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 LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
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 V
 
 PART I 
 
 SPEECHES AND DEBATES 
 
 1856-1858
 
 LINCOLN IN JUNE, i860 
 From a Photogravure after a Portrait by C. A. Barry
 
 THE WORKS OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 
 Sp 
 
 eeches and Debates 
 
 
 
 1856 
 
 -1859 
 
 
 
 Introductions and 
 
 Special Articles 
 
 by 
 
 Ti 
 
 HEGDORE 
 
 Roosevelt 
 
 William K 
 
 \ Taft 
 
 Ci 
 
 ■iARLES E 
 
 . Hughes 
 
 Joseph H. 
 
 Choate 
 
 H 
 
 ENRY WaTTERSON 
 
 Robert G. 
 
 Ingersoll 
 
 
 
 And 
 
 Others 
 
 
 
 
 Managir 
 
 )g Editors 
 
 
 
 
 JOHN H. 
 
 CLIFFORD 
 
 
 
 
 MARION 
 
 M. MILLER 
 
 
 
 
 Volume II 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 NEWTON & CARTWRIGHT 
 
 156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
 
 Copyright, 1907 
 By Current Literature Publishing Company 
 
 Copyright, 1908 
 By The University Society Inc.
 
 J 1^ 9-'^ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Lincoln the Statesman. By William Howard 
 
 XalL • • • • • • » • IJC 
 
 Speeches (August i, 1856, to July 17, 1858) 
 
 Fragment of Speech at Galena, 111., in the 
 Fremont Campaign, in Reply to Objectors to 
 Agitation Against the Extension of Slavery. 
 About August I, 1856 ..... I 
 
 Fragment of Speech in Fremont Campaign. 
 October i, 1856 3 
 
 Fragment of Speech at a Republican Banquet 
 
 in Chicago. December 10, 1856 ... 9 
 
 Speech in Reply to Senator Douglas at Spring- 
 field, 111. June 26, 1857 12 
 
 Argument in the Rock Island Bridge Case. 
 Extracts from a Report in the Daily Press of 
 Chicago, September 24, 1857 . . . . 31 
 
 Notes of Argument in a Railroad Case. June 
 15, 1858 .34 
 
 Speech in Acceptance of Nomination as United 
 States Senator, Made at the Close of the Re- 
 publican State Convention, Springfield, 111. 
 June 16, 1858 35 
 
 Speech at Chicago, 111. July 10, 1858 . . 46 
 
 Speech at Springfield, III. July 17, 1858 . . 72 
 
 The Joint Debate with Douglas. Together with 
 Correspondence in Regard to the Debate, and 
 Intervening Speeches (July 24 to October 15, 1858) 
 Introduction. By Horace White . . . loi
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 Correspondence in Regard to the Debate. July 
 
 24 to July 31, 1858 116 
 
 Fragment of Speech in Rejoinder to the Reply 
 of Senator Douglas to Mr. Lincoln's Spring- 
 field Speeches of June 16 and July 17, 1858. De- 
 livered at Beardstown, 111. August 12, 1858 . 121 
 
 Speech at Lewiston, 111. August 17, 1858 . 125 
 
 First Joint Debate, at Ottawa, 111. August 21, 
 185S . 128 
 
 Second Joint Debate, at Freeport, 111. August 
 27, 1858 174 
 
 Report of Speech at Clinton, 111. September 8, 
 1858 224 
 
 Fragment of Speech at Paris, 111. September 8, 
 1858 226 
 
 Fragments of Speech at Edwardsville, 111. Sep- 
 tember 13, 1858 . ... . . . 227 
 
 Third Joint Debate, at Jonesboro, 111. Septem- 
 ber 15, 1858 231 
 
 Fourth Joint Debate, at Charleston, III. Sep- 
 tember 18, 1858 . . . . . .287
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Beginning with the speeches that Lincoln de- 
 livered in the Fremont campaign of 1856, this 
 volume concludes with his opening address in the 
 Fourth Joint Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, 
 w^hich was held at Charleston, 111. Between the 
 debates with his great opponent, Lincoln deliv- 
 ered several speeches, fragments of which were 
 taken down by Horace White, now of the New 
 York Evening Post, and then reporter of the 
 Lincoln-Douglas debates for the Chicago Trib- 
 une These are printed here in their chrono- 
 logical sequence, as is also the correspondence 
 of the principals preliminary to the Debate. 
 
 Excepting two legal arguments, all the 
 speeches in the volume relate to the extension of 
 slavery, the burning political issue of the time. 
 This had been kindled by Senator Douglas's 
 Nebraska Act, repealing the guaranty in the ^lis- 
 souri Compromise of free soil to the new Terri- 
 tories north of the southern boundary of Mis- 
 souri, and had been fanned by the Dred Scott 
 Decision into a flame that endangered the free- 
 dom even of States already established in which 
 slavery was constitutionally prohibited. 
 
 Vll
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Lincoln the Statesman. 
 
 By William Howard Taft. 
 
 There are few lives which seem to have been 
 shaped so providentially to meet a country's great 
 need as that of Lincoln with reference to slavery 
 and the Civil War. Coming from a childhood of 
 the greatest penury and discomfort and squalor, 
 mingling with the humblest and the poorest in 
 a Western settlement, Lincoln acquired a sense of 
 equality and democracy and a love of equal 
 rights that never left him and gave deep color to 
 his whole life. His soul revolted at human slav- 
 ery. He had a tenderness of heart and a sym- 
 pathy with his fellow-man that manifested itself 
 in the smallest details of his life, and he had a 
 power of putting himself in another's place which 
 gave him a profound sense of justice. He under- 
 stood the play of human nature as few men have. 
 He knew the motives and the things which in- 
 fluenced the plain people as no other American in 
 our American race of politicians has understood 
 them. He had a sense of humor and a power of 
 quaint expression and a capacity for creating 
 which enabled him to give force by homely illus- 
 tration to the arguments which his great power 
 of logic enabled him to drive home. 
 
 ix
 
 X INTRODUCTION 
 
 GREATEST POLITICIAN OF HIS AGE 
 
 He was the greatest politician of his age, and 
 while he had deeply imbedded in his moral nature 
 the principles in favor of human liberty, he did 
 not purpose to sacrifice his influence to bring 
 about the goal of his whole life's ambition by go- 
 ing so fast in extreme declarations of abstract 
 principles as to deprive him of future usefulness. 
 I have read and reread with pleasure the story of 
 Lincoln by Herndon, his partner, and noted with 
 intense interest his unwillingness to attend a meet- 
 ing of abolitionists lest he might lose his influence 
 with the Whigs, who did not sympathize wnth the 
 abolitionists. Nor did he wish to offend the 
 abolitionists. So he made a court engagement 
 for himself some twenty miles away, which made 
 it impossible for him to attend the meeting. 
 Now, it would be easy to say that this was cow- 
 ardly, that this was the trick of a mere politician, 
 but I think we may well ascribe the motive to a 
 desire not to lose his usefulness at a time when 
 the future seemed big with opportunity for him. 
 His whole life showed that, while he had ideals, 
 he never allowed the longing for the impossible 
 to interfere with the securing of the possible. 
 
 A PARTY MAN 
 
 He w^as a party man, as every man must be 
 who wishes to leave his individual impress upon 
 the individual character of the nation. I do not 
 mean for a moment to deprecate independence 
 of party, or "mugwumpism," because I believe 
 that the independent vote on the whole exercises 
 more direct effect in the election than the party 
 vote. It must be so. But while ail independent
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 voters as a mass exercise more control over the 
 decisions in an election, as individuals they do 
 not do so. The man who would retain his indi- 
 vidual influence and effect good measures in our 
 country, where parties are a necessity in the 
 carrying on of the Government, must be a party 
 man. And no one recognizes this more fully 
 than did Lincoln. 
 
 ECONOMIC VIEWS 
 
 Lincoln's economic views were not distinctly 
 marked. Early in his career he favored internal 
 improvements in Illinois, as a member of the 
 Legislature, to such a point as to involve the 
 State in a heavy indebtedness, which never in- 
 ured largely to the benefit of the people. His 
 mind was not directed, even during the war, to 
 economic subjects. He safely delegated the 
 finances of the country to his Secretary of the 
 Treasury, Mr. Chase. As a follower of Clay, he 
 was in favor of the protective or American sys- 
 tem, as it was called. During his administration 
 the Morrill tariff was passed, for the system of 
 protection to American industries on the modern 
 plan was then fully inaugurated. 
 
 THE DECLARATION AND SLAVERY 
 
 Lincoln relied greatly in his discussions on tlie 
 slavery question upon the terms of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence. He dwelt upon the postu- 
 late set forth in that instrument that all men are 
 created equal, and he insisted that, in so far as 
 the Constitution recognized slavery, and in so far 
 as slavery was an institution of our Government, 
 it was a departure from the Declaration of Inde-
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 pendence. He maintained that the words ''all 
 men are created equal" included the negro as well 
 as the white man, but affirmed with great empha- 
 sis that he did not mean that the men who were 
 thus declared equal were necessarily fitted at 
 once to be voters or take part in the Government. 
 What he contended was that they were entitled 
 to the bread they earned and should be given the 
 right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
 
 Lincoln was not a man stiffly dogmatic. He 
 was a man who allowed the application of his 
 principles to be controlled by the fitness of the 
 thing. His whole nature was that of sweet rea- 
 sonableness and common sense. 
 
 It is true that the Declaration recites that all 
 just government must rely on the consent of the 
 governed ; but that is to be interpreted as mean- 
 ing a consent of the governed who have intel- 
 ligence sufficient to enable them to discriminate 
 as to what is government in their own interest. 
 Lincoln in his debates with Douglas did not in- 
 sist that the colored men, as they then were, 
 should take part in the Government as voters, 
 but he evidently treated the postulate in the 
 Declaration of Independence as the ideal toward 
 which all government should work. 
 
 One of the reasons why Mr. Lincoln was so bit- 
 terly opposed to slavery, as he said in his con- 
 troversy with Douglas, was that it was an incon- 
 sistent blot upon our escutcheon as a free country, 
 and that it robbed us of our proper world 
 influence in favor of freedom and liberty. Noth- 
 ing could more clearly show his desire that we, 
 among the nations of the world, should wield an 
 influence in favor of the spread of free institu- 
 tions and in favor of international morality.
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 UPHOLDER OF THE LAWS 
 
 The one thing that distinguished Lincoln in all 
 his life was his contention in favor of the equal 
 administration and protection of the laws. From 
 the soles of his feet, through all that long frame 
 to the top of his head, he was a democrat in the 
 true sense of the word and opposed to privilege 
 and class immunity. He was not an enemy of 
 wealth lawfully accumulated. He welcomed and 
 encouraged internal improvements, and of course 
 favored prosperity developed by business enter- 
 prises and the combinations of capital, but he al- 
 ways exalted in the consideration of every issue 
 the rights of the individual, and especially of the 
 humbler members of society, who were least able 
 to protect themselves. 
 
 Therefore, we may know with certainty that 
 cannot brook contradiction that in the struggle 
 to make all business lawful, to take away from 
 great corporate combinations the illegal privi- 
 leges and immunities that official investigations 
 have shown in many instances to prevail, Lin- 
 coln would have made the same good fight which 
 has endeared Roosevelt to the same plain people 
 of the country who upheld the hands of the mar- 
 tyred President through all the great trials of his 
 administration.
 
 SPEECHES AND DEBATES 
 
 (1856-1858) 
 
 "Who Are the Disunionists— You or We?" 
 
 Fragment of Speech at Galena, III., in the 
 Fremont Campaign, in Reply to Object- 
 ors to Agitation Against the Extension 
 OF Slavery. About August i, 1856. 
 
 You further charge us with being disunionists. 
 If you mean that it is our aim to dissolve the 
 Union, I for myself answer that it is untrue ; for 
 those who act with me I answer that it is untrue. 
 Have you heard us assert that as our aim? Do 
 you really believe that such is our aim ? Do you 
 find it in our platform, our speeches, our con- 
 ventions, or anywhere? If not, withdraw the 
 charge. 
 
 But you may say that though it is not our aim, 
 it will be the result if we succeed, and that we 
 are therefore disunionists in fact. This is a grave 
 charge you make against us, and we certainly 
 have a right to demand that you specify in what 
 way we are to dissolve the Union. How are we 
 to effect this? 
 
 The only specification offered is volunteered 
 by Mr. Fillmore in his Albany speech. His 
 charge is that if we elect a President and Vice- 
 President both from the free States, it will dis-
 
 2 SPEECHES [Oct. 1 
 
 solve the Union. This is open folly. The Con- 
 stitution provides that the President and Vice- 
 President of the United States shall be of differ- 
 ent States ; but says nothing as to the latitude 
 and longitude of those States. In 1828 Andrew 
 Jackson, of Tennessee, and John C. Calhoun, of 
 South Carolina, were elected President and Vice- 
 President, both from slave States ; but no one 
 thought of dissolving the Union then on that ac- 
 count. In 1840 Harrison, of Ohio, and Tyler, of 
 Virginia, were elected. In 1841 Harrison died 
 and John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency, and 
 William R. King, of Alabama, was elected acting 
 Vice-President by the Senate ; but no one sup- 
 posed that the Union was in danger. In fact, at 
 the very time Mr. Fillmore uttered his idle 
 charge, the state of things in the Unitied States 
 disproved it. Mr. Pierce, of New Hampshire, 
 and Mr. Bright, of Indiana, both from free 
 States, are President and Vice-President, and the 
 Union stands and will stand. You do not pre- 
 tend that it ought to dissolve the Union, and the 
 facts show that it won't; therefore the charge 
 may be dismissed without further consideration. 
 No other specification is made, and the only 
 one that could be made is that the restoration of 
 the restriction of 1820, making the United States 
 territory free territory, would dissolve the Union. 
 Gentlemen, it will require a decided majority to 
 pass such an act. We, the majority, being able 
 constitutionally to do all that we purpose, would 
 have no desire to dissolve the Union. Do you 
 say that such restriction of slavery would be un- 
 constitutional, and that some of the States would 
 not submit to its enforcement ? I grant you that 
 an unconstitutional act is not a law ; but I do not
 
 i8s6] IN FREMONT CAMPAIGN 3 
 
 ask and will not take your construction of the 
 Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United 
 States is the tribunal to decide such a question, 
 and we will submit to its decisions ; and if you 
 do also, there will be an end of the matter. Will 
 you? If not, who are the disunionists — you or 
 we? We, the majority, would not strive to dis- 
 solve the Union; and if any attempt is made, 
 it must be by you, who so loudly stigmatize us as 
 disunionists. But the Union, in any event, will 
 not be dissolved. We don't want to dissolve it, 
 and if you attempt it we won't let you. With the 
 purse and sword, the army and navy and 
 treasury, in our hands and at our command, you 
 could not do it. This government would be very 
 weak indeed if a majority with a disciplined army 
 and navy and a well-filled treasury could not pre- 
 serve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undis- 
 ciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk 
 about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, 
 nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve 
 the Union; you shall not. 
 
 Sectionalism and Slavery. 
 
 Fragment of Speech in Fremont Campaign. 
 
 October i, 1856. 
 
 It is constantly objected to Fremont and Day- 
 ton, that they are supported by a sectional party, 
 who by their sectionalism endanger the national 
 union. This objection, more than all others, 
 causes men really opposed to slavery extension 
 to hesitate. Practically, it is the most difficult 
 objection we have to meet. For this reason I 
 now propose to examine it a little more carefully
 
 4 SPEECHES [Oct. I 
 
 than I have heretofore done, or seen it done by 
 others. First, then, what is the question between 
 the parties respectively represented by Buchanan 
 and Fremont? Simply this, "Shall slavery be 
 allowed to extend into United States territories 
 now legally free?" Buchanan says it shall, and 
 Fremont says it shall not. 
 
 That is the naked issue, and the whole of it. 
 Lay the respective platforms side by side, and the 
 difference between them will be found to amount 
 to precisely that. True, each party charges upon 
 the other designs much beyond what is involved 
 in the issue as stated ; but as these charges cannot 
 be fully proved either way, it is probably better 
 to reject them on both sides, and stick to the 
 naked issue as it is clearly made up on the record. 
 
 And now to restate the question, "Shall slavery 
 be allowed to extend into United States terri- 
 tories now legally free ?" I beg to know how one 
 side of that question is more sectional than the 
 other ? Of course I expect to effect nothing with 
 the man who makes the charge of sectionalism 
 without caring whether it is just or not. But of 
 the candid, fair man who has been puzzled w^ith 
 this charge, I do ask how is one side of this ques- 
 tion more sectional than the other ? I beg of him 
 to consider well, and answer calmly. 
 
 If one side be as sectional as the other, nothing 
 is gained, as to sectionalism, by changing sides ; 
 so that each must choose sides of the question on 
 some other ground, as I should think, according 
 as the one side or the other shall appear nearest 
 right. If he shall really think slavery ought to 
 be extended, let him go to Buchanan ; if he think 
 it ought not, let him go to Fremont. 
 
 But Fremont and Dayton are both residents of
 
 1856] IN FREMONT CAMPAIGN 5 
 
 the free States, and this fact has been vaunted in 
 high places as excessive sectionalism. While in- 
 terested individuals become indignant and excited 
 against this manifestation of sectionalism, I am 
 very happy to know that the Constitution remains 
 calm — keeps cool — upon the subject. It does say 
 that President and Vice-President shall be resi- 
 dents of different States, but it does not say that 
 one must live in a slave and the other in a free 
 State. 
 
 It has been a custom to take one from a slave 
 and the other from a free State; but the custom 
 has not at all been uniform. In 1828 General 
 Jackson and Mr. Calhoun, both from slave 
 States, were placed on the same ticket ; and 
 Mr. Adams and Dr. Rush, both from free 
 States, were pitted against them. General Jack- 
 son and Mr. Calhoun were elected, and qualified 
 and served under the election, yet the whole thing 
 never suggested the idea of sectionalism. In 
 1841, the President, General Harrison, died, by 
 which Mr. Tyler, the Vice-President and a slave- 
 State man, became President. Mr. Mangum, an- 
 other slave-State man, was placed in the vice- 
 presidential chair, served out the term, and no 
 fuss about it, no sectionalism thought of. In 
 1853 the present President came into office. He 
 is a free-State man. Mr. King, the new Vice- 
 President-elect, was a slave-State man ; but he 
 died without entering on the duties of his office. 
 At first his vacancy was filled by Atchison, an- 
 other slave-State man ; but he soon resigned, and 
 the place was supplied by Bright, a free-State 
 man. So that right now, and for the half year 
 last past, our President and Vice-President are 
 both actually free-State men. But it is said the
 
 6 SPEECHES [Oct. i 
 
 friends of Fremont avow the purpose of electing 
 him exclusively by free-State votes, and that this 
 is unendurable sectionalism. 
 
 This statement of fact is not exactly true. 
 With the friends of Fremont it is an expected 
 necessity, but it is not an "avowed purpose," to 
 elect him, if at all, principally by free-State votes ; 
 but it is with equal intensity true that Buchanan's 
 friends expect to elect him, if at all, chiefly by 
 slave-State votes. Here, again, the sectionalism 
 is just as much on one side as the other. 
 
 The thing which gives most color to the charge 
 of sectionalism, made against those who oppose 
 the spread of slavery into free territory, is the 
 fact that they can get no votes in the slave States, 
 while their opponents get all, or nearly so, in the 
 slave States, and also a large number in the free 
 States. To state it in another way, the exten- 
 sionists can get votes all over the nation, while 
 the restrictionists can get them only in the free 
 States. 
 
 This being the fact, why is it so ? It is not be- 
 cause one side of the question dividing them is 
 more sectional than the other, nor because of any 
 difference in the mental or moral structure of the 
 people North and South. It is because in that 
 question the people of the South have an imme- 
 diate palpable and immensely great pecuniary in- 
 terest, while with the people of the North it is 
 merely an abstract question of moral right, with 
 only slight and remote pecuniary interest added. 
 
 The slaves of the South, at a moderate esti- 
 mate, are worth a thousand millions of dollars. 
 Let it be permanently settled that this property 
 may extend to new territory without restraint, 
 and it greatly enhances, perhaps quite doubles,.
 
 i856] IN FREMONT CAMPAIGN 7 
 
 its value at once. This immense palpable pecuni- 
 ary interest on the question of extending slavery- 
 unites the Southern people as one man. But it 
 cannot be demonstrated that the North will gain 
 a dollar by restricting it. Moral principle is all, 
 or nearly all, that unites us of the North. Pity 'tis, 
 it is so, but this is a looser bond than pecuniary 
 interest. Right here is the plain cause of their 
 perfect union and our want of it. And see how 
 it works. If a Southern man aspires to be Presi- 
 dent, they choke him down constantly, in order 
 that the glittering prize of the presidency may be 
 held up on Southern terms to the greedy eyes of 
 Northern ambition. With this they tempt us and 
 break in upon us. 
 
