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Volume Four, by Abraham Lincoln
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Title: The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Four
Constitutional Edition
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Commentator: Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Schurz, and Joseph Choate
Editor: Arthur Brooks Lapsley
Release Date: June, 2001 [Etext #2656]
Posting Date: July 5, 2009
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LINCOLN'S PAPERS ***
Produced by David Widger
THE PAPERS AND WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
VOLUME FOUR
CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION
By Abraham Lincoln
Edited by Arthur Brooks Lapsley
THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Volume Four
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES II
LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS FOURTH DEBATE, AT CHARLESTON, SEPTEMBER 18, 1858.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--It will be very difficult for an audience so large
as this to hear distinctly what a speaker says, and consequently it is
important that as profound silence be preserved as possible.
While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to
know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between
the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this
occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I
thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard
to it. I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of
bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white
and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor
to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which
I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of
social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live,
while they do remain together there must be the position of superior
and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the
superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion
I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior
position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that
because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want
her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am
now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for
either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get
along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this
that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was
in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between
negroes and white men. I recollect of but one distinguished instance
that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its
correctness, and that is the case of Judge Douglas's old friend Colonel
Richard M. Johnson. I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am
not going to enter at large upon this subject), that I have never had the
least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was
no law to keep them from it; but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem
to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep
them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very
last stand by the law of this State which forbids the marrying of white
people with negroes. I will add one further word, which is this: that I do
not understand that there is any place where an alteration of the social
and political relations of the negro and the white man can be made, except
in the State Legislature,--not in the Congress of the United States; and
as I do not really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and
as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror that some such danger is
rapidly approaching, I propose as the best means to prevent it that the
Judge be kept at home, and placed in the State Legislature to fight the
measure. I do not propose dwelling longer at this time on this subject.
When Judge Trumbull, our other Senator in Congress, returned to Illinois
in the month of August, he made a speech at Chicago, in which he made what
may be called a charge against Judge Douglas, which I understand proved to
be very offensive to him. The Judge was at that time out upon one of his
speaking tours through the country, and when the news of it reached him,
as I am informed, he denounced Judge Trumbull in rather harsh terms for
having said what he did in regard to that matter. I was traveling at that
time, and speaking at the same places with Judge Douglas on subsequent
days, and when I heard of what Judge Trumbull had said of Douglas, and
what Douglas had said back again, I felt that I was in a position where
I could not remain entirely silent in regard to the matter. Consequently,
upon two or three occasions I alluded to it, and alluded to it in no other
wise than to say that in regard to the charge brought by Trumbull against
Douglas, I personally knew nothing, and sought to say nothing about it;
that I did personally know Judge Trumbull; that I believed him to be a
man of veracity; that I believed him to be a man of capacity sufficient to
know very well whether an assertion he was making, as a conclusion drawn
from a set of facts, was true or false; and as a conclusion of my own from
that, I stated it as my belief if Trumbull should ever be called upon,
he would prove everything he had said. I said this upon two or three
occasions. Upon a subsequent occasion, Judge Trumbull spoke again before
an audience at Alton, and upon that occasion not only repeated his charge
against Douglas, but arrayed the evidence he relied upon to substantiate
it. This speech was published at length; and subsequently at Jacksonville
Judge Douglas alluded to the matter. In the course of his speech, and near
the close of it, he stated in regard to myself what I will now read:
"Judge Douglas proceeded to remark that he should not hereafter occupy his
time in refuting such charges made by Trumbull, but that, Lincoln having
indorsed the character of Trumbull for veracity, he should hold him
(Lincoln) responsible for the slanders."
I have done simply what I have told you, to subject me to this invitation
to notice the charge. I now wish to say that it had not originally been my
purpose to discuss that matter at all But in-as-much as it seems to be the
wish of Judge Douglas to hold me responsible for it, then for once in
my life I will play General Jackson, and to the just extent I take the
responsibility.
I wish to say at the beginning that I will hand to the reporters that
portion of Judge Trumbull's Alton speech which was devoted to this matter,
and also that portion of Judge Douglas's speech made at Jacksonville in
answer to it. I shall thereby furnish the readers of this debate with the
complete discussion between Trumbull and Douglas. I cannot now read them,
for the reason that it would take half of my first hour to do so. I can
only make some comments upon them. Trumbull's charge is in the following
words:
"Now, the charge is, that there was a plot entered into to have a
constitution formed for Kansas, and put in force, without giving the
people an opportunity to vote upon it, and that Mr. Douglas was in the
plot."
I will state, without quoting further, for all will have an opportunity of
reading it hereafter, that Judge Trumbull brings forward what he regards
as sufficient evidence to substantiate this charge.
It will be perceived Judge Trumbull shows that Senator Bigler, upon the
floor of the Senate, had declared there had been a conference among the
senators, in which conference it was determined to have an enabling act
passed for the people of Kansas to form a constitution under, and in
this conference it was agreed among them that it was best not to have a
provision for submitting the constitution to a vote of the people after
it should be formed. He then brings forward to show, and showing, as he
deemed, that Judge Douglas reported the bill back to the Senate with that
clause stricken out. He then shows that there was a new clause inserted
into the bill, which would in its nature prevent a reference of the
constitution back for a vote of the people,--if, indeed, upon a mere
silence in the law, it could be assumed that they had the right to vote
upon it. These are the general statements that he has made.
I propose to examine the points in Judge Douglas's speech in which he
attempts to answer that speech of Judge Trumbull's. When you come to
examine Judge Douglas's speech, you will find that the first point he
makes is:
"Suppose it were true that there was such a change in the bill, and that
I struck it out,--is that a proof of a plot to force a constitution upon
them against their will?"
His striking out such a provision, if there was such a one in the bill,
he argues, does not establish the proof that it was stricken out for the
purpose of robbing the people of that right. I would say, in the first
place, that that would be a most manifest reason for it. It is true, as
Judge Douglas states, that many Territorial bills have passed without
having such a provision in them. I believe it is true, though I am not
certain, that in some instances constitutions framed under such bills
have been submitted to a vote of the people with the law silent upon the
subject; but it does not appear that they once had their enabling acts
framed with an express provision for submitting the constitution to be
framed to a vote of the people, then that they were stricken out when
Congress did not mean to alter the effect of the law. That there have been
bills which never had the provision in, I do not question; but when was
that provision taken out of one that it was in? More especially does the
evidence tend to prove the proposition that Trumbull advanced, when
we remember that the provision was stricken out of the bill almost
simultaneously with the time that Bigler says there was a conference among
certain senators, and in which it was agreed that a bill should be passed
leaving that out. Judge Douglas, in answering Trumbull, omits to attend to
the testimony of Bigler, that there was a meeting in which it was agreed
they should so frame the bill that there should be no submission of the
constitution to a vote of the people. The Judge does not notice this part
of it. If you take this as one piece of evidence, and then ascertain that
simultaneously Judge Douglas struck out a provision that did require it to
be submitted, and put the two together, I think it will make a pretty fair
show of proof that Judge Douglas did, as Trumbull says, enter into a plot
to put in force a constitution for Kansas, without giving the people any
opportunity of voting upon it.
But I must hurry on. The next proposition that Judge Douglas puts is this:
"But upon examination it turns out that the Toombs bill never did contain
a clause requiring the constitution to be submitted."
This is a mere question of fact, and can be determined by evidence. I only
want to ask this question: Why did not Judge Douglas say that these words
were not stricken out of the Toomb's bill, or this bill from which it is
alleged the provision was stricken out,--a bill which goes by the name of
Toomb's, because he originally brought it forward? I ask why, if the Judge
wanted to make a direct issue with Trumbull, did he not take the exact
proposition Trumbull made in his speech, and say it was not stricken out?
Trumbull has given the exact words that he says were in the Toomb's bill,
and he alleges that when the bill came back, they were stricken out. Judge
Douglas does not say that the words which Trumbull says were stricken
out were not so stricken out, but he says there was no provision in the
Toomb's bill to submit the constitution to a vote of the people. We see at
once that he is merely making an issue upon the meaning of the words.
He has not undertaken to say that Trumbull tells a lie about these words
being stricken out, but he is really, when pushed up to it, only taking an
issue upon the meaning of the words. Now, then, if there be any issue upon
the meaning of the words, or if there be upon the question of fact as to
whether these words were stricken out, I have before me what I suppose to
be a genuine copy of the Toomb's bill, in which it can be shown that the
words Trumbull says were in it were, in fact, originally there. If there
be any dispute upon the fact, I have got the documents here to show
they were there. If there be any controversy upon the sense of the
words,--whether these words which were stricken out really constituted a
provision for submitting the matter to a vote of the people,--as that is a
matter of argument, I think I may as well use Trumbull's own argument. He
says that the proposition is in these words:
"That the following propositions be and the same are hereby offered to
the said Convention of the people of Kansas when formed, for their free
acceptance or rejection; which, if accepted by the Convention and ratified
by the people at the election for the adoption of the constitution, shall
be obligatory upon the United States and the said State of Kansas."
Now, Trumbull alleges that these last words were stricken out of the bill
when it came back, and he says this was a provision for submitting the
constitution to a vote of the people; and his argument is this:
"Would it have been possible to ratify the land propositions at the
election for the adoption of the constitution, unless such an election was
to be held?"
This is Trumbull's argument. Now, Judge Douglas does not meet the charge
at all, but he stands up and says there was no such proposition in that
bill for submitting the constitution to be framed to a vote of the people.
Trumbull admits that the language is not a direct provision for submitting
it, but it is a provision necessarily implied from another provision. He
asks you how it is possible to ratify the land proposition at the election
for the adoption of the constitution, if there was no election to be held
for the adoption of the constitution. And he goes on to show that it is
not any less a law because the provision is put in that indirect shape
than it would be if it were put directly. But I presume I have said enough
to draw attention to this point, and I pass it by also.
Another one of the points that Judge Douglas makes upon Trumbull, and at
very great length, is, that Trumbull, while the bill was pending, said in
a speech in the Senate that he supposed the constitution to be made would
have to be submitted to the people. He asks, if Trumbull thought so then,
what ground is there for anybody thinking otherwise now? Fellow-citizens,
this much may be said in reply: That bill had been in the hands of a
party to which Trumbull did not belong. It had been in the hands of the
committee at the head of which Judge Douglas stood. Trumbull perhaps had a
printed copy of the original Toomb's bill. I have not the evidence on
that point except a sort of inference I draw from the general course
of business there. What alterations, or what provisions in the way of
altering, were going on in committee, Trumbull had no means of knowing,
until the altered bill was reported back. Soon afterwards, when it was
reported back, there was a discussion over it, and perhaps Trumbull in
reading it hastily in the altered form did not perceive all the bearings
of the alterations. He was hastily borne into the debate, and it does not
follow that because there was something in it Trumbull did not perceive,
that something did not exist. More than this, is it true that what
Trumbull did can have any effect on what Douglas did? Suppose Trumbull had
been in the plot with these other men, would that let Douglas out of it?
Would it exonerate Douglas that Trumbull did n't then perceive he was in
the plot? He also asks the question: Why did n't Trumbull propose to
amend the bill, if he thought it needed any amendment? Why, I believe that
everything Judge Trumbull had proposed, particularly in connection with
this question of Kansas and Nebraska, since he had been on the floor of
the Senate, had been promptly voted down by Judge Douglas and his friends.
He had no promise that an amendment offered by him to anything on this
subject would receive the slightest consideration. Judge Trumbull did
bring to the notice of the Senate at that time the fact that there was no
provision for submitting the constitution about to be made for the people
of Kansas to a vote of the people. I believe I may venture to say that
Judge Douglas made some reply to this speech of Judge Trumbull's, but he
never noticed that part of it at all. And so the thing passed by. I think,
then, the fact that Judge Trumbull offered no amendment does not throw
much blame upon him; and if it did, it does not reach the question of fact
as to what Judge Douglas was doing. I repeat, that if Trumbull had himself
been in the plot, it would not at all relieve the others who were in it
from blame. If I should be indicted for murder, and upon the trial it
should be discovered that I had been implicated in that murder, but that
the prosecuting witness was guilty too, that would not at all touch
the question of my crime. It would be no relief to my neck that they
discovered this other man who charged the crime upon me to be guilty too.
Another one of the points Judge Douglas makes upon Judge Trumbull is, that
when he spoke in Chicago he made his charge to rest upon the fact that the
bill had the provision in it for submitting the constitution to a vote
of the people when it went into his Judge Douglas's hands, that it was
missing when he reported it to the Senate, and that in a public speech he
had subsequently said the alterations in the bill were made while it was
in committee, and that they were made in consultation between him (Judge
Douglas) and Toomb's. And Judge Douglas goes on to comment upon the fact
of Trumbull's adducing in his Alton speech the proposition that the bill
not only came back with that proposition stricken out, but with another
clause and another provision in it, saying that "until the
complete execution of this Act there shall be no election in said
Territory,"--which, Trumbull argued, was not only taking the provision
for submitting to a vote of the people out of the bill, but was adding an
affirmative one, in that it prevented the people from exercising the right
under a bill that was merely silent on the question. Now, in regard
to what he says, that Trumbull shifts the issue, that he shifts his
ground,--and I believe he uses the term that, "it being proven false, he
has changed ground," I call upon all of you, when you come to examine that
portion of Trumbull's speech (for it will make a part of mine), to examine
whether Trumbull has shifted his ground or not. I say he did not shift his
ground, but that he brought forward his original charge and the evidence
to sustain it yet more fully, but precisely as he originally made it.
Then, in addition thereto, he brought in a new piece of evidence. He
shifted no ground. He brought no new piece of evidence inconsistent with
his former testimony; but he brought a new piece, tending, as he thought,
and as I think, to prove his proposition. To illustrate: A man brings
an accusation against another, and on trial the man making the charge
introduces A and B to prove the accusation. At a second trial he
introduces the same witnesses, who tell the same story as before, and a
third witness, who tells the same thing, and in addition gives further
testimony corroborative of the charge. So with Trumbull. There was no
shifting of ground, nor inconsistency of testimony between the new piece
of evidence and what he originally introduced.
But Judge Douglas says that he himself moved to strike out that last
provision of the bill, and that on his motion it was stricken out and a
substitute inserted. That I presume is the truth. I presume it is true
that that last proposition was stricken out by Judge Douglas. Trumbull
has not said it was not; Trumbull has himself said that it was so stricken
out. He says: "I am now speaking of the bill as Judge Douglas reported
it back. It was amended somewhat in the Senate before it passed, but I am
speaking of it as he brought it back." Now, when Judge Douglas parades the
fact that the provision was stricken out of the bill when it came back, he
asserts nothing contrary to what Trumbull alleges. Trumbull has only said
that he originally put it in, not that he did not strike it out. Trumbull
says it was not in the bill when it went to the committee. When it came
back it was in, and Judge Douglas said the alterations were made by him in
consultation with Toomb's. Trumbull alleges, therefore, as his conclusion,
that Judge Douglas put it in. Then, if Douglas wants to contradict
Trumbull and call him a liar, let him say he did not put it in, and not
that he did n't take it out again. It is said that a bear is sometimes
hard enough pushed to drop a cub; and so I presume it was in this case.
I presume the truth is that Douglas put it in, and afterward took it out.
That, I take it, is the truth about it. Judge Trumbull says one thing,
Douglas says another thing, and the two don't contradict one another at
all. The question is, what did he put it in for? In the first place, what
did he take the other provision out of the bill for,--the provision which
Trumbull argued was necessary for submitting the constitution to a vote of
the people? What did he take that out for; and, having taken it out, what
did he put this in for? I say that in the run of things it is not unlikely
forces conspire to render it vastly expedient for Judge Douglas to take
that latter clause out again. The question that Trumbull has made is
that Judge Douglas put it in; and he don't meet Trumbull at all unless he
denies that.
In the clause of Judge Douglas's speech upon this subject he uses this
language toward Judge Trumbull. He says:
"He forges his evidence from beginning to end; and by falsifying the
record, he endeavors to bolster up his false charge."
Well, that is a pretty serious statement--Trumbull forges his evidence
from beginning to end. Now, upon my own authority I say that it is not
true. What is a forgery? Consider the evidence that Trumbull has brought
forward. When you come to read the speech, as you will be able to, examine
whether the evidence is a forgery from beginning to end. He had the bill
or document in his hand like that [holding up a paper]. He says that is a
copy of the Toomb's bill,--the amendment offered by Toomb's. He says that
is a copy of the bill as it was introduced and went into Judge Douglas's
hands. Now, does Judge Douglas say that is a forgery? That is one thing
Trumbull brought forward. Judge Douglas says he forged it from beginning
to end! That is the "beginning," we will say. Does Douglas say that is a
forgery? Let him say it to-day, and we will have a subsequent examination
upon this subject. Trumbull then holds up another document like this, and
says that is an exact copy of the bill as it came back in the amended form
out of Judge Douglas's hands. Does Judge Douglas say that is a forgery?
Does he say it in his general sweeping charge? Does he say so now? If he
does not, then take this Toomb's bill and the bill in the amended form,
and it only needs to compare them to see that the provision is in the one
and not in the other; it leaves the inference inevitable that it was taken
out.
But, while I am dealing with this question, let us see what Trumbull's
other evidence is. One other piece of evidence I will read. Trumbull says
there are in this original Toomb's bill these words:
"That the following propositions be and the same are hereby offered to
the said Convention of the people of Kansas, when formed, for their free
acceptance or rejection; which, if accepted by the Convention and ratified
by the people at the election for the adoption of the constitution, shall
be obligatory upon the United States and the said State of Kansas."
Now, if it is said that this is a forgery, we will open the paper here and
see whether it is or not. Again, Trumbull says, as he goes along, that Mr.
Bigler made the following statement in his place in the Senate, December
9, 1857:
"I was present when that subject was discussed by senators before the bill
was introduced, and the question was raised and discussed, whether the
constitution, when formed, should be submitted to a vote of the people. It
was held by those most intelligent on the subject that, in view of all the
difficulties surrounding that Territory, the danger of any experiment at
that time of a popular vote, it would be better there should be no such
provision in the Toomb's bill; and it was my understanding, in all the
intercourse I had, that the Convention would make a constitution, and send
it here, without submitting it to the popular vote."
