judge Douglas cannot have; and I know there is no substance to it whatever.

Yet I have no doubt he is “conscientious” about it.

I know that after Mr. Lovejoy got into the legislature that winter he complained to me that I had told all the old Whigs of his district that the old Whig party was good enough for them, and some of them voted against him because I told them so.

Now, I have no means of totally disproving such charges as this which the Judge makes.

A man cannot prove a negative;

but he has a right to claim that, when a man makes an affirmative charge, he must offer some proof to show the truth of what he says.

I

certainly cannot introduce testimony to show the negative about things;

but I have a right to claim that, if a man says he _knows_ a thing, then he must show _how he knows it_.

I always have a right to claim this, and it is not satisfactory to me that he may be “conscientious” on the subject.

Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things, but in regard to that general Abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes when he says that I was engaged at that time in selling out and Abolitionizing the old Whig party, I hope you will permit me to read a part of a printed speech that I made then at Peoria, which will show altogether a different view of the position I took in that contest of 1854. [_Voice: “Put on your specs.

”_] Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer a young man: “This is the _repeal_ of the Missouri Compromise.

The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it we have before us the chief materials enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.

“I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong,--wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska,--and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.

“This _declared_ indifference, but as I must think covert real _zeal_ for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.

I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,--criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but _self-interest_.

“Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people.

They are just what we would be in their situation.

If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it.

If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up.

This I believe of the masses North and South.

Doubtless there are individuals on both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence.

We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North, and become tip-top Abolitionists;

while some Northern ones go South, and become most cruel slavemasters.

“When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact.

When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.

I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.

If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution.

My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,--to their own native land.

But a moment’s reflection would convince me that, whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.

If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days.

What then?

Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings?

Is it quite certain that this betters their condition?

I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon.

What next?

Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?

My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.

Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it.

A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded.

We cannot make them equals.

It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

“When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.

“But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it would for reviving the African slave-trade by law.

The law which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter.

” I have reason to know that Judge Douglas _knows_ that I said this.

I

think he has the answer here to one of the questions he put to me.

I do not mean to allow him to catechize me unless he pays back for it in kind.

I will not answer questions one after another, unless he reciprocates; but as he has made this inquiry, and I have answered it before, he has got it without my getting anything in return.

He has got my answer on the fugitive-slave law.

Now, gentlemen, I don’t want to read at any great length; but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery and the black race.

This is the whole of it;

and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse.

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.

I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races.

There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and, inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I as well as Judge Douglas am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.

I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence,--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.

I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects,--certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment.

But _in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man_.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies.

The Judge is wofully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a “grocery-keeper.

” I don’t think that it would be a great sin if I had been; but he is mistaken.

Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.

It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little still-house up at the head of a hollow.

And so I think my friend, the Judge, is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War.

The Judge did not make his charge very distinctly;

but I tell you what he can prove, by referring to the record.

You remember I was an Old Whig; and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it.

But whenever they asked for any money or land-warrants or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did.

You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent.

Such is the truth; and the Judge has the right to make all he can out of it.

But when he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War, or did anything else to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.

As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I will dwell a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics upon which the Judge has spoken.

He has read from my speech in Springfield in which I say that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.

” Does the Judge say it _can_ stand?

I don’t know whether he does or not.

The Judge does not seem to be attending to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion that a house divided against itself _can stand_.

If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an authority of a somewhat higher character.

Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the purpose of saying something seriously.

I know that the Judge may readily enough agree with me that the maxim which was put forth by the Savior is true, but he may allege that I misapply it; and the Judge has a right to urge that in my application I do misapply it, and then I have a right to show that I do _not_ misapply it.

When he undertakes to say that, because I think this nation so far as the question of slavery is concerned will all become one thing or all the other, I am in favor of bringing about a dead uniformity in the various States in all their institutions, he argues erroneously.

The great variety of the local institutions in the States, springing from differences in the soil, differences in the face of the country, and in the climate, are bonds of union.

They do not make “a house divided against itself,” but they make a house united.

If they produce in one section of the country what is called for by the wants of another section, and this other section can supply the wants of the first, they are not matters of discord, but bonds of union,--true bonds of union.

But can this question of slavery be considered as among _these_ varieties in the institutions of the country?

I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to be a bond of union, and on the contrary been an apple of discord and an element of division in the house.

I ask you to consider whether, so long as the moral constitution of men’s minds shall continue to be the same, after this generation and assemblage shall sink into the grave and another race shall arise with the same moral and intellectual development we have,--whether, if that institution is standing in the same irritating position in which is now is, it will not continue an element of division?

If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this question, the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it,--restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by the abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the seal of legislation _against its spread_.

The public mind _did_ rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.

But lately, I think,--and in this I charge nothing on the Judge’s motives,--lately, I think that he, and those acting with him, have placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the _perpetuity and nationalization of slavery_.

And while it is placed upon this new basis, I say and I have said that I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Now I believe, if we could arrest the spread and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it _would be_ in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.

The crisis would be past, and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years--if it should live so long--in the States where it exists, yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races.

[_A voice: “Then do you repudiate Popular Sovereignty?

”_] Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty.

What is Popular Sovereignty?

Is it the right of the people to have slavery or not have it, as they see fit, in the Territories?

I will state--and I have an able man to watch me--my understanding is that Popular Sovereignty, as now applied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to _have_ slavery if they want to, but does not allow them _not_ to have it if they do not want it.

I do not mean that, if this vast concourse of people were in a Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged to have a slave if he did not want one;

but I do say that, as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge complains and from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he ascribes to me at all.

I had no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a war between the Free and Slave States.

I had no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a political and social equality of the black and white races.

It never occurred to me that I was doing anything or favoring anything to reduce to a dead uniformity all the local institutions of the various States.

But I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better that I did not mean it.

It is just as fatal to the country, if I have any influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not.

But can it be true that placing this institution upon the original basis--the basis upon which our fathers placed it--can have any tendency to set the Northern and the Southern States at war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane because they raise it in Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut pine logs on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because they cut pine logs in Maine, where they do grow?

The Judge says this is a new principle started in regard to this question.

Does the Judge claim that he is working on the plan of the founders of the government?

I think he says in some of his speeches--indeed, I have one here now--that he saw evidence of a policy to allow slavery to be south of a certain line, while north of it it should be excluded; and he saw an indisposition on the part of the country to stand upon that policy, and therefore he set about studying the subject upon _original principles_, and upon _original principles_ he got up the Nebraska bill!

I am fighting it upon these “original principles,”--fighting it in the Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, and Madisonian fashion.