 The Democratic party in 1844 elected a South- 
 ern President. Since then they have neither had 
 a Southern candidate for election nor nomina- 
 tion. Their conventions of 1848, 1852 and 1856 
 have been struggles exclusively among Northern 
 men, each vying to outbid the other for the 
 Southern vote ; the South standing calmly by to 
 finally cry "Going, going, gone" to the highest 
 bidder, and at the same time to make its power 
 more distinctly seen, and thereby to secure a still 
 higher bid at the next succeeding struggle. 
 
 "Actions speak louder than words" is the max- 
 im, and if true the South now distinctly says 
 to the North, "Give us the measures and you take 
 the men." The total withdrawal of Southern as- 
 pirants for the presidency multiplies the number 
 of Northern ones. These last, in competing with 
 each other, commit themselves to the utmost 
 verge that, through their own greediness, they 
 have the least hope their Northern supporters 
 will bear. Having got committed in a race of
 
 8 SPEECHES [Dec. lo 
 
 competition, necessity drives them into union to 
 sustain themselves. Each at first secures all he 
 can on personal attachments to him and through 
 hopes resting on him personally. Next they 
 unite with one another and with the perfectly 
 banded South, to make the offensive position 
 they have got into *'a party measure." This done, 
 large additional numbers are secured. 
 
 When the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
 was first proposed, at the North, there was liter- 
 ally "nobody" in favor of it. In February, 1854, 
 our legislature met in called, or extra, session. 
 From them Douglas sought an indorsement of 
 his then pending measure of repeal. In our legis- 
 lature were about seventy Demvocrats to thirty 
 Whigs. The former held a caucus, in which it 
 was resolved to give Douglas the desired indorse- 
 ment. Seme of the members of the caucus 
 bolted, — would not stand it, — and they now 
 divulge the secrets. They say that the caucus 
 fairly confessed that the repeal was wrong, and 
 they pleaded the determination to indorse it solely 
 on the ground that it was necessary to sustain 
 Douglas. Here we have the direct evidence of 
 how the Nebraska bill obtained its strength in 
 Illinois. It was given, not in a sense of right, 
 but "in the teeth of a sense of wrong, to sustain 
 Douglas. So Illinois was divided. So New Eng- 
 land for Pierce, Michigan for Cass, Pennsylvania 
 for Buchanan, and all for the Democratic party. 
 
 And when by such means they have got a large 
 portion of the Northern people into a position 
 contrary to their own honest impulses and sense 
 ot right, they have the impudence to turn upon 
 these who do stand firm, and call them sectional. 
 W^re it not too serious a matter, this cool impu-
 
 1856] AT CHICAGO BANQUET 9 
 
 dence would be laughable, to say the least. Re- 
 curring to the question, "Shall slavery be allowed 
 to extend into United States territory now legally 
 free?" This is a sectional Question — that is to 
 say, it is a question in its nature calculated to 
 divide the American people geographically. 
 Who is to blame for that? Who can help it? 
 Either side can help it ; but how ? Simply by 
 yielding to the other side ; there is no other way ; 
 in the whole range of possibility there is no other 
 way. Then, which side shall yield ? To this, 
 again, there can be but one answer, — the side 
 which is in the wrong. True, we differ as to 
 which side is wrong, and we boldly say, let all 
 who really think slavery ought to be spread into 
 free territory, openly go over against us ; there is 
 where, they rightfully belong. But why should 
 any go who really think slavery ought not to 
 spread ? Do they really think the right ought to 
 yield to the wrong? Are they afraid to stand by 
 the right ? Do they fear that the Constitution is 
 too weak to sustain them in the right? Do they 
 really think that by right surrendering to wrong 
 the hopes of our Constitution, our Union, and 
 our liberties can possibly be bettered? 
 
 The Foundation of American Democracy: 
 Equality Not of States but of Men. 
 
 Fragment of Speech at a Republican Ban- 
 quet IN Chicago. December 10, 1856. 
 
 We have another annual presidential message. 
 Like a rejected lover making merry at the wed- 
 ding of his rival, the President felicitates himself 
 hugely over the late presidential election. He
 
 lO SPEECHES [Dec. lo 
 
 considers the result a signal triumph of good 
 principles and good men, and a very pointed re- 
 buke of bad ones. He says the people did it. He 
 forgets that the ''people," as he complacently calls 
 only those who voted for Buchanan, are in a 
 minority of the whole people by about four hun- 
 dred thousand votes — one full tenth of all the 
 votes. Remembering this, he might perceive that 
 the "rebuke" may not be quite as durable as he 
 seems to think — that the majority may not choose 
 to remain permanently rebuked by that minority. 
 
 The President thinks the great body of us Fre- 
 monters, being ardently attached to liberty, in 
 the abstract, were duped by a few wicked and 
 designing men. There is a slight difference of 
 opinion on this. We think he, being ardently at- 
 tached to the hope of a second term, in the con- 
 crete, was duped by men who had liberty every 
 way. He is the cat's-paw. By much dragging of 
 chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws 
 are burnt off to the gristle, and he is thrown 
 aside as unfit for further use. As the fool said 
 of King Lear, when his daughters had turned 
 him out of doors, ''He's a shelled peascod"^ 
 Y'Thafs a sheaVd peascod'']. 
 
 So far as the President charges us "with a de- 
 sire to change the domestic institutions of exist- 
 ing States," and of "doing everything in our 
 power to deprive the Constitution and the laws 
 of moral authority," for the whole party on be- 
 lief, and for myself on knowledge, I pronounce 
 the charge an unmixed and unmitigated false- 
 hood. 
 
 Our government rests in public opinion. Who- 
 ever can change public opinion can change the 
 government practically just so much. Public
 
 i856] AT CHICAGO BANQUET n 
 
 opinion, on any subject, always has a "central 
 idea," from which all its minor thoughts radiate. 
 That ''central idea" in our political public opinion 
 at the beginning was, and until recently has con- 
 tinued to be, "the equality of men." And al- 
 though it has always submitted patiently to what- 
 ever of inequality there seemed to be as matter 
 of actual necessity, its constant working has been 
 a steady progress toward the practical equality of 
 all men. The late presidential election was a 
 struggle by one party to discard that central idea 
 and to substitute for it the opposite idea that 
 slavery is right in the abstract, the workings of 
 which as a central idea may be the perpetuity of 
 human slavery and its extension to all countries 
 and colors. Less than a year ago the Richmond 
 Enquirer, an avowed advocate of slavery, re- 
 gardless of color, in order to favor his views, 
 invented the phrase "State equality," and now 
 the President, in his message, adopts the En- 
 quirer's catch-phrase, telling us the people "have 
 asserted the constitutional equality of each and 
 all of the States of the Union as States." The 
 President flatters himself that the new central 
 idea is completely inaugurated; and so indeed it 
 is, so far as the mere fact of a presidential elec- 
 tion can inaugurate it. To us it is left to know 
 that the majority of the people have not yet de- 
 clared for it, and to hope that they never will. 
 All of us who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan, 
 taken together, are a majority of four hundred 
 thousand. But in the late contest we were di- 
 vided between Fremont and Fillmore. Can we 
 not come together for the future ? Let every one 
 who really believes, and is resolved, that free so- 
 ciety is not and shall not be a failure, and who
 
 12 SPEECHES [June 2S 
 
 can conscientiously declare that in the past con- 
 test he has done only what he thought best — let 
 every such one have charity to believe that every 
 other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be 
 bygones ; let past differences as nothing be ; and 
 with steady eye on the real issue, let us rein- 
 augurate the good old ''central ideas" of the re- 
 public. We can do it. The human heart is with 
 us ; God is with us. We shall again be able not to 
 declare that ''all States as States are equal," nor 
 yet that "all citizens as citizens are equal," but to 
 renew the broader, better declaration, including 
 both these and much more, that "all men are cre- 
 ated equal." 
 
 Self-Government in the Territories; the Dred 
 Scott Decision ; and the Meaning of Equal- 
 ity in the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 Speech in Reply to Senator Douglas, at 
 Springfield, III. June 26, 1857. 
 
 Fellozv-citizens: I am here to-night, partly by 
 the invitation of some of you, and partly by my 
 own inclination. Two weeks ago Judge Douglas 
 spoke here on the several subjects of Kansas, the 
 Dred Scott decision, and Utah. I listened to the 
 speech at the time, and have the report of it since. 
 It was intended to controvert opinions which I 
 think just, and to assail (politically, not person- 
 ally) those men who, in common with me, enter- 
 tain those opinions. For this reason I wished 
 then, and still wish, to make some answer to it, 
 which I now take the opportunity of doing. 
 
 I begin with Utah. If it prove to be true, as 
 is probable, that the people of Utah are in open
 
 i857] AT SPRINGFIELD i7 
 
 rebellion against the United States, then Judge 
 Douglas is in favor of repealing their territorial 
 organization, and attaching them to the adjoining 
 States for judicial purposes. I say, too, if they 
 are in rebellion, they ought to be somehow co- 
 erced to obedience ; and I am not now prepared to 
 admit or deny that the judge's mode of coercing 
 them is not as good as any. The Republicans 
 can fall in with it without taking back anything 
 they have ever said. To be sure, it would be a 
 considerable backing down by Judge Douglas 
 from his much-vaunted doctrine of self-govern- 
 ment for the Territories ; but this is only addi- 
 tional proof of what was very plain from the be- 
 ginning, that that doctrine was a mere deceitful 
 pretense for the benefit of slavery. Those who 
 could not see that much in the Nebraska act itself, 
 which forced governors, and secretaries, and 
 judges on the people of the Territories without 
 their choice or consent, could not be made to see, 
 though one should rise from the dead. 
 
 But in all this, it is very plain the judge evades 
 the only question the Republicans have ever 
 pressed upon the Democracy in regard to Utah. 
 That question the judge well knew to be this : 
 "If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a 
 State constitution tolerating polygamy, will the 
 Democracy admit them into the Union?" There 
 is nothing in the United States Constitution or 
 law against polygamy; and why is it not a part 
 of the judge's ''sacred right of self-government" 
 for the people to have it, or rather to keep it, if 
 they choose ? These questions, so far as I know, 
 the judge never answers. It might involve the 
 Democracy to answer them either way, and they 
 go unanswered.
 
 14 
 
 SPEECHES [June 2S 
 
 Kansas. 
 
 As to Kansas. The substance of the judge's 
 speech on Kansas is an effort to put the free- 
 State men in the wrong for not voting at the 
 election of delegates to the constitutional con- 
 vention. He says : ''There is every reason to 
 hope and believe that the law will be fairly in- 
 terpreted and impartially executed, so as to in- 
 sure to every bona Ude inhabitant the free and 
 quiet exercise of the elective franchise." 
 
 It appears extraordinary that Judge Douglas 
 should make such a statement. He knows that, 
 by the law, no one can vote who has not been 
 registered ; and he knows that the free-State men 
 place their refusal to vote on the ground that but 
 few of them have been registered. It is possible 
 that this is not true, but Judge Douglas knows it 
 is asserted to be true in letters, newspapers, and 
 public speeches, and borne by every mail and 
 blown by every breeze to the eyes and ears of the 
 world. He knows it is boldly declared that the 
 people of many whole counties, and many whole 
 neighborhoods in others, are left unregistered ; 
 yet he does not venture to contradict the declara- 
 tion, or to point out how they can vote without 
 being registered; but he just slips along, not 
 seeming to know there is any such question of 
 fact, and complacently declares : ''There is every 
 reason to hope and believe that the law will be 
 fairly and impartially executed, so as to insure to 
 every bona Ude inhabitant the free and quiet ex- 
 ercise of the elective franchise." 
 
 I readily agree that if all had a chance to vote, 
 they ought to have voted. If, on the contrary, 
 as they allege, and Judge Douglas ventures not to 
 particularly contradict, few only of the free-State
 
 i857] AT SPRINGFIELD 15 
 
 men had a chance to vote, they were perfectly 
 right in staying from the polls in a body. 
 
 By the way, since the judge spoke, the Kan- 
 sas election has come off. The judge expressed 
 his confidence that all the Democrats in Kansas 
 would do their duty — including "free-State Dem- 
 ocrats," of course. The returns received here as 
 yet are very incomplete ; but so far as they go, 
 they indicate that only about one-sixth of th^ 
 registered voters have really voted ; and this, too, 
 when not more, perhaps, than one half of the 
 rightful voters have been registered, thus show- 
 ing the thing to have been altogether the most 
 exquisite farce ever enacted. I am watching with 
 considerable interest to ascertain what figure ''the 
 free-State Democrats" cut in the concern. Of 
 course they voted, — all Democrats do their duty, 
 — and of course they did not vote for slave-State 
 candidates. We soon shall know how many dele- 
 gates they elected, how many candidates they had 
 pledged to a free State, and how many votes were 
 cast for them. 
 
 Allow me to barely whisper my suspicion that 
 there were no such things in Kansas as ''free- 
 State Democrats" — that they were altogether 
 mythical, good only to figure in newspapers and 
 speeches in the free States. If there should prove 
 to be one real living free-State Democrat in Kan- 
 sas, I suggest that it might be well to catch him, 
 and stuff and preserve his skin as an interesting 
 specimen of that soon-to-be-extinct variety of 
 the genus Democrat. 
 
 The Dred Scott Decision. 
 
 And now as to the Dred Scott decision. That 
 decision declares two propositions — first, that a
 
 1 6 SPEECHES [June 26 
 
 negro cannot sue in the United States courts; 
 and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit 
 slavery in the Territories. It was made by a 
 divided court — dividing differently on the differ- 
 ent points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the 
 merits of the decision, and in that respect I shall 
 follow his example, believing I could no more 
 improve on ^McLean and Curtis than he could on 
 Taney. 
 
 He denounces all who question the correctness 
 of that decision, as offering violent resistance to 
 it. But who resists it? Who has, in spite of the 
 decision, declared Dred Scott free, and resisted 
 the authority of his master over him? 
 
 Judicial decisions have two uses — first, to abso- 
 lutely determine the case decided ; and secondly, 
 to indicate to the public how other similar cases 
 will be decided when they arise. For the later use, 
 they are called "precedents" and "authorities." 
 
 We believe as much as Judge Douglas (per- 
 haps more) in obedience to, and respect for, the 
 judicial department of government. We think its 
 decisions on constitutional questions, when fully 
 settled, should control not only the particular 
 cases decided, but the general policy of the coun- 
 try, subject to be disturbed only by amendments 
 to the Constitution as provided in that instrument 
 itself. Alore than this would be revolution. But 
 we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. 
 We know the court that made it has often over- 
 ruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we 
 can to have it to overrule this. We offer no re- 
 sistance to it. 
 
 Judicial decisions are of greater or less author- 
 ity as precedents according to circumstances. 
 That this should be so accords both with com-
 
 iSo/] AT SPRINGFIELD 17 
 
 mon sense and the customary understanding of 
 the legal profession. 
 
 If this important decision had been made by 
 the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and 
 without any apparent partisan bias, and in ac- 
 cordance with legal public expectation and with 
 the steady practice of the departm^ents through- 
 out our history, and had been in no part based 
 on assumed historical facts which are not really 
 true ; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been 
 before the court more than once, and had there 
 been affirmicd and reaffirmed through a course of 
 years, it then might be, perhaps would be, fac- 
 tious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in 
 it as a precedent. 
 
 But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all 
 these claims to the public confidence, it is not re- 
 sistance, it is not factious, it is not even disre- 
 spectful, to treat it as not having yet quite es- 
 tablished a settled doctrine for the country. But 
 Judge Douglas considers this view awful. Hear 
 him : 
 
 The courts are the tribunals prescribed by the Con- 
 stitution and created by the authority of the people to 
 determine, expound, and enforce the law. Hence, who- 
 ever resists the final decision of the highest judicial 
 tribunal aims a deadly blow at our whole republican sys- 
 tem of government — a blow which, if successful, would 
 place all our rights and liberties at the mercy of pas- 
 sion, anarchy, and violence. I repeat, therefore, that if 
 resistance to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, in a matter like the points decided in the 
 Dred Scott case, clearly within their jurisdiction as de- 
 fined by the Constitution, shall be forced upon the 
 country as a political issue, it will become a distinct and 
 naked issue between the friends and enemies of the 
 Constitution — the friends and the enemies of the su- 
 premacy of the laws.
 
 1 8 SPEECHES [June 26 
 
 Why, this same Supreme Court onse decided a 
 national bank to be constitutional ; but General 
 Jackson, as President of the United States, dis- 
 regarded the decision, and vetoed a bill for a re- 
 charter, partly on constitutional ground declaring 
 that each public functionary must support the 
 Constitution, *'as he understands it." But hear 
 the general's own words. Here they are, taken 
 from his veto message : 
 
 It is maintained by the advocates of the bank, that its 
 constitutionality, in all its features, ought to be consid- 
 ered as settled by precedent, and by the decision of the 
 Supreme Court. To this conclusion I cannot assent. 
 Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority, and 
 should not be regarded as deciding questions of consti- 
 tutional power, except where the acquiescence of the 
 people and the States can be considered as well settled. 
 So far from this being the case on this subject, an 
 argument against the bank might be based on prece- 
 dent. One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a 
 bank; another, in 181 1, decided against it. One Con- 
 gress, in 1815, decided against a bank; another, in 1816, 
 decided in its favor. Prior to the present Congress, 
 therefore, the precedents drawn from that source were 
 equal. If we resort to the States, the expressions of 
 legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the 
 bank have been probably to those in its favor as four to 
 one. There is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, 
 if its authority were admitted, ought to weigh in favor 
 of the act before me. 
 
 I drop the quotations merely to remark that all 
 there ever was in the way of precedent up to the 
 Dred Scott decision, on the points therein de- 
 cided, had been against that decision. But hear 
 General Jackson further : 
 
 If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the 
 whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the 
 coordinate authorities of this government. The Con- 
 gress, the executive, and the court must, each for itself,
 
 i857l AT SPRINGFIELD 19 
 
 be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each 
 pubHc officer who takes an oath to support the Consti- 
 tution swears that he will support it as he understands 
 it, and not as it is understood by others. 
 
 Again and again have I heard Judge Douglas 
 denounce that bank decision and applaud General 
 Jackson for disregarding it. It would be inter- 
 esting for him to look over his recent speech, 
 and see how exactly his fierce philippics against 
 us for resisting Supreme Court decisions fall 
 upon his ov/n head. It will call to mind a long 
 and fierce political war in this country, upon an 
 issue which, in his own language, and, of course, 
 in his own changeless estimation, was "a distinct 
 issue between the friends and the enemies of the 
 Constitution," and in which war he fought in the 
 ranks of the enemies of the Constitution. 
 
 I have said, in substance, that the Dred Scott 
 decision was in part based on assumed historical 
 facts which were not really true, and I ought not 
 to leave the subject without giving some reasons 
 for saying this ; I therefore give an instance or 
 two, which I think fully sustain me. Chief Jus- 
 tice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the ma- 
 jority of the court, insists at great length that 
 negroes were no part of the people who made, 
 or for whom was made, the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, or the Constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
 On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissent- 
 ing opinion, shows that in five of the then thirteen 
 States — to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
 New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina — 
 free negroes were voters, and in proportion to 
 their numbers had the same part in making the
 
 20 SPEECHES CJune 26 
 
 Constitution that the white people had. He 
 shows this with so much particularity as to leave 
 no doubt of its truth : and as a sort of conclusion 
 on that point, holds the following language : 
 
 The Constitution was ordained and established by the 
 people of the United States, through the action, in each 
 State, of those persons who were qualified by its laws to 
 act thereon in behalf of themselves and all other citi- 
 zens of the State. In some of the States, as we have 
 seen, colored persons were among those qualified by law 
 to act on the subject. These colored persons were not 
 only included in the body of "the people of the United 
 States" by whom the Constitution was ordained and 
 established ; but in at least five of the States they had 
 the power to act, and doubtless did act, by their suf- 
 frages, upon the question of its adoption. 
 
 Again, Chief Justice Taney says : 
 
 It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public 
 opinion, in relation to that unfortunate race, which pre- 
 vailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the 
 world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, 
 and when the Constitution of the United States was 
 framed and adopted. 
 
 And again, after quoting from the Declaration, 
 he says : 
 
 The general words above quoted would seem to in- 
 clude the whole human family, and if they were used in 
 a similar instrument at this day, would be so under- 
 stood. 
 