Then Trumbull follows on:
"In speaking of this meeting again on the 21st December, 1857
[Congressional Globe, same vol., page 113], Senator Bigler said:
"'Nothing was further from my mind than to allude to any social or
confidential interview. The meeting was not of that character. Indeed, it
was semi-official, and called to promote the public good. My recollection
was clear that I left the conference under the impression that it had
been deemed best to adopt measures to admit Kansas as a State through the
agency of one popular election, and that for delegates to this Convention.
This impression was stronger because I thought the spirit of the bill
infringed upon the doctrine of non-intervention, to which I had great
aversion; but with the hope of accomplishing a great good, and as no
movement had been made in that direction in the Territory, I waived this
objection, and concluded to support the measure. I have a few items of
testimony as to the correctness of these impressions, and with their
submission I shall be content. I have before me the bill reported by
the senator from Illinois on the 7th of March, 1856, providing for the
admission of Kansas as a State, the third section of which reads as
follows:
"That the following propositions be, and the same are hereby offered to
the said Convention of the people of Kansas, when formed, for their free
acceptance or rejection; which, if accepted by the Convention and ratified
by the people at the election for the adoption of the constitution, shall
be obligatory upon the United States and the said State of Kansas."
The bill read in his place by the senator from Georgia on the 25th of
June, and referred to the Committee on Territories, contained the same
section word for word. Both these bills were under consideration at the
conference referred to; but, sir, when the senator from Illinois reported
the Toombs bill to the Senate with amendments, the next morning, it did
not contain that portion of the third section which indicated to the
Convention that the constitution should be approved by the people. The
words "and ratified by the people at the election for the adoption of the
constitution" had been stricken out.
Now, these things Trumbull says were stated by Bigler upon the floor
of the Senate on certain days, and that they are recorded in the
Congressional Globe on certain pages. Does Judge Douglas say this is a
forgery? Does he say there is no such thing in the Congressional Globe?
What does he mean when he says Judge Trumbull forges his evidence from
beginning to end? So again he says in another place that Judge Douglas,
in his speech, December 9, 1857 (Congressional Globe, part I., page 15),
stated:
"That during the last session of Congress, I [Mr. Douglas] reported a bill
from the Committee on Territories, to authorize the people of Kansas to
assemble and form a constitution for themselves. Subsequently the senator
from Georgia [Mr. Toombs] brought forward a substitute for my bill, which,
after having been modified by him and myself in consultation, was passed
by the Senate."
Now, Trumbull says this is a quotation from a speech of Douglas, and is
recorded in the Congressional Globe. Is it a forgery? Is it there or
not? It may not be there, but I want the Judge to take these pieces of
evidence, and distinctly say they are forgeries if he dare do it.
[A voice: "He will."]
Well, sir, you had better not commit him. He gives other
quotations,--another from Judge Douglas. He says:
"I will ask the senator to show me an intimation, from any one member of
the Senate, in the whole debate on the Toombs bill, and in the Union, from
any quarter, that the constitution was not to be submitted to the
people. I will venture to say that on all sides of the chamber it was so
understood at the time. If the opponents of the bill had understood it
was not, they would have made the point on it; and if they had made it,
we should certainly have yielded to it, and put in the clause. That is a
discovery made since the President found out that it was not safe to take
it for granted that that would be done, which ought in fairness to have
been done."
Judge Trumbull says Douglas made that speech, and it is recorded. Does
Judge Douglas say it is a forgery, and was not true? Trumbull says
somewhere, and I propose to skip it, but it will be found by any one who
will read this debate, that he did distinctly bring it to the notice of
those who were engineering the bill, that it lacked that provision; and
then he goes on to give another quotation from Judge Douglas, where Judge
Trumbull uses this language:
"Judge Douglas, however, on the same day and in the same debate, probably
recollecting or being reminded of the fact that I had objected to the
Toombs bill when pending that it did not provide for a submission of the
constitution to the people, made another statement, which is to be found
in the same volume of the Globe, page 22, in which he says: 'That the bill
was silent on this subject was true, and my attention was called to that
about the time it was passed; and I took the fair construction to be, that
powers not delegated were reserved, and that of course the constitution
would be submitted to the people.'
"Whether this statement is consistent with the statement just before made,
that had the point been made it would have been yielded to, or that it was
a new discovery, you will determine."
So I say. I do not know whether Judge Douglas will dispute this, and yet
maintain his position that Trumbull's evidence "was forged from beginning
to end." I will remark that I have not got these Congressional Globes
with me. They are large books, and difficult to carry about, and if Judge
Douglas shall say that on these points where Trumbull has quoted from them
there are no such passages there, I shall not be able to prove they are
there upon this occasion, but I will have another chance. Whenever he
points out the forgery and says, "I declare that this particular thing
which Trumbull has uttered is not to be found where he says it is," then
my attention will be drawn to that, and I will arm myself for the contest,
stating now that I have not the slightest doubt on earth that I will find
every quotation just where Trumbull says it is. Then the question is, How
can Douglas call that a forgery? How can he make out that it is a forgery?
What is a forgery? It is the bringing forward something in writing or in
print purporting to be of certain effect when it is altogether untrue. If
you come forward with my note for one hundred dollars when I have never
given such a note, there is a forgery. If you come forward with a letter
purporting to be written by me which I never wrote, there is another
forgery. If you produce anything in writing or in print saying it is so
and so, the document not being genuine, a forgery has been committed. How
do you make this forgery when every piece of the evidence is genuine?
If Judge Douglas does say these documents and quotations are false and
forged, he has a full right to do so; but until he does it specifically,
we don't know how to get at him. If he does say they are false and
forged, I will then look further into it, and presume I can procure the
certificates of the proper officers that they are genuine copies. I have
no doubt each of these extracts will be found exactly where Trumbull says
it is. Then I leave it to you if Judge Douglas, in making his sweeping
charge that Judge Trumbull's evidence is forged from beginning to end,
at all meets the case,--if that is the way to get at the facts. I repeat
again, if he will point out which one is a forgery, I will carefully
examine it, and if it proves that any one of them is really a forgery,
it will not be me who will hold to it any longer. I have always wanted
to deal with everyone I meet candidly and honestly. If I have made any
assertion not warranted by facts, and it is pointed out to me, I will
withdraw it cheerfully. But I do not choose to see Judge Trumbull
calumniated, and the evidence he has brought forward branded in general
terms "a forgery from beginning to end." This is not the legal way of
meeting a charge, and I submit it to all intelligent persons, both friends
of Judge Douglas and of myself, whether it is.
The point upon Judge Douglas is this: The bill that went into his hands
had the provision in it for a submission of the constitution to the
people; and I say its language amounts to an express provision for a
submission, and that he took the provision out. He says it was known that
the bill was silent in this particular; but I say, Judge Douglas, it was
not silent when you got it. It was vocal with the declaration, when you
got it, for a submission of the constitution to the people. And now, my
direct question to Judge Douglas is, to answer why, if he deemed the bill
silent on this point, he found it necessary to strike out those particular
harmless words. If he had found the bill silent and without this
provision, he might say what he does now. If he supposes it was implied
that the constitution would be submitted to a vote of the people, how
could these two lines so encumber the statute as to make it necessary to
strike them out? How could he infer that a submission was still implied,
after its express provision had been stricken from the bill? I find the
bill vocal with the provision, while he silenced it. He took it out, and
although he took out the other provision preventing a submission to a vote
of the people, I ask, Why did you first put it in? I ask him whether he
took the original provision out, which Trumbull alleges was in the bill.
If he admits that he did take it, I ask him what he did it for. It looks
to us as if he had altered the bill. If it looks differently to him,--if
he has a different reason for his action from the one we assign him--he
can tell it. I insist upon knowing why he made the bill silent upon that
point when it was vocal before he put his hands upon it.
I was told, before my last paragraph, that my time was within three
minutes of being out. I presume it is expired now; I therefore close.
Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.
FELLOW-CITIZENS: It follows as a matter of course that a half-hour answer
to a speech of an hour and a half can be but a very hurried one. I shall
only be able to touch upon a few of the points suggested by Judge Douglas,
and give them a brief attention, while I shall have to totally omit others
for the want of time.
Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from me an
answer to the question whether I am in favor of negro citizenship. So far
as I know the Judge never asked me the question before. He shall have no
occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I am not
in favor of negro citizenship. This furnishes me an occasion for saying a
few words upon the subject. I mentioned in a certain speech of mine, which
has been printed, that the Supreme Court had decided that a negro could
not possibly be made a citizen; and without saying what was my ground of
complaint in regard to that, or whether I had any ground of complaint,
Judge Douglas has from that thing manufactured nearly everything that he
ever says about my disposition to produce an equality between the negroes
and the white people. If any one will read my speech, he will find I
mentioned that as one of the points decided in the course of the Supreme
Court opinions, but I did not state what objection I had to it. But Judge
Douglas tells the people what my objection was when I did not tell them
myself. Now, my opinion is that the different States have the power to
make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States if they
choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If
the State of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise
of it. That is all I have to say about it.
Judge Douglas has told me that he heard my speeches north and my speeches
south; that he had heard me at Ottawa and at Freeport in the north and
recently at Jonesboro in the south, and there was a very different cast of
sentiment in the speeches made at the different points. I will not charge
upon Judge Douglas that he wilfully misrepresents me, but I call upon
every fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him
to point out any difference between my speeches north and south. While I
am here perhaps I ought to say a word, if I have the time, in regard to
the latter portion of the Judge's speech, which was a sort of declamation
in reference to my having said I entertained the belief that this
government would not endure half slave and half free. I have said so, and
I did not say it without what seemed to me to be good reasons. It perhaps
would require more time than I have now to set forth these reasons in
detail; but let me ask you a few questions. Have we ever had any peace on
this slavery question? When are we to have peace upon it, if it is kept in
the position it now occupies? How are we ever to have peace upon it? That
is an important question. To be sure, if we will all stop, and allow Judge
Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career until they
plant the institution all over the nation, here and wherever else our flag
waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be peace. But let me ask Judge
Douglas how he is going to get the people to do that? They have been
wrangling over this question for at least forty years. This was the cause
of the agitation resulting in the Missouri Compromise; this produced the
troubles at the annexation of Texas, in the acquisition of the territory
acquired in the Mexican War. Again, this was the trouble which was quieted
by the Compromise of 1850, when it was settled "forever" as both the great
political parties declared in their National Conventions. That "forever"
turned out to be just four years, when Judge Douglas himself reopened it.
When is it likely to come to an end? He introduced the Nebraska Bill in
1854 to put another end to the slavery agitation. He promised that it
would finish it all up immediately, and he has never made a speech
since, until he got into a quarrel with the President about the Lecompton
Constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at the end of
the slavery agitation. But in one speech, I think last winter, he did
say that he did n't quite see when the end of the slavery agitation would
come. Now he tells us again that it is all over and the people of Kansas
have voted down the Lecompton Constitution. How is it over? That was only
one of the attempts at putting an end to the slavery agitation--one
of these "final settlements." Is Kansas in the Union? Has she formed
a constitution that she is likely to come in under? Is not the slavery
agitation still an open question in that Territory? Has the voting down
of that constitution put an end to all the trouble? Is that more likely to
settle it than every one of these previous attempts to settle the slavery
agitation? Now, at this day in the history of the world we can no more
foretell where the end of this slavery agitation will be than we can see
the end of the world itself. The Nebraska-Kansas Bill was introduced four
years and a half ago, and if the agitation is ever to come to an end we
may say we are four years and a half nearer the end. So, too, we can say
we are four years and a half nearer the end of the world, and we can
just as clearly see the end of the world as we can see the end of this
agitation. The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If Kansas should
sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the earth's surface, this
vexed question would still be among us. I say, then, there is no way of
putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back upon
the basis where our fathers placed it; no way but to keep it out of our
new Territories,--to restrict it forever to the old States where it now
exists. Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction. That is one way of putting an end to the
slavery agitation.
The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his friends
have their way and plant slavery over all the States; cease speaking of
it as in any way a wrong; regard slavery as one of the common matters
of property, and speak of negroes as we do of our horses and cattle. But
while it drives on in its state of progress as it is now driving, and as
it has driven for the last five years, I have ventured the opinion, and
I say to-day, that we will have no end to the slavery agitation until
it takes one turn or the other. I do not mean that when it takes a turn
toward ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two
years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction
would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur
in the best way for both races, in God's own good time, I have no doubt.
But, my friends, I have used up more of my time than I intended on this
point.
Now, in regard to this matter about Trumbull and myself having made a
bargain to sell out the entire Whig and Democratic parties in 1854: Judge
Douglas brings forward no evidence to sustain his charge, except
the speech Matheny is said to have made in 1856, in which he told a
cock-and-bull story of that sort, upon the same moral principles that
Judge Douglas tells it here to-day. This is the simple truth. I do not
care greatly for the story, but this is the truth of it: and I have twice
told Judge Douglas to his face that from beginning to end there is not one
word of truth in it. I have called upon him for the proof, and he does
not at all meet me as Trumbull met him upon that of which we were just
talking, by producing the record. He did n't bring the record because
there was no record for him to bring. When he asks if I am ready to
indorse Trumbull's veracity after he has broken a bargain with me, I reply
that if Trumbull had broken a bargain with me I would not be likely to
indorse his veracity; but I am ready to indorse his veracity because
neither in that thing, nor in any other, in all the years that I have
known Lyman Trumbull, have I known him to fail of his word or tell a
falsehood large or small. It is for that reason that I indorse Lyman
Trumbull.
[Mr. JAMES BROWN (Douglas postmaster): "What does Ford's History say about
him?"]
Some gentleman asks me what Ford's History says about him. My own
recollection is that Ford speaks of Trumbull in very disrespectful terms
in several portions of his book, and that he talks a great deal worse of
Judge Douglas. I refer you, sir, to the History for examination.
Judge Douglas complains at considerable length about a disposition on the
part of Trumbull and myself to attack him personally. I want to attend to
that suggestion a moment. I don't want to be unjustly accused of dealing
illiberally or unfairly with an adversary, either in court or in a
political canvass or anywhere else. I would despise myself if I supposed
myself ready to deal less liberally with an adversary than I was willing
to be treated myself. Judge Douglas in a general way, without putting it
in a direct shape, revives the old charge against me in reference to the
Mexican War. He does not take the responsibility of putting it in a very
definite form, but makes a general reference to it. That charge is more
than ten years old. He complains of Trumbull and myself because he says
we bring charges against him one or two years old. He knows, too, that
in regard to the Mexican War story the more respectable papers of his
own party throughout the State have been compelled to take it back and
acknowledge that it was a lie.
[Here Mr. LINCOLN turned to the crowd on the platform, and, selecting HON.
ORLANDO B. FICKLIN, led him forward and said:]
I do not mean to do anything with Mr. FICKLIN except to present his face
and tell you that he personally knows it to be a lie! He was a member
of Congress at the only time I was in Congress, and [FICKLIN] knows
that whenever there was an attempt to procure a vote of mine which
would indorse the origin and justice of the war, I refused to give such
indorsement and voted against it; but I never voted against the supplies
for the army, and he knows, as well as Judge Douglas, that whenever a
dollar was asked by way of compensation or otherwise for the benefit of
the soldiers I gave all the votes that FICKLIN or Douglas did, and perhaps
more.
[Mr. FICKLIN: My friends, I wish to say this in reference to the matter:
Mr. Lincoln and myself are just as good personal friends as Judge Douglas
and myself. In reference to this Mexican War, my recollection is that
when Ashmun's resolution [amendment] was offered by Mr. Ashmun of
Massachusetts, in which he declared that the Mexican War was unnecessary
and unconstitutionally commenced by the President-my recollection is that
Mr. Lincoln voted for that resolution.]
That is the truth. Now, you all remember that was a resolution censuring
the President for the manner in which the war was begun. You know they
have charged that I voted against the supplies, by which I starved the
soldiers who were out fighting the battles of their country. I say that
FICKLIN knows it is false. When that charge was brought forward by the
Chicago Times, the Springfield Register [Douglas's organ] reminded the
Times that the charge really applied to John Henry; and I do know that
John Henry is now making speeches and fiercely battling for Judge Douglas.
If the Judge now says that he offers this as a sort of setoff to what I
said to-day in reference to Trumbull's charge, then I remind him that he
made this charge before I said a word about Trumbull's. He brought this
forward at Ottawa, the first time we met face to face; and in the opening
speech that Judge Douglas made he attacked me in regard to a matter
ten years old. Is n't he a pretty man to be whining about people making
charges against him only two years old!
The Judge thinks it is altogether wrong that I should have dwelt upon this
charge of Trumbull's at all. I gave the apology for doing so in my opening
speech. Perhaps it did n't fix your attention. I said that when Judge
Douglas was speaking at place--where I spoke on the succeeding day he used
very harsh language about this charge. Two or three times afterward I said
I had confidence in Judge Trumbull's veracity and intelligence; and my own
opinion was, from what I knew of the character of Judge Trumbull, that he
would vindicate his position and prove whatever he had stated to be true.
This I repeated two or three times; and then I dropped it, without saying
anything more on the subject for weeks--perhaps a month. I passed it by
without noticing it at all till I found, at Jacksonville, Judge Douglas
in the plenitude of his power is not willing to answer Trumbull and let
me alone, but he comes out there and uses this language: "He should not
hereafter occupy his time in refuting such charges made by Trumbull but
that, Lincoln having indorsed the character of Trumbull for veracity, he
should hold him [Lincoln] responsible for the slanders." What was Lincoln
to do? Did he not do right, when he had the fit opportunity of meeting
Judge Douglas here, to tell him he was ready for the responsibility? I
ask a candid audience whether in doing thus Judge Douglas was not the
assailant rather than I? Here I meet him face to face, and say I am ready
to take the responsibility, so far as it rests on me.
Having done so I ask the attention of this audience to the question
whether I have succeeded in sustaining the charge, and whether Judge
Douglas has at all succeeded in rebutting it? You all heard me call upon
him to say which of these pieces of evidence was a forgery. Does he
say that what I present here as a copy of the original Toombs bill is a
forgery? Does he say that what I present as a copy of the bill reported by
himself is a forgery, or what is presented as a transcript from the Globe
of the quotations from Bigler's speech is a forgery? Does he say the
quotations from his own speech are forgeries? Does he say this transcript
from Trumbull's speech is a forgery?
["He didn't deny one of them."]
I would then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of a
story is true the whole story turns out false. I take it these people have
some sense; they see plainly that Judge Douglas is playing cuttle-fish,
a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued
except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the
enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes. Ain't the Judge playing the
cuttle-fish?
Now, I would ask very special attention to the consideration of Judge
Douglas's speech at Jacksonville; and when you shall read his speech
of to-day, I ask you to watch closely and see which of these pieces of
testimony, every one of which he says is a forgery, he has shown to
be such. Not one of them has he shown to be a forgery. Then I ask the
original question, if each of the pieces of testimony is true, how is it
possible that the whole is a falsehood?
In regard to Trumbull's charge that he [Douglas] inserted a provision into
the bill to prevent the constitution being submitted to the people, what
was his answer? He comes here and reads from the Congressional Globe to
show that on his motion that provision was struck out of the bill. Why,
Trumbull has not said it was not stricken out, but Trumbull says
he [Douglas] put it in; and it is no answer to the charge to say he
afterwards took it out. Both are perhaps true. It was in regard to that
thing precisely that I told him he had dropped the cub. Trumbull shows you
that by his introducing the bill it was his cub. It is no answer to that
assertion to call Trumbull a liar merely because he did not specially say
that Douglas struck it out. Suppose that were the case, does it answer
Trumbull? I assert that you [pointing to an individual] are here to-day,
and you undertake to prove me a liar by showing that you were in Mattoon
yesterday. I say that you took your hat off your head, and you prove me
a liar by putting it on your head. That is the whole force of Douglas's
argument.
Now, I want to come back to my original question. Trumbull says that Judge
Douglas had a bill with a provision in it for submitting a constitution
to be made to a vote of the people of Kansas. Does Judge Douglas deny that
fact? Does he deny that the provision which Trumbull reads was put in that
bill? Then Trumbull says he struck it out. Does he dare to deny that? He
does not, and I have the right to repeat the question,--Why Judge Douglas
took it out? Bigler has said there was a combination of certain senators,
among whom he did not include Judge Douglas, by which it was agreed that
the Kansas Bill should have a clause in it not to have the constitution
formed under it submitted to a vote of the people. He did not say that
Douglas was among them, but we prove by another source that about the same
time Douglas comes into the Senate with that provision stricken out of the
bill. Although Bigler cannot say they were all working in concert, yet
it looks very much as if the thing was agreed upon and done with a mutual
understanding after the conference; and while we do not know that it was
absolutely so, yet it looks so probable that we have a right to call upon
the man who knows the true reason why it was done to tell what the true
reason was. When he will not tell what the true reason was, he stands in
the attitude of an accused thief who has stolen goods in his possession,
and when called to account refuses to tell where he got them. Not only is
this the evidence, but when he comes in with the bill having the provision
stricken out, he tells us in a speech, not then but since, that these
alterations and modifications in the bill had been made by HIM, in
consultation with Toombs, the originator of the bill. He tells us the
same to-day. He says there were certain modifications made in the bill in
committee that he did not vote for. I ask you to remember, while certain
amendments were made which he disapproved of, but which a majority of the
committee voted in, he has himself told us that in this particular the
alterations and modifications were made by him, upon consultation with
Toombs. We have his own word that these alterations were made by him, and
not by the committee. Now, I ask, what is the reason Judge Douglas is so
chary about coming to the exact question? What is the reason he will not
tell you anything about How it was made, BY WHOM it was made, or that he
remembers it being made at all? Why does he stand playing upon the meaning
of words and quibbling around the edges of the evidence? If he can explain
all this, but leaves it unexplained, I have the right to infer that Judge
Douglas understood it was the purpose of his party, in engineering that
bill through, to make a constitution, and have Kansas come into the Union
with that constitution, without its being submitted to a vote of the
people. If he will explain his action on this question, by giving a
better reason for the facts that happened than he has done, it will be
satisfactory. But until he does that--until he gives a better or more
plausible reason than he has offered against the evidence in the case--I
suggest to him it will not avail him at all that he swells himself up,
takes on dignity, and calls people liars. Why, sir, there is not a word in
Trumbull's speech that depends on Trumbull's veracity at all. He has only
arrayed the evidence and told you what follows as a matter of reasoning.
There is not a statement in the whole speech that depends on Trumbull's
word. If you have ever studied geometry, you remember that by a course of
reasoning Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to
two right angles. Euclid has shown you how to work it out. Now, if you
undertake to disprove that proposition, and to show that it is erroneous,
would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar? They tell me that
my time is out, and therefore I close.
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE, AT GALESBURGH, OCTOBER 7, 1858
Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.
MY FELLOW-CITIZENS: A very large portion of the speech which Judge Douglas
has addressed to you has previously been delivered and put in print. I
do not mean that for a hit upon the Judge at all.---If I had not been
interrupted, I was going to say that such an answer as I was able to make
to a very large portion of it had already been more than once made and
published. There has been an opportunity afforded to the public to see
our respective views upon the topics discussed in a large portion of the
speech which he has just delivered. I make these remarks for the purpose
of excusing myself for not passing over the entire ground that the Judge
has traversed. I however desire to take up some of the points that he
has attended to, and ask your attention to them, and I shall follow him
backwards upon some notes which I have taken, reversing the order, by
beginning where he concluded.
The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted
that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a
slander upon the framers of that instrument to suppose that negroes
were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to believe that Mr.
Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself
applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held
a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them?
I only have to remark upon this part of the Judge's speech (and that, too,
very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for
any great length of time), that I believe the entire records of the world,
from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years
ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single
man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence;
I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that
Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member
of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever
said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic
party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will
remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson was the
owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject
he used the strong language that "he trembled for his country when he
remembered that God was just"; and I will offer the highest premium in
my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever
uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson.
The next thing to which I will ask your attention is the Judge's comments
upon the fact, as he assumes it to be, that we cannot call our public
meetings as Republican meetings; and he instances Tazewell County as one
of the places where the friends of Lincoln have called a public meeting
and have not dared to name it a Republican meeting. He instances Monroe
County as another, where Judge Trumbull and Jehu Baker addressed the
persons whom the Judge assumes to be the friends of Lincoln calling them
the "Free Democracy." I have the honor to inform Judge Douglas that he
spoke in that very county of Tazewell last Saturday, and I was there on
Tuesday last; and when he spoke there, he spoke under a call not venturing
to use the word "Democrat." [Turning to Judge Douglas.] what think you of
this?
So, again, there is another thing to which I would ask the Judge's
attention upon this subject. In the contest of 1856 his party delighted
to call themselves together as the "National Democracy"; but now, if
there should be a notice put up anywhere for a meeting of the "National
Democracy," Judge Douglas and his friends would not come. They would not
suppose themselves invited. They would understand that it was a call for
those hateful postmasters whom he talks about.
Now a few words in regard to these extracts from speeches of mine which
Judge Douglas has read to you, and which he supposes are in very great
contrast to each other. Those speeches have been before the public for a
considerable time, and if they have any inconsistency in them, if there
is any conflict in them, the public have been able to detect it. When the
Judge says, in speaking on this subject, that I make speeches of one sort
for the people of the northern end of the State, and of a different sort
for the southern people, he assumes that I do not understand that my
speeches will be put in print and read north and south. I knew all the
while that the speech that I made at Chicago, and the one I made at
Jonesboro and the one at Charleston, would all be put in print, and all
the reading and intelligent men in the community would see them and know
all about my opinions. And I have not supposed, and do not now suppose,
that there is any conflict whatever between them. But the Judge will have
it that if we do not confess that there is a sort of inequality between
the white and black races which justifies us in making them slaves, we
must then insist that there is a degree of equality that requires us to
make them our wives. Now, I have all the while taken a broad distinction
in regard to that matter; and that is all there is in these different
speeches which he arrays here; and the entire reading of either of the
speeches will show that that distinction was made. Perhaps by taking two
parts of the same speech he could have got up as much of a conflict as
the one he has found. I have all the while maintained that in so far as it
should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and black
races that should produce a perfect social and political equality, it was
an impossibility. This you have seen in my printed speeches, and with it
I have said that in their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior races are
our equals. And these declarations I have constantly made in reference
to the abstract moral question, to contemplate and consider when we are
legislating about any new country which is not already cursed with
the actual presence of the evil,--slavery. I have never manifested any
impatience with the necessities that spring from the actual presence of
black people amongst us, and the actual existence of slavery amongst us
where it does already exist; but I have insisted that, in legislating for
new countries where it does not exist there is no just rule other than
that of moral and abstract right! With reference to those new countries,
those maxims as to the right of a people to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness" were the just rules to be constantly referred
to. There is no misunderstanding this, except by men interested to
misunderstand it. I take it that I have to address an intelligent and
reading community, who will peruse what I say, weigh it, and then judge
whether I advanced improper or unsound views, or whether I advanced
hypocritical, and deceptive, and contrary views in different portions of
the country. I believe myself to be guilty of no such thing as the latter,
though, of course, I cannot claim that I am entirely free from all error
in the opinions I advance.
The Judge has also detained us awhile in regard to the distinction between
his party and our party. His he assumes to be a national party, ours a
sectional one. He does this in asking the question whether this country
has any interest in the maintenance of the Republican party. He assumes
that our party is altogether sectional, that the party to which he
adheres is national; and the argument is, that no party can be a rightful
party--and be based upon rightful principles--unless it can announce its
principles everywhere. I presume that Judge Douglas could not go into
Russia and announce the doctrine of our national Democracy; he could not
denounce the doctrine of kings and emperors and monarchies in Russia; and
it may be true of this country that in some places we may not be able to
proclaim a doctrine as clearly true as the truth of democracy, because
there is a section so directly opposed to it that they will not tolerate
us in doing so. Is it the true test of the soundness of a doctrine that in
some places people won't let you proclaim it? Is that the way to test the
truth of any doctrine? Why, I understood that at one time the people of
Chicago would not let Judge Douglas preach a certain favorite doctrine of
his. I commend to his consideration the question whether he takes that as
a test of the unsoundness of what he wanted to preach.
There is another thing to which I wish to ask attention for a little while
on this occasion. What has always been the evidence brought forward to
prove that the Republican party is a sectional party? The main one was
that in the Southern portion of the Union the people did not let the
Republicans proclaim their doctrines amongst them. That has been the main
evidence brought forward,--that they had no supporters, or substantially
none, in the Slave States. The South have not taken hold of our principles
as we announce them; nor does Judge Douglas now grapple with those
principles. We have a Republican State Platform, laid down in Springfield
in June last stating our position all the way through the questions before
the country. We are now far advanced in this canvass. Judge Douglas and
I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we have now for the fifth
time met face to face in debate, and up to this day I have not found
either Judge Douglas or any friend of his taking hold of the Republican
platform, or laying his finger upon anything in it that is wrong. I ask
you all to recollect that. Judge Douglas turns away from the platform
of principles to the fact that he can find people somewhere who will not
allow us to announce those principles. If he had great confidence that our
principles were wrong, he would take hold of them and demonstrate them to
be wrong. But he does not do so. The only evidence he has of their being
wrong is in the fact that there are people who won't allow us to preach
them. I ask again, is that the way to test the soundness of a doctrine?
I ask his attention also to the fact that by the rule of nationality he is
himself fast becoming sectional. I ask his attention to the fact that his
speeches would not go as current now south of the Ohio River as they have
formerly gone there I ask his attention to the fact that he felicitates
himself to-day that all the Democrats of the free States are agreeing with
him, while he omits to tell us that the Democrats of any slave State agree
with him. If he has not thought of this, I commend to his consideration
the evidence in his own declaration, on this day, of his becoming
sectional too. I see it rapidly approaching. Whatever may be the result
of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas and myself, I see the
day rapidly approaching when his pill of sectionalism, which he has been
thrusting down the throats of Republicans for years past, will be crowded
down his own throat.
Now, in regard to what Judge Douglas said (in the beginning of his speech)
about the Compromise of 1850 containing the principles of the Nebraska
Bill, although I have often presented my views upon that subject, yet as
I have not done so in this canvass, I will, if you please, detain you a
little with them. I have always maintained, so far as I was able, that
there was nothing of the principle of the Nebraska Bill in the Compromise
of 1850 at all,--nothing whatever. Where can you find the principle of the
Nebraska Bill in that Compromise? If anywhere, in the two pieces of the
Compromise organizing the Territories of New Mexico and Utah. It was
expressly provided in these two acts that when they came to be admitted
into the Union they should be admitted with or without slavery, as they
should choose, by their own constitutions. Nothing was said in either of
those acts as to what was to be done in relation to slavery during the
Territorial existence of those Territories, while Henry Clay constantly
made the declaration (Judge Douglas recognizing him as a leader) that, in
his opinion, the old Mexican laws would control that question during the
Territorial existence, and that these old Mexican laws excluded slavery.
How can that be used as a principle for declaring that during the
Territorial existence as well as at the time of framing the constitution
the people, if you please, might have slaves if they wanted them? I am not
discussing the question whether it is right or wrong; but how are the New
Mexican and Utah laws patterns for the Nebraska Bill? I maintain that the
organization of Utah and New Mexico did not establish a general principle
at all. It had no feature of establishing a general principle. The acts to
which I have referred were a part of a general system of Compromises.
They did not lay down what was proposed as a regular policy for the
Territories, only an agreement in this particular case to do in that way,
because other things were done that were to be a compensation for it. They
were allowed to come in in that shape, because in another way it was paid
for, considering that as a part of that system of measures called the
Compromise of 1850, which finally included half-a-dozen acts. It included
the admission of California as a free State, which was kept out of the
Union for half a year because it had formed a free constitution. It
included the settlement of the boundary of Texas, which had been undefined
before, which was in itself a slavery question; for if you pushed the line
farther west, you made Texas larger, and made more slave territory;
while, if you drew the line toward the east, you narrowed the boundary and
diminished the domain of slavery, and by so much increased free territory.
It included the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.
It included the passage of a new Fugitive Slave law. All these things were
put together, and, though passed in separate acts, were nevertheless, in
legislation (as the speeches at the time will show), made to depend upon
each other. Each got votes with the understanding that the other measures
were to pass, and by this system of compromise, in that series of
measures, those two bills--the New Mexico and Utah bills--were passed: and
I say for that reason they could not be taken as models, framed upon
their own intrinsic principle, for all future Territories. And I have the
evidence of this in the fact that Judge Douglas, a year afterward, or more
than a year afterward, perhaps, when he first introduced bills for the
purpose of framing new Territories, did not attempt to follow these bills
of New Mexico and Utah; and even when he introduced this Nebraska Bill, I
think you will discover that he did not exactly follow them. But I do not
wish to dwell at great length upon this branch of the discussion. My own
opinion is, that a thorough investigation will show most plainly that the
New Mexico and Utah bills were part of a system of compromise, and not
designed as patterns for future Territorial legislation; and that this
Nebraska Bill did not follow them as a pattern at all.
The Judge tells, in proceeding, that he is opposed to making any odious
distinctions between free and slave States. I am altogether unaware that
the Republicans are in favor of making any odious distinctions between the
free and slave States. But there is still a difference, I think, between
Judge Douglas and the Republicans in this. I suppose that the real
difference between Judge Douglas and his friends, and the Republicans on
the contrary, is, that the Judge is not in favor of making any difference
between slavery and liberty; that he is in favor of eradicating, of
pressing out of view, the questions of preference in this country for free
or slave institutions; and consequently every sentiment he utters discards
the idea that there is any wrong in slavery. Everything that emanates from
him or his coadjutors in their course of policy carefully excludes the
thought that there is anything wrong in slavery. All their arguments, if
you will consider them, will be seen to exclude the thought that there is
anything whatever wrong in slavery. If you will take the Judge's speeches,
and select the short and pointed sentences expressed by him,--as his
declaration that he "don't care whether slavery is voted up or down,"--you
will see at once that this is perfectly logical, if you do not admit that
slavery is wrong. If you do admit that it is wrong, Judge Douglas cannot
logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down.
Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a
right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no
wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot
logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong. He insists that upon
the score of equality the owners of slaves and owners of property--of
horses and every other sort of property--should be alike, and hold them
alike in a new Territory. That is perfectly logical if the two species of
property are alike and are equally founded in right. But if you admit that
one of them is wrong, you cannot institute any equality between right and
wrong. And from this difference of sentiment,--the belief on the part of
one that the institution is wrong, and a policy springing from that belief
which looks to the arrest of the enlargement of that wrong, and this other
sentiment, that it is no wrong, and a policy sprung from that sentiment,
which will tolerate no idea of preventing the wrong from growing larger,
and looks to there never being an end to it through all the existence of
things,--arises the real difference between Judge Douglas and his friends
on the one hand and the Republicans on the other. Now, I confess myself as
belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral,
social, and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence
amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory
way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown
about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention
of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may
come to an end.
Judge Douglas has again, for, I believe, the fifth time, if not the
seventh, in my presence, reiterated his charge of a conspiracy or
combination between the National Democrats and Republicans. What evidence
Judge Douglas has upon this subject I know not, inasmuch as he never
favors us with any. I have said upon a former occasion, and I do not
choose to suppress it now, that I have no objection to the division in
the Judge's party. He got it up himself. It was all his and their work.
He had, I think, a great deal more to do with the steps that led to the
Lecompton Constitution than Mr. Buchanan had; though at last, when they
reached it, they quarreled over it, and their friends divided upon it. I
am very free to confess to Judge Douglas that I have no objection to the
division; but I defy the Judge to show any evidence that I have in any way
promoted that division, unless he insists on being a witness himself in
merely saying so. I can give all fair friends of Judge Douglas here
to understand exactly the view that Republicans take in regard to that
division. Don't you remember how two years ago the opponents of the
Democratic party were divided between Fremont and Fillmore? I guess you
do. Any Democrat who remembers that division will remember also that he
was at the time very glad of it, and then he will be able to see all there
is between the National Democrats and the Republicans. What we now think
of the two divisions of Democrats, you then thought of the Fremont and
Fillmore divisions. That is all there is of it.