 In these the Chief Justice does not directly as- 
 sert, but plainly assumes, as a fact, that the pub- 
 lic estimate of the black man is more favorable 
 now than it was in the days of the Revolution. 
 This assumption is a mistake. In some trifling 
 particulars the condition of that race has been 
 ameliorated ; but as a whole, in this country, the
 
 1857] AT SPRINGFIELD 21 
 
 change between then and now is decidedly the 
 other way; and their ultimate destiny has never 
 appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four 
 years. In two of the five States — New Jersey 
 and North Carolina — that then gave the free ne- 
 gro the right of voting, which right has since been 
 taken away, and in a third — New York — it has 
 been greatly abridged ; while it has not been ex- 
 tended, so far as I know, to a single additional 
 State, though the number of the States has more 
 than doubled. In those days, as I understand, 
 masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate 
 their slaves; but since then such legal restraints 
 have been made upon emancipation as to amount 
 almost to prohibition. In those days legislatures 
 held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery 
 in their respective States, but now it is becoming 
 quite fashionable for State constitutions to with- 
 hold that power from the legislatures. In those 
 days, by common consent, the spread of the black 
 man's bondage to the new countries was prohib- 
 ited, but now Congress decides that it will not 
 continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court 
 decides that it could not if it would. In those 
 days our Declaration of Independence was held 
 sacred by all, and thought to include all ; but now, 
 to aid in making the bondage of the negro uni- 
 versal and eternal, it is assailed and sneered at 
 and construed, and hawked at and torn, till, if its 
 framers could rise from their graves, they could 
 not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth 
 seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon 
 is after him, ambition follows, philosophy fol- 
 lows, and the theology of the day is fast joining 
 the cry. They have him in his prison-house ; 
 they have searched his person, and left no prying
 
 2 2 SPEECHES [June 26 
 
 instrument with him. One after another they 
 have closed the hea\y iron doors upon him : and 
 now they have him. as it were, bolted in with a 
 lock of a hundred keys, which can never be un- 
 locked without the concurrence of ever\- key — 
 the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, 
 and they scattered to a hundred different and 
 distant places ; and they stand musing as to 
 what invention, in all the dominions of mind and 
 matter, can be produced to make the impossibilitv' 
 of his escape m^ore complete than it is. 
 
 It is grossly incorrect to say or assume that 
 the public estimate of the negro is more favor- 
 able now than it was at the origin of the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Three years and a half ago. Judge Douglas 
 brought forward his famous Nebraska bill. The 
 countn,- was at once in a blaze. He scorned all 
 opposition, and carried it through Congress. 
 Since then he has seen himself superseded in a 
 presidential nomination by one indorsing the 
 general doctrine of his measure, but at the same 
 time standing clear of the odium of its imtimely 
 agitation and its gross breach of national faith; 
 and he has seen that successful rival constitu- 
 tionally elected, not by the strength of friends, 
 but by the di\*ision of adversaries, being in a pop- 
 ular minority of nearly four hundred thousand 
 votes. He has seen his chief aids in his own State. 
 Shields and Richardson, politically speaking, suc- 
 cessively tried. con\-icted, and executed for an 
 offense not their own, but his. And now he sees 
 his own case standins: next on the docket for trial. 
 
 There is a natural disgust in the minds of 
 nearly all white people at the idea of an indis- 
 criminate amalsramation of the white and black
 
 iS57] AT SPRIXGFIELD 23 
 
 races : and Judge Douglas eridently i? ':i-ir.~ hi- 
 chief hope upon the chances of his i r>: 1: t :: 
 appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. 
 If he can, by much drumming and repe^: r^ 
 fasten the odium of that idea upon hi 5 ^Iversa- 
 ries, he thinks he can struggle throug? :' t : -r:. 
 He therefore clings to this hope, as ^ Ir: r rr 
 man to the last plank. He makes sr :: : : - r : : r 
 lugging it in i-zrr. I'r.t :;;: i:: ::. : : - _:ri 
 Scott decision- He nnis :r.t 7 7 r.= ry.-i- 
 
 ing that the Declare::::: ::' It^t: : ^ t : ies 
 all men, black as ■ t;; 1; .;i::e. ajic :::: : v.in he 
 boldly denies ths.: :: r :. des negroe- 1: ^V.. and 
 proceeds to argje gi^.ty that all who coniend it 
 does, do so only because they want to vote, and 
 eat. and sleep, and marry with negroes ! He will 
 have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now 
 I protest against the coimterfeit logic which con- 
 cludes that, because I do not want a black woman 
 for a slave I must necessarily want ht: ::r a 
 wife. I need not have her for either. I can just 
 leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is 
 not my equal ; but in her natural right to eat the 
 bread she earns with her own hands without ask- 
 ing leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the 
 equal of all others. 
 
 Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in :hr T "t 1 
 Scott case, admits that the lang-. : t ci liie 
 Declaration is broad enough to indu : e whole 
 human family, but he and Judge D . ^ h = ?.-rue 
 that the authors of that instrumen: h :: :ji- 
 tend to include negroes, by the fact : n : :' did 
 not at once actuahy ciace them on :.:-. ~. : irv 
 with the whites. Xow this grave :.rr- : :.: 
 comes to just nothing at all. by :he : ^^r : :: 
 that they did not at once, or ever aftenv-irL :.::..-
 
 24 SPEECHES [June 26 
 
 ally place all white people on an equality with one 
 another. And this is the staple argument of both 
 the chief justice and the senator for doing this 
 obvious violence to the plain, unmistakable lan- 
 guage of the Declaration. 
 
 I think the authors of that notable instrument 
 intended to include all men, but they did not in- 
 tend to declare all men equal in all respects. They 
 did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, 
 intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. 
 They defined with tolerable distinctness in what 
 respects they did consider all men created equal 
 — equal with "certain inalienable rights, among 
 which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness." This they said, and this they meant. 
 They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth 
 that all were then actually enjoying that equality, 
 nor yet that they were about to confer it immedi- 
 ately upon them. In fact, they had no power to 
 confer such a boon. They meant simply to de- 
 clare the right, so that 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, and 
 revered by all ; constantly looked to, constantly 
 labored for, and even though never perfectly at- 
 tained, 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. The as- 
 sertion that "all men are created equal" was of 
 no practical use in effecting our separation from 
 Great Britain ; and it was placed in the Declara- 
 tion not for that, but for future use. Its authors 
 meant it to be — as, thank God, it is now proving 
 itself — a stumbling-block to all those who in after
 
 i857] AT SPRINGFIELD 25 
 
 times might seek to turn a free people back into 
 the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the 
 proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they 
 meant when such should reappear in this fair land 
 and commence their vocation, they should find 
 left for them at least one hard nut to crack. 
 
 I have now briefly expressed my view of the 
 meaning and object of that part of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence which declares that "all 
 men are created equal." 
 
 Now let us hear Judge Douglas's view of the 
 same subject, as I find it in the printed report of 
 his late speech. Here it is : 
 
 No man can vindicate the character, motives, and con- 
 duct of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
 except upon the hypothesis that they referred to the 
 white race alone, and not to the African, when they de- 
 clared all men to have been created equal; that they 
 were speaking of British subjects on this continent be- 
 ing equal to British subjects born and residing in Great 
 Britain; that they were entitled to the same inalienable 
 rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration was 
 adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the 
 eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their alle- 
 giance from the British crown, and dissolving their 
 connection with the mother country. 
 
 My good friends, read that carefully over some 
 leisure hour, and ponder well upon it ; see what a 
 mere wreck — mangled ruin — it makes of our 
 once glorious Declaration. 
 
 "They were speaking of British subjects on 
 this continent being equal to British subjects born 
 and residing in Great Britain !" Why, according 
 to this, not only negroes but white people outside 
 of Great Britain and America were not spoken of 
 in that instrument. The English, Irish, and
 
 26 SPEECHES [June 26 
 
 Scotch, along with white Americans, were in- 
 cluded, to be sure, but the French, Germans, and 
 other white people of the world are all gone to 
 pot along with the judge's inferior races ! 
 
 I had thought the Declaration promised some- 
 thing better than the condition of British sub- 
 jects ; but no, it only meant that we should be 
 equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal 
 condition. According to that, it gave no promise 
 that, having kicked off the king and lords of 
 Great Britain, we should not at once be saddled 
 with a king and lords of our own. 
 
 I had thought the Declaration contemplated 
 the progressive improvement in the condition of 
 all men everywhere; but no, it merely "was 
 adopted for the purpose of justifying the colo- 
 nists in the eyes of the civilized world in with- 
 drawing their allegiance from the British crown, 
 and dissolving their connection with the mother 
 country." Why, that object having been effected 
 some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no 
 practical use now — mere rubbish — old wadding 
 left to rot on the battle-field after the victory is 
 won. 
 
 I understand you are preparing to celebrate the 
 ''Fourth," to-morrow week. What for? The 
 doings of that day had no reference to the pres- 
 ent ; and quite half of you are not even descend- 
 ants of those who were referred to at that day. 
 But I suppose you will celebrate, and will even 
 go so far as to read the Declaration. Suppose, 
 after you read it once in the old-fashioned way, 
 you read it once more with Judge Douglas's ver- 
 sion. It will then run thus : ''We hold these 
 truths to be self-evident, that all British subjects 
 who were on this continent eighty-one years ago,
 
 i857] AT SPRINGFIELD 27 
 
 were created equal to all British subjects born 
 and then residing in Great Britain." 
 
 And now I appeal to all — to Democrats as well 
 as others — are you really willing that the Decla- 
 ration shall thus be frittered away? — thus left no 
 more, at most, than an interesting memorial of 
 the dead past? — thus shorn of its vitality and 
 practical value, and left without the germ or even 
 the suggestion of the individual rights of man 
 in it? 
 
 But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at 
 the thought of the mixing of blood by the white 
 and black races. Agreed for once — a thousand 
 times agreed. There are white men enough to 
 marry all the white women, and black men 
 enough to marry all the black women ; and so let 
 them be married. On this point we fully agree 
 with the judge, and when he shall show that his 
 policy is better adapted to prevent amalgamation 
 than ours, we shall drop ours and adopt his. Let 
 us see. In 1850 there were in the United States 
 405,751 mulattos. Very few of these are the 
 offspring of whites and free blacks ; nearly all 
 have sprung from black slaves and white mas- 
 ters. A separation of the races is the only per- 
 fect preventive of amalgamation; but as an im- 
 mediate separation is impossible, the next best 
 thing is to keep them apart where they are not 
 already together. If white and black people 
 never get together in Kansas, they will never 
 mix blood in Kansas. That is at least one self- 
 evident truth. A few free colored persons may 
 get into the free States, in any event; but their 
 number is too insignificant to amount to much 
 in the way of mixing blood. In 1850 there were 
 in the free States 56,649 mulattos; but for the
 
 28 SPEECHES [June 26 
 
 most part they were not born there — they came 
 from the slave States, ready made up. In the 
 same year the slave States had 348,874 mulattos, 
 all of home production. The proportion of free 
 mulattos to free blacks — the only colored classes 
 in the free States — is much greater in the slave 
 than in the free States. It is worthy of note, too, 
 that among the free States those which make the 
 colored man the nearest equal to the white have 
 proportionably the fewest mulattos, the least of 
 amalgamation. In New Hampshire, the State 
 which goes farthest toward equality between the 
 races, there are just 184 mulattos, while there 
 are in Virginia — how many do you think? — 79,- 
 775, being 23,126 more than in all the free States 
 together. 
 
 These statistics show that slavery is the great- 
 est source of amalgamation, and next to it, not 
 the elevation, but the degradation of the free 
 blacks. Yet Judge Douglas dreads the slightest 
 restraints on the spread of slavery, and the 
 slightest human recognition of the negro, as 
 tending horribly to amalgamiation. 
 
 The very Dred Scott case affords a strong test 
 as to which party most favors amalgamation, the 
 Republicans or the dear Union-saving Democ- 
 racy. Dred Scott, his wife, and two daughters 
 were all involved in the suit. We desired the 
 court to have held that they were citizens so far 
 at least as to entitle them to a hearing as to 
 whether they were free or not; and then, also, 
 that they were in fact and in law really free. 
 Could we have had our way, the chances of these 
 black girls ever mixing their blood with that of 
 white people would have been diminished at least 
 to the extent that it could not have been without
 
 i857] AT SPRINGFIELD 29 
 
 their consent. But Judge Douglas is delighted 
 to have them decided to be slaves, and not human 
 enough to have a hearing,* even if they were free, 
 and thus left subject to the forced concubinage 
 of their masters, and liable to become the mothers 
 of mulattos in spite of themselves : the very state 
 of case that produces nine tenths of all the mu- 
 lattos — all the mixing of blood in the nation. 
 
 Of course, I state this case as an illustration 
 only, not meaning to say or intimate that the 
 master of Dred Scott and his family, or any more 
 than a percentage of masters generally, are in- 
 clined to exercise this particular power which 
 they hold over their female slaves. 
 
 I have said that the separation of the races 
 is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation. 
 I have no right to say all the members of the 
 Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say 
 that as a party they are in favor of it. There 
 is nothing in their platform directly on the sub- 
 ject. But I can say a very large proportion of 
 its m.embers are for it, and that the chief plank in 
 their platform — opposition to the spread of 
 slavery — is most favorable to that separation. 
 
 Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be 
 effected by colonization ; and no political party, 
 as such, is now doing anything directly for colo- 
 nization. Party operations at present only favor 
 or retard colonization incidentally. The enter- 
 prise is a difficult one ; but ''where there is a will 
 there is a way," and what colonization needs 
 most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two 
 elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us 
 be brought to believe it is morally right, and at 
 the same time favorable to, or at least not against, 
 our interest to transfer the African to his native
 
 30 SPEECHES [Sept. 22 
 
 clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however 
 great the task may be. The children of Israel, 
 to such numbers as to include four hundred thou- 
 sand fighting men, went out of Egyptian bondage 
 in a body. 
 
 How differently the respective courses of the 
 Democratic and Republican parties incidentally 
 bear on the question of forming a will — a public 
 sentiment — for colonization, is easy to see. The 
 Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability 
 they can, that the negro is a man, that his bondage 
 is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppres- 
 sion ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats 
 deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignifi- 
 cance, the wrong of his bondage ; so far as pos- 
 sible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate 
 and excite hatred and disgust against him ; com- 
 pliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so ; 
 and call the indefinite outspreading of his bond- 
 age "a sacred right of self-government." 
 
 The plainest print cannot be read through a 
 gold eagle ; and it will be ever hard to find many 
 men who will send a slave to Liberia, and pay his 
 passage, while they can send him to a new coun- 
 try — Kansas, for instance — and sell him for fif- 
 teen hundred dollars, and the rise.
 
 i857] BRIDGE CASE 31 
 
 Argument in the Rock Island Bridge Case, 
 
 Extracts from a Report in the Daily Press of 
 Chicago, September 24, 1857. 
 
 THE ROCK ISLAND BRIDGE CASE. 
 
 Hurd et al. 
 
 vs. 
 
 Railroad Bridge Co. 
 
 United States Circuit Court, 
 
 Hon. John McClean, Presiding Judge. 
 
 13th day, Tuesday, September 22nd, 1857. 
 
 Mr. A. Lincoln addressed the jury. He said 
 he did not purpose to assail anybody, that he ex- 
 pected to grow earnest as he proceeded but not 
 ill-natured. ''There is some conflict of testimony 
 in the case," he said, "but one quarter of such a 
 number of witnesses seldom agree and even if 
 all were on one side, some discrepancy might be 
 expected. We are to try and reconcile them, 
 and to believe that they are not intentionally erro- 
 neous as long as we can." He had no prejudice, 
 he said, against steamboats or steamboatmen nor 
 any against St. Louis, for he supposed they went 
 about this matter as other people would do in 
 their situation. "St. Louis," he continued, "as 
 a commercial place may desire that this bridge 
 should not stand as it is adverse to her com- 
 merce, diverting a portion of it from the river; 
 and it may be that she supposes that the addi- 
 tional cost of railroad transportation upon the
 
 32 SPEECHES [Sept 22 
 
 productions of Iowa will force them to go to St. 
 Louis if this bridge is removed. The meetings 
 in St. Louis are connected with this case only 
 as some witnesses are in it and thus has some 
 prejudice added color to their testimony." 
 
 The last thing that would be pleasing to him, 
 Mr. Lincoln said, would be to have one of these 
 great channels extending almost from where it 
 never freezes to where it never thaws blocked 
 up, but there is a travel from east to west whose 
 demands are not less important than those of the 
 river. It is growing larger and larger, building 
 up new countries with a rapidity never before 
 seen in the history of the world. 
 
 He alluded to the astonishing growth of Illi- 
 nois, having grown within his memory to a popu- 
 lation of a million and a half ; to Iowa and the 
 other young rising communities of the northwest. 
 
 **This current of travel." said he, "has its 
 rights as well as that of north and south. If the 
 river had not the advantage in priority and legis- 
 lation we could enter into free competition with 
 it and we could surpass it. This particular rail- 
 road line has a great importance and the state- 
 ment of its business during a little less than a 
 year shows this importance. It is in evidence 
 that from September 8th, 1856, to August 8th, 
 1857, 12,586 freight cars and 74,179 passengers 
 passed over this bridge. Navigation was closed 
 four days short of four months last year, and 
 during this time while the river was of no use 
 this road and bridge were valuable. There is, 
 too, a considerable portion of time when floating 
 or thin ice makes the river useless while the 
 bridge is as useful as ever. This shows that this 
 bridge must be treated with respect in this court
 
 i857l BRIDGE CASE 33 
 
 and is not to be kicked about with contempt. The 
 other day Judge Wead alluded to the strike of 
 the contending interest and even a dissolution of 
 the Union. The proper mode for all parties in 
 this affair is to ''live and let live" and then we 
 will find a cessation of this trouble about the 
 bridge. What mood were the steamboat men in 
 when this bridge was burned ? Why, there was a 
 shouting and ringing of bells and whistling on all 
 the boats as it fell. It was a jubilee, a greater 
 celebration than follows an excited election. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln then proceeded to discuss the evi- 
 dence in the case. This consumed the rest of the 
 day. 
 
 On the next morning, September 14, 1857, 
 Mr. Lincoln resumed his discussion, in which he 
 designed to show that the fault lay with the man- 
 agement of the damaged boat, and was not due 
 to faulty construction of the bridge. A bridge 
 with piers, he declared, was a necessity in rail- 
 road engineering for getting across the Mississ- 
 ippi river. There was, he said, no practicability 
 in the project of building a tunnel under the 
 river, for there "is not a tunnel that is a success- 
 ful project in this world. A suspension bridge 
 cannot be built so high but that the chimneys of 
 the boats will grow up till they cannot pass. The 
 steamboat men will take pains to make them 
 grow. The cars of a railroad cannot without im- 
 mense expense rise high enough to get even with 
 a suspension bridge or go low enough to get 
 through a tunnel ; such expense is unreasonable. 
 
 ''The plaintiffs have to establish that the bridge 
 is a material obstruction and that they have man- 
 aged their boat with reasonable care and skill. 
 As to the last point, high winds have nothing to
 
 34 SPEECHES [June i6 
 
 do with it, for it was not a windy day. They 
 must show due skill and care. Difficulties going 
 down stream will not do, for they were going up 
 stream. Difficulties with barges, in tow, have 
 nothing to do with the accident, for they had no 
 barge." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln said he had much more to say, 
 many things he could suggest to the jury, but he 
 wished to close to save time. 
 
 Adjudication Rather Than Legislation the 
 Proper Method for Settlement of Certain 
 Legal Controversies* 
 
 Notes of Argument in a Railroad Case. June 
 
 15, 1858. 
 
 Legislation and adjudication must follow and 
 conform to the progress of society. The prog- 
 ress of society now begins to produce cases of 
 the transfer for debts of the entire property of 
 railroad corporations ; and to enable transferees 
 to use and enjoy the transferred property, legis- 
 lation and adjudication begin to be necessary. 
 Shall this class of legislation just now beginning 
 with us be general or special ? Section ten of our 
 Constitution requires that it should be general, 
 if possible. \^Read the section.'] Special legis- 
 lation always trenches upon the judicial depart- 
 ment, and in so far violates section two of the 
 Constitution. [Read it.] 
 
 Just reasoning — policy — is in favor of general 
 legislation, else the legislature will be loaded 
 down with the investigation of smaller cases — a 
 work which the courts ought to perform, and 
 can perform much more perfectly. How can the
 
 i858] AT SPRINGFIELD 
 
 35 
 
 legislature rightly decide the facts between P. 
 and B. and S. C. and Co.? 
 
 It is said that under a general law, whenever 
 a railroad company got tired of its debts it may 
 transfer fraudulently to get rid of them. So they 
 may — so may individuals ; and which, the legisla- 
 ture or the courts, is best suited to try the ques- 
 tion of fraud in either case? 
 
 It is said, if a purchaser have acquired legal 
 rights, let him not be robbed of them; but if he 
 needs legislation, let him submit to just terms to 
 obtain it. 
 
 Let him, say we, have general law in advance 
 (guarded in every possible way against fraud), 
 so that when he acquires a legal right he will 
 have no occasion to wait for additional legisla- 
 tion ; and if he has practised fraud, -let the courts 
 so decide. 
 
 "A House Divided Against Itself Cannot 
 
 Stand." 
 
 Speech in Acceptance of Nomination as 
 United States Senator, Made at the 
 Close of the Republican State Conven- 
 tion, Springfield, III. June i6, 1858. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Conven- 
 tion: If we could first know where we are, and 
 whither we are tending, we could better judge 
 what to do, and how to do it. 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 slavery agitation. Under the 
 operation of that policy, that agitation has not 
 only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
 
 36 SPEECHES [June i6 
 
 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 gov- 
 ernment cannot endure permanently half slave 
 and half free. I do not expect the Union to be 
 dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but 
 I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
 become all one thing, or all the other. Either 
 the opponents of slavery will arrest the further 
 spread of it, and place it where the public mind 
 shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of 
 ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will push it 
 forward till it shall become alike lawful in all 
 the States, old as well as new. North as well as 
 South. 
 
 Have we no tendency to the latter condition? 
 
 Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate 
 that now almost complete legal combination — 
 piece of machinery, so to speak — compounded of 
 the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott de- 
 cision. Let him consider not only what work 
 the machinery is adapted to do, and how well 
 adapted ; but also let him study the history of its 
 construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, 
 if he can, to trace the evidences of design and 
 concert of action among its chief architects, from 
 the beginning. 
 
 The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded 
 from more than half the States by State constitu- 
 tions, and from most of the national territory bj 
 congressional prohibition. Four days later com- 
 menced the struggle which ended in repealing 
 that congressional prohibition. This opened all 
 the national territory to slavery, and was the first 
 point gained. 
 
 But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an
 
 i8s8] AT SPRINGFIELD 37 
 
 indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was 
 indispensable to save the point already gained and 
 give chance for more. 
 
 This necessity had not been overlooked, but 
 had been provided for, as well as might be, in the 
 notable argument of ''squatter sovereignty," 
 otherwise called ''sacred right of self-govern- 
 ment," which latter phrase, though expressive of 
 the only rightful basis of any government, was so 
 perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount 
 to just this : That if any one man choose to en- 
 slave another, no third man shall be allowed to 
 object. That argument was incorporated into 
 the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which 
 follows : 'Tt being the true intent and meaning 
 of this act not to legislate slavery into any Terri- 
 tory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but 
 to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form 
 and regulate their domestic institutions in their 
 own way, subject only to the Constitution of the 
 United States." Then opened the roar of loose 
 declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty" 
 and "sacred right of self-government." "But," 
 said opposition members, "let us amend the bill 
 so as to expressly declare that the people of the 
 Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said 
 the friends of the measure ; and down they voted 
 the amendment. 
 
 While the Nebraska bill was passing through 
 Congress, a law case involving the question of a 
 negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having 
 voluntarily taken him first into a free State and 
 then into a Territory covered by the congres- 
 sional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a 
 long time in each, was passing through the 
 United States Circuit Court for the District of
 
 38 SPEECHES [June i6 
 
 Missouri ; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit 
 were brought to a decision in the same month of 
 May, 1854. The negro's name was Dred Scott, 
 which name now designates the decision finally 
 made in the case. Before the then next presi- 
 dential election, the law case came to and was 
 argued in the Supreme Court of the United 
 States ; but the decision of it was deferred until 
 after the election. Still, before the election, Sen- 
 ator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, re- 
 quested the leading advocate of the Nebraska 
 bill to state his opinion whether the people of a 
 Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery 
 from their limits ; and the latter answered : "That 
 is a question for the Supreme Court." 
 
 The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, 
 and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. 
 That was the second point gained. The indorse- 
 ment, however, fell short of a clear popular ma- 
 jority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, 
 and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable 
 and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his 
 last annual message, as impressively as possible 
 echoed back upon the people the weight and 
 authority of the indorsement. The Supreme 
 Court met again ; did not announce their decision, 
 but ordered a reargument. The presidential in- 
 auguration came, and still no decision of the 
 court ; but the incoming President in his inaugu- 
 ral address fervently exhorted the people to abide 
 by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might 
 be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. 
 
 The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds 
 an early occasion to make a speech at this capital 
 indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehe- 
 mently denouncing: all opposition to it. The new
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 39 
 
 President, too, seizes the early occasion of the 
 SilHman letter to indorse and strongly construe 
 that decision, and to express his astonishment 
 that any different view had ever been enter- 
 tained ! 
 
 At length a squabble springs up between the 
 President and the author of the Nebraska bill, 
 on the mere question of fact, whether the Le- 
 compton constitution was or was not, in any just 
 sense, made by the people of Kansas ; and in that 
 quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a 
 fair vote for the people, and that he cares not 
 whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I 
 do not understand his declaration that he cares 
 not whether slavery be voted down or voted up 
 to be intended by him other than as an apt defi- 
 nition of the policy he would impress upon the 
 public mind — the principle for which he declares 
 he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to 
 the end. And well may he cling to that principle. 
 If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling 
 to it. That principle is the only shred left of his 
 original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred 
 Scott decision ''squatter sovereignty" squatted 
 out of existence, tumbled down like temporary 
 scaffolding, — like the mold at the foundry, served 
 through one blast and fell back into loose 
 sand, — helped to carry an election, and then was 
 kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with 
 the Republicans against the Lecompton constitu- 
 tion involves nothing of the original Nebraska 
 doctrine. That struggle was made on a point — 
 the right of a people to make their own constitu- 
 tion — upon which he and the Republicans have 
 never differed. 
 
 The several points of the Dred Scott decision,
 
 40 SPEECHES [June i6 
 
 in connection with Senator Douglas's "care not'* 
 policy, constitute the piece of machinery in its 
 present state of advancement. This was the third 
 point gained. The working points of that ma- 
 chinery are : 
 
 (i) That no negro slave, imported as such 
 from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, 
 can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense 
 of that term as used in the Constitution of the 
 United States. This point is made in order to 
 deprive the negro in every possible event of the 
 benefit of that provision of the United States 
 Constitution which declares that ''the citizens of 
 each State shall be entitled to all the privileges 
 and immunities of citizens in the several States." 
 
 (2) That, "subject to the Constitution of the 
 United States," neither Congress nor a territorial 
 legislature can exclude slavery from any United 
 States Territory. This point is made in order 
 that individual men may fill up the Territories 
 with slaves, without danger of losing them as 
 property, and thus enhance the chances of per- 
 manency to the institution through all the 
 future. 
 
 (3) That whether the holding a negro in actual 
 slavery in a free State makes him free as against 
 the holder, the United States courts will not de- 
 cide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of 
 any slave State the negro may be forced into by 
 the master. This point is made not to be pressed 
 immediately, but, if acquiesced in for a while, 
 and apparently indorsed by the people at an elec- 
 tion, then to sustain the logical conclusion that 
 what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with 
 Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every 
 Other master may lawfully do with any other one
 
 i8s8] AT SPRINGFIELD 41 
 
 or one thousand slaves in Illinois or in any other 
 free State. 
 
 Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand 
 with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of 
 it, is to educate and mold public opinion, at least 
 Northern public opinion, not to care whether 
 slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows 
 exactly where we now are, and partially, also, 
 whither we are tending. 
 
 It will throw additional light on the latter, to 
 go back and run the mind over the string of his- 
 torical facts already stated. Several things will 
 now appear less dark and mysterious than they 
 did when they were transpiring. The people were 
 to be left ''perfectly free," ''subject only to the 
 Constitution." What the Constitution had to do 
 with it outsiders could not then see. Plainly 
 enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the 
 Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and 
 declare the perfect freedom of the people to be 
 just no freedom at all. Why was the amend- 
 ment expressly declaring the right of the people 
 voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption 
 of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred 
 Scott decision. Why was the court decision held 
 up? Why even a senator's individual opinion 
 withheld till after the presidential election? 
 Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would 
 have damaged the "perfectly free" argument 
 upon which the election was to be carried. Why 
 the outgoing President's felicitation on the in- 
 dorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? 
 Why the incoming President's advance exhorta- 
 tion in favor of the decision ? These things look 
 like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited 
 -horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is
 
 42 SPEECHES tjune i6 
 
 dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And 
 why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision 
 by the President and others ? 
 
 We cannot absolutely know that all these exact 
 adaptations are the result of preconcert. But 
 when we see a lot of framed timbers, different 
 portions of which we know have been gotten out 
 at different times and places and by different work- 
 men, — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for 
 instance, — and we see these timbers joined to- 
 gether, and see they exactly make the frame of 
 a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises ex- 
 actly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions 
 of the different pieces exactly adapted to their 
 respective places, and not a piece too many or too 
 few, not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single 
 piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame 
 exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece 
 in — in such a case we find it impossible not to be- 
 lieve that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and 
 James all understood one another from the be- 
 ginning, and all worked upon a common plan or 
 draft drawn up before the first blow was struck. 
 
 It should not be overlooked that, by the Ne- 
 braska bill, the people of a State as well as Ter- 
 ritory were to be left "perfectly free," "subject 
 only to the Constitution." Why mention a State ? 
 They were legislating for Territories, and not for 
 or about States. Certainly the people of a State 
 are and ought to be subject to the Constitution 
 of the United States ; but why is mention of this 
 lugged into this merely territorial law ? Why are 
 the people of a Territory and the people of a 
 State therein lumped together, and their relation 
 to the Constitution therein treated as being pre- 
 cisely the same ? While the opinion of the court.
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 43 
 
 by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, 
 and the separate opinions of all the concurring 
 judges, expressly declare that the Constitution 
 of the United States neither permits Congress 
 nor a territorial legislature to exclude slavery 
 from any United States Territory, they all omit 
 to declare whether or not the same Constitution 
 permits a State, or the people of a State, to ex- 
 clude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission ; but 
 who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had 
 sought to get into the opinion a declaration of un- 
 limited power in the people of a State to exclude 
 slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace 
 sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the 
 people of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill — I 
 ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have 
 been voted down in the one case as it had been in 
 the other ? The nearest approach to the point of 
 declaring the power of a State over slavery is 
 made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more 
 than once, using the precise idea, and almost the 
 language too, of the Nebraska act. On one occa- 
 sion his exact language is : ''Except in cases 
 where the power is restrained by the Constitution 
 of the United States, the law of the State is su- 
 preme over the subject of slavery within its juris- 
 diction." In what cases the power of the States 
 is so restrained by the United States Constitution 
 is left an open question, precisely as the same 
 question as to the restraint on the power of the 
 Territories was left open in the Nebraska act. 
 Put this and that together, and we have another 
 nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled 
 with another Supreme Court decision declaring 
 that the Constitution of the United States does 
 not permit a State to exclude slavery from its
 
 44 SPEECHES [June i6 
 
 limits. And this may especially be expected if 
 the doctrine of *'care not whether slavery be 
 voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the pub- 
 lic mind sufficiently to give promise that such a 
 decision can be maintained when made. 
 
 Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks 
 of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome, 
 or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, 
 and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the 
 present political dynasty shall be met and over- 
 thrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming 
 that the people of Missouri are on the verge of 
 making their State free, and we shall awake to 
 the reality instead that the Supreme Court has 
 made Illinois a slave State. To meet and over- 
 throw the power of that dynasty is the work now 
 before all those who would prevent that consum- 
 mation. That is what we have to do. How can 
 we best do it? 
 
 There are those who denounce us openly to 
 their own friends, and yet whisper us softly that 
 Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there 
 is with which to effect that object. They wish us 
 to infer all this from the fact that he now has a 
 little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty ; 
 and that he has regularly voted with us on a 
 single point upon which he and we have never 
 differed. They remind us that he is a great man, 
 and that the largest of us are very small ones. 
 Let this be granted. But ''a living dog is better 
 than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead 
 Hon for this work, is at least a caged and tooth- 
 less one. How can he oppose the advances of 
 slavery? He don't care anything about it. His 
 avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" 
 to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas
 
 i8s8] AT SPRINGFIELD 
 
 45 
 
 Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior 
 talent will be needed to resist the revival of the 
 African slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an 
 effort to revive that trade is approaching? He 
 has not said so. Does he really think so? But 
 if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has 
 labored to prove it a sacred right of white men 
 to take negro slaves into the new Territories. 
 Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right 
 to buy them where they can be bought cheapest ? 
 And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper 
 in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in 
 his power to reduce the whole question of slavery 
 to one of a mere right of property; and as such, 
 how can he oppose the foreign slave-trade? How 
 can he refuse that trade in that ''property" shall 
 be "perfectly free," unless he does it as a pro- 
 tection to the home production? And as the 
 home producers will probably not ask the pro- 
 tection, he v/ill be wholly without a ground of 
 opposition. 
 
 Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man 
 may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yes- 
 terday — that he may rightfully change when he 
 finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, 
 run ahead, and infer that he will make any par- 
 ticular change of which he, himself, has given no 
 intimation ? Can we safely base our action upon 
 any such vague inference ? Now, as ever, I wish 
 not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, 
 question his motives, or do aught that can be per- 
 sonally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he 
 and we can come together on principle so that 
 our great cause may have assistance from his 
 great ability, I hope to have interposed no ad- 
 ventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now
 
 46 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 with us — he does not pretend to be — he does not 
 promise ever to be. 
 
 Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and con- 
 ducted by, its own undoubted friends — those 
 whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the 
 work, who do care for the result. Two years ago 
 the Republicans of the nation mustered over thir- 
 teen hundred thousand strong. We did this un- 
 der the single impulse of resistance to a common 
 danger, with every external circumstance against 
 us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile ele- 
 ments, we gathered from the four winds, and 
 formed and fought the battle through, under the 
 constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and 
 pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter 
 now ? — now, when that same enemy is wavering, 
 dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not 
 doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand firm, 
 we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate 
 or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later, the vic- 
 tory is sure to come. 
 
 The Law of Equal Freedom. 
 
 Speech at Chicago, III. July io, 1858. 
 
 My Fellow-citizens: On yesterday evening, 
 upon the occasion of the reception given to Sen- 
 ator Douglas, I was furnished with a seat very 
 convenient for hearing him, and was otherwise 
 very courteously treated by him and his friends, 
 and for which I thank him and them. During 
 the course of his remarks my name was rnen- 
 tioned in such a way as, I suppose, renders it at 
 least not improper that I should make some sort
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 47 
 
 of reply to him. I shall not attempt to follow 
 the Senator in the precise order in which he 
 addressed the assembled multitude upon that 
 occasion, though I shall perhaps do so in the 
 main. 
 
 There was one question to which he asked the 
 attention of the crowd, which I deem of some- 
 what less importance — at least of propriety for 
 me to dwell upon — than the others, which he 
 brought in near the close of his speech, and which 
 I think it would not be entirely proper for me to 
 omit attending to ; and yet if I were not to give 
 some attention to it now, I should probably forget 
 it altogether. While I am upon this subject, al- 
 low me to say that I do not intend to indulge in 
 that inconvenient mode sometimes adopted in 
 public speaking, of reading from documents ; but 
 I shall depart from that rule so far as to read a 
 little scrap from his speech, which notices this 
 first topic of which I shall speak — that is, pro- 
 vided I can find it in the paper. 
 
 I have made up my mind to appeal to the people 
 against the combination that has been made against me. 
 The Republican leaders have formed an alliance, an 
 unholy and unnatural alliance, with a portion of un- 
 scrupulous federal office-holders. I intend to fight that 
 allied army wherever I meet them. I know th-ey deny 
 the alliance, but yet these men who are trying to divide 
 the Democratic party for the purpose of electing a Re- 
 publican senator in my place, are just so much the 
 agents and tools of the supporters of Mr. Lincoln. 
 Hence I shall deal with this allied army just as the 
 Russians dealt with the allies at Sebastopol — that is, 
 the Russians did not stop to inquire, when they fired 
 a broadside, whether it hit an Englishman, a French- 
 man, or a Turk. Nor will I stop to inquire, nor shall 
 I hesitate, whether my blows shall hit these Republican 
 leaders or their allies, who are holding the federal 
 offices and yet acting in concert with them.
 
 48 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 Well, now, gentlemen, is not that very alarm- 
 ing ? Just to think of it ! right at the outset of his 
 canvass, I, a poor, kind, amiable, intelligent gen- 
 tlemen — I am to be slain in this way. Why, my 
 friend the judge is not only, as it turns out, not 
 a dead lion, nor even a living one — he is the 
 rugged Russian bear. 
 
 But if they will have it — for he says that we 
 deny it — that there is any such alliance, as he 
 says there is, — and I don't propose hanging very 
 much upon this question of veracity, — but if he 
 will have it that there is such an alliance, that 
 the administration men and we are allied, and we 
 stand in the attitude of English, French, and 
 Turk, he occupying the position of the Russian, 
 — in that case I beg he will indulge us while we 
 barely suggest to him that these allies took Se- 
 bastopol. 
 
 Gentlemen, only a few more words as to this 
 alliance. For my part, I have to say that whether 
 there be such an alliance depends, so far as I 
 know, upon what may be a right definition of the 
 term alliance. If for the Republican party to see 
 the other great party to which they are opposed 
 divided among themselves and not try to stop the 
 division, and rather be glad of it, — if that is an 
 alliance, I confess I am in it ; but if it is meant to 
 be said that the Republicans had formed an alli- 
 ance going beyond that, by which there is contri- 
 bution of money or sacrifice of principle on the one 
 side or the other, so far as the Republican party 
 is concerned, if there be any such thing, I pro- 
 test that I neither know anything of it nor do I 
 believe it. I will, however, say — as I think this 
 branch of the argument is lugged in — I would 
 before I leave H state, for the benefit of those
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 49 
 
 concerned, that one of those same Buchanan men 
 did once tell me of an argument that he made for 
 his opposition to Judge Douglas. He said that a 
 friend of our Senator Douglas had been talking 
 to him, and had among other things said to him : 
 ''Why, you don't want to beat Douglas ?" ''Yes," 
 said he, "I do want to beat him, and I will tell 
 you why. I believe his original Nebraska bill 
 was right in the abstract, but it was wrong in the 
 time that it was brought forward. It was wrong 
 in the application to a Territory in regard to 
 which the question had been settled; it v/as 
 brought forward at a time when nobody asked 
 him ; it was tendered to the South when the South 
 had not asked for it, but when they could not well 
 refuse it ; and for this same reason he forced that 
 question upon our party. It has sunk the best 
 men all over the nation, everywhere ; and nov/ 
 when our President, struggling with the diffi- 
 culties of this man's getting up, has reached the 
 very hardest point to turn in the case, he deserts 
 him, and I am for putting him where he will 
 trouble us no more." 
 
 Now, gentlemen, that is not my argument — 
 that is not my argument at all. I have only been 
 stating to you the argument of a Buchanan man. 
 You will judge if there is any force in it. 
 
 Popular sovereignty ! everlasting popular sov- 
 ereignty ! Let us for a iViOment inquire into this 
 vast matter of popular sovereignty. What is 
 popular sovereignty? We recollect that at an 
 early period in the history of this struggle, there 
 was another name for the same thing — squatter 
 sovereignty. It was not exactly popular sover- 
 eignty, but squatter sovereignty. What did 
 those terms mean? What do those terms
 
 50 SPEECHES rjuly lo 
 
 mean when used now? And vast credit 
 is taken by our friend the judge in regard 
 to his support of it, when he declares the last 
 years of his life have been, and all the future 
 years of his life shall be, devoted to this matter 
 of popular sovereignty. What is it? Why, it is 
 the sovereignty of the people ! What was squat- 
 ter sovereignty? I suppose if it had any 
 significance at all, it was the right of the people 
 to govern themselves, to be sovereign in their 
 own affairs while they were squatted down in a 
 country not their own, while they had squatted 
 on a Territory that did not belong to them, in the 
 sense that a State belongs to the people who in- 
 habit it — when it belonged to the nation — such 
 right to govern themselves was called "squatter 
 sovereignty." 
 
 Now I wish you to mark what has become of 
 that squatter sovereignty. What has become of 
 it ? Can you get anybody to tell you now that the 
 people of a Territory have any authority to gov- 
 ern themselves, in regard to this mooted question 
 of slavery, before they form a State constitution ? 
 No such thing at all, although there is a general 
 running fire, and although there has been a hur- 
 rah made in every speech on that side, assuming 
 that policy had given the people of a Territory 
 the right to govern themselves upon this ques- 
 tion ; yet the point is dodged. To-day it has been 
 decided — no more than a year ago it was decided 
 by the Supreme Court of the United States, and 
 is insisted upon to-day — that the people of a Ter- 
 ritory have no right to exclude slavery from a 
 Territory ; that if any one man chooses to take 
 slaves into a Territory, all the rest of the people 
 have no right to keep them out. This being so,
 
 i8:8] AT CHICAGO 51 
 
 and this decision being made one of the points 
 that the judge approved, and one in the approval 
 of which he says he means to keep me down — put 
 me down I should not say, for I have never been 
 up ; he says he is in favor of it, and sticks to it, 
 and expects to win his battle on that decision, 
 which says that there is no such thing as squatter 
 sovereignty, but that any one man may take 
 slaves into a Territory, and all the other men in 
 the Territory may be opposed to it, and yet by 
 reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit 
 it. When that is so, how much is left of this vast 
 matter of squatter sovereignty, I should like to 
 know? 
 