But if the Judge continues to put forward the declaration that there is
an unholy and unnatural alliance between the Republicans and the National
Democrats, I now want to enter my protest against receiving him as an
entirely competent witness upon that subject. I want to call to the
Judge's attention an attack he made upon me in the first one of these
debates, at Ottawa, on the 21st of August. In order to fix extreme
Abolitionism upon me, Judge Douglas read a set of resolutions which he
declared had been passed by a Republican State Convention, in October,
1854, at Springfield, Illinois, and he declared I had taken part in that
Convention. It turned out that although a few men calling themselves an
anti-Nebraska State Convention had sat at Springfield about that time, yet
neither did I take any part in it, nor did it pass the resolutions or any
such resolutions as Judge Douglas read. So apparent had it become that the
resolutions which he read had not been passed at Springfield at all,
nor by a State Convention in which I had taken part, that seven days
afterward, at Freeport, Judge Douglas declared that he had been misled by
Charles H. Lanphier, editor of the State Register, and Thomas L. Harris,
member of Congress in that district, and he promised in that speech that
when he went to Springfield he would investigate the matter. Since
then Judge Douglas has been to Springfield, and I presume has made the
investigation; but a month has passed since he has been there, and, so
far as I know, he has made no report of the result of his investigation.
I have waited as I think sufficient time for the report of that
investigation, and I have some curiosity to see and hear it. A fraud, an
absolute forgery was committed, and the perpetration of it was traced to
the three,--Lanphier, Harris, and Douglas. Whether it can be narrowed in
any way so as to exonerate any one of them, is what Judge Douglas's report
would probably show.
It is true that the set of resolutions read by Judge Douglas were
published in the Illinois State Register on the 16th of October, 1854, as
being the resolutions of an anti-Nebraska Convention which had sat in
that same month of October, at Springfield. But it is also true that the
publication in the Register was a forgery then, and the question is still
behind, which of the three, if not all of them, committed that forgery.
The idea that it was done by mistake is absurd. The article in the
Illinois State Register contains part of the real proceedings of that
Springfield Convention, showing that the writer of the article had
the real proceedings before him, and purposely threw out the genuine
resolutions passed by the Convention and fraudulently substituted the
others. Lanphier then, as now, was the editor of the Register, so that
there seems to be but little room for his escape. But then it is to
be borne in mind that Lanphier had less interest in the object of that
forgery than either of the other two. The main object of that forgery at
that time was to beat Yates and elect Harris to Congress, and that object
was known to be exceedingly dear to Judge Douglas at that time. Harris and
Douglas were both in Springfield when the Convention was in session,
and although they both left before the fraud appeared in the Register,
subsequent events show that they have both had their eyes fixed upon that
Convention.
The fraud having been apparently successful upon the occasion, both Harris
and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to put it to
new uses. As the fisherman's wife, whose drowned husband was brought home
with his body full of eels, said when she was asked what was to be done
with him, "Take the eels out and set him again," so Harris and Douglas
have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which
they gained Harris's election, and set the fraud again more than once. On
the 9th of July, 1856, Douglas attempted a repetition of it upon Trumbull
on the floor of the Senate of the United States, as will appear from the
appendix of the Congressional Globe of that date.
On the 9th of August, Harris attempted it again upon Norton in the House
of Representatives, as will appear by the same documents,--the appendix
to the Congressional Globe of that date. On the 21st of August last, all
three--Lanphier, Douglas, and Harris--reattempted it upon me at Ottawa.
It has been clung to and played out again and again as an exceedingly high
trump by this blessed trio. And now that it has been discovered publicly
to be a fraud we find that Judge Douglas manifests no surprise at it at
all. He makes no complaint of Lanphier, who must have known it to be a
fraud from the beginning. He, Lanphier, and Harris are just as cozy now
and just as active in the concoction of new schemes as they were before
the general discovery of this fraud. Now, all this is very natural if they
are all alike guilty in that fraud, and it is very unnatural if any one
of them is innocent. Lanphier perhaps insists that the rule of honor
among thieves does not quite require him to take all upon himself,
and consequently my friend Judge Douglas finds it difficult to make a
satisfactory report upon his investigation. But meanwhile the three are
agreed that each is "a most honorable man."
Judge Douglas requires an indorsement of his truth and honor by a
re-election to the United States Senate, and he makes and reports against
me and against Judge Trumbull, day after day, charges which we know to
be utterly untrue, without for a moment seeming to think that this one
unexplained fraud, which he promised to investigate, will be the least
drawback to his claim to belief. Harris ditto. He asks a re-election to
the lower House of Congress without seeming to remember at all that he is
involved in this dishonorable fraud! The Illinois State Register, edited
by Lanphier, then, as now, the central organ of both Harris and Douglas,
continues to din the public ear with this assertion, without seeming to
suspect that these assertions are at all lacking in title to belief.
After all, the question still recurs upon us, How did that fraud
originally get into the State Register? Lanphier then, as now, was the
editor of that paper. Lanphier knows. Lanphier cannot be ignorant of how
and by whom it was originally concocted. Can he be induced to tell, or,
if he has told, can Judge Douglas be induced to tell how it originally was
concocted? It may be true that Lanphier insists that the two men for whose
benefit it was originally devised shall at least bear their share of it!
How that is, I do not know, and while it remains unexplained I hope to be
pardoned if I insist that the mere fact of Judge Douglas making charges
against Trumbull and myself is not quite sufficient evidence to establish
them!
While we were at Freeport, in one of these joint discussions, I answered
certain interrogatories which Judge Douglas had propounded to me, and then
in turn propounded some to him, which he in a sort of way answered. The
third one of these interrogatories I have with me, and wish now to make
some comments upon it. It was in these words: "If the Supreme Court of
States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of
acquiescing in, adhering to, and following such decision as a rule of
political action?"
To this interrogatory Judge Douglas made no answer in any just sense of
the word. He contented himself with sneering at the thought that it was
possible for the Supreme Court ever to make such a decision. He sneered at
me for propounding the interrogatory. I had not propounded it without some
reflection, and I wish now to address to this audience some remarks upon
it.
In the second clause of the sixth article, I believe it is, of the
Constitution of the United States, we find the following language:
"This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made
in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under
the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;
and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the
Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
The essence of the Dred Scott case is compressed into the sentence which I
will now read:
"Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of this opinion, upon
a different point, the right of property in a slave is distinctly and
expressly affirmed in the Constitution."
I repeat it, "The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly
affirmed in the Constitution"! What is it to be "affirmed" in the
Constitution? Made firm in the Constitution, so made that it cannot be
separated from the Constitution without breaking the Constitution; durable
as the Constitution, and part of the Constitution. Now, remembering the
provision of the Constitution which I have read--affirming that that
instrument is the supreme law of the land; that the judges of every State
shall be bound by it, any law or constitution of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding; that the right of property in a slave is affirmed in
that Constitution, is made, formed into, and cannot be separated from
it without breaking it; durable as the instrument; part of the
instrument;--what follows as a short and even syllogistic argument from
it? I think it follows, and I submit to the consideration of men capable
of arguing whether, as I state it, in syllogistic form, the argument has
any fault in it:
Nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can destroy a right
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United
States.
The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in
the Constitution of the United States.
Therefore, nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can destroy
the right of property in a slave.
I believe that no fault can be pointed out in that argument; assuming the
truth of the premises, the conclusion, so far as I have capacity at all to
understand it, follows inevitably. There is a fault in it as I think, but
the fault is not in the reasoning; but the falsehood in fact is a fault
of the premises. I believe that the right of property in a slave is not
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, and Judge Douglas
thinks it is. I believe that the Supreme Court and the advocates of that
decision may search in vain for the place in the Constitution where the
right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed I say,
therefore, that I think one of the premises is not true in fact. But it is
true with Judge Douglas. It is true with the Supreme Court who pronounced
it. They are estopped from denying it, and being estopped from denying it,
the conclusion follows that, the Constitution of the United States being
the supreme law, no constitution or law can interfere with it. It
being affirmed in the decision that the right of property in a slave is
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, the conclusion
inevitably follows that no State law or constitution can destroy that
right. I then say to Judge Douglas and to all others that I think it will
take a better answer than a sneer to show that those who have said that
the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in
the Constitution, are not prepared to show that no constitution or law
can destroy that right. I say I believe it will take a far better argument
than a mere sneer to show to the minds of intelligent men that whoever has
so said is not prepared, whenever public sentiment is so far advanced as
to justify it, to say the other. This is but an opinion, and the opinion
of one very humble man; but it is my opinion that the Dred Scott decision,
as it is, never would have been made in its present form if the party that
made it had not been sustained previously by the elections. My own opinion
is, that the new Dred Scott decision, deciding against the right of the
people of the States to exclude slavery, will never be made if that party
is not sustained by the elections. I believe, further, that it is just as
sure to be made as to-morrow is to come, if that party shall be sustained.
I have said, upon a former occasion, and I repeat it now, that the course
of arguement that Judge Douglas makes use of upon this subject (I charge
not his motives in this), is preparing the public mind for that new Dred
Scott decision. I have asked him again to point out to me the reasons for
his first adherence to the Dred Scott decision as it is. I have turned his
attention to the fact that General Jackson differed with him in regard
to the political obligation of a Supreme Court decision. I have asked his
attention to the fact that Jefferson differed with him in regard to the
political obligation of a Supreme Court decision. Jefferson said that
"Judges are as honest as other men, and not more so." And he said,
substantially, that whenever a free people should give up in absolute
submission to any department of government, retaining for themselves no
appeal from it, their liberties were gone. I have asked his attention
to the fact that the Cincinnati platform, upon which he says he stands,
disregards a time-honored decision of the Supreme Court, in denying the
power of Congress to establish a National Bank. I have asked his attention
to the fact that he himself was one of the most active instruments at one
time in breaking down the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois because
it had made a decision distasteful to him,--a struggle ending in the
remarkable circumstance of his sitting down as one of the new Judges who
were to overslaugh that decision; getting his title of Judge in that very
way.
So far in this controversy I can get no answer at all from Judge Douglas
upon these subjects. Not one can I get from him, except that he swells
himself up and says, "All of us who stand by the decision of the Supreme
Court are the friends of the Constitution; all you fellows that dare
question it in any way are the enemies of the Constitution." Now, in this
very devoted adherence to this decision, in opposition to all the great
political leaders whom he has recognized as leaders, in opposition to his
former self and history, there is something very marked. And the manner
in which he adheres to it,--not as being right upon the merits, as
he conceives (because he did not discuss that at all), but as being
absolutely obligatory upon every one simply because of the source from
whence it comes, as that which no man can gainsay, whatever it may
be,--this is another marked feature of his adherence to that decision.
It marks it in this respect, that it commits him to the next decision,
whenever it comes, as being as obligatory as this one, since he does not
investigate it, and won't inquire whether this opinion is right or wrong.
So he takes the next one without inquiring whether it is right or wrong.
He teaches men this doctrine, and in so doing prepares the public mind to
take the next decision when it comes, without any inquiry. In this I think
I argue fairly (without questioning motives at all) that Judge Douglas
is most ingeniously and powerfully preparing the public mind to take that
decision when it comes; and not only so, but he is doing it in various
other ways. In these general maxims about liberty, in his assertions that
he "don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down,"; that "whoever
wants slavery has a right to have it"; that "upon principles of equality
it should be allowed to go everywhere"; that "there is no inconsistency
between free and slave institutions"--in this he is also preparing
(whether purposely or not) the way for making the institution of slavery
national! I repeat again, for I wish no misunderstanding, that I do not
charge that he means it so; but I call upon your minds to inquire, if you
were going to get the best instrument you could, and then set it to work
in the most ingenious way, to prepare the public mind for this movement,
operating in the free States, where there is now an abhorrence of the
institution of slavery, could you find an instrument so capable of doing
it as Judge Douglas, or one employed in so apt a way to do it?
I have said once before, and I will repeat it now, that Mr. Clay, when he
was once answering an objection to the Colonization Society, that it had a
tendency to the ultimate emancipation of the slaves, said that:
"Those who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate
emancipation must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of the
Colonization Society: they must go back to the era of our liberty and
independence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its annual joyous
return; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must penetrate
the human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the love of
liberty!"
And I do think--I repeat, though I said it on a former occasion--that
Judge Douglas and whoever, like him, teaches that the negro has no share,
humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back
to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far as in him lies,
muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is
blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever
wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as
lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and
the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the
public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery
perpetual and national.
There is, my friends, only one other point to which I will call your
attention for the remaining time that I have left me, and perhaps I shall
not occupy the entire time that I have, as that one point may not take me
clear through it.
Among the interrogatories that Judge Douglas propounded to me at Freeport,
there was one in about this language:
"Are you opposed to the acquisition of any further territory to the United
States, unless slavery shall first be prohibited therein?"
I answered, as I thought, in this way: that I am not generally opposed
to the acquisition of additional territory, and that I would support a
proposition for the acquisition of additional territory according as my
supporting it was or was not calculated to aggravate this slavery question
amongst us. I then proposed to Judge Douglas another interrogatory,
which was correlative to that: "Are you in favor of acquiring additional
territory, in disregard of how it may affect us upon the slavery
question?" Judge Douglas answered,--that is, in his own way he answered
it. I believe that, although he took a good many words to answer it, it
was a little more fully answered than any other. The substance of his
answer was that this country would continue to expand; that it would
need additional territory; that it was as absurd to suppose that we could
continue upon our present territory, enlarging in population as we are, as
it would be to hoop a boy twelve years of age, and expect him to grow to
man's size without bursting the hoops. I believe it was something
like that. Consequently, he was in favor of the acquisition of further
territory as fast as we might need it, in disregard of how it might affect
the slavery question. I do not say this as giving his exact language,
but he said so substantially; and he would leave the question of slavery,
where the territory was acquired, to be settled by the people of the
acquired territory. ["That's the doctrine."] May be it is; let us consider
that for a while. This will probably, in the run of things, become one of
the concrete manifestations of this slavery question. If Judge Douglas's
policy upon this question succeeds, and gets fairly settled down, until
all opposition is crushed out, the next thing will be a grab for the
territory of poor Mexico, an invasion of the rich lands of South America,
then the adjoining islands will follow, each one of which promises
additional slave-fields. And this question is to be left to the people of
those countries for settlement. When we get Mexico, I don't know whether
the Judge will be in favor of the Mexican people that we get with it
settling that question for themselves and all others; because we know the
Judge has a great horror for mongrels, and I understand that the people of
Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels. I understand that there
is not more than one person there out of eight who is pure white, and I
suppose from the Judge's previous declaration that when we get Mexico, or
any considerable portion of it, that he will be in favor of these mongrels
settling the question, which would bring him somewhat into collision with
his horror of an inferior race.
It is to be remembered, though, that this power of acquiring additional
territory is a power confided to the President and the Senate of the
United States. It is a power not under the control of the representatives
of the people any further than they, the President and the Senate, can be
considered the representatives of the people. Let me illustrate that by a
case we have in our history. When we acquired the territory from Mexico in
the Mexican War, the House of Representatives, composed of the immediate
representatives of the people, all the time insisted that the territory
thus to be acquired should be brought in upon condition that slavery
should be forever prohibited therein, upon the terms and in the language
that slavery had been prohibited from coming into this country. That was
insisted upon constantly and never failed to call forth an assurance that
any territory thus acquired should have that prohibition in it, so far as
the House of Representatives was concerned. But at last the President and
Senate acquired the territory without asking the House of Representatives
anything about it, and took it without that prohibition. They have the
power of acquiring territory without the immediate representatives of the
people being called upon to say anything about it, and thus furnishing a
very apt and powerful means of bringing new territory into the Union,
and, when it is once brought into the country, involving us anew in this
slavery agitation. It is therefore, as I think, a very important question
for due consideration of the American people, whether the policy of
bringing in additional territory, without considering at all how it
will operate upon the safety of the Union in reference to this one great
disturbing element in our national politics, shall be adopted as the
policy of the country. You will bear in mind that it is to be acquired,
according to the Judge's view, as fast as it is needed, and the indefinite
part of this proposition is that we have only Judge Douglas and his class
of men to decide how fast it is needed. We have no clear and certain
way of determining or demonstrating how fast territory is needed by the
necessities of the country. Whoever wants to go out filibustering, then,
thinks that more territory is needed. Whoever wants wider slave-fields
feels sure that some additional territory is needed as slave territory.
Then it is as easy to show the necessity of additional slave-territory
as it is to assert anything that is incapable of absolute demonstration.
Whatever motive a man or a set of men may have for making annexation of
property or territory, it is very easy to assert, but much less easy to
disprove, that it is necessary for the wants of the country.
And now it only remains for me to say that I think it is a very grave
question for the people of this Union to consider, whether, in view of
the fact that this slavery question has been the only one that has
ever endangered our Republican institutions, the only one that has ever
threatened or menaced a dissolution of the Union, that has ever disturbed
us in such a way as to make us fear for the perpetuity of our liberty,--in
view of these facts, I think it is an exceedingly interesting and
important question for this people to consider whether we shall engage in
the policy of acquiring additional territory, discarding altogether from
our consideration, while obtaining new territory, the question how it may
affect us in regard to this, the only endangering element to our liberties
and national greatness. The Judge's view has been expressed. I, in my
answer to his question, have expressed mine. I think it will become an
important and practical question. Our views are before the public. I am
willing and anxious that they should consider them fully; that they should
turn it about and consider the importance of the question, and arrive at
a just conclusion as to whether it is or is not wise in the people of this
Union, in the acquisition of new territory, to consider whether it will
add to the disturbance that is existing amongst us--whether it will add to
the one only danger that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union
or our own liberties. I think it is extremely important that they shall
decide, and rightly decide, that question before entering upon that
policy.
And now, my friends, having said the little I wish to say upon this head,
whether I have occupied the whole of the remnant of my time or not, I
believe I could not enter upon any new topic so as to treat it fully,
without transcending my time, which I would not for a moment think of
doing. I give way to Judge Douglas.
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE, AT QUINCY, OCTOBER 13, 1858.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have had no immediate conference with Judge
Douglas, but I will venture to say that he and I will perfectly agree that
your entire silence, both when I speak and when he speaks, will be most
agreeable to us.