 When we get back, we get to the point of the 
 right of the people to make a constitution. Kan- 
 sas was settled, for example, in 1854. It was a 
 Territory yet, without having formed a constitu- 
 tion, in a very regular way, for three years. All 
 this time negro slavery could be taken in by any 
 few individuals, and by that decision of the Su- 
 preme Court, which the judge approves, all the 
 rest of the people cannot keep it out ; but when 
 they come to make a constitution they may say 
 they will not have slavery. But it is there ; they 
 are obliged to tolerate it some way, and all ex- 
 perience shows it will be so — for they will not 
 take the negro slaves and absolutely deprive the 
 owners of them. All experience shows this to be 
 so. All that space of time that runs from the 
 beginning of the settlement of the Territory un- 
 til there is sufficiency of people to make a State 
 constitution — all that portion of time popular 
 sovereignty is given up. The seal is absolutely 
 put down upon it by the court decision, and Judge 
 Douglas puts his own upon the top of that; yet 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY
 
 52 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 he is appealing to the people to give him vast 
 credit for his devotion to popular sovereignty. 
 
 Again, when we get to the question of the 
 right of the people to form a State constitution 
 as they please, to form it with slavery or without 
 slavery — if that is anything new, I confess I don't 
 know it. Has there ever been a time when any- 
 body said that any other than the people of a 
 Territory itself should form a constitution? 
 What is now in it that Judge Douglas should 
 have fought several years of his life, and pledge 
 himself to fight all the remxaining years of his life, 
 for? Can Judge Douglas find anybody on earth 
 that said that anybody else should form a consti- 
 tution for a people? [A voice: ''Yes."] Well, 
 I should like you to name him ; I should like to 
 know who he was. [Same voice: "John Cal- 
 houn."] No, sir; I never heard of even John 
 Calhoun saying such a thing. He insisted on the 
 same principle as Judge Douglas ; but his mode 
 of applying it, in fact, was wrong. It is enough 
 for my purpose to ask this crowd whenever a Re- 
 publican said anything against it? They never 
 said anything against it, but they have constantly 
 spoken for it; and whosoever will undertake to 
 examine the platform and the speeches of re- 
 sponsible men of the party, and of irresponsible 
 men, too, if you please, will be unable to find one 
 word from anybody in the Republican ranks op- 
 posed to that popular sovereignty which Judge 
 Douglas thinks he has invented. I suppose that 
 Judge Douglas will claim in a little while that he 
 is the inventor of the idea that the people should 
 govern themselves ; that nobody ever thought of 
 such a thing until he brought it forward. We do 
 not remember that in that old Declaration of In-
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 53 
 
 dependence it is said that '*We hold these truths 
 to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; 
 that they are endowed by their Creator with cer- 
 tain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that to se- 
 cure these rights, governments are instituted 
 among men, deriving their just powers from the 
 consent of the governed." There is the origin 
 of popular sovereignty. Who, then, shall come 
 in at this day and claim that he invented it? 
 
 The Lecompton constitution connects itself 
 with this question, for it is in this matter of the 
 Lecompton constitution that our friend Judge 
 Douglas claims such vast credit. I agree that in 
 opposing the Lecompton constitution, so far as I 
 can perceive, he was right. I do not deny that at 
 all ; and, gentlemen, you will readily see why I 
 could not deny it, even if I wanted to. But I do 
 not wish to ; for all the Republicans in the nation 
 opposed it, and they would have opposed it just 
 as much without Judge Douglas's aid as with it. 
 They had all taken ground against it, long before 
 he did. Why, the reason that he urges against that 
 constitution I urged against him a year before. I 
 have the printed speech in my hand. The argu- 
 ment that he makes why that constitution should 
 not be adopted, that the people were not fairly 
 represented nor allowed to vote, I pointed out in 
 a speech a year ago, which I hold in my hand 
 now, that no fair chance was to be given to the 
 people. Y'Read it; read it."'\ I shall not waste 
 your time by trying to read it. ["Read it; read 
 it."] Gentlemen, reading from speeches is a very 
 tedious business, particularly for an old man who 
 has to put on spectacles, and more so if the man 
 be so tall that he has to bend over to the light.
 
 54 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 A little more now as to this matter of popular 
 sovereignty and the Lecompton constitution. The 
 Lecompton constitution, as the judge tells us, was 
 defeated. The defeat of it was a good thing, or 
 it was not. He thinks the defeat of it was a good 
 thing, and so do I, and we agree in that. Who 
 defeated it? \^A voice: "Judge Douglas/'] Yes, 
 he furnished himself, and if you suppose he con- 
 trolled the other Democrats that went with him, 
 he furnished three votes, while the Republicans 
 furnished twenty. 
 
 That is what he did to defeat it. In the House 
 of Representatives he and his friends furnished 
 some twenty votes, and the Republicans fur- 
 nished ninety odd. Now, who was it that did 
 the work? [A voice: "Douglas/'] Why, yes, 
 Douglas did it ! To be sure he did. 
 
 Let us, however, put that proposition another 
 way. The Republicans could not have done it 
 without Judge Douglas. Could he have done it 
 without them ? Which could have come the near- 
 est to doing it without the other? [A voice: 
 ''Who killed the hill?" Another voice: "Doug- 
 las/'] Ground was taken against it by the Re- 
 publicans long before Douglas did it. The pro- 
 portion of opposition to that measure is about 
 five to one. [A voice: "Why don't they come out 
 on it?"] You don't know what you are talking 
 about, my friend. I am quite willing to answer 
 any gentleman in the crowd who asks an intelli- 
 gent question. 
 
 Now, who, in all this country, has ever found 
 any of our friends of Judge Douglas's way of 
 thinking, and who have acted upon this main 
 question, that have ever thought of uttering a 
 word in behalf of Judge Trumbull? \^A voice:
 
 1858] AT CHICAGO 55 
 
 ''We have."] I defy you to show a printed reso- 
 lution passed in a Democratic meetin^^. I take it 
 upon myself to defy any man to show a printed 
 resolution of a Democratic meeting, large or 
 small, in favor of Judge Trumbull, or any of the 
 five to one Republicans who beat that bill. Every- 
 thing m.ust be for the Democrats ! They did 
 everything, and the five to one that really did 
 the thing they snub over, and they do not seem to 
 remember that they have an existence upon the 
 face of the earth. 
 
 Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious. 
 I leave this branch of the subject to take hold of 
 another. I take up that part of Judge Douglas's 
 speech in which he respectfully attended to me. 
 
 Judge Douglas made two points upon my re- 
 cent speech at Springfield. He says they are to 
 be the issues of this campaign. The first one of 
 these points he bases upon the language in a 
 speech which I delivered at Springfield, which I 
 believe I can quote correctly from memory. I 
 said there that "we are now far into the fifth 
 year since a policy was instituted for the avowed 
 object and with the confident promise of putting 
 an end to slavery agitation ; under the operation 
 of that policy, that agitation has not only not 
 ceased, but has constantly augmented. I believe 
 it v/ill not cease until a crisis shall have been 
 reached and passed. 'A house divided against 
 itself cannot stand.' I believe this government 
 cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
 free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved" 
 — I am quoting from my speech — 'T 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
 
 56 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 arrest the further spread of it, and place it where 
 the pubHc mind shall rest in the belief that it is in 
 the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates 
 will push it forward until it shall become alike 
 lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North 
 as well as South." 
 
 That is the paragraph! In this paragraph 
 which I have quoted in your hearing, and to 
 which I ask the attention of all. Judge Douglas 
 thinks he discovers great political heresy. I want 
 your attention particularly to what he has in- 
 ferred from it. He says I am in favor of mak- 
 ing all the States of this Union uniform in al] 
 their internal regulations ; that in all their domes- 
 tic concerns I am in favor of making them en- 
 tirely uniform. He draws this inference from the 
 language I have quoted to you. He says that I 
 am in favor of making war by the North upon 
 the South for the extinction of slavery; that I 
 am also in favor of inviting (as he expresses it) 
 the South to a war upon the North, for the pur- 
 pose of nationalizing slavery. Now, it is singu- 
 lar enough, if you will carefully read that passage 
 over, that I did not say that I was in favor of 
 anything in it. I only said what I expected would 
 take place. I made a prediction only — it may 
 have been a foolish one, perhaps. I did not even 
 say that I desired that slavery should be put in 
 course of ultimate extinction. I do say so, now, 
 however, so there need be no longer any difficulty 
 about that. It may be written down in the great 
 speech. 
 
 Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that 
 this speech of mine was probably carefully pre- 
 pared. I admit that it was. I am not master of 
 language ; I have not a fine education ; I am not
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 57 
 
 capable of entering into a disquisition upon dia- 
 lectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not be- 
 lieve the language I employed bears any such 
 construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. But 
 I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. 
 I know what I meant, and I will not leave this 
 crowd in doubt, if I can explain it to them, what 
 I really meant in the use of that paragraph. 
 
 I am not, in the first place, unaware that this 
 government has endured eighty-two years half 
 slave and half free. I know that. I am toler- 
 ably well acquainted with the history of the coun- 
 try, and I know that it has endured eighty-two 
 years half slave and half free. I believe — and 
 that is what I meant to allude to there — I beheve 
 it has endured because during all that time, until 
 the introduction of the Nebraska bill, the public 
 mind did rest all the time in the belief that slavery 
 was in course of ultimate extinction. That was 
 what gave us the rest that we had through that 
 period of eighty-two years ; at least, so I believe. 
 I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as 
 any Abolitionist — I have been an old-line Whig — 
 I have always hated it, but I have always been 
 quiet about it until this new era of the introduc- 
 tion of the Nebraska bill began. I always be- 
 lieved that everybody was against it, and that it 
 was in course of ultimate extinction. [Pointing 
 to Mr. Browning, who stood near hy,'\ Brown- 
 ing thought so ; the great mass of the nation have 
 rested in the belief that slavery was in course of 
 ultimate extinction. They had reason so to 
 believe. 
 
 The adoption of the Constitution and its at- 
 tendant history led the people to believe so, and 
 that such was the belief of the framers of the
 
 58 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 Constitution itself. Why did those old men, 
 about the time of the adoption of the Constitu- 
 tion, decree that slavery should not go into the 
 new Territory, where it had not already gone? 
 Why declare that within twenty years the Afri- 
 can slave-trade, by which slaves are supplied, 
 might be cut off by Congress? Why were all 
 these acts? I might enumerate more of these 
 acts — but enough. What were they but a clear 
 indication that the framers of the Constitution 
 intended and expected the ultimate extinction of 
 that institution? And now, when I say, — as I 
 said in my speech that Judge Douglas has quoted 
 from, — when I say that I think the opponents of 
 slavery will resist the farther spread of it, and 
 place it where the public mind shall rest in the 
 belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, 
 I only mean to say that they will place it where 
 the founders of this government originally placed 
 it. 
 
 I have said a hundred times, and I have now 
 no inclination to take it back, that I believe there 
 is no right and ought to be no inclination in the 
 people of the free States to enter into the slave 
 States and interfere with the question of slavery 
 at all. I have said that always ; Judge Douglas 
 has heard me say it — if not quite a hundred times, 
 at least as good as a hundred times ; and when it 
 is said that I am in favor of interfering with 
 slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted 
 by anything I have ever intended, and, as I be- 
 lieve, by anything I have ever said. If by any 
 means I have ever used language which could 
 fairly be so construed (as, however, I believe I 
 never have), I now correct it. 
 
 So much, then, for the inference that Judge
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 59 
 
 Douglas draws, that I am in favor of setting the 
 sections at war with one another. I know that I 
 never meant any such thing, and I beheve that no 
 fair mind can infer any such thing from any- 
 thing I have ever said. 
 
 Now in relation to his inference that I am in 
 favor of a general consolidation of all the local 
 institutions of the various States. I will attend to 
 that for a little while, and try to inquire, if I can, 
 how on earth it could be that any man could draw 
 such an inference from anything I said. I have 
 said very many times in Judge Douglas's hear- 
 ing that no man believed more than I in the 
 principle of self-government; that it lies at the 
 bottom of all my ideas of just government from 
 beginning to end. I have denied that his use of 
 that term applies properly. But for the thing it- 
 self I deny that any man has ever gone ahead 
 of me in his devotion to the principle, whatever 
 he may have done in efficiency in advocating it. 
 I think that I have said it in your hearing — that 
 I believe each individual is naturally entitled to 
 do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his 
 labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any 
 other man's rights; that each community, as a 
 State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with 
 all the concerns within that State that interfere 
 with the right of no other State; and that the 
 General Government, upon principle, has no right 
 to interfere with anything other than that general 
 class of things that does concern the whole. I 
 have said that at all times. I have said as 
 illustrations that I do not believe in the right of 
 Illinois to interfere with the cranberry laws of 
 Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia, or the liquor 
 laws of Maine. I have said these things over and
 
 6o SPEECHES tjuly lo 
 
 over again, and I repeat them here as my senti- 
 ments. 
 
 How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, be- 
 cause I hope to see slavery put where the public 
 mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course 
 of ultimate extinction, that I am in favor of Illi- 
 nois going over and interfering with the cran- 
 berry laws of Indiana ? What can authorize him 
 to draw any such inference? I suppose there 
 might be one thing that at least enabled him to 
 draw such an inference that would not be true 
 with me or many others ; that is, because he looks 
 upon all this matter of slavery as an exceedingly 
 little thing — this matter of keeping one sixth of 
 the population of the whole nation in a state of 
 oppression and tyranny unequaled in the world. 
 He looks upon it as being an exceedingly little 
 thing, only equal to the question of the cranberry 
 laws of Indiana — as something having no moral 
 question in it — as something on a par with the 
 question of whether a man shall pasture his land 
 with cattle or plant it with tobacco — so little and 
 so small a thing that he concludes, if I could de- 
 sire that anything should be done to bring about 
 the ultimate extinction of that little thing, I must 
 be in favor of bringing about an amalgamation 
 of all the other little things in the Union. Now, 
 it so happens — and there, I presume, is the foun- 
 dation of this mistake — that the judge thinks 
 thus; and it so happens that there is a vast por- 
 tion of the American people that do not look upon 
 that matter as being this very little thing. They 
 look upon it as a vast moral evil ; they can prove 
 it as such by the writings of those who gave us 
 the blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and that 
 they so looked upon it, and not as an evil merely
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 6i 
 
 confining itself to the States where it is situated ; 
 and while we agree that, by the Constitution we 
 assented to, in the States where it exists we have 
 no right to interfere with it, because it is in the 
 Constitution, we are by both duty and inclination 
 to stick by that Constitution in all its letter and 
 spirit from beginning to end. 
 
 So much, then, as to my disposition — my wish 
 — to have all the State legislatures blotted out, 
 and to have one consolidated government, and a 
 uniformity of domestic regulations in all the 
 States ; by which I suppose it is meant, if we raise 
 corn here, we must make sugar cane grow here 
 too, and we must make those which grow North 
 grow in the South. All this I suppose he under- 
 stands I am in favor of doing. Now, so much 
 for all this nonsense — for I must call it so. The 
 judge can have no issue with me on a question of 
 establishing uniformity in the domestic regula- 
 tions of the States. 
 
 A little now on the other point — the Dred Scott 
 decision. Another of the issues he says that is 
 to be made with me, is upon his devotion to 
 the Dred Scott decision, and my opposition 
 to it. 
 
 I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, 
 my opposition to the Dred Scott decision; but I 
 should be allowed to state the nature of that op- 
 position, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. 
 What is fairly implied by the term Judge Doug- 
 las has used, "resistance to the decision"? I do 
 not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott 
 from his master, I would be interfering with 
 property, and that terrible difficulty that Judge 
 Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, 
 would arise. But I am doing no such thing as
 
 62 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 that ; all that I am doing is refusing to obey it as 
 a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a 
 vote should come up on a question whether 
 slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory, 
 in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote 
 that it should. 
 
 That is what I would do. Judge Douglas said 
 last night that before the decision he might ad- 
 vance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the 
 decision when it was made ; but after it was made 
 he would abide by it until it was reversed. Just 
 so! We let this property abide by the decision, 
 but we will try to reverse that decision. We will 
 try to put it where Judge Douglas would not ob- 
 ject, for he says he will obey it until it is reversed. 
 Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is 
 made ; and we mean to reverse it, and we mean 
 to do it peaceably. 
 
 What are the uses of decisions of courts? 
 They have two uses. As rules of property they 
 have two uses. First — they decide upon the 
 question before the court. They decide in this 
 case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody resists 
 that. Not only that, but they say to everybody 
 else that persons standing just as Dred Scott 
 stands are as he is. That is, they say that when a 
 question comes up upon another person, it will be 
 so decided again, unless the court decides in an- 
 other way, unless the court overrules its decision. 
 Well, we mean to do what we can to have the 
 court decide the other way. That is one thing 
 wt mean to try to do. 
 
 The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws 
 around this decision is a degree of sacredness 
 that has never been before thrown around any 
 other decision. I have never heard of such a
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 63 
 
 thing. Why, decisions apparently contrary to 
 that^ decision, or that good lawyers thought 
 were contrary to that decision, have been 
 made by that very court before. It is the 
 first of its kind; it is an astonisher in legal 
 history. It is a new wonder of the world. 
 It is based upon falsehood in the main as to 
 the facts, — allegations of facts upon which it 
 stands are not facts at all in many instances, — 
 and no decision made on any question — the first 
 instance of a decision made under so many un- 
 favorable circumstances — thus placed, has ever 
 been held by the profession as law, and it has al- 
 ways needed confirmation before the lawyers re- 
 garded it as settled law. But Judge Douglas 
 will have it that all hands must take this extraor- 
 dinary decision, made under these extraordi- 
 nary circumstances, and give their vote in Con- 
 gress in accordance with it, yield to it and obey it 
 in every possible sense. Circumstances alter 
 cases. Do not gentlemen here remember the case 
 of that same Supreme Court, somie twenty-five or 
 thirty years ago, deciding that a national bank 
 was constitutional? I ask if somebody does not 
 remember that a national bank was declared to 
 be constitutional? Such is the truth, whether it 
 be remembered or not. The bank charter ran 
 out, and a recharter was granted by Congress. 
 That recharter was laid before General Jackson. 
 It was urged upon him, when he denied the con- 
 stitutionality of the bank, that the Supreme Court 
 had decided that it was constitutional ; and Gen- 
 eral Jackson then said that the Supreme Court 
 had no right to lay down a rule to govern a co- 
 ordinate branch of the government, the members 
 of which had sworn to support the Constitution —
 
 64 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 that each member had sworn to support that 
 Constitution as he understood it. I will venture 
 here to say that I have heard Judge Douglas say 
 that he approved of General Jackson for that act. 
 What has now become of all his tirade against 
 ''resistance to the Supreme Court"? 
 
 My fellow-citizens, getting back a little, for I 
 pass from these points, when Judge Douglas 
 makes his threat of annihilation upon the ''alli- 
 ance," he is cautious to say that that warfare of 
 his is to fall upon the leaders of the Republican 
 party. Almost every word he utters, and every 
 distinction he makes, has its significance. He 
 means for the Republicans who do not count 
 themselves as leaders to be his friends ; he makes 
 no fuss over them; it is the leaders that he is 
 making war upon. He wants it understood that 
 the mass of the Republican party are really his 
 friends. It is only the leaders that are doing 
 something, that are intolerant, and require ex- 
 termination at his hands. As this is clearly and 
 unquestionably the light in which he presents 
 that m.atter, I want to ask your attention, ad- 
 dressing myself to Republicans here, that I may 
 ask you somie questions as to where you, as the 
 Republican party, would be placed if you sus- 
 tained Judge Douglas in his present position by a 
 reelection? I do not claim, gentlemen, to be un- 
 selfish ; I do not pretend that I would not like to 
 go to the United States Senate; I make no such 
 hypocritical pretense, but I do say to you that in 
 this mighty issue, it is nothing to you — nothing 
 to the mass of the people of the nation — whether 
 or not Judge Douglas or myself shall ever be 
 heard of after this night ; it may be a trifle to 
 either of us, but in connection with this mighty
 
 i858] 'AT CHICAGO 65 
 
 question, upon which hang the destinies of the 
 nation, perhaps, it is absolutely nothing. But 
 where will you be placed if you reindorse Judge 
 Douglas? Don't you know how apt he is — how 
 exceedingly anxious he is at all times to seize 
 upon anything and everything to persuade you 
 that something he has done you did yourselves? 
 Why, he tried to persuade you last night that our 
 Illinois legislature instructed him to introduce the 
 Nebraska bill. There was nobody in that legisla- 
 ture ever thought of such a thing; and when he 
 first introduced the bill, he never thought of it; 
 but still he fights furiously for the proposition, 
 and that he did it because there was a standing 
 instruction to our senators to be always introdu- 
 cing Nebraska bills. He tells you he is for the 
 Cincinnati platform; he tells you he is for the 
 Dred Scott decision. He tells you, not in his 
 speech last night, but substantially in a former 
 speech, that he cares not if slavery is voted up or 
 down ; he tells you the struggle on Lecompton is 
 past — it may come up again or not, and if it does 
 he stands where he stood when in spite of him 
 and his opposition you built up the Republican 
 party. If you indorse him, you tell him you do 
 not care whether slavery be voted up or down, 
 and he will close, or try to close, your mouths 
 with his declaration, repeated by the day, the 
 week, the month, and the year. I think, in the 
 position in which Judge Douglas stood in oppos- 
 ing the Lecompton constitution, he was right; 
 he does not know that it will return, but if it does 
 we may know where to find him, and if it does 
 not we may know where to look for him, and that 
 is on the Cincinnati platform. Now I could ask 
 the Republican party, after all the hard names
 
 66 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 Judge Douglas has called them by, all his re- 
 peated charges of their inclination to marry with 
 and hug negroes, all his declarations of Black 
 Republicanism, — by the way, we are improving, 
 the black has got rubbed off, — but with all that, 
 if he be indorsed by Republican votes, where do 
 you stand? Plainly, you stand ready saddled, 
 bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven 
 over to the slavery extension camp of the nation, 
 — just ready to be driven over, tied together in 
 a lot, — to be driven over, every man with a 
 rope around his neck, that halter being held by 
 Judge Douglas. That is the question. If Repub- 
 lican men have been in earnest in what they have 
 done, I think they had better not do it; but I 
 think the Republican party is made up of those 
 who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose 
 the extension of slavery, and who will hope for 
 its ultimate extinction. If they believe it is wrong 
 in grasping up the new lands of the continent, and 
 keeping them from the settlem.ent of free white 
 laborers, who want the land to bring up their 
 families upon ; if they are in earnest, although 
 they may make a mistake, they will grow restless, 
 and the time will come when they will come back 
 again and reorganize, if not by the same name, 
 at least upon the same principles as their party 
 now has. It is better, then, to save the work 
 while it is begun. You have done the labor; 
 maintain it, keep it. If men choose to serve you, 
 go with them; but as you have made up your 
 organization upon principle, stand by it; for, as 
 surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired 
 your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, 
 and continues to give you hope, so surely will you 
 still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 67 
 
 back again after your wanderings, merely to do 
 your work over again. 
 
 We were often — more than once at least — in 
 the course of Judge Douglas's speech last night 
 reminded that this government was made for 
 white men — that he believed it was made for 
 white men. Well, that is putting it into a shape 
 in which no one wants to deny it; but the judge 
 then goes into his passion for drawing inferences 
 that are not warranted. I protest now and for- 
 ever, against that counterfeit logic which pre- 
 sumes that because I do not want a negro woman 
 for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. 
 My understanding is that I need not have her for 
 either ; but, as God made us separate, we can 
 leave one another alone, and do one another much 
 good thereby. There are white men enough to 
 marry all the white women, and enough black 
 men to marry all the black women, and in God's 
 name let them be so married. The judge regales 
 us with the terrible enormities that take place by 
 the mixture of races ; that the inferior race bears 
 the superior down. Why, judge, if we do not let 
 them get together in the Territories, they won't 
 mix there. [A voice: ''Three cheers for Lin- 
 coln T The cheers were given with a hearty 
 good zvilL] I should say at least that that is a 
 self-evident truth. 
 
 Now, it happens that we meet together once 
 every year, somewhere about the 4th of July, for 
 some reason or other. These 4th of July gather- 
 ings I suppose have their uses. If you will in- 
 dulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some 
 of them. 
 
 We are now a mighty nation : we are thirty, 
 or about thirty, millions of people, and we own
 
 68 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 and inhabit about one fifteenth part of the dry- 
 land of the whole earth. We run our memory 
 back over the pages of history for about eighty- 
 two years, and we discover that we were then a 
 very small people, in point of numbers vastly 
 inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less 
 extent of country, with vastly less of everything 
 we deem desirable among men. We look upon 
 the change as exceedingly advantageous to us 
 and to our posterity, and we fix upon something 
 that happened away back as in some way or other 
 being connected with this rise of prosperity. We 
 find a race of men living in that day whom we 
 claim as our fathers and grandfathers ; they were 
 iron men ; they fought for the principle that they 
 were contending for ; and we understood that by 
 what they then did it has followed that the de- 
 gree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come 
 to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind 
 ourselves of all the good done in this process of 
 time, of how it was done and who did it, and how 
 we are historically connected with it; and we go 
 from these meetings in better humor with our- 
 selves — we feel more attached the one to the 
 other, and more firmly bound to the country we 
 inhabit. In every way we are better men, in the 
 age, and race, and country in which we live, for 
 these celebrations. But after we have done all 
 this, we have not yet reached the whole. There 
 is something else connected with it. We have, 
 besides these men — descended by blood from our 
 ancestors — among us, perhaps half our people 
 who are not descendants at all of these men ; they 
 are men who have come from Europe, — German, 
 Irish, French, and Scandinavian, — men that have 
 come from Europe themselves, or whose ances-
 
 i858] AT CHICAGO 69 
 
 tors have come hither and settled here, finding 
 themselves our equal in all things. If they look 
 back through this history to trace their connec- 
 tion with those days by blood, they find they have 
 none ; they cannot carry themselves back into 
 that glorious epoch and make themselves feel 
 that they are part of us ; but when they look 
 through that old Declaration of Independence, 
 they find that those old men say that "We hold 
 these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
 created equal," and then they feel that that moral 
 sentiment taught in that day evidences their rela- 
 tion to those men, that it is the father of all moral 
 principle in them, and that they have a right to 
 claim it as though they were blood of the blood, 
 and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that 
 Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric 
 cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of 
 patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that 
 will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love 
 of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout 
 the world. 
 
 Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things 
 w^ith this idea of "don't care if slavery is voted up 
 or voted down," for sustaining the Dred Scott 
 decision, for holding that the Declaration of In- 
 dependence did not mean anything at all, we have 
 Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the 
 Declaration of Independence means, and we have 
 him saying that the people of America are equal 
 to the people of England. According to his con- 
 struction, you Germans are not connected with 
 it. Now I ask you, in all soberness, if all these 
 things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and 
 indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated 
 to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of
 
 70 SPEECHES [July lo 
 
 liberty in the country, and to transform this gov- 
 ernment into a government of some other form? 
 Those arguments that are made, that the inferior 
 race are to be treated with as much allowance 
 as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is 
 to be done for them as their condition will allow 
 — what are these arguments? They are the ar- 
 guments that kings have made for enslaving the 
 people in all ages of the world. You will find 
 that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were 
 of this class ; they always bestrode the necks of 
 the people — not that they wanted to do it, but 
 because the people were better off for being rid- 
 den. That is their argument, and this argument 
 of the judge is the same old serpent that says, 
 You work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the 
 fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will — 
 whether it come from the mouth of a king, an 
 excuse for enslaving the people of his country, 
 or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason 
 for enslaving the men of another race, it is all 
 the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of 
 argumentation that is made for the purpose of 
 convincing the public mind that we should not 
 care about this should be granted, it does not stop 
 with the negro. I should like to know — taking 
 this old Declaration of Independence, which de- 
 clares that all men are equal upon principle, and 
 making exceptions to it, — where will it stop? If 
 one man says it does not mean a negro, why not 
 another say it does not mean some other man? 
 If that Declaration is not the truth, let us get the 
 statute-book in which we find it, and tear it out ! 
 Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true, let 
 us tear it out [Cries of "No, no"]. Let us stick 
 to it, then ; let us stand firmly by it, then.
 
 i8s8] AT CHICAGO 71 
 
 It may be argued that there are certain condi- 
 tions 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 estabhshed this government. We had 
 slaves among us ; we could not get our Constitu- 
 tion unless we permitted them to remain in slav- 
 ery; we could not secure the good we did secure 
 if we grasped for more ; but having by necessity 
 submitted to that much, it does not destroy the 
 principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let 
 that charter stand as our standard. 
 
 My friend has said to me that I am a poor 
 hand to quote Scripture. I will try it again, 
 however. It is said in one of the admonitions of 
 our Lord, ''Be ye [therefore] perfect even as 
 your Father which is in heaven is perfect." The 
 Saviour, I suppose, did not expect that any hu- 
 man creature could be perfect as the Father in 
 heaven ; but he said, ''As your father in heaven 
 is perfect, be ye also perfect." He set that up as 
 a standard, and he who did most toward reach- 
 ing that standard attained the highest degree of 
 moral perfection. So I say in relation to the 
 principle that ail men are created equal, let it be 
 as nearly reached as we can. If wc cannot give 
 freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that 
 will impose slavery upon any other creature. Let 
 us then turn this government back into the chan- 
 nel in which the framers of the Constitution orig- 
 inally placed it. Let us stand firmly by each other. 
 If we do not do so, we are tending in the con- 
 trary direction that our friend Judge Douglas 
 proposes — not intentionally — working in the 
 traces that tend to make this one universal slave
 
 72 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 nation. He is one that runs in that direction, and 
 as such I resist him. 
 
 My friends, I have detained you about as long- 
 as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us 
 discard all this quibbling about this man and the 
 other man, this race and that race and the other 
 race being inferior, and therefore they must be 
 placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all 
 these things, and unite as one people throughout 
 this land, until we shall once more stand up de- 
 claring that all men are created equal. 
 
 My friends, I could not, without launching off 
 upon some new topic, which would detain you too 
 long, continue to-night. I thank you for this 
 most extensive audience that you have furnished 
 me to-night. I leave you, hoping that the lamp 
 of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there 
 shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created 
 free and equal. 
 
 The Conspiracy to Nationalize Slavery. 
 
 Speech at Springfield, III. July 17, 1858. 
 
 Fellow-citizens: Another election, which is 
 deemed an important one, is approaching; and, 
 as I suppose, the Republican party will without 
 much difficulty elect their State ticket. But in 
 regard to the legislature, we, the Republicans, 
 labor under some disadvantages. In the first 
 place, we have a legislature to elect upon an ap- 
 portionment of the representation made several 
 years ago, when the proportion of the population 
 was far greater in the South (as compared with 
 the North) than it now is, and inasmuch as our 
 opponents hold almost entire sway in the South,
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 73 
 
 and we a correspondingly large majority in the 
 North, the fact that we are now to be represented 
 as we were years ago, when the population was 
 diiterent, is to us a very great disadvantage. We 
 had in the year 1855, according to law, a census 
 or enumeration of the inhabitants taken for the 
 purpose of a new apportionment of representa- 
 tion. We know what a fair apportionment of 
 representation upon that census would give us. 
 We know that it could not, if fairly made, fail to 
 give the Republican party from six to ten more 
 members of the legislature than they can prob- 
 ably get as the law now stands. It so happened 
 at the last session of the legislature, that our op- 
 ponents, holding the control of both branches of 
 the legislature, steadily refused to give us such 
 an apportionment as we were rightly entitled to 
 have upon the census already taken. The legis- 
 lature steadily refused to give us such an appor- 
 tionment as we were rightfully entitled to have 
 upon the census taken of the population of 
 the State. The legislature would pass no bill 
 upon that subject, except such as was at least as 
 tinfair to us as the old one, and in which, in some 
 instances, two men in the Democratic regions 
 were allov/ed to go as far toward sending a mem- 
 ber to the legislature as three were in the Repub- 
 lican regions. Comparison was made at the time 
 as to representative and senatorial districts, which 
 completely demonstrated that such was the fact. 
 Such a bill was passed and tendered to the Re- 
 publican governor for his signature ; but prin- 
 cipally for the reasons I have stated, he withheld 
 his approval, and the bill fell without becoming 
 a law. 
 
 Another disadvantage under which we labor
 
 74 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 is that there are one or two Democratic senators 
 who will be members of the next legislature, and 
 will vote for the election of senator, who are hold- 
 ing over in districts in which we could, on all 
 reasonable calculation, elect men of our own, if 
 we only had the chance of an election. When we 
 consider that there are but twenty-five senators 
 in the Senate, taking two from the side w'here 
 they rightfully belong, and adding them to the 
 other, is to us a disadvantage not to be lightly re- 
 garded. Still, so it is ; we have this to contend 
 with. Perhaps there is no ground of complaint 
 on our part. In attending to the many things in- 
 volved in the last general election for President, 
 governor, auditor, treasurer, superintendent of 
 public instruction, members of Congress, of the 
 legislature, county officers, and so on, we allowed 
 these things to happen by want of sufficient at- 
 tention, and we have no cause to complain of our 
 adversaries, so far as this matter is concerned. 
 But we have some cause to complain of the re- 
 fusal to give us a fair apportionment. 
 
 There is still another disadvantage under 
 which we labor, and to which I will ask your at- 
 tention. It arises out of the relative positions of 
 the two persons w^ho stand before the State as 
 candidates for the Senate. Senator Douglas is of 
 world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians 
 of his party, or who have been of his party for 
 years past, have been looking upon him as cer- 
 tainly, at no distant day, to be the President of 
 the United States. They have seen in his round, 
 jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, mar- 
 shaiships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships 
 and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out 
 in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of
 
 1858] AT SPRIXGFIELD 75 
 
 by their greedy hands. And as they have been 
 gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they 
 cannot, in the httle distraction that has taken 
 place in the party, bring themselves to give up the 
 charming hope ; but with greedier anxiety they 
 rush about him, sustain him, and give him 
 marches, triumphal entries, and receptions be- 
 yond what even in the days of his highest pros- 
 perity they could have brought about in his favor. 
 On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to 
 be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody 
 has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting 
 out. These are disadvantages all, taken together, 
 that the Republicans labor under. \\q have to 
 fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle 
 alone. I am, in a certain sense, made the stand- 
 ard-bearer in behalf of the Republicans. I was 
 made so merely because there had to be some one 
 so placed, I being in no wise preferable to any 
 other one of the twenty-five, perhaps a hundred, 
 we have in the Republican ranks. Then I say I 
 wish it to be distinctly understood and borne in 
 mind, that we have to fight this battle without 
 many — perhaps without any — of the external 
 aids which are brought to bear against us. So I 
 hope those with whom I am surrounded have 
 principle enough to nerve themselves for the task, 
 and leave nothing undone that can be fairly done 
 to bring about the right result. 
 
 After Senator Douglas left Washington, as his 
 movements were made known by the public 
 prints, he tarried a considerable time in the city 
 of Xew York ; and it was heralded that, like an- 
 other Xapoleon, he was lying by and framing 
 the plan of his campaign. It was telegraphed 
 to Washington City, and published in the
 
 76 SPEECHES tjuly 17 
 
 Union, that he was framing his plan for the 
 purpose of going to IlHnois to pounce upon and 
 annihilate the treasonable and disunion speech 
 which Lincoln had made here on the i6th of 
 June. Now, I do suppose that the judge really 
 spent some time in New York maturing the plan 
 of the campaign, as his friends heralded for him. 
 I have been able, by noting his movements since 
 his arrival in Illinois, to discover evidences con- 
 firmatory of that allegation. I think I have been 
 able to see what are the material points of that 
 plan. I will, for a little while, ask your attention 
 to some of them. What I shall point out, though 
 not showing the whole plan, are nevertheless the 
 main points, as I suppose. 
 
 They are not very numerous. The first is pop- 
 ular sovereignty. The second and third are at- 
 tacks upon my speech made on the i6th of June. 
 Out of these three points — drawing within the 
 range of popular sovereignty the question of the 
 Lecompton constitution — he makes his principal 
 assault. Upon these his successive speeches are 
 substantially one and the same. On this matter 
 of popular sovereignty I wish to be a little care- 
 ful. Auxiliary to these main points, to be sure, 
 are their thunderings of cannon, their marching 
 and music, their fizzle-gigs and fireworks ; but I 
 will not waste time with them. They are but the 
 little trappings of the campaign. 
 
 Coming to the substance, the first point, "popu- 
 lar sovereignty." It is to be labeled upon the 
 cars in which he travels ; put upon the hacks he 
 rides in ; to be flaunted upon the arches he passes 
 under, and the banners which wave over him. It 
 is to be dished up in as many varieties as a French 
 cook can produce soups from potatoes. Now,
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 77 
 
 as this is so great a staple of the plan of the cam- 
 paign, it is worth while to examine it carefully; 
 and if we examine only a very little, and do not 
 allow ourselves to be misled, we shall be able to 
 see that the whole thing is the most arrant quix- 
 otism that was ever enacted before a community. 
 What is the matter of popular sovereignty ? The 
 first thing, in order to understand it, is to get a 
 good definition of what it is, and after that to 
 see how it is applied. 
 
 I suppose almost every one knows that, in this 
 controversy, whatever has been said has had ref- 
 erence to the question of negro slavery. We have 
 not been in a controversy about the right of the 
 people to govern themselves in the ordinary mat- 
 ters of domestic concern in the States and Terri- 
 tories. Mr. Buchanan, in one of his late mes- 
 sages (I think when he sent up the Lecompton 
 constitution), urged that the main point of pub- 
 lic attention was not in regard to the great va- 
 riety of small domestic matters, but was directed 
 to the question of negro slavery; and he asserts 
 that if the people had had a fair chance to vote 
 on that question, there was no reasonable ground 
 of objection in regard to minor questions. Now, 
 while I think that the people had not had given, 
 or offered them, a fair chance upon that slavery 
 question, still, if there had been a fair submission 
 to a vote upon that main question, the President's 
 proposition would have been true to the utter- 
 most. Hence, when hereafter I speak of popu- 
 lar sovereignty, I wish to be understood as apply- 
 ing what I say to the question of slavery only, 
 not to other minor domestic matters of a Terri- 
 tory or State. 
 
 Does Judge Douglas, when he says that several
 
 78 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 of the past years of his Hfe have been devoted 
 to the question of "popular sovereignty," and that 
 all the remainder of his life shall be devoted to it, 
 does he mean to say that he has been devoting his 
 life to securing to the people of the Territories 
 the right to exclude slavery from the Territories ? 
 If he means so to say, he means to deceive ; be- 
 cause he and every one knows that the decision 
 of the Supreme Court, which he approves and 
 makes especial ground of attack upon me for dis- 
 approving, forbids the people of a Territory to 
 exclude slavery. This covers the whole ground, 
 from the settlement of a Territory till it reaches 
 the degree of maturity entitling it to form a State 
 constitution. So far as all that ground is con- 
 cerned, the judge is not sustaining popular sov- 
 ereignty, but absolutely opposing it. He sustains 
 the decision which declares that the popular will 
 of the Territories has no constitutional power to 
 exclude slavery during their territorial existence. 
 This being so, the period of time from the first 
 settlement of a Territory till it reaches the point 
 of forming a State constitution is not the thing 
 that the judge has fought for, or is fighting for; 
 but on the contrary, he has fought for, and is 
 fighting for the thing that annihilates and crushes 
 out that same popular sovereignty. . 
 
 Well, so much being disposed of, what is left? 
 Why, he is contending for the right of the people, 
 when they come to make a State constitution, to 
 make it for themselves, and precisely as best suits 
 themselves. I say again, that is quixotic. I defy 
 contradiction when I declare that the judge can 
 find no one to oppose him on that proposition. _ I 
 repeat, there is nobody opposing that proposition 
 on principle. Let me not be misunderstood.' I
 
 2858] AT SPRINGFIELD 
 
 79 
 
 know that, with reference to the Lecompton con- 
 stitution, I may be misunderstood ; but when you 
 understand me correctly, my proposition will be 
 true and accurate. Nobody is opposing, or has op- 
 posed, the right of the people, when they form a 
 constitution, to form it for themselves. Mr. 
 Buchanan and his friends have not done it ; they, 
 too, as well as the Republicans and the Anti- 
 Lecompton Democrats, have not done it; but, on 
 the contrary, they together have insisted on the 
 right of the people to form a constitution for 
 themselves. The difference between the Buchan- 
 an men on the one hand, and the Douglas men 
 and the Republicans on the other, has not been on 
 a question of principle, but on a question of fact. 
 
 The dispute was upon the question of fact, 
 whether the Lecompton constitution had been 
 fairly formed by the people or not. Mr. Buchan- 
 an and his friends have not contended for the 
 contrary principle any more than the Douglas 
 men or the Republicans. They have insisted that 
 whatever of small irregularities existed in getting 
 up the Lecompton constitution were such as hap- 
 pen in the settlement of all new Territories. The 
 question was, was it a fair emanation of the 
 people? It was a question of fact and not of 
 principle. As to the principle, all were agreed. 
 Judge Douglas voted with the Republicans upon 
 that matter of fact. 
 
 He and they, by their voices and votes, denied 
 that it was a fair emanation of the people. The 
 administration affirmed that it was. With re- 
 spect to the evidence bearing upon that question 
 of fact, I readily agree that Judge Douglas and the 
 Republicans had the right on their side, and that 
 the administration was wrong. But I state again
 
 8o SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 that, as a matter of principle, there is no dispute 
 upon the right of a people in a Territory merging 
 into a State to form a constitution for themselves 
 without outside interference from any quarter. 
 This being so, what is Judge Douglas going to 
 spend his life for? Does he expect to stand up in 
 majestic dignity, and go through his apotheosis 
 and become a god, in the maintaining of a prin- 
 ciple which neither man nor mouse in all God's 
 creation is opposing? Now something in regard 
 to the Lecompton constitution more specially ; for 
 I pass from this other question of popular sov- 
 ereignty as the most arrant humbug that has ever 
 been attempted on an intelligent community. 
 