In the month of May, 1856, the elements in the State of Illinois which
have since been consolidated into the Republican party assembled together
in a State Convention at Bloomington. They adopted at that time what, in
political language, is called a platform. In June of the same year the
elements of the Republican party in the nation assembled together in
a National Convention at Philadelphia. They adopted what is called the
National Platform. In June, 1858,--the present year,--the Republicans
of Illinois reassembled at Springfield, in State Convention, and adopted
again their platform, as I suppose not differing in any essential
particular from either of the former ones, but perhaps adding something in
relation to the new developments of political progress in the country.
The Convention that assembled in June last did me the honor, if it be one,
and I esteem it such, to nominate me as their candidate for the United
States Senate. I have supposed that, in entering upon this canvass, I
stood generally upon these platforms. We are now met together on the 13th
of October of the same year, only four months from the adoption of the
last platform, and I am unaware that in this canvass, from the beginning
until to-day, any one of our adversaries has taken hold of our platforms,
or laid his finger upon anything that he calls wrong in them.
In the very first one of these joint discussions between Senator Douglas
and myself, Senator Douglas, without alluding at all to these platforms,
or any one of them, of which I have spoken, attempted to hold me
responsible for a set of resolutions passed long before the meeting of
either one of these conventions of which I have spoken. And as a ground
for holding me responsible for these resolutions, he assumed that they had
been passed at a State Convention of the Republican party, and that I
took part in that Convention. It was discovered afterward that this was
erroneous, that the resolutions which he endeavored to hold me responsible
for had not been passed by any State Convention anywhere, had not been
passed at Springfield, where he supposed they had, or assumed that they
had, and that they had been passed in no convention in which I had taken
part. The Judge, nevertheless, was not willing to give up the point that
he was endeavoring to make upon me, and he therefore thought to still
hold me to the point that he was endeavoring to make, by showing that
the resolutions that he read had been passed at a local convention in the
northern part of the State, although it was not a local convention that
embraced my residence at all, nor one that reached, as I suppose, nearer
than one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles of where I was when it
met, nor one in which I took any part at all. He also introduced other
resolutions, passed at other meetings, and by combining the whole,
although they were all antecedent to the two State Conventions and the one
National Convention I have mentioned, still he insisted, and now insists,
as I understand, that I am in some way responsible for them.
At Jonesboro, on our third meeting, I insisted to the Judge that I was
in no way rightfully held responsible for the proceedings of this local
meeting or convention, in which I had taken no part, and in which I was
in no way embraced; but I insisted to him that if he thought I was
responsible for every man or every set of men everywhere, who happen to
be my friends, the rule ought to work both ways, and he ought to be
responsible for the acts and resolutions of all men or sets of men who
were or are now his supporters and friends, and gave him a pretty
long string of resolutions, passed by men who are now his friends, and
announcing doctrines for which he does not desire to be held responsible.
This still does not satisfy Judge Douglas. He still adheres to his
proposition, that I am responsible for what some of my friends in
different parts of the State have done, but that he is not responsible
for what his have done. At least, so I understand him. But in addition to
that, the Judge, at our meeting in Galesburgh, last week, undertakes to
establish that I am guilty of a species of double dealing with the
public; that I make speeches of a certain sort in the north, among the
Abolitionists, which I would not make in the south, and that I make
speeches of a certain sort in the south which I would not make in the
north. I apprehend, in the course I have marked out for myself, that I
shall not have to dwell at very great length upon this subject.
As this was done in the Judge's opening speech at Galesburgh, I had an
opportunity, as I had the middle speech then, of saying something in
answer to it. He brought forward a quotation or two from a speech of mine
delivered at Chicago, and then, to contrast with it, he brought forward an
extract from a speech of mine at Charleston, in which he insisted that I
was greatly inconsistent, and insisted that his conclusion followed, that
I was playing a double part, and speaking in one region one way, and in
another region another way. I have not time now to dwell on this as long
as I would like, and wish only now to requote that portion of my speech
at Charleston which the Judge quoted, and then make some comments upon
it. This he quotes from me as being delivered at Charleston, and I believe
correctly:
"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing
about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black
races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters
or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to
intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which
will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and
political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live while they do
remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. I am
as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned
to the white race."
This, I believe, is the entire quotation from Charleston speech, as Judge
Douglas made it his comments are as follows:
"Yes, here you find men who hurrah for Lincoln, and say he is right when
he discards all distinction between races, or when he declares that
he discards the doctrine that there is such a thing as a superior and
inferior race; and Abolitionists are required and expected to vote for
Mr. Lincoln because he goes for the equality of races, holding that in the
Declaration of Independence the white man and negro were declared equal,
and endowed by divine law with equality. And down South, with the old-line
Whigs, with the Kentuckians, the Virginians and the Tennesseeans, he tells
you that there is a physical difference between the races, making the
one superior, the other inferior, and he is in favor of maintaining the
superiority of the white race over the negro."
Those are the Judges comments. Now, I wish to show you that a month,
or only lacking three days of a month, before I made the speech at
Charleston, which the Judge quotes from, he had himself heard me say
substantially the same thing It was in our first meeting, at Ottawa--and I
will say a word about where it was, and the atmosphere it was in, after a
while--but at our first meeting, at Ottawa, I read an extract from an
old speech of mine, made nearly four years ago, not merely to show my
sentiments, but to show that my sentiments were long entertained and
openly expressed; in which extract I expressly declared that my own
feelings would not admit a social and political equality between the white
and black races, and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I
still knew that the public sentiment of the country would not, and that
such a thing was an utter impossibility, or substantially that. That
extract from my old speech the reporters by some sort of accident passed
over, and it was not reported. I lay no blame upon anybody. I suppose they
thought that I would hand it over to them, and dropped reporting while I
was giving it, but afterward went away without getting it from me. At the
end of that quotation from my old speech, which I read at Ottawa, I made
the comments which were reported at that time, and which I will now read,
and ask you to notice how very nearly they are the same as Judge Douglas
says were delivered by me down in Egypt. After reading, I added these
words:
"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 or the black race, and this is the whole of it: anything that
argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the
negro, is but a specious and fantastical 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, directly or indirectly,
to interfere with the institution in the States where it exists. I believe
I have no right to do so. I have no inclination to do so. I have no
purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and
black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in
my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together on 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
rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence,--the right of 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 that he is not
my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not in
intellectual and moral endowments; 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 other man."
I have chiefly introduced this for the purpose of meeting the Judge's
charge that the quotation he took from my Charleston speech was what I
would say down South among the Kentuckians, the Virginians, etc., but
would not say in the regions in which was supposed to be more of the
Abolition element. I now make this comment: That speech from which I have
now read the quotation, and which is there given correctly--perhaps too
much so for good taste--was made away up North in the Abolition District
of this State par excellence, in the Lovejoy District, in the personal
presence of Lovejoy, for he was on the stand with us when I made it. It
had been made and put in print in that region only three days less than
a month before the speech made at Charleston, the like of which Judge
Douglas thinks I would not make where there was any Abolition element.
I only refer to this matter to say that I am altogether unconscious of
having attempted any double-dealing anywhere; that upon one occasion I may
say one thing, and leave other things unsaid, and vice versa, but that I
have said anything on one occasion that is inconsistent with what I have
said elsewhere, I deny, at least I deny it so far as the intention is
concerned. I find that I have devoted to this topic a larger portion of my
time than I had intended. I wished to show, but I will pass it upon this
occasion, that in the sentiment I have occasionally advanced upon the
Declaration of Independence I am entirely borne out by the sentiments
advanced by our old Whig leader, Henry Clay, and I have the book here to
show it from but because I have already occupied more time than I intended
to do on that topic, I pass over it.
At Galesburgh, I tried to show that by the Dred Scott decision, pushed
to its legitimate consequences, slavery would be established in all the
States as well as in the Territories. I did this because, upon a former
occasion, I had asked Judge Douglas whether, if the Supreme Court should
make a decision declaring that the States had not the power to exclude
slavery from their limits, he would adopt and follow that decision as a
rule of political action; and because he had not directly answered that
question, but had merely contented himself with sneering at it, I again
introduced it, and tried to show that the conclusion that I stated
followed inevitably and logically from the proposition already decided
by the court. Judge Douglas had the privilege of replying to me at
Galesburgh, and again he gave me no direct answer as to whether he would
or would not sustain such a decision if made. I give him his third chance
to say yes or no. He is not obliged to do either, probably he will not do
either; but I give him the third chance. I tried to show then that this
result, this conclusion, inevitably followed from the point already
decided by the court. The Judge, in his reply, again sneers at the thought
of the court making any such decision, and in the course of his remarks
upon this subject uses the language which I will now read. Speaking of me,
the Judge says:
"He goes on and insists that the Dred Scott decision would carry slavery
into the free States, notwithstanding the decision itself says the
contrary." And he adds:
"Mr. Lincoln knows that there is no member of the Supreme Court that holds
that doctrine. He knows that every one of them in their opinions held the
reverse."
I especially introduce this subject again for the purpose of saying that
I have the Dred Scott decision here, and I will thank Judge Douglas to lay
his finger upon the place in the entire opinions of the court where any
one of them "says the contrary." It is very hard to affirm a negative with
entire confidence. I say, however, that I have examined that decision with
a good deal of care, as a lawyer examines a decision and, so far as I have
been able to do so, the court has nowhere in its opinions said that
the States have the power to exclude slavery, nor have they used other
language substantially that, I also say, so far as I can find, not one of
the concurring judges has said that the States can exclude slavery, nor
said anything that was substantially that. The nearest approach that any
one of them has made to it, so far as I can find, was by Judge Nelson,
and the approach he made to it was exactly, in substance, the Nebraska
Bill,--that the States had the exclusive power over the question of
slavery, so far as they are not limited by the Constitution of the United
States. I asked the question, therefore, if the non-concurring judges,
McLean or Curtis, had asked to get an express declaration that the States
could absolutely exclude slavery from their limits, what reason have we
to believe that it would not have been voted down by the majority of the
judges, just as Chase's amendment was voted down by Judge Douglas and his
compeers when it was offered to the Nebraska Bill.
Also, at Galesburgh, I said something in regard to those Springfield
resolutions that Judge Douglas had attempted to use upon me at Ottawa, and
commented at some length upon the fact that they were, as presented,
not genuine. Judge Douglas in his reply to me seemed to be somewhat
exasperated. He said he would never have believed that Abraham Lincoln, as
he kindly called me, would have attempted such a thing as I had attempted
upon that occasion; and among other expressions which he used toward me,
was that I dared to say forgery, that I had dared to say forgery [turning
to Judge Douglas]. Yes, Judge, I did dare to say forgery. But in this
political canvass the Judge ought to remember that I was not the first
who dared to say forgery. At Jacksonville, Judge Douglas made a speech in
answer to something said by Judge Trumbull, and at the close of what
he said upon that subject, he dared to say that Trumbull had forged his
evidence. He said, too, that he should not concern himself with Trumbull
any more, but thereafter he should hold Lincoln responsible for the
slanders upon him. When I met him at Charleston after that, although I
think that I should not have noticed the subject if he had not said he
would hold me responsible for it, I spread out before him the statements
of the evidence that Judge Trumbull had used, and I asked Judge Douglas,
piece by piece, to put his finger upon one piece of all that evidence that
he would say was a forgery! When I went through with each and every piece,
Judge Douglas did not dare then to say that any piece of it was a forgery.
So it seems that there are some things that Judge Douglas dares to do, and
some that he dares not to do.
[A voice: It is the same thing with you.]
Yes, sir, it is the same thing with me. I do dare to say forgery when it
is true, and don't dare to say forgery when it is false. Now I will say
here to this audience and to Judge Douglas I have not dared to say he
committed a forgery, and I never shall until I know it; but I did dare
to say--just to suggest to the Judge--that a forgery had been committed,
which by his own showing had been traced to him and two of his friends.
I dared to suggest to him that he had expressly promised in one of his
public speeches to investigate that matter, and I dared to suggest to him
that there was an implied promise that when he investigated it he would
make known the result. I dared to suggest to the Judge that he could not
expect to be quite clear of suspicion of that fraud, for since the time
that promise was made he had been with those friends, and had not kept his
promise in regard to the investigation and the report upon it. I am not
a very daring man, but I dared that much, Judge, and I am not much scared
about it yet. When the Judge says he would n't have believed of Abraham
Lincoln that he would have made such an attempt as that he reminds me of
the fact that he entered upon this canvass with the purpose to treat
me courteously; that touched me somewhat. It sets me to thinking. I was
aware, when it was first agreed that Judge Douglas and I were to have
these seven joint discussions, that they were the successive acts of a
drama, perhaps I should say, to be enacted, not merely in the face of
audiences like this, but in the face of the nation, and to some extent,
by my relation to him, and not from anything in myself, in the face of the
world; and I am anxious that they should be conducted with dignity and in
the good temper which would be befitting the vast audiences before which
it was conducted. But when Judge Douglas got home from Washington and made
his first speech in Chicago, the evening afterward I made some sort of
a reply to it. His second speech was made at Bloomington, in which he
commented upon my speech at Chicago and said that I had used language
ingeniously contrived to conceal my intentions, or words to that effect.
Now, I understand that this is an imputation upon my veracity and my
candor. I do not know what the Judge understood by it, but in our first
discussion, at Ottawa, he led off by charging a bargain, somewhat corrupt
in its character, upon Trumbull and myself,--that we had entered into a
bargain, one of the terms of which was that Trumbull was to Abolitionize
the old Democratic party, and I (Lincoln) was to Abolitionize the old Whig
party; I pretending to be as good an old-line Whig as ever. Judge Douglas
may not understand that he implicated my truthfulness and my honor when he
said I was doing one thing and pretending another; and I misunderstood him
if he thought he was treating me in a dignified way, as a man of honor and
truth, as he now claims he was disposed to treat me. Even after that time,
at Galesburgh, when he brings forward an extract from a speech made at
Chicago and an extract from a speech made at Charleston, to prove that I
was trying to play a double part, that I was trying to cheat the public,
and get votes upon one set of principles at one place, and upon another
set of principles at another place,--I do not understand but what he
impeaches my honor, my veracity, and my candor; and because he does this,
I do not understand that I am bound, if I see a truthful ground for it,
to keep my hands off of him. As soon as I learned that Judge Douglas was
disposed to treat me in this way, I signified in one of my speeches that
I should be driven to draw upon whatever of humble resources I might
have,--to adopt a new course with him. I was not entirely sure that I
should be able to hold my own with him, but I at least had the purpose
made to do as well as I could upon him; and now I say that I will not be
the first to cry "Hold." I think it originated with the Judge, and when he
quits, I probably will. But I shall not ask any favors at all. He asks
me, or he asks the audience, if I wish to push this matter to the point of
personal difficulty. I tell him, no. He did not make a mistake, in one of
his early speeches, when he called me an "amiable" man, though perhaps he
did when he called me an "intelligent" man. It really hurts me very much
to suppose that I have wronged anybody on earth. I again tell him, no! I
very much prefer, when this canvass shall be over, however it may result,
that we at least part without any bitter recollections of personal
difficulties.
The Judge, in his concluding speech at Galesburgh, says that I was pushing
this matter to a personal difficulty, to avoid the responsibility for the
enormity of my principles. I say to the Judge and this audience, now, that
I will again state our principles, as well as I hastily can, in all their
enormity, and if the Judge hereafter chooses to confine himself to a war
upon these principles, he will probably not find me departing from the
same course.
We have in this nation this element of domestic slavery. It is a matter of
absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. It is the opinion
of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is
a dangerous element. We keep up a controversy in regard to it. That
controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion; and if we can
learn exactly--can reduce to the lowest elements--what that difference
of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the
different systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that
disturbing element. I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to
its lowest of terms, is no other than the difference between the men who
think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong. The Republican
party think it wrong; we think it is a moral, a social, and a political
wrong. We think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons
or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to
say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation.
Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal
with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as
we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the run
of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due regard to
the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting
rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations
thrown about it. I suppose that in reference both to its actual existence
in the nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we have no right at
all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we profess that we
have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the right to do it.
We go further than that: we don't propose to disturb it where, in
one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us. We think the
Constitution would permit us to disturb it in the District of Columbia.
Still, we do not propose to do that, unless it should be in terms which
I don't suppose the nation is very likely soon to agree to,--the terms of
making the emancipation gradual, and compensating the unwilling owners.
Where we suppose we have the constitutional right, we restrain ourselves
in reference to the actual existence of the institution and the
difficulties thrown about it. We also oppose it as an evil so far as it
seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall restrict it
to its present limits. We don't suppose that in doing this we violate
anything due to the actual presence of the institution, or anything due to
the constitutional guaranties thrown around it.
We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way, upon which I ought
perhaps to address you a few words. We do not propose that when Dred Scott
has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will decide him
to be free. We do not propose that, when any other one, or one thousand,
shall be decided by that court to be slaves, we will in any violent way
disturb the rights of property thus settled; but we nevertheless do oppose
that decision as a political rule which shall be binding on the voter to
vote for nobody who thinks it wrong, which shall be binding on the members
of Congress or the President to favor no measure that does not actually
concur with the principles of that decision. We do not propose to be
bound by it as a political rule in that way, because we think it lays the
foundation, not merely of enlarging and spreading out what we consider an
evil, but it lays the foundation for spreading that evil into the States
themselves. We propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if we can,
and a new judicial rule established upon this subject.
I will add this: that if there be any man who does not believe that
slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in any
one of them, that man is misplaced, and ought to leave us; while on the
other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient
over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of
the constitutional guaranties thrown around it, and would act in disregard
of these, he too is misplaced, standing with us. He will find his place
somewhere else; for we have a due regard, so far as we are capable of
understanding them, for all these things. This, gentlemen, as well as I
can give it, is a plain statement of our principles in all their enormity.
I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country contrary to me,--a
sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, and therefore it goes for
the policy that does not propose dealing with it as a wrong. That policy
is the Democratic policy, and that sentiment is the Democratic sentiment.
If there be a doubt in the mind of any one of this vast audience that this
is really the central idea of the Democratic party in relation to this
subject, I ask him to bear with me while I state a few things tending, as
I think, to prove that proposition. In the first place, the leading man--I
think I may do my friend Judge Douglas the honor of calling him such
advocating the present Democratic policy never himself says it is wrong.