 As to the Lecompton constitution, I have al- 
 ready said that on the question of fact as to 
 whether it was a fair emanation of the people or 
 not. Judge Douglas with the Republicans and 
 some ''Americans" had greatly the argument 
 against the administration ; and while I repeat 
 this, I wish to know what there is in the opposi- 
 tion of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton constitu- 
 tion that entitles him to be considered the only 
 opponent to it — as being par excellence the very 
 quintessence of that opposition. I agree to the 
 rightfulness of his opposition. He in the Senate, 
 and his class of men there, formed the number 
 three and no more. In the House of Representa- 
 tives his class of men — the Anti-Lecompton Dem- 
 ocrats — formed a number of about twenty. It 
 took one hundred and twenty to defeat the meas- 
 ure against one hundred and twelve. Of the 
 votes of that one hundred and twenty. Judge 
 Douglas's friends furnished twenty, to add to 
 which there were six Americans and ninety-four 
 Republicans. I do not say that I am precisely
 
 i858] AT SPRINGFIELD 8i 
 
 accurate in their numbers, but I am sufficiently so 
 for any use I am making of it. 
 
 Why is it that twenty shall be entitled to all the 
 credit of doing that work, and the hundred none 
 of it? Why, if, as Judge Douglas says, the honor 
 is to be divided and due credit is to be given to 
 other parties, why is just so much given as is 
 consonant with the wishes, the interests, and ad- 
 vancement of the twenty ? My understanding is, 
 when a common job is done, or a common enter- 
 prise prosecuted, if I put in five dollars to your 
 one, I have a right to take out five dollars to your 
 one. But he does not so understand it. He de- 
 clares the dividend of credit for defeating Le- 
 compton upon a basis which seems unprecedented 
 and incomprehensible. 
 
 Let us see. Lecompton in the raw was de- 
 feated. It afterward took a sort of cooked-up 
 shape, and was passed in the English bill. It is 
 said by the judge that the defeat was a good and 
 proper thing. If it was a good thing, why is he 
 entitled to more credit than others for the per- 
 formance of that good act, unless there was 
 something in the antecedents of the Republicans 
 that might induce every one to expect them to 
 join in that good work, and at the same time 
 something leading them to doubt that he would? 
 Does he place his superior claim to credit on the 
 ground that he performed a good act which was 
 never expected of him ? He says I have a prone- 
 ness for quoting scripture. If I should do so 
 now, it occurs that perhaps he places himself 
 somewhat upon the ground of the parable of the 
 lost sheep which went astray upon the mountains, 
 and when the owner of the hundred sheep found 
 the one that was lost, and threw it upon his
 
 82 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 shoulders, and came home rejoicing, it was said 
 that there was more rejoicing over the one sheep 
 that was lost and had been found, than over the 
 ninety and nine in the fold. The application is 
 made by the Saviour in this parable, thus : "Veri- 
 ly, I say unto you, there is more rejoicing in 
 heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over 
 ninety and nine just persons that need no repent- 
 ance." 
 
 And now, if the judge claims the benefit of this 
 parable, let him repent. Let him not come up 
 here and say : "I am the only just person ; and 
 you are the ninety-nine sinners !" Repentance 
 before forgiveness is a provision of the Christian 
 system, and on that condition alone will the Re- 
 publicans grant him forgiveness. 
 
 How will he prove that we have ever occupied 
 a different position in regard to the Lecompton 
 constitution or any principle in it? He says he 
 did not make his opposition on the ground as to 
 whether it was a free or slave constitution, and 
 he would have you understand that the Republi- 
 cans made their opposition because it ultimately 
 became a slave constitution. To make proof in 
 favor of himself on this point, he reminds us that 
 he opposed Lecompton before the vote was taken 
 declaring whether the State was to be free or 
 slave. But he forgets to say that our Republican 
 senator, Trumbull, made a speech against Le- 
 compton even before he did. 
 
 Why did he oppose it ? Partly, as he declares, 
 because the members of the convention who 
 framed it were not fairly elected by the people; 
 that the people were not allowed to vote unless 
 they had been registered ; and that the people of 
 whole counties, in some instances, were not regis-
 
 i858] AT SPRINGFIELD S^ 
 
 tered. For these reasons he declares the consti- 
 tution was not an emanation, in any true sense, 
 from the people. He also has an additional ob- 
 jection as to the mode of submitting the constitu- 
 tion back to the people. But bearing on the ques- 
 tion of whether the delegates were fairly elected, 
 a speech of his, made something more than 
 twelve months ago from this stand, becomes im- 
 portant. It was made a little while before the 
 election of the delegates who made Lecompton. 
 In that speech he declared there was every reason 
 to hope and believe the election would be fair, and 
 if any one failed to vote it would be his own cul- 
 pable fault. 
 
 I, a few days after, made a sort of answer to 
 that speech. In that answer I made substantially 
 the very argument with which he combated his 
 Lecompton adversaries in the Senate last winter. 
 I pointed to the facts that the people could not 
 vote without being registered, and that the time 
 for registering had gone by. I commented on it 
 as wonderful that Judge Douglas could be igno- 
 rant of these facts, which every one else in the 
 nation so well knew. 
 
 I now pass from popular sovereignty and Le- 
 compton. I may have occasion to refer to one 
 or both. 
 
 When he was preparing his plan of campaign, 
 Napoleon-like, in New York, as appears by two 
 speeches I have heard him deliver since his ar- 
 rival in Illinois, he gave special attention to a 
 speech of mine delivered here on the i6th of June 
 last. He says that he carefully read that speech. 
 He told us that at Chicago a week ago last night, 
 and he repeated it at Bloomington last night. 
 Doubtless he repeated it again to-day, though I
 
 84 SPEECHES [Jv.ly 17 
 
 did not hear him. In the two first places — Chica- 
 go and Bloomington — I heard him; to-day I did 
 not. He said he had carefully examined that 
 speech ; when, he did not say ; but there is no 
 reasonable doubt it was when he was in New 
 York preparing his plan of campaign. I am glad 
 he did read it carefully. He says it was evidently 
 prepared with great care. I freely admit it was 
 prepared with care. I claim not to be more free 
 from errors than others — perhaps scarcely so 
 much ; but I was very careful not to put anything 
 in that speech as a matter of fact, or make any 
 inferences which did not appear to me to be true 
 and fully warrantable. If I had made any mis- 
 take I was willing to be corrected ; if I had drawn 
 any inference in regard to Judge Douglas, or any 
 one else, which was not warranted, I was fully 
 prepared to modify it as soon as discovered. I 
 planted myself upon the truth and the truth only, 
 so far as I knew it, or could be brought to know 
 it. 
 
 Having made that speech with the most kindly 
 feelings toward Judge Douglas, as manifested 
 therein, I was gratified when I found that he had 
 carefully examined it, and had detected no error of 
 fact, nor any inference against him, nor any mis- 
 representations, of which he thought fit to com- 
 plain. In neither of the two speeches I have men- 
 tioned, did he make any such complaint. I will 
 thank any one who will inform me that he, in his 
 speech to-day, pointed out anything I had stated, 
 respecting him, as being erroneous. I presume 
 there is no such thing. I have reason to be grati- 
 fied that the care and caution used in that speech 
 left it so that he, most of all others interested in 
 discovering error, has not been able to point out
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 85 
 
 one thing against him which he could say was 
 wrong. He seizes upon the doctrines he supposes 
 to be included in that speech, and declares that 
 upon them will turn the issues of the campaign. 
 He then quotes, or attempts to quote, from my 
 speech. I will not say that he wilfully misquotes, 
 but he does fail to quote accurately. His attempt 
 at quoting is from a passage which I believe I 
 can quote accurately from memory. I shall make 
 the quotation now, with some comments upon it, 
 as I have already said, in order that the judge 
 shall be left entirely without excuse for misrep- 
 resenting me. I do so now, as I hope, for the last 
 time. I do this in great caution, in order that if 
 he repeats his misrepresentation, it shall be plain 
 to all that he does so wilfully. If, after all, he 
 still persists, I shall be compelled to reconstruct 
 the course I have marked out for myself, and 
 draw upon such humble resources as I have for 
 a new course, better suited to the real exigencies 
 of the case. I set out, in this campaign, with the 
 intention of conducting it strictly as a gentleman, 
 in substance, at least, if not in the outside polish. 
 The latter I shall never be, but that which consti- 
 tutes the inside of a gentleman I hope I under- 
 stand, and am not less inclined to practise than 
 others. It was my purpose and expectation that 
 this canvass would be conducted upon principle, 
 and with fairness on both sides, and it shall not 
 be my fault if this purpose and expectation shall 
 be given up. 
 
 He charges, in substance, that I invite a war of 
 sections ; that I propose all local institutions of 
 the different States shall become consolidated and 
 uniform. What is there in the language of that 
 speech which expresses such purpose or bears
 
 S6 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 such construction? I have again and again said 
 that I would not enter into any of the States to 
 disturb the institution of slavery. Judge Doug- 
 las said, at Bloomington, that I used language 
 most able and ingenious for concealing what I 
 really meant ; and that while I had protested 
 against entering into the slave States, I never- 
 theless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio 
 and throw missiles into Kentucky, to disturb 
 them in their domestic institutions. 
 
 I said in that speech, and I meant no more, that 
 the institution of slavery ought to be placed in 
 the very attitude where the framers of this gov- 
 ernment placed it and left it. I do not understand 
 that the framers of our Constitution left the 
 people in the free States in the attitude of firing 
 bombs or shells into the slave States. I was not 
 using that passage for the purpose for which he 
 infers I did use it. I said : 
 
 We are now far advanced into the fifth year since a 
 policy was created for the avowed object and with the 
 confident promise of putting an end to slavery agita- 
 tion. Under the operation of that policy that agitation 
 has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. 
 In my opinion it will not cease till a crisis shall have been 
 reached and passed. "A house divided against itself 
 cannot stand." I believe that this government cannot 
 endure permanently half slave and half free. It will 
 become all one thing or all the other. Either the oppo- 
 nents 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. 
 
 Now you all see, from that quotation, I did not 
 express my wish on anything. In that passage I 
 indicated no wish or purpose of my own ; I simply
 
 i858] AT SPRIXGFIELD 87 
 
 expressed my expectation. Cannot the judge 
 perceive a distinction between a purpose and an 
 expectation? I have often expressed an ex- 
 pectation to die, but I have never expressed 
 a wish to die. I said at Chicago, and now 
 repeat, that I am quite aware this gov- 
 ernment has endured half slave and half 
 free for eighty-two years. I understand that 
 little bit of history. I expressed the opinion I 
 did, because I perceived — or thought I perceived 
 — a new set of causes introduced. I did sav at 
 Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to 
 see the spread of slavery arrested, and to see it 
 placed where the public mind shall rest in the be- 
 lief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. 
 I said that because I supposed, when the public 
 mind shall rest in that belief, we shall have peace 
 on the slavery question. I have believed — and 
 now believe — the public mind did rest in that be- 
 lief up to the introduction of the Nebraska bill. 
 
 Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, 
 so far I rested in the hope and belief that it was 
 in the course of ultimate extinction. For that 
 reason, it had been a minor question with me. I 
 might have been mistaken ; but I had believed, 
 and now believe, that the whole public mind, that 
 is, the mind of the great majority, had rested in 
 that belief up to the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
 promise. But upon that event, I became con- 
 vinced that either I had been resting in a delusion, 
 or the institution was being placed on a new 
 basis — a basis for making it perpetual, national, 
 and universal. Subsequent events have greatly 
 confirmed me in that belief. I believe that bill 
 to be the beginning of a conspiracy for that pur- 
 pose. So believing, I have since then considered
 
 88 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 that question a paramount one. So believing, I 
 think the pubHc mind will never rest till the power 
 of Congress to restrict the spread of it shall again 
 be acknowledged and exercised on the one hand, 
 or, on the other, all resistance be entirely crushed 
 out. I have expressed that opinion, and I enter- 
 tain it to-night. It is denied that there is any 
 tendency to the nationalization of slavery in these 
 StateSo 
 
 Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, in one of his 
 speeches, when they were presenting him canes, 
 silver plate, gold pitchers, and the like, for as- 
 saulting Senator Sumner, distinctly affirmed his 
 opinion that when this Constitution was formed, 
 it was the belief of no man that slavery would 
 last to the present day. 
 
 He said, what I think, that the framers of our 
 Constitution placed the institution of slavery 
 where the public mind rested in the hope that it 
 was in the course of ultimate extinction. But he 
 went on to say that the men of the present age, 
 by their experience, have become wiser than the 
 framers of the Constitution ; and the invention of 
 the cotton-gin had made the perpetuity of slavery 
 a necessity in this country. 
 
 As another piece of evidence tending to this 
 same point. Quite recently in Virginia, a man — 
 the owner of slaves — made a will providing that 
 after his death certain of his slaves should have 
 their freedom if they should so choose, and go to 
 Liberia, rather than remain in slavery. They 
 chose to be liberated. But the persons to whom 
 they would descend as property claimed them as 
 slaves. A suit was instituted, which finally came 
 to the Supreme Court of Virginia, and was there- 
 in decided against the slaves, upon the ground
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 89 
 
 that a negro cannot make a choice — that they had 
 no legal power to choose — could not perform the 
 condition upon which their freedom depended. 
 
 I do not mention this with any purpose of criti- 
 cising it, but to connect it with the arguments as 
 affording additional evidence of the change of 
 sentiment upon this question of slavery in the 
 direction of making it perpetual and national. I 
 argue now as I did before, that there is such a 
 tendency, and I am backed not merely by the 
 facts, but by the open confession in the slave 
 States. 
 
 And now, as to the judge's inference, that be- 
 cause I wish to see slavery placed in the course 
 of ultimate extinction — placed where our fathers 
 originally placed it — I wish to annihilate the State 
 legislatures — to force cotton to grow upon the 
 tops of the Green Mountains — to freeze ice in 
 Florida — to cut lumber on the broad Illinois 
 prairies — that I am in favor of all these ridicu- 
 lous and impossible things. 
 
 It seems to me it is a complete answer to all this 
 to ask, if, when Congress did have the fashion of 
 restricting slavery from free territory, when 
 courts did have the fashion of deciding that tak- 
 ing a slave into a free country made him free — I 
 say it is a sufficient answer to ask, if any of this 
 ridiculous nonsense about consolidation and uni- 
 formity did actually follow? Who heard of any 
 such thing, because of the ordinance of '87? be- 
 cause of the Missouri Restriction ? because of the 
 numerous court decisions of that character? 
 
 Now, as to the Dred Scott decision ; for upon 
 that he makes his last point at me. He boldly 
 takes ground in favor of that decision. This is 
 one half the onslaught, and one third of the entire
 
 90 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 plan of the campaign. I am opposed to that de- 
 cision in a certain sense, but not in the sense 
 which he puts on it. I say that in so far as it 
 decided in favor of Dred Scott's master, and 
 against Dred Scott and his family, I do not pro- 
 pose to disturb or resist the decision. 
 
 I never have proposed to do any such thing. I 
 think that in respect for judicial authority, my 
 humble history would not suffer in comparison 
 with that of Judge Douglas. He would have 
 the citizen conform his vote to that decision ; the 
 member of Congress, his ; the President, his use 
 of the veto power. He would make it a rule of 
 political action for the people and all the depart- 
 ments of the government. I would not. By re- 
 sisting it as a political rule, I disturb no right of 
 property, create no disorder, excite no mobs. 
 
 When he spoke at Chicago, on Friday evening 
 of last week, he made this same point upon me. 
 On Saturday evening I replied, and reminded 
 him of a Supreme Court decision which he op- 
 posed for at least several years. Last night, at 
 Bloomington, he took some notice of that reply, 
 but entirely forgot to remember that part of it. 
 
 He renews his onslaught upon me, forgetting 
 to remember that I have turned the tables against 
 himself on that very point. I renew the effort to 
 draw his attention to it. I wish to stand erect 
 before the country, as well as Judge Douglas, on 
 this question of judicial authority, and therefore 
 I add something to the authority in favor of my 
 own position. I wish to show that I am sustained 
 by authority, in addition to that heretofore pre- 
 sented. I do not expect to convince the judge. 
 It is part of the plan of his campaign, and he will 
 cling to it with a desperate grip. Even turn it
 
 i858] AT SPRINGFIELD 91 
 
 upon him — the sharp point against him, and gaff 
 him through — he will still cling to it till he can 
 invent some new dodge to take the place of it. 
 
 In public speaking it is tedious reading from 
 documents, but I must beg to indulge the practice 
 to a limited extent. I shall read from a letter 
 written by Mr. Jefferson in 1820, and now to be 
 found in the seventh volume of his correspond- 
 ence, at page 177. It seems he had been pre- 
 sented by a gentleman of the name of Jarvis with 
 a book, or essay, or periodical, called the "Repub- 
 lican," and he was writing in acknowledgment of 
 the present, and noting some of its contents. 
 After expressing the hope that the work will pro- 
 duce a favorable effect upon the minds of the 
 young, he proceeds to say : 
 
 That it will have this tendency may be expected, and 
 for that reason I feel an urgency to note what I deem 
 an error in it, the more requiring notice as your opinion 
 is strengthened by that of many others. You seem, in 
 pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges as the ultimate 
 arbiters of all constitutional questions — a very dan- 
 gerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us 
 under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are 
 as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, 
 with others, the same passions for party, for power, 
 and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is, 
 "Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem" ; and their 
 power is the more dangerous as they are in office for 
 life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, 
 to the elective control. The Constitution has erected 
 no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever 
 hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, 
 its members would become despots. It has more wisely 
 made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign 
 within themselves. 
 
 Thus we see the power claimed for the Su- 
 preme Court by Judge' Douglas, Mv. Jefferson
 
 92 SPEECHES rjuly 17 
 
 holds, would reduce us to the despotism of an 
 oligarchy. 
 
 Now, I have said no more than this — in fact, 
 never quite so much as this — at least I am sus- 
 tained by Mr. Jefferson. 
 
 Let us go a little further. You remember we 
 once had a national bank. Some one owed the 
 bank a debt; he was sued and sought to avoid 
 payment, on the ground that the bank was un- 
 constitutional. The case went to the Supreme 
 Court, and therein it was decided that the bank 
 was constitutional. The whole Democratic party 
 revolted against that decision. General Jackson 
 himself asserted that he, as President, would not 
 be bound to hold a national bank to be constitu- 
 tional, even though the court had decided it to be 
 so. He fell in precisely with the view of Mr. 
 Jefferson, and acted upon it under his official 
 oath, in vetoing a charter for a national bank. 
 The declaration that Congress does not possess 
 this constitutional power to charter a bank, has 
 gone into the Demiocratic platform, at their na- 
 tional conventions, and was brought forward and 
 reaffirmed in their last convention at Cincinnati. 
 They have contended for that declaration, in the 
 very teeth of the Supreme Court, for more than a 
 quarter of a century. In fact, they have reduced 
 the decision to an absolute nullity. That decision, 
 I repeat, is repudiated in the Cincinnati platform ; 
 and still, as if to show that effrontery can go no 
 farther, Judge Douglas vaunts, in the very 
 speeches in which he denounces me for opposing 
 the Dred Scott decision, that he stands on the 
 Cincinnati platform. 
 
 Now, I wish to know what the judge can 
 charge upon me, with respect to decisions of the
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 93 
 
 Supreme Court, which does not lie in all its 
 length, breadth, and proportions at his own door. 
 The plain truth is simply this : Judge Douglas is 
 for Supreme Court decisions when he likes, and 
 against them when he does not like them. He is 
 for the Dred Scott decision because it tends to 
 nationalize slavery — because it is part of the orig- 
 inal combination for that object. It so happens, 
 singularly enough, that I never stood opposed to 
 a decision of the Supreme Court till this. On the 
 contrary, I have no recollection that he was ever 
 particularly in favor of one till this. He never 
 was in favor of any, nor opposed to any, till the 
 present one, which helps to nationalize slavery. 
 
 Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, 
 free men everywhere, judge ye between him and 
 me upon this issue. 
 
 He says this Dred Scott case is a very small 
 matter at most ; that it has no practical effect ; 
 that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is 
 but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition, 
 that the thing which determines whether a man 
 is free or a slave, is rather concrete than abstract. 
 I think you would conclude that it was if your 
 liberty depended upon it, and so would Judge 
 Douglas if his liberty depended upon it. But 
 suppose it was on the question of spreading slav- 
 ery over the new Territories that he considers 
 it as being merely an abstract matter, and one of 
 no practical importance. How has the planting 
 of slavery in new countries always been effected? 
 It has now been decided that slavery cannot be 
 kept out of our new Territories by any legal 
 means. In what do our new Territories now dif- 
 fer in this respect from the old colonies when 
 slavery was first planted within them? It was
 
 94 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 planted as Mr. Clay once declared, and as history 
 proves true, by individual men in spite of the 
 wishes of the people ; the mother government 
 refusing to prohibit it, and withholding from 
 the people of the colonies the authority to pro- 
 hibit it for themselves. Mr. Clay says this was 
 one of the great and just causes of complaint 
 against Great Britain by the colonies, and the best 
 apology we can now make for having the institu- 
 tion amongst us. In that precise condition our 
 Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in 
 placing our own new Territories ; the govern- 
 ment will not prohibit slavery within them, nor 
 allow the people to prohibit it. 
 