He has the high distinction, so far as I know, of never having said
slavery is either right or wrong. Almost everybody else says one or the
other, but the Judge never does. If there be a man in the Democratic party
who thinks it is wrong, and yet clings to that party, I suggest to him, in
the first place, that his leader don't talk as he does, for he never says
that it is wrong. In the second place, I suggest to him that if he will
examine the policy proposed to be carried forward, he will find that he
carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it. If you
will examine the arguments that are made on it, you will find that every
one carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in slavery.
Perhaps that Democrat who says he is as much opposed to slavery as I am
will tell me that I am wrong about this. I wish him to examine his own
course in regard to this matter a moment, and then see if his opinion will
not be changed a little. You say it is wrong; but don't you constantly
object to anybody else saying so? Do you not constantly argue that this
is not the right place to oppose it? You say it must not be opposed in the
free States, because slavery is not here; it must not be opposed in the
slave States, because it is there; it must not be opposed in politics,
because that will make a fuss; it must not be opposed in the pulpit,
because it is not religion. Then where is the place to oppose it? There is
no suitable place to oppose it. There is no place in the country to oppose
this evil overspreading the continent, which you say yourself is
coming. Frank Blair and Gratz Brown tried to get up a system of gradual
emancipation in Missouri, had an election in August, and got beat, and
you, Mr. Democrat, threw up your hat, and hallooed "Hurrah for Democracy!"
So I say, again, that in regard to the arguments that are made, when Judge
Douglas Says he "don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down,"
whether he means that as an individual expression of sentiment, or only as
a sort of statement of his views on national policy, it is alike true to
say that he can thus argue logically if he don't see anything wrong in
it; but he cannot say so logically if he admits that slavery is wrong. He
cannot say that he would as soon see a wrong voted up as voted down. When
Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they
have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical, if there is nothing
wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot
logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong. When he says that
slave property and horse and hog property are alike to be allowed to go
into the Territories, upon the principles of equality, he is reasoning
truly, if there is no difference between them as property; but if the
one is property held rightfully, and the other is wrong, then there is no
equality between the right and wrong; so that, turn it in anyway you can,
in all the arguments sustaining the Democratic policy, and in that policy
itself, there is a careful, studied exclusion of the idea that there is
anything wrong in slavery. Let us understand this. I am not, just here,
trying to prove that we are right, and they are wrong. I have been stating
where we and they stand, and trying to show what is the real difference
between us; and I now say that whenever we can get the question distinctly
stated, can get all these men who believe that slavery is in some of these
respects wrong to stand and act with us in treating it as a wrong,--then,
and not till then, I think we will in some way come to an end of this
slavery agitation.
Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.
MY FRIENDS:--Since Judge Douglas has said to you in his conclusion that he
had not time in an hour and a half to answer all I had said in an hour,
it follows of course that I will not be able to answer in half an hour all
that he said in an hour and a half.
I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public
annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his system of policy
in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall
last forever. We are getting a little nearer the true issue of this
controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge
Douglas asks you, Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why
cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made
it, forever? In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make
this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I
insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did
not make it so but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid
of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter
of choice, the fathers of the government made this nation part slave and
part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that:
when the fathers of the government cut off the source of slavery by the
abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from
the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed
it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in
the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it
cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends
could not let it remain as our fathers made it?
It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the institution of
slavery, that it shall be placed upon the basis that our fathers placed it
upon. Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, once said, and truly said, that
when this government was established, no one expected the institution
of slavery to last until this day, and that the men who formed this
government were wiser and better than the men of these days; but the
men of these days had experience which the fathers had not, and that
experience had taught them the invention of the cotton-gin, and this had
made the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a necessity in this
country. Judge Douglas could not let it stand upon the basis which our
fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it upon the cotton-gin basis.
It is a question, therefore, for him and his friends to answer, why they
could not let it remain where the fathers of the government originally
placed it. I hope nobody has understood me as trying to sustain the
doctrine that we have a right to quarrel with Kentucky, or Virginia, or
any of the slave States, about the institution of slavery,--thus giving
the Judge an opportunity to be eloquent and valiant against us in fighting
for their rights. I expressly declared in my opening speech that I had
neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence of,
the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in doing
as they pleased with slavery Or any other existing institution. Then what
becomes of all his eloquence in behalf of the rights of States, which are
assailed by no living man?
But I have to hurry on, for I have but a half hour. The Judge has informed
me, or informed this audience, that the Washington Union is laboring for
my election to the United States Senate. This is news to me,--not very
ungrateful news either. [Turning to Mr. W. H. Carlin, who was on the
stand]--I hope that Carlin will be elected to the State Senate, and
will vote for me. [Mr. Carlin shook his head.] Carlin don't fall in, I
perceive, and I suppose he will not do much for me; but I am glad of all
the support I can get, anywhere, if I can get it without practicing
any deception to obtain it. In respect to this large portion of Judge
Douglas's speech in which he tries to show that in the controversy between
himself and the Administration party he is in the right, I do not feel
myself at all competent or inclined to answer him. I say to him, "Give it
to them,--give it to them just all you can!" and, on the other hand, I
say to Carlin, and Jake Davis, and to this man Wogley up here in Hancock,
"Give it to Douglas, just pour it into him!"
Now, in regard to this matter of the Dred Scott decision, I wish to say a
word or two. After all, the Judge will not say whether, if a decision is
made holding that the people of the States cannot exclude slavery, he will
support it or not. He obstinately refuses to say what he will do in that
case. The judges of the Supreme Court as obstinately refused to say
what they would do on this subject. Before this I reminded him that at
Galesburgh he said the judges had expressly declared the contrary, and you
remember that in my Opening speech I told him I had the book containing
that decision here, and I would thank him to lay his finger on the place
where any such thing was said. He has occupied his hour and a half, and he
has not ventured to try to sustain his assertion. He never will. But he is
desirous of knowing how we are going to reverse that Dred Scott decision.
Judge Douglas ought to know how. Did not he and his political friends
find a way to reverse the decision of that same court in favor of the
constitutionality of the National Bank? Didn't they find a way to do it so
effectually that they have reversed it as completely as any decision ever
was reversed, so far as its practical operation is concerned?
And let me ask you, did n't Judge Douglas find a way to reverse the
decision of our Supreme Court when it decided that Carlin's father--old
Governor Carlin had not the constitutional power to remove a Secretary of
State? Did he not appeal to the "MOBS," as he calls them? Did he not make
speeches in the lobby to show how villainous that decision was, and how it
ought to be overthrown? Did he not succeed, too, in getting an act passed
by the Legislature to have it overthrown? And did n't he himself sit down
on that bench as one of the five added judges, who were to overslaugh the
four old ones, getting his name of "judge" in that way, and no other? If
there is a villainy in using disrespect or making opposition to Supreme
Court decisions, I commend it to Judge Douglas's earnest consideration.
I know of no man in the State of Illinois who ought to know so well about
how much villainy it takes to oppose a decision of the Supreme Court as
our honorable friend Stephen A. Douglas.
Judge Douglas also makes the declaration that I say the Democrats are
bound by the Dred Scott decision, while the Republicans are not. In the
sense in which he argues, I never said it; but I will tell you what I have
said and what I do not hesitate to repeat to-day. I have said that as the
Democrats believe that decision to be correct, and that the extension
of slavery is affirmed in the National Constitution, they are bound to
support it as such; and I will tell you here that General Jackson once
said each man was bound to support the Constitution "as he understood
it." Now, Judge Douglas understands the Constitution according to the
Dred Scott decision, and he is bound to support it as he understands it.
I understand it another way, and therefore I am bound to support it in the
way in which I understand it. And as Judge Douglas believes that decision
to be correct, I will remake that argument if I have time to do so. Let me
talk to some gentleman down there among you who looks me in the face. We
will say you are a member of the Territorial Legislature, and, like Judge
Douglas, you believe that the right to take and hold slaves there is a
constitutional right The first thing you do is to swear you will support
the Constitution, and all rights guaranteed therein; that you
will, whenever your neighbor needs your legislation to support his
constitutional rights, not withhold that legislation. If you withhold
that necessary legislation for the support of the Constitution and
constitutional rights, do you not commit perjury? I ask every sensible man
if that is not so? That is undoubtedly just so, say what you please. Now,
that is precisely what Judge Douglas says, that this is a constitutional
right. Does the Judge mean to say that the Territorial Legislature in
legislating may, by withholding necessary laws, or by passing unfriendly
laws, nullify that constitutional right? Does he mean to say that? Does he
mean to ignore the proposition so long and well established in law, that
what you cannot do directly, you cannot do indirectly? Does he mean that?
The truth about the matter is this: Judge Douglas has sung paeans to his
"Popular Sovereignty" doctrine until his Supreme Court, co-operating with
him, has squatted his Squatter Sovereignty out. But he will keep up this
species of humbuggery about Squatter Sovereignty. He has at last invented
this sort of do-nothing sovereignty,--that the people may exclude slavery
by a sort of "sovereignty" that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is
not that running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down
as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a
pigeon that had starved to death? But at last, when it is brought to the
test of close reasoning, there is not even that thin decoction of it left.
It is a presumption impossible in the domain of thought. It is precisely
no other than the putting of that most unphilosophical proposition, that
two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. The Dred Scott
decision covers the whole ground, and while it occupies it, there is no
room even for the shadow of a starved pigeon to occupy the same ground.
Judge Douglas, in reply to what I have said about having upon a previous
occasion made the speech at Ottawa as the one he took an extract from at
Charleston, says it only shows that I practiced the deception twice. Now,
my friends, are any of you obtuse enough to swallow that? Judge Douglas
had said I had made a speech at Charleston that I would not make up north,
and I turned around and answered him by showing I had made that same
speech up north,--had made it at Ottawa; made it in his hearing; made
it in the Abolition District,--in Lovejoy's District,--in the personal
presence of Lovejoy himself,--in the same atmosphere exactly in which I
had made my Chicago speech, of which he complains so much.
Now, in relation to my not having said anything about the quotation from
the Chicago speech: he thinks that is a terrible subject for me to handle.
Why, gentlemen, I can show you that the substance of the Chicago speech
I delivered two years ago in "Egypt," as he calls it. It was down at
Springfield. That speech is here in this book, and I could turn to it and
read it to you but for the lack of time. I have not now the time to read
it. ["Read it, read it."] No, gentlemen, I am obliged to use discretion in
disposing most advantageously of my brief time. The Judge has taken great
exception to my adopting the heretical statement in the Declaration of
Independence, that "all men are created equal," and he has a great deal to
say about negro equality. I want to say that in sometimes alluding to the
Declaration of Independence, I have only uttered the sentiments that Henry
Clay used to hold. Allow me to occupy your time a moment with what he
said. Mr. Clay was at one time called upon in Indiana, and in a way that I
suppose was very insulting, to liberate his slaves; and he made a written
reply to that application, and one portion of it is in these words:
"What is the foundation of this appeal to me in Indiana to liberate the
slaves under my care in Kentucky? It is a general declaration in the
act announcing to the world the independence of the thirteen American
colonies, that men are created equal. Now, as an abstract principle, there
is no doubt of the truth of that declaration, and it is desirable in the
original construction of society, and in organized societies, to keep it
in view as a great fundamental principle."
When I sometimes, in relation to the organization of new societies in new
countries, where the soil is clean and clear, insisted that we should keep
that principle in view, Judge Douglas will have it that I want a negro
wife. He never can be brought to understand that there is any middle
ground on this subject. I have lived until my fiftieth year, and have
never had a negro woman either for a slave or a wife, and I think I can
live fifty centuries, for that matter, without having had one for either.
I maintain that you may take Judge Douglas's quotations from my Chicago
speech, and from my Charleston speech, and the Galesburgh speech,--in his
speech of to-day,--and compare them over, and I am willing to trust them
with you upon his proposition that they show rascality or double-dealing.
I deny that they do.
The Judge does not seem at all disposed to have peace, but I find he is
disposed to have a personal warfare with me. He says that my oath would
not be taken against the bare word of Charles H. Lanphier or Thomas L.
Harris. Well, that is altogether a matter of opinion. It is certainly not
for me to vaunt my word against oaths of these gentlemen, but I will tell
Judge Douglas again the facts upon which I "dared" to say they proved
a forgery. I pointed out at Galesburgh that the publication of these
resolutions in the Illinois State Register could not have been the result
of accident, as the proceedings of that meeting bore unmistakable
evidence of being done by a man who knew it was a forgery; that it was a
publication partly taken from the real proceedings of the Convention, and
partly from the proceedings of a convention at another place, which showed
that he had the real proceedings before him, and taking one part of
the resolutions, he threw out another part, and substituted false and
fraudulent ones in their stead. I pointed that out to him, and also that
his friend Lanphier, who was editor of the Register at that time and now
is, must have known how it was done. Now, whether he did it, or got some
friend to do it for him, I could not tell, but he certainly knew all about
it. I pointed out to Judge Douglas that in his Freeport speech he had
promised to investigate that matter. Does he now say that he did not make
that promise? I have a right to ask why he did not keep it. I call upon
him to tell here to-day why he did not keep that promise? That fraud has
been traced up so that it lies between him, Harris, and Lanphier. There
is little room for escape for Lanphier. Lanphier is doing the Judge
good service, and Douglas desires his word to be taken for the truth.
He desires Lanphier to be taken as authority in what he states in his
newspaper. He desires Harris to be taken as a man of vast credibility; and
when this thing lies among them, they will not press it to show where the
guilt really belongs. Now, as he has said that he would investigate it,
and implied that he would tell us the result of his investigation, I
demand of him to tell why he did not investigate it, if he did not; and if
he did, why he won't tell the result. I call upon him for that.
This is the third time that Judge Douglas has assumed that he learned
about these resolutions by Harris's attempting to use them against Norton
on the floor of Congress. I tell Judge Douglas the public records of the
country show that he himself attempted it upon Trumbull a month before
Harris tried them on Norton; that Harris had the opportunity of learning
it from him, rather than he from Harris. I now ask his attention to that
part of the record on the case. My friends, I am not disposed to detain
you longer in regard to that matter.
I am told that I still have five minutes left. There is another matter I
wish to call attention to. He says, when he discovered there was a mistake
in that case, he came forward magnanimously, without my calling his
attention to it, and explained it. I will tell you how he became so
magnanimous. When the newspapers of our side had discovered and published
it, and put it beyond his power to deny it, then he came forward and made
a virtue of necessity by acknowledging it. Now he argues that all
the point there was in those resolutions, although never passed at
Springfield, is retained by their being passed at other localities. Is
that true? He said I had a hand in passing them, in his opening speech,
that I was in the convention and helped to pass them. Do the resolutions
touch me at all? It strikes me there is some difference between holding
a man responsible for an act which he has not done and holding him
responsible for an act that he has done. You will judge whether there
is any difference in the "spots." And he has taken credit for great
magnanimity in coming forward and acknowledging what is proved on him
beyond even the capacity of Judge Douglas to deny; and he has more
capacity in that way than any other living man.
Then he wants to know why I won't withdraw the charge in regard to a
conspiracy to make slavery national, as he has withdrawn the one he made.
May it please his worship, I will withdraw it when it is proven false on
me as that was proven false on him. I will add a little more than that,
I will withdraw it whenever a reasonable man shall be brought to believe
that the charge is not true. I have asked Judge Douglas's attention to
certain matters of fact tending to prove the charge of a conspiracy to
nationalize slavery, and he says he convinces me that this is all untrue
because Buchanan was not in the country at that time, and because the Dred
Scott case had not then got into the Supreme Court; and he says that I say
the Democratic owners of Dred Scott got up the case. I never did say that
I defy Judge Douglas to show that I ever said so, for I never uttered
it. [One of Mr. Douglas's reporters gesticulated affirmatively at Mr.
Lincoln.] I don't care if your hireling does say I did, I tell you myself
that I never said the "Democratic" owners of Dred Scott got up the case.
I have never pretended to know whether Dred Scott's owners were Democrats,
or Abolitionists, or Freesoilers or Border Ruffians. I have said that
there is evidence about the case tending to show that it was a made-up
case, for the purpose of getting that decision. I have said that that
evidence was very strong in the fact that when Dred Scott was declared to
be a slave, the owner of him made him free, showing that he had had the
case tried and the question settled for such use as could be made of that
decision; he cared nothing about the property thus declared to be his by
that decision. But my time is out, and I can say no more.
LAST DEBATE, AT ALTON, OCTOBER 15, 1858
Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I have been somewhat, in my own mind, complimented
by a large portion of Judge Douglas's speech,--I mean that portion
which he devotes to the controversy between himself and the present
Administration. This is the seventh time Judge Douglas and myself have met
in these joint discussions, and he has been gradually improving in regard
to his war with the Administration. At Quincy, day before yesterday, he
was a little more severe upon the Administration than I had heard him upon
any occasion, and I took pains to compliment him for it. I then told him
to give it to them with all the power he had; and as some of them were
present, I told them I would be very much obliged if they would give it to
him in about the same way. I take it he has now vastly improved upon
the attack he made then upon the Administration. I flatter myself he has
really taken my advice on this subject. All I can say now is to re-commend
to him and to them what I then commended,--to prosecute the war against
one another in the most vigorous manner. I say to them again: "Go it,
husband!--Go it, bear!"
There is one other thing I will mention before I leave this branch of the
discussion,--although I do not consider it much of my business, anyway. I
refer to that part of the Judge's remarks where he undertakes to involve
Mr. Buchanan in an inconsistency. He reads something from Mr. Buchanan,
from which he undertakes to involve him in an inconsistency; and he gets
something of a cheer for having done so. I would only remind the Judge
that while he is very valiantly fighting for the Nebraska Bill and the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it has been but a little while since
he was the valiant advocate of the Missouri Compromise. I want to know
if Buchanan has not as much right to be inconsistent as Douglas has? Has
Douglas the exclusive right, in this country, of being on all sides of
all questions? Is nobody allowed that high privilege but himself? Is he to
have an entire monopoly on that subject?
So far as Judge Douglas addressed his speech to me, or so far as it was
about me, it is my business to pay some attention to it. I have heard the
Judge state two or three times what he has stated to-day, that in a speech
which I made at Springfield, Illinois, I had in a very especial manner
complained that the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case had decided that
a negro could never be a citizen of the United States. I have omitted by
some accident heretofore to analyze this statement, and it is required
of me to notice it now. In point of fact it is untrue. I never have
complained especially of the Dred Scott decision because it held that a
negro could not be a citizen, and the Judge is always wrong when he says
I ever did so complain of it. I have the speech here, and I will thank
him or any of his friends to show where I said that a negro should be a
citizen, and complained especially of the Dred Scott decision because
it declared he could not be one. I have done no such thing; and Judge
Douglas, so persistently insisting that I have done so, has strongly
impressed me with the belief of a predetermination on his part to
misrepresent me. He could not get his foundation for insisting that I
was in favor of this negro equality anywhere else as well as he could by
assuming that untrue proposition. Let me tell this audience what is true
in regard to that matter; and the means by which they may correct me if I
do not tell them truly is by a recurrence to the speech itself. I spoke
of the Dred Scott decision in my Springfield speech, and I was then
endeavoring to prove that the Dred Scott decision was a portion of a
system or scheme to make slavery national in this country. I pointed out
what things had been decided by the court. I mentioned as a fact that they
had decided that a negro could not be a citizen; that they had done so, as
I supposed, to deprive the negro, under all circumstances, of the remotest
possibility of ever becoming a citizen and claiming the rights of a
citizen of the United States under a certain clause of the Constitution. I
stated that, without making any complaint of it at all. I then went on and
stated the other points decided in the case; namely, that the bringing
of a negro into the State of Illinois and holding him in slavery for two
years here was a matter in regard to which they would not decide whether
it would make him free or not; that they decided the further point that
taking him into a United States Territory where slavery was prohibited by
Act of Congress did not make him free, because that Act of Congress, as
they held, was unconstitutional. I mentioned these three things as making
up the points decided in that case. I mentioned them in a lump, taken in
connection with the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, and the amendment
of Chase, offered at the time, declaratory of the right of the people of
the Territories to exclude slavery, which was voted down by the friends
of the bill. I mentioned all these things together, as evidence tending
to prove a combination and conspiracy to make the institution of slavery
national. In that connection and in that way I mentioned the decision on
the point that a negro could not be a citizen, and in no other connection.
Out of this Judge Douglas builds up his beautiful fabrication of my
purpose to introduce a perfect social and political equality between the
white and black races. His assertion that I made an "especial objection"
(that is his exact language) to the decision on this account is untrue in
point of fact.
Now, while I am upon this subject, and as Henry Clay has been alluded to,
I desire to place myself, in connection with Mr. Clay, as nearly right
before this people as may be. I am quite aware what the Judge's object
is here by all these allusions. He knows that we are before an audience
having strong sympathies southward, by relationship, place of birth, and
so on. He desires to place me in an extremely Abolition attitude. He read
upon a former occasion, and alludes, without reading, to-day to a portion
of a speech which I delivered in Chicago. In his quotations from that
speech, as he has made them upon former occasions, the extracts were taken
in such a way as, I suppose, brings them within the definition of what
is called garbling,--taking portions of a speech which, when taken by
themselves, do not present the entire sense of the speaker as expressed at
the time. I propose, therefore, out of that same speech, to show how
one portion of it which he skipped over (taking an extract before and an
extract after) will give a different idea, and the true idea I intended to
convey. It will take me some little time to read it, but I believe I will
occupy the time that way.
You have heard him frequently allude to my controversy with him in regard
to the Declaration of Independence. I confess that I have had a struggle
with Judge Douglas on that matter, and I will try briefly to place myself
right in regard to it on this occasion. I said--and it is between
the extracts Judge Douglas has taken from this speech, and put in his
published speeches:
"It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities
and impose them upon us, and to the extent that a necessity is imposed
upon a man he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which
we found ourselves when we established this government. We had slaves
among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them
to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we
grasped for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does
not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let the
charter remain as our standard."
Now, I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge Douglas
against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of
slavery. You hear me read it from the same speech from which he takes
garbled extracts for the purpose of proving upon me a disposition to
interfere with the institution of slavery, and establish a perfect social
and political equality between negroes and white people.
Allow me while upon this subject briefly to present one other extract from
a speech of mine, more than a year ago, at Springfield, in discussing this
very same question, soon after Judge Douglas took his ground that negroes
were, not included in the Declaration of Independence:
"I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all
men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They
did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral
development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness
in what they did consider all men created equal,--equal in certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to
assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that
equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them.
In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to
declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as
circumstances should permit.
"They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be
familiar to all,--constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even,
though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby
constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the
happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere."
There again are the sentiments I have expressed in regard to the
Declaration of Independence upon a former occasion,--sentiments which have
been put in print and read wherever anybody cared to know what so humble
an individual as myself chose to say in regard to it.
At Galesburgh, the other day, I said, in answer to Judge Douglas, that
three years ago there never had been a man, so far as I knew or believed,
in the whole world, who had said that the Declaration of Independence did
not include negroes in the term "all men." I reassert it to-day. I assert
that Judge Douglas and all his friends may search the whole records of the
country, and it will be a matter of great astonishment to me if they shall
be able to find that one human being three years ago had ever uttered the
astounding sentiment that the term "all men" in the Declaration did not
include the negro. Do not let me be misunderstood. I know that more than
three years ago there were men who, finding this assertion constantly in
the way of their schemes to bring about the ascendency and perpetuation
of slavery, denied the truth of it. I know that Mr. Calhoun and all the
politicians of his school denied the truth of the Declaration. I know
that it ran along in the mouth of some Southern men for a period of years,
ending at last in that shameful, though rather forcible, declaration of
Pettit of Indiana, upon the floor of the United States Senate, that the
Declaration of Independence was in that respect "a self-evident lie,"
rather than a self-evident truth. But I say, with a perfect knowledge of
all this hawking at the Declaration without directly attacking it, that
three years ago there never had lived a man who had ventured to assail it
in the sneaking way of pretending to believe it, and then asserting it did
not include the negro. I believe the first man who ever said it was Chief
Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, and the next to him was our friend
Stephen A. Douglas. And now it has become the catchword of the entire
party. I would like to call upon his friends everywhere to consider how
they have come in so short a time to view this matter in a way so entirely
different from their former belief; to ask whether they are not being
borne along by an irresistible current,--whither, they know not.
In answer to my proposition at Galesburgh last week, I see that some man
in Chicago has got up a letter, addressed to the Chicago Times, to show,
as he professes, that somebody had said so before; and he signs himself
"An Old-Line Whig," if I remember correctly. In the first place, I would
say he was not an old-line Whig. I am somewhat acquainted with old-line
Whigs from the origin to the end of that party; I became pretty well
acquainted with them, and I know they always had some sense, whatever else
you could ascribe to them. I know there never was one who had not more
sense than to try to show by the evidence he produces that some men had,
prior to the time I named, said that negroes were not included in the
term "all men" in the Declaration of Independence. What is the evidence
he produces? I will bring forward his evidence, and let you see what he
offers by way of showing that somebody more than three years ago had said
negroes were not included in the Declaration. He brings forward part of a
speech from Henry Clay,--the part of the speech of Henry Clay which I
used to bring forward to prove precisely the contrary. I guess we are
surrounded to some extent to-day by the old friends of Mr. Clay, and they
will be glad to hear anything from that authority. While he was in Indiana
a man presented a petition to liberate his negroes, and he (Mr. Clay) made
a speech in answer to it, which I suppose he carefully wrote out himself
and caused to be published. I have before me an extract from that speech
which constitutes the evidence this pretended "Old-Line Whig" at Chicago
brought forward to show that Mr. Clay did n't suppose the negro was
included in the Declaration of Independence. Hear what Mr. Clay said:
"And what is the foundation of this appeal to me in Indiana to liberate
the slaves under my care in Kentucky? It is a general declaration in the
act announcing to the world the independence of the thirteen American
colonies, that all men are created equal. Now, as an abstract principle,
there is no doubt of the truth of that declaration; and it is desirable,
in the original construction of society and in organized societies, to
keep it in view as a great fundamental principle. But, then, I apprehend
that in no society that ever did exist, or ever shall be formed, was
or can the equality asserted among the members of the human race be
practically enforced and carried out. There are portions, large portions,
women, minors, insane, culprits, transient sojourners, that will always
probably remain subject to the government of another portion of the
community.
"That declaration, whatever may be the extent of its import, was made by
the delegations of the thirteen States. In most of them slavery existed,
and had long existed, and was established by law. It was introduced and
forced upon the colonies by the paramount law of England. Do you believe
that in making that declaration the States that concurred in it intended
that it should be tortured into a virtual emancipation of all the slaves
within their respective limits? Would Virginia and other Southern States
have ever united in a declaration which was to be interpreted into an
abolition of slavery among them? Did any one of the thirteen colonies
entertain such a design or expectation? To impute such a secret and
unavowed purpose, would be to charge a political fraud upon the noblest
band of patriots that ever assembled in council,--a fraud upon the
Confederacy of the Revolution; a fraud upon the union of those States
whose Constitution not only recognized the lawfulness of slavery, but
permitted the importation of slaves from Africa until the year 1808."
This is the entire quotation brought forward to prove that somebody
previous to three years ago had said the negro was not included in the
term "all men" in the Declaration. How does it do so? In what way has it a
tendency to prove that? Mr. Clay says it is true as an abstract principle
that all men are created equal, but that we cannot practically apply it in
all eases. He illustrates this by bringing forward the cases of females,
minors, and insane persons, with whom it cannot be enforced; but he says
it is true as an abstract principle in the organization of society as well
as in organized society and it should be kept in view as a fundamental
principle. Let me read a few words more before I add some comments of my
own. Mr. Clay says, a little further on:
"I desire no concealment of my opinions in regard to the institution of
slavery. I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lament that we have
derived it from the parental government and from our ancestors. I wish
every slave in the United States was in the country of his ancestors. But
here they are, and the question is, How can they be best dealt with? If
a state of nature existed, and we were about to lay the foundations
of society, no man would be more strongly opposed than I should be to
incorporate the institution of slavery amongst its elements."
Now, here in this same book, in this same speech, in this same extract,
brought forward to prove that Mr. Clay held that the negro was not
included in the Declaration of Independence, is no such statement on
his part, but the declaration that it is a great fundamental truth which
should be constantly kept in view in the organization of society and in
societies already organized. But if I say a word about it; if I attempt,
as Mr. Clay said all good men ought to do, to keep it in view; if, in this
"organized society," I ask to have the public eye turned upon it; if I
ask, in relation to the organization of new Territories, that the public
eye should be turned upon it, forthwith I am vilified as you hear me
to-day. What have I done that I have not the license of Henry Clay's
illustrious example here in doing? Have I done aught that I have not his
authority for, while maintaining that in organizing new Territories and
societies this fundamental principle should be regarded, and in organized
society holding it up to the public view and recognizing what he
recognized as the great principle of free government?
And when this new principle--this new proposition that no human being ever
thought of three years ago--is brought forward, I combat it as having an
evil tendency, if not an evil design. I combat it as having a tendency to
dehumanize the negro, to take away from him the right of ever striving to
be a man. I combat it as being one of the thousand things constantly done
in these days to prepare the public mind to make property, and nothing but
property, of the negro in all the States of this Union.
But there is a point that I wish, before leaving this part of the
discussion, to ask attention to. I have read and I repeat the words of
Henry Clay:
"I desire no concealment of my opinions in regard to the institution of
slavery. I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lament that we have
derived it from the parental government and from our ancestors. I wish
every slave in the United States was in the country of his ancestors. But
here they are, and the question is, How can they be best dealt with? If
a state of nature existed, and we were about to lay the foundations
of society, no man would be more strongly opposed than I should be to
incorporate the institution of slavery amongst its elements."
The principle upon which I have insisted in this canvass is in relation
to laying the foundations of new societies. I have never sought to apply
these principles to the old States for the purpose of abolishing slavery
in those States. It is nothing but a miserable perversion of what I have
said, to assume that I have declared Missouri, or any other slave State,
shall emancipate her slaves; I have proposed no such thing. But when Mr.
Clay says that in laying the foundations of society in our Territories
where it does not exist, he would be opposed to the introduction of
slavery as an element, I insist that we have his warrant--his license--for
insisting upon the exclusion of that element which he declared in such
strong and emphatic language was most hurtful to him.
Judge Douglas has again referred to a Springfield speech in which I said
"a house divided against itself cannot stand." The Judge has so often made
the entire quotation from that speech that I can make it from memory. I
used this language:
"We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with
the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the slavery
agitation. Under the operation of this policy, that agitation has not only
not ceased, but has constantly augmented. 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 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."
That extract and the sentiments expressed in it have been extremely
offensive to Judge Douglas. He has warred upon them as Satan wars upon the
Bible. His perversions upon it are endless. Here now are my views upon it
in brief:
I said we were now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated
with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the
slavery agitation. Is it not so? When that Nebraska Bill was brought
forward four years ago last January, was it not for the "avowed object" of
putting an end to the slavery agitation? We were to have no more agitation
in Congress; it was all to be banished to the Territories. By the way, I
will remark here that, as Judge Douglas is very fond of complimenting Mr.
Crittenden in these days, Mr. Crittenden has said there was a falsehood
in that whole business, for there was no slavery agitation at that time to
allay. We were for a little while quiet on the troublesome thing, and that
very allaying plaster of Judge Douglas's stirred it up again. But was it
not understood or intimated with the "confident promise" of putting an end
to the slavery agitation? Surely it was. In every speech you heard Judge
Douglas make, until he got into this "imbroglio," as they call it, with
the Administration about the Lecompton Constitution, every speech on that
Nebraska Bill was full of his felicitations that we were just at the
end of the slavery agitation. The last tip of the last joint of the old
serpent's tail was just drawing out of view. But has it proved so? I have
asserted that under that policy that agitation "has not only not ceased,
but has constantly augmented." When was there ever a greater agitation in
Congress than last winter? When was it as great in the country as to-day?
There was a collateral object in the introduction of that Nebraska policy,
which was to clothe the people of the Territories with a superior degree
of self-government, beyond what they had ever had before. The first
object and the main one of conferring upon the people a higher degree of
"self-government" is a question of fact to be determined by you in answer
to a single question. Have you ever heard or known of a people anywhere
on earth who had as little to do as, in the first instance of its use, the
people of Kansas had with this same right of "self-government "? In
its main policy and in its collateral object, it has been nothing but a
living, creeping lie from the time of its introduction till to-day.
I have intimated that I thought the agitation would not cease until a
crisis should have been reached and passed. I have stated in what way I
thought it would be reached and passed. I have said that it might go one
way or the other. We might, by arresting the further spread of it, and
placing it where the fathers originally placed it, put it where the public
mind should rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction. Thus the agitation may cease. It may be pushed forward until
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North
as well as South. I have said, and I repeat, my wish is that the further
spread of it may be arrested, and that it may be where the public
mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction--I have expressed that as my wish I entertain the opinion, upon
evidence sufficient to my mind, that the fathers of this government placed
that institution where the public mind did rest in the belief that it was
in the course of ultimate extinction. Let me ask why they made provision
that the source of slavery--the African slave-trade--should be cut off at
the end of twenty years? Why did they make provision that in all the new
territory we owned at that time slavery should be forever inhibited? Why
stop its spread in one direction, and cut off its source in another,
if they did not look to its being placed in the course of its ultimate
extinction?
Again: the institution of slavery is only mentioned in the Constitution of
the United States two or three times, and in neither of these cases does
the word "slavery" or "negro race" occur; but covert language is used
each time, and for a purpose full of significance. What is the language
in regard to the prohibition of the African slave-trade? It runs in about
this way:
"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now
existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight."
The next allusion in the Constitution to the question of slavery and the
black race is on the subject of the basis of representation, and there the
language used is:
"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several
States which may be included within this Union, according to their
respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole
number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term
of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other
persons."
It says "persons," not slaves, not negroes; but this "three-fifths" can be
applied to no other class among us than the negroes.
Lastly, in the provision for the reclamation of fugitive slaves, it is
said:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof,
escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation
therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered
up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
There again there is no mention of the word "negro" or of slavery. In
all three of these places, being the only allusions to slavery in the
instrument, covert language is used. Language is used not suggesting that
slavery existed or that the black race were among us. And I understand the
contemporaneous history of those times to be that covert language was used
with a purpose, and that purpose was that in our Constitution, which it
was hoped and is still hoped will endure forever,--when it should be read
by intelligent and patriotic men, after the institution of slavery had
passed from among us,--there should be nothing on the face of the great
charter of liberty suggesting that such a thing as negro slavery had ever
existed among us. This is part of the evidence that the fathers of the
government expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to
an end. They expected and intended that it should be in the course of
ultimate extinction. And when I say that I desire to see the further
spread of it arrested, I only say I desire to see that done which the
fathers have first done. When I say I desire to see it placed where the
public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction, I only say I desire to see it placed where they placed it.
It is not true that our fathers, as Judge Douglas assumes, made this
government part slave and part free. Understand the sense in which he
puts it. He assumes that slavery is a rightful thing within itself,--was
introduced by the framers of the Constitution. The exact truth is, that
they found the institution existing among us, and they left it as they
found it. But in making the government they left this institution with
many clear marks of disapprobation upon it. They found slavery among
them, and they left it among them because of the difficulty--the absolute
impossibility--of its immediate removal. And when Judge Douglas asks me
why we cannot let it remain part slave and part free, as the fathers of
the government made it, he asks a question based upon an assumption which
is itself a falsehood; and I turn upon him and ask him the question, when
the policy that the fathers of the government had adopted in relation
to this element among us was the best policy in the world, the only wise
policy, the only policy that we can ever safely continue upon that will
ever give us peace, unless this dangerous element masters us all and
becomes a national institution,--I turn upon him and ask him why he could
not leave it alone. I turn and ask him why he was driven to the necessity
of introducing a new policy in regard to it. He has himself said he
introduced a new policy. He said so in his speech on the 22d of March of
the present year, 1858. I ask him why he could not let it remain where
our fathers placed it. I ask, too, of Judge Douglas and his friends why we
shall not again place this institution upon the basis on which the fathers
left it. I ask you, when he infers that I am in favor of setting the free
and slave States at war, when the institution was placed in that attitude
by those who made the Constitution, did they make any war? If we had no
war out of it when thus placed, wherein is the ground of belief that we
shall have war out of it if we return to that policy? Have we had any
peace upon this matter springing from any other basis? I maintain that we
have not. I have proposed nothing more than a return to the policy of the
fathers.