 I defy any man to find any difference between 
 the policy which originally planted slavery in 
 these colonies and that policy which nov/ prevails 
 in our new Territories. If it does not go into 
 them, it is only because no individual wishes it to 
 go. The judge indulged himself doubtless, to- 
 day, with the question as to what I am going to 
 do with or about the Dred Scott decision. Well, 
 judge, will you please tell me what you did about 
 the bank decision ? Will you not graciously allow 
 us to do with the Dred Scott decision precisely 
 as you did with the bank decision? You suc- 
 ceeded in breaking down the moral effect of that 
 decision ; did you find it necessary to amend the 
 Constitution? or to set up a court of negroes in 
 order to do it? 
 
 There is one other point. Judge Douglas has a 
 very affectionate leaning toward the Americans 
 and Old Whigs. Last evening, in a sort of weep- 
 ing tone, he described to us a death-bed scene. 
 He had been called to the side of Mr. Clay, in 
 his last moments, in order that the genius of
 
 i858] AT SPRINGFIELD 95 
 
 ''popular sovereignty" might duly descend from 
 the dying man and settle upon him, the living and 
 most worthy successor. He could do no less than 
 promise that he would devote the remainder of 
 his life to "popular sovereignty" ; and then the 
 great statesman departs in peace. By this part of 
 the ''plan of the campaign," the judge has evi- 
 dently promised himself that tears shall be drawn 
 down the cheeks of all Old Whigs, as large as 
 half-grown apples. 
 
 Mr. Webster, too, was mentioned; but it did 
 not quite come to a death-bed scene, as to him. 
 It would be amusing, if it were not disgusting, 
 to see how quick these compromise-breakers ad- 
 minister on the political effects of their dead ad- 
 versaries, trumping up claims never before heard 
 of, and dividing the assets among themselves. If 
 I should be found dead to-morrow morning, 
 nothing but my insignificance could prevent a. 
 speech being made on my authority, before the 
 end of next week. It so happens that in that 
 "popular sovereignty" with which Mr. Clay was 
 identified, the Missouri Compromise was ex- 
 pressly reserved ; and it was a little singular if 
 Mr. Clay cast his mantle upon Judge Douglas on 
 purpose to have that compromise repealed. 
 
 Again, the judge did not keep faith with Mr. 
 Clay when he first brought in his Nebraska bill. 
 He left the Missouri Compromise unrepealed, 
 and in his report accompanying the bill, he told 
 the world he did it on purpose. The manes of 
 Mr. Clay must have been in great agony, till 
 thirty days later, when "popular sovereignty" 
 stood forth in all its glory. 
 
 One more thing. Last night Judge Douglas 
 tormented himself with horrors about my disposi-
 
 g6 SPEECHES [July 17 
 
 tion to make negroes perfectly equal with white 
 men in social and political relations. He did not 
 stop to show that I have said any such thing, or 
 that it legitimately follows from anything I have 
 said, but he rushes on with his assertions. I ad- 
 here to the Declaration of Independence. If 
 Judge Douglas and his friends are not willing to 
 stand by it, let them come up and amend it. Let 
 them make it read that all men are created equal, 
 except negroes. Let us have it decided whether 
 the Declaration of Independence, in this blessed 
 year of 1858, shall be thus amended. In his con- 
 struction of the Declaration last year, he said it 
 only meant that Americans in America were 
 equal to Englishmen in England. Then, when I 
 pointed out to him that by that rule he excludes 
 the Germans, the Irish, the Portuguese, and all 
 the other people who have come amongst us since 
 the Revolution, he reconstructs his construction. 
 In his last speech he tells us it meant Europeans. 
 
 I press him a little further, and ask if it meant 
 to include the Russians in Asia? or does he mean 
 to exclude that vast population from the prin- 
 ciples of our Declaration of Independence? I 
 expect ere long he will introduce another amend- 
 ment to his definition. He is not at all particular. 
 He is satisfied with anything which does not en- 
 danger the nationalizing of negro slavery. It 
 may draw white men down, but it must not lift 
 negroes up. Who shall say, ''I am the superior, 
 and you are the inferior" ? 
 
 My declarations upon this subject of negro 
 slavery may be misrepresented, but cannot be 
 misunderstood. I have said that I do not under- 
 stand the Declaration to mean that all men were 
 created equal in all respects. They are not our
 
 1858] AT SPRINGFIELD 97 
 
 equal in color ; but I suppose that It does mean 
 to declare that all men are equal in some re- 
 spects ; they are equal in their right to "life, lib- 
 erty, and the pursuit of happiness." Certainly 
 the negro is not our equal in color — perhaps not 
 in many other respects ; still, in the right to put 
 into his mouth the bread that his own hands have 
 earned, he is the equal of every other man, white 
 or black. In pointing out that more has been 
 given you, you cannot be justified in taking away 
 the little which has been given him. All I ask for 
 the negro is that if you do not like him, let him 
 alone. If God gave him but little, that little let 
 him enjoy. 
 
 When our government was established, we had 
 the institution of slavery among us. We were in 
 a certain sense compelled to tolerate its existence. 
 It was a sort of necessity. We had gone through 
 our struggle, and secured our own independence. 
 The framers of the Constitution found the insti- 
 tution of slavery amongst their other institutions 
 at the time. They found that by an effort to 
 eradicate it, they might lose much of what they 
 had already gained. They were obliged to bow 
 to the necessity. They gave power to Congress 
 to abolish the slave-trade at the end of twenty 
 years. They also prohibited slavery in the Terri- 
 tories where it did not exist. They did what 
 they could and yielded to necessity for the rest. 
 I also yield to all which follows from that neces- 
 sity. What I would most desire would be the 
 separation of the white and black races. 
 
 One more point on this Springfield speech 
 which Judge Douglas says he has read so care- 
 fully. I expressed my belief in the existence of 
 a conspiracy to perpetuate and nationalize slav-
 
 98 SPEECHES 
 
 ery. I did not profess to know it, nor do I now. 
 I showed the part Judge Douglas had played in 
 the string of facts, constituting to my mind the 
 proof of that conspiracy. I showed the parts 
 played by others. 
 
 I charged that the people had been deceived 
 into carrying the last presidential election, by the 
 impression that the people of the Territories 
 might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was 
 known in advance by the conspirators, that the 
 court was to decide that neither Congress nor the 
 people could so exclude slavery. These charges 
 are more distinctly made than anything else in 
 the speech. 
 
 Judge Douglas has carefully read and re-read 
 that speech. He has not, so far as I know, con- 
 tradicted those charges. In the two speeches 
 which I heard he certainly did not. On his own 
 tacit admission I renew that charge. I charge 
 him with having been a party to that conspiracy, 
 and to that deception, for the sole purpose of 
 nationalizing slavery.
 
 The Joint Debate with Douglas 
 
 Together with Correspondence in Re- 
 gard TO THE Debate, and Interven- 
 ing Speeches (July 24 to Oc- 
 
 TOBER 15, 1858) 
 With an Introduction by Horace White
 
 THE JOINT DEBATE 
 WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 By Horace White. 
 
 The following account of Mr. Lincoln's debate with 
 Senator Douglas is condensed from a chapter in Hern- 
 don and Weik's ''Life of Lincoln" written in February, 
 1890, by Horace White, now of the New York Evening 
 Post, who accompanied Mr. Lincoln as the reporter 
 of the debate for the Chicago Tribune. It is presented 
 here by the kind permission of the publishers of the 
 "Life," D. Appleton and Company, of New York. 
 
 All of the seven joint debates were reported 
 by Mr. Hitt* for the Tribune, the manuscript 
 passing through my hands before going to the 
 printers. . . . 
 
 The volume containing the debates, published 
 in i860 by Follett, Foster & Co., of Columbus, 
 Ohio, presents Mr. Lincoln's speeches as they 
 appeared in the Chicago Tribune, and Mr. Doug- 
 las's as they appeared in the Chicago Times. . . . 
 
 The next stage brought us to Ottawa, the first 
 joint debate, August 21. Here the crowd was 
 enormous. The weather had been very dry and 
 the town was shrouded in dust raised by the mov- 
 ing populace. Crowds were pouring into town, 
 
 * Mr. Robert R. Hitt, subsequently Assistant Secretary 
 of State, and, after this, Congressman from the 6th District 
 of Illinois. 
 
 lOI
 
 102 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 from sunrise till noon in all sorts of conveyances, 
 teams, railroad trains, canal boats, cavalcades, and 
 processions on foot, with banners and inscrip- 
 tions, stirring up such clouds of dust that it was 
 hard to make out what was underneath them. 
 The town was covered with bunting, and bands 
 of music were tooting around every corner, 
 drowned now and then by the roar of cannon. 
 Mr. Lincoln came by railroad and Mr. Douglas 
 by carriage from La Salle. A train of seventeen 
 passenger cars from Chicago attested the interest 
 felt in that city in the first meeting of the cham- 
 pions. Two great processions escorted them to 
 the platform in the public square. But the eager- 
 ness to hear the speaking was so great that the 
 crowd had taken possession of the square and the 
 platform, and had climbed on the wooden awning 
 overhead, to such an extent that the speakers and 
 the committees and the reporters could not get to 
 their places. Half an hour was consumed in a 
 rough-and-tumble skirmish to make way for 
 them, and, when finally this was accomplished, a 
 section of the awning gave way with its load of 
 men and boys, and came down on the heads of 
 the Douglas committee of reception. But, fortu- 
 nately, nobody was hurt. 
 
 Here I was joined by Mr. Hitt and also by Mr. 
 Chester P. Dewey of the New York Evening 
 Post, who remained with us until the end of the 
 campaign. Hither, also, came quite an army of 
 young newspaper men, among whom was Henry 
 Villard, in behalf of Forney's Philadelphia Press. 
 I have preserved Mr. Dewey's sketch of the two 
 orators as they appeared on the Ottawa platform, 
 and I introduce it here as a graphic description 
 by a new hand:
 
 INTRODUCTION 103 
 
 "Two men presenting wider contrasts could 
 hardly be found, as the representatives of the two 
 great parties. Everybody knows Douglas, a 
 short, thick-set, burly man, with large, round 
 head, heavy hair, dark complexion, and fierce 
 bulldog look. Strong in his own real power, and 
 skilled by a thousand conflicts in all the strategy 
 of a hand-to-hand or a general fight ; of tower- 
 ing ambition, restless in his determined desire for 
 notoriety, proud, defiant, arrogant, audacious, un- 
 scrupulous, 'Little Dug' ascended the platform 
 and looked out impudently and carelessly on the 
 immense throng which surged and struggled be- 
 fore him. A native of Vermont, reared on a soil 
 where no slave stood, he came to Illinois a 
 teacher, and from one post to another had risen 
 to his present eminence. Forgetful of the ances- 
 tral hatred of slavery to which he was the heir, 
 he had come ... to owe much of his fame to 
 continued subservience to Southern influence. 
 
 ''The other — Lincoln — is a native of Kentucky, 
 of poor white parentage, and, from his cradle, 
 has felt the blighting influence of the dark and 
 cruel shadow which rendered labor dishonorable 
 and kept the poor in poverty, while it advanced 
 the rich in their possessions. Reared in poverty, 
 and to the humblest aspirations, he left his native 
 State, crossed the line into Illinois, and began his 
 career of honorable toil. At first a laborer, split- 
 ting rails for a living — deficient in education, and 
 applying himself even to the rudiments of knowl- 
 edge — he, too, felt the expanding power of his 
 American manhood, and began to achieve the 
 greatness to which he has succeeded. With great 
 difficulty, struggling through the tedious formu- 
 laries of legal lore, he was admitted to the bar.
 
 104 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 and rapidly made his way to the front ranks of his 
 profession. Honored by the people with office, 
 he is still the same honest and reliable man. He 
 volunteers in the Black Hawk war, and does the 
 State good service in its sorest need. In every 
 relation of life, socially and to the State, Mr. Lin- 
 coln has been always the pure and honest man. 
 In physique he is the opposite to Douglas. Built 
 on the Kentucky type, he is very tall, slender, and 
 angular, awkward even in gait and attitude. His 
 face is sharp, large-featured, and unprepossessing. 
 His eyes are deep-set under heavy brows, his fore- 
 head is high and retreating, and his hair is dark 
 and heavy. In repose, I must confess that 'Long 
 Abe's' appearance is not comely. But stir him up 
 and the fire of his genius plays on every feature. 
 His eye glows and sparkles ; every lineament, now 
 so ill-formed, grows brilliant and expressive, and 
 you have before you a man of rare power and of 
 strong magnetic influence. He takes the people 
 every time, and there is no getting away from 
 his sturdy good sense, his unaffected sincerity, 
 and the unceasing play of his good humor, which 
 accompanies his close logic and smoothes the way 
 to conviction. Listening to him on Saturday, 
 calmly and unprejudiced, I v/as convinced that 
 he had no superior as a stump-speaker. He is 
 clear, concise, and logical, his language is elo- 
 quent and at perfect command. He is altogether 
 a more fluent speaker than Douglas, and in all the 
 arts of debate fully his equal. The Republicans 
 of Illinois have chosen a champion worthy of 
 their heartiest support, and fully equipped for the 
 conflict with the great Squatter Sovereign." 
 
 At the conclusion of the Ottawa debate, a cir- 
 cumstance occurred which, Mr. Lincoln said to
 
 INTRODUCTION 105 
 
 me afterwards, was extremely mortifying to him. 
 Half a dozen Republicans, roused to a high pitch 
 of enthusiasm for their leader, seized him as he 
 came down from the platform, hoisted him upon 
 their shoulders and marched off with him, singing 
 the ''Star-Spangled Banner," or "Hail, Colum- 
 bia," until they reached the place where he was to 
 spend the night. What use Douglas made of this 
 incident, is known to the readers of the joint de- 
 bates. He said a few days later, at Joliet, that 
 Lincoln was so used up in the discussion that his 
 knees trembled, and he had to be carried from 
 the platform, and he caused this to be printed in 
 the newspapers of his own party. Mr. Lincoln 
 called him to account for this fable at Jonesboro. 
 
 The Ottawa debate gave great satisfaction to 
 our side. Mr. Lincoln, we thought, had the bet- 
 ter of the argument, and we all came away en- 
 couraged. But the Douglas men were encour- 
 aged also. In his concluding half hour, Douglas 
 spoke with great rapidity and animation, and yet 
 with perfect distinctness, and his supporters 
 cheered him wildly. 
 
 The next joint debate was to take place at Free- 
 port, six days later. In the interval, Mr. Lincoln 
 addressed meetings at Henry, Marshall County; 
 Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, Mc- 
 Donough County. During this interval he pre- 
 pared the answers to the seven questions put to 
 him by Douglas at Ottawa, and wrote the four 
 questions which he propounded to Douglas at 
 Freeport. The second of these, viz. : ''Can the 
 people of a United States Territory, in any law- 
 ful way, against the wish of any citizen of the 
 United States, exclude slavery from its limits 
 prior to the formation of a State Constitution?"
 
 io6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 was made the subject of a conference between Mr. 
 Lincoln and a number of his friends from Chi- 
 cago, among whom were Norman B. Judd and 
 Dr. C. H. Ray, the latter the chief editor of the 
 Tribune. This conference took place at the town 
 of Dixon. I was not present, but Dr. Ray 
 told me that all who were there counseled Mr. 
 Lincoln not to put that question to Douglas, be- 
 cause he would answer it in the affirmative and 
 thus probably secure his re-election. It was their 
 opinion that Lincoln should argue strongly from 
 the Dred Scott decision, which Douglas in- 
 dorsed, that the people of the Territories could 
 not lawfully exclude slavery prior to the forma- 
 tion of a State Constitution, but that he should 
 not force Douglas to say yes or no. They be- 
 lieved that the latter would let that subject alone 
 as much as possible in order not to offend the 
 South, unless he should be driven into a corner. 
 Mr. Lincoln replied that to draw an affirmative 
 answer from Douglas on this question was ex- 
 actly what he wanted, and that his object was to 
 make it impossible for Douglas to get the vote of 
 the Southern States in the next Presidential elec- 
 tion. He considered that fight much more im- 
 portant than the present one, and he would be 
 willing to lose this in order to win that. 
 
 The result justified Mr. Lincoln's prevision. 
 Douglas did answer in the affirmative. If he had 
 answered in the negative he would have lost the 
 Senatorial election, and that would have ended his 
 political career. He took the chance of being 
 able to make satisfactory explanations to the 
 slaveholders, but they would have nothing to do 
 with him afterwards. 
 
 The crowd that assembled at Freeport on the
 
 INTRODUCTION 107 
 
 27th of August was even larger than that at Ot- 
 tawa. Hundreds of people came from Chicago and 
 many from the neighboring State of Wisconsin. 
 Douglas came from Galena the night before the 
 debate, and was greeted with a great torchlight 
 procession. Lincoln came the following morning 
 from Dixon, and was received at the railway sta- 
 tion by a dense crowd, filling up all the adjacent 
 streets, who shouted themselves hoarse when his 
 tall form was seen emerging from the train. 
 Here, again, the people had seized upon the plat- 
 form, and all the approaches to it, an hour before 
 the speaking began, and a hand-to-hand fight took 
 place to secure possession. 
 
 After the debate was finished, we Republicans 
 did not feel very happy. We held the same 
 opinion that Mr. Judd and Dr. Ray had — that 
 Douglas's answer had probably saved him from 
 defeat. We did not look forward, and we did not 
 look South, and even if we had done so, we were 
 too much enlisted in this campaign to swap it for 
 another one which was two years distant. Mr. 
 Lincoln's wisdom was soon vindicated by his 
 antagonist, one of whose earliest acts, after he 
 returned to Washington City, was to make a 
 speech (February 23, 1859) defending himself 
 against attacks upon the ''Freeport heresy," as 
 the Southerners called it. In that debate Jeffer- 
 son Davis was particularly aggravating, and 
 Douglas did not reply to him with his usual spirit. 
 
 It would draw this chapter out to unreasonable 
 length, if I were to give details of all the small 
 meetings of this campaign. After the Freeport 
 joint debate, we went to Carlinville, Macoupin 
 County, where John M. Palmer divided the time 
 with Mr. Lincoln. From this place we went to
 
 io8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 Clinton, De Witt County, via Springfield and 
 Decatur. . . . 
 
 Our course took us next to Bloomington, Mc- 
 Lean County; Monticello, Piatt County, and 
 Paris, Edgar County. At the last-mentioned 
 place (September 8) we were joined by Owen 
 Love joy, who had never been in that part of the 
 State before. The fame of Lovejoy as an Aboli- 
 tionist had preceded him, however, and the people 
 gathered around him in a curious and hesitating 
 way, as though he were a witch who might sud- 
 denly give them lockjaw or bring murrain on 
 their cattle, if he were much provoked. Love- 
 joy saw this and was greatly amused by it, and 
 when he made a speech in the evening, Mr. Lin- 
 coln having made his in the daytime, he invited 
 the timid ones to come up and feel of his horns 
 and examine his cloven foot and his forked tail. 
 Lovejoy was one of the most effective orators 
 of his time. After putting his audience in good 
 humor in this way, he made one of his impas- 
 sioned speeches which never failed to gain votes 
 where human hearts were responsive to the 
 wrongs of slavery. Edgar County was in the 
 Democratic list, but this year it gave a Repub- 
 lican majority on the legislative and congressional 
 tickets, and I think Lovejoy 's speech was largely 
 accountable for the result. . . . 
 
 The next meetings in their order were Hills- 
 boro, Montgomery County ; Greenville, Bond 
 County, and Edwardsville, Madison County. . . . 
 
 From Edwardsville we went to the Jonesboro 
 joint debate. The audience here was small, not 
 more than i,ooo or 1,500, and nearly all Demo- 
 crats. This was in the heart of Egypt. The 
 country people came into the little town with ox
 
 INTRODUCTION 109 
 
 teams mostly, and a very stunted breed of oxen, 
 too. Their wagons were old-fashioned, and 
 looked as though they were ready to fall in pieces. 
 A train with three or four carloads of Douglas 
 men came up, with Douglas himself, from Cairo. 
 All who were present listened to the debate with 
 very close attention, and there was scarcely any 
 cheering on either side. Of course, we did not 
 expect any in that place. The reason why Doug- 
 \as did not get much, was that Union County was 
 a stronghold of the "Danites," or Buchanan 
 Democrats.* . . . 
 
 From Jonesboro we went to Centralia, where a 
 great State Fair was sprawling over the prairie, 
 but there was no speaking there. It was not good 
 form to have political bouts at State Fairs, and 
 I believe that the managers had prohibited them. 
 After one day at this place, where great crowds 
 clustered around both Lincoln and Douglas when- 
 ever they appeared on the grounds, we went to 
 Charleston, Coles County, September 18, where 
 the fourth joint debate took