I confess, when I propose a certain measure of policy, it is not enough
for me that I do not intend anything evil in the result, but it is
incumbent on me to show that it has not a tendency to that result. I
have met Judge Douglas in that point of view. I have not only made the
declaration that I do not mean to produce a conflict between the States,
but I have tried to show by fair reasoning, and I think I have shown to
the minds of fair men, that I propose nothing but what has a most peaceful
tendency. The quotation that I happened to make in that Springfield
Speech, that "a house divided against itself cannot stand," and which has
proved so offensive to the judge, was part and parcel of the same thing.
He tries to show that variety in the democratic institutions of the
different States is necessary and indispensable. I do not dispute it. I
have no controversy with Judge Douglas about that. I shall very readily
agree with him that it would be foolish for us to insist upon having a
cranberry law here in Illinois, where we have no cranberries, because they
have a cranberry law in Indiana, where they have cranberries. I should
insist that it would be exceedingly wrong in us to deny to Virginia the
right to enact oyster laws, where they have oysters, because we want no
such laws here. I understand, I hope, quite as well as Judge Douglas or
anybody else, that the variety in the soil and climate and face of the
country, and consequent variety in the industrial pursuits and productions
of a country, require systems of law conforming to this variety in the
natural features of the country. I understand quite as well as Judge
Douglas that if we here raise a barrel of flour more than we want, and the
Louisianians raise a barrel of sugar more than they want, it is of mutual
advantage to exchange. That produces commerce, brings us together, and
makes us better friends. We like one another the more for it. And I
understand as well as Judge Douglas, or anybody else, that these mutual
accommodations are the cements which bind together the different parts
of this Union; that instead of being a thing to "divide the
house,"--figuratively expressing the Union,--they tend to sustain it; they
are the props of the house, tending always to hold it up.
But when I have admitted all this, I ask if there is any parallel between
these things and this institution of slavery? I do not see that there
is any parallel at all between them. Consider it. When have we had any
difficulty or quarrel amongst ourselves about the cranberry laws of
Indiana, or the oyster laws of Virginia, or the pine-lumber laws of Maine,
or the fact that Louisiana produces sugar, and Illinois flour? When have
we had any quarrels over these things? When have we had perfect peace in
regard to this thing which I say is an element of discord in this Union?
We have sometimes had peace, but when was it? It was when the institution
of slavery remained quiet where it was. We have had difficulty and turmoil
whenever it has made a struggle to spread itself where it was not. I ask,
then, if experience does not speak in thunder-tones telling us that the
policy which has given peace to the country heretofore, being returned to,
gives the greatest promise of peace again. You may say, and Judge Douglas
has intimated the same thing, that all this difficulty in regard to
the institution of slavery is the mere agitation of office-seekers and
ambitious Northern politicians. He thinks we want to get "his place," I
suppose. I agree that there are office-seekers amongst us. The Bible
says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have
discovered that fact without the Bible. I do not claim that I am any less
so than the average of men, but I do claim that I am not more selfish than
Judge Douglas.
But is it true that all the difficulty and agitation we have in regard
to this institution of slavery spring from office-seeking, from the mere
ambition of politicians? Is that the truth? How many times have we had
danger from this question? Go back to the day of the Missouri Compromise.
Go back to the nullification question, at the bottom of which lay this
same slavery question. Go back to the time of the annexation of Texas.
Go back to the troubles that led to the Compromise of 1850. You will find
that every time, with the single exception of the Nullification question,
they sprung from an endeavor to spread this institution. There never was a
party in the history of this country, and there probably never will be, of
sufficient strength to disturb the general peace of the country. Parties
themselves may be divided and quarrel on minor questions, yet it extends
not beyond the parties themselves. But does not this question make a
disturbance outside of political circles? Does it not enter into the
churches and rend them asunder? What divided the great Methodist Church
into two parts, North and South? What has raised this constant disturbance
in every Presbyterian General Assembly that meets? What disturbed the
Unitarian Church in this very city two years ago? What has jarred and
shaken the great American Tract Society recently, not yet splitting it,
but sure to divide it in the end? Is it not this same mighty, deep-seated
power that somehow operates on the minds of men, exciting and stirring
them up in every avenue of society,--in politics, in religion, in
literature, in morals, in all the manifold relations of life? Is this the
work of politicians? Is that irresistible power, which for fifty years has
shaken the government and agitated the people, to be stifled and subdued
by pretending that it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought not to
talk about it? If you will get everybody else to stop talking about it,
I assure you I will quit before they have half done so. But where is
the philosophy or statesmanship which assumes that you can quiet that
disturbing element in our society which has disturbed us for more than
half a century, which has been the only serious danger that has threatened
our institutions,--I say, where is the philosophy or the statesmanship
based on the assumption that we are to quit talking about it, and that the
public mind is all at once to cease being agitated by it? Yet this is the
policy here in the North that Douglas is advocating, that we are to care
nothing about it! I ask you if it is not a false philosophy. Is it not a
false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon
the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that everybody does care
the most about--a thing which all experience has shown we care a very
great deal about?
The Judge alludes very often in the course of his remarks to the exclusive
right which the States have to decide the whole thing for themselves. I
agree with him very readily that the different States have that right.
He is but fighting a man of straw when he assumes that I am contending
against the right of the States to do as they please about it. Our
controversy with him is in regard to the new Territories. We agree that
when the States come in as States they have the right and the power to do
as they please. We have no power as citizens of the free-States, or in
our Federal capacity as members of the Federal Union through the General
Government, to disturb slavery in the States where it exists. We profess
constantly that we have no more inclination than belief in the power
of the government to disturb it; yet we are driven constantly to defend
ourselves from the assumption that we are warring upon the rights of the
Sates. What I insist upon is, that the new Territories shall be kept free
from it while in the Territorial condition. Judge Douglas assumes that we
have no interest in them,--that we have no right whatever to interfere. I
think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Do we not
wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express
myself? Do we not feel an interest in getting to that outlet with such
institutions as we would like to have prevail there? If you go to the
Territory opposed to slavery, and another man comes upon the same ground
with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are equal, it turns
out that he has the equal right all his way, and you have no part of it
your way. If he goes in and makes it a slave Territory, and by consequence
a slave State, is it not time that those who desire to have it a free
State were on equal ground? Let me suggest it in a different way. How many
Democrats are there about here ["A thousand"] who have left slave States
and come into the free State of Illinois to get rid of the institution
of slavery? [Another voice: "A thousand and one."] I reckon there are a
thousand and one. I will ask you, if the policy you are now advocating had
prevailed when this country was in a Territorial condition, where would
you have gone to get rid of it? Where would you have found your free State
or Territory to go to? And when hereafter, for any cause, the people in
this place shall desire to find new homes, if they wish to be rid of the
institution, where will they find the place to go to?
Now, irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there
is a right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I am still in favor of our new
Territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home,--may
find some spot where they can better their condition; where they can
settle upon new soil and better their condition in life. I am in favor
of this, not merely (I must say it here as I have elsewhere) for our own
people who are born amongst us, but as an outlet for free white people
everywhere the world over--in which Hans, and Baptiste, and Patrick, and
all other men from all the world, may find new homes and better their
conditions in life.
I have stated upon former occasions, and I may as well state again, what I
understand to be the real issue in this controversy between Judge Douglas
and myself. On the point of my wanting to make war between the free and
the slave States, there has been no issue between us. So, too, when he
assumes that I am in favor of producing a perfect social and political
equality between the white and black races. These are false issues,
upon which Judge Douglas has tried to force the controversy. There is
no foundation in truth for the charge that I maintain either of these
propositions. The real issue in this controversy--the one pressing upon
every mind--is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the
institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look
upon it as a wrong. The sentiment that contemplates the institution of
slavery in this country as a wrong is the sentiment of the Republican
party. It is the sentiment around which all their actions, all their
arguments, circle, from which all their propositions radiate. They look
upon it as being a moral, social, and political wrong; and while they
contemplate it as such, they nevertheless have due regard for its actual
existence among us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any
satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations thrown about
it. Yet, having a due regard for these, they desire a policy in regard
to it that looks to its not creating any more danger. They insist that it
should, as far as may be, be treated as a wrong; and one of the methods of
treating it as a wrong is to make provision that it shall grow no larger.
They also desire a policy that looks to a peaceful end of slavery at some
time. These are the views they entertain in regard to it as I understand
them; and all their sentiments, all their arguments and propositions,
are brought within this range. I have said, and I repeat it here, that
if there be a man amongst us who does not think that the institution of
slavery is wrong in any one of the aspects of which I have spoken, he is
misplaced, and ought not to be with us. And if there be a man amongst us
who is so impatient of it as a wrong as to disregard its actual
presence among us and the difficulty of getting rid of it suddenly in a
satisfactory way, and to disregard the constitutional obligations thrown
about it, that man is misplaced if he is on our platform. We disclaim
sympathy with him in practical action. He is not placed properly with us.
On this subject of treating it as a wrong, and limiting its spread, let me
say a word. Has anything ever threatened the existence of this Union save
and except this very institution of slavery? What is it that we hold most
dear amongst us? Our own liberty and prosperity. What has ever threatened
our liberty and prosperity, save and except this institution of slavery?
If this is true, how do you propose to improve the condition of things by
enlarging slavery, by spreading it out and making it bigger? You may have
a wen or cancer upon your person, and not be able to cut it out, lest
you bleed to death; but surely it is no way to cure it, to engraft it and
spread it over your whole body. That is no proper way of treating what you
regard a wrong. You see this peaceful way of dealing with it as a wrong,
restricting the spread of it, and not allowing it to go into new
countries where it has not already existed. That is the peaceful way,
the old-fashioned way, the way in which the fathers themselves set us the
example.
On the other hand, I have said there is a sentiment which treats it as not
being wrong. That is the Democratic sentiment of this day. I do not mean
to say that every man who stands within that range positively asserts that
it is right. That class will include all who positively assert that it is
right, and all who, like Judge Douglas, treat it as indifferent and do not
say it is either right or wrong. These two classes of men fall within the
general class of those who do not look upon it as a wrong. And if there
be among you anybody who supposes that he, as a Democrat, can consider
himself "as much opposed to slavery as anybody," I would like to reason
with him. You never treat it as a wrong. What other thing that you
consider as a wrong do you deal with as you deal with that? Perhaps you
say it is wrong--but your leader never does, and you quarrel with anybody
who says it is wrong. Although you pretend to say so yourself, you can
find no fit place to deal with it as a wrong. You must not say anything
about it in the free States, because it is not here. You must not say
anything about it in the slave States, because it is there. You must not
say anything about it in the pulpit, because that is religion, and has
nothing to do with it. You must not say anything about it in politics,
because that will disturb the security of "my place." There is no place to
talk about it as being a wrong, although you say yourself it is a wrong.
But, finally, you will screw yourself up to the belief that if the people
of the slave States should adopt a system of gradual emancipation on the
slavery question, you would be in favor of it. You would be in favor of
it. You say that is getting it in the right place, and you would be glad
to see it succeed. But you are deceiving yourself. You all know that Frank
Blair and Gratz Brown, down there in St. Louis, undertook to introduce
that system in Missouri. They fought as valiantly as they could for the
system of gradual emancipation which you pretend you would be glad to see
succeed. Now, I will bring you to the test. After a hard fight they were
beaten, and when the news came over here, you threw up your hats and
hurrahed for Democracy. More than that, take all the argument made in
favor of the system you have proposed, and it carefully excludes the idea
that there is anything wrong in the institution of slavery. The arguments
to sustain that policy carefully exclude it. Even here to-day you heard
Judge Douglas quarrel with me because I uttered a wish that it might
sometime come to an end. Although Henry Clay could say he wished every
slave in the United States was in the country of his ancestors, I am
denounced by those pretending to respect Henry Clay for uttering a
wish that it might sometime, in some peaceful way, come to an end. The
Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not tolerate the
merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least degree of wrong about
it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas's arguments. He says he "don't care
whether it is voted up or voted down" in the Territories. I do not care
myself, in dealing with that expression, whether it is intended to be
expressive of his individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the
national policy he desires to have established. It is alike valuable
for my purpose. Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong
in slavery; but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in it,
because no man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted
up or voted down. He may say he don't care whether an indifferent thing
is voted up or down, but he must logically have a choice between a right
thing and a wrong thing. He contends that whatever community wants slaves
has a right to have them. So they have, if it is not a wrong. But if it is
a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong. He says that upon
the score of equality slaves should be allowed to go in a new Territory,
like other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference
between it and other property. If it and other property are equal, this
argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is wrong and the
other right, there is no use to institute a comparison between right
and wrong. You may turn over everything in the Democratic policy from
beginning to end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute book, in
the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in
conversation, or the shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments,--it
everywhere carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it.
That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be
silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--right and
wrong--throughout the world. They are the two principles that have
stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue
to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the
divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it
develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and
earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether
from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own
nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an
apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
I was glad to express my gratitude at Quincy, and I re-express it here,
to Judge Douglas,--that he looks to no end of the institution of slavery.
That will help the people to see where the struggle really is. It will
hereafter place with us all men who really do wish the wrong may have
an end. And whenever we can get rid of the fog which obscures the real
question, when we can get Judge Douglas and his friends to avow a policy
looking to its perpetuation,--we can get out from among that class of men
and bring them to the side of those who treat it as a wrong. Then there
will soon be an end of it, and that end will be its "ultimate extinction."
Whenever the issue can be distinctly made, and all extraneous matter
thrown out so that men can fairly see the real difference between the
parties, this controversy will soon be settled, and it will be done
peaceably too. There will be no war, no violence. It will be placed again
where the wisest and best men of the world placed it. Brooks of South
Carolina once declared that when this Constitution was framed its framers
did not look to the institution existing until this day. When he said
this, I think he stated a fact that is fully borne out by the history of
the times. But he also said they were better and wiser men than the men of
these days, yet the men of these days had experience which they had not,
and by the invention of the cotton-gin it became a necessity in this
country that slavery should be perpetual. I now say that, willingly or
unwillingly--purposely or without purpose, Judge Douglas has been the
most prominent instrument in changing the position of the institution of
slavery,--which the fathers of the government expected to come to an end
ere this, and putting it upon Brooks's cotton-gin basis; placing it where
he openly confesses he has no desire there shall ever be an end of it.
I understand I have ten minutes yet. I will employ it in saying something
about this argument Judge Douglas uses, while he sustains the Dred Scott
decision, that the people of the Territories can still somehow exclude
slavery. The first thing I ask attention to is the fact that Judge Douglas
constantly said, before the decision, that whether they could or not,
was a question for the Supreme Court. But after the court had made the
decision he virtually says it is not a question for the Supreme Court, but
for the people. And how is it he tells us they can exclude it? He says it
needs "police regulations," and that admits of "unfriendly legislation."
Although it is a right established by the Constitution of the United
States to take a slave into a Territory of the United States and hold him
as property, yet unless the Territorial Legislature will give friendly
legislation, and more especially if they adopt unfriendly legislation,
they can practically exclude him. Now, without meeting this proposition as
a matter of fact, I pass to consider the real constitutional obligation.
Let me take the gentleman who looks me in the face before me, and let
us suppose that he is a member of the Territorial Legislature. The first
thing he will do will be to swear that he will support the Constitution
of the United States. His neighbor by his side in the Territory has
slaves and needs Territorial legislation to enable him to enjoy that
constitutional right. Can he withhold the legislation which his neighbor
needs for the enjoyment of a right which is fixed in his favor in the
Constitution of the United States which he has sworn to support? Can he
withhold it without violating his oath? And, more especially, can he pass
unfriendly legislation to violate his oath? Why, this is a monstrous sort
of talk about the Constitution of the United States! There has never been
as outlandish or lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any respectable man
on earth. I do not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in
a Territory of the United States. I believe the decision was improperly
made and I go for reversing it. Judge Douglas is furious against those who
go for reversing a decision. But he is for legislating it out of all
force while the law itself stands. I repeat that there has never been so
monstrous a doctrine uttered from the mouth of a respectable man.
I suppose most of us (I know it of myself) believe that the people of the
Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law,--that
is a right fixed in the Constitution. But it cannot be made available to
them without Congressional legislation. In the Judge's language, it is a
"barren right," which needs legislation before it can become efficient
and valuable to the persons to whom it is guaranteed. And as the right is
constitutional, I agree that the legislation shall be granted to it, and
that not that we like the institution of slavery. We profess to have no
taste for running and catching niggers, at least, I profess no taste for
that job at all. Why then do I yield support to a Fugitive Slave law?
Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that
right, can be supported without it. And if I believed that the right to
hold a slave in a Territory was equally fixed in the Constitution with the
right to reclaim fugitives, I should be bound to give it the legislation
necessary to support it. I say that no man can deny his obligation to give
the necessary legislation to support slavery in a Territory, who believes
it is a constitutional right to have it there. No man can, who does not
give the Abolitionists an argument to deny the obligation enjoined by
the Constitution to enact a Fugitive State law. Try it now. It is the
strongest Abolition argument ever made. I say if that Dred Scott decision
is correct, then the right to hold slaves in a Territory is equally a
constitutional right with the right of a slaveholder to have his runaway
returned. No one can show the distinction between them. The one is
express, so that we cannot deny it. The other is construed to be in the
Constitution, so that he who believes the decision to be correct believes
in the right. And the man who argues that by unfriendly legislation,
in spite of that constitutional right, slavery may be driven from the
Territories, cannot avoid furnishing an argument by which Abolitionists
may deny the obligation to return fugitives, and claim the power to pass
laws unfriendly to the right of the slaveholder to reclaim his fugitive. I
do not know how such an arguement may strike a popular assembly like this,
but I defy anybody to go before a body of men whose minds are educated
to estimating evidence and reasoning, and show that there is an iota of
difference between the constitutional right to reclaim a fugitive and the
constitutional right to hold a slave, in a Territory, provided this Dred
Scott decision is correct, I defy any man to make an argument that will
justify unfriendly legislation to deprive a slaveholder of his right to
hold his slave in a Territory, that will not equally, in all its length,
breadth, and thickness, furnish an argument for nullifying the Fugitive
Slave law. Why, there is not such an Abolitionist in the nation as
Douglas, after all! such an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas, after
all!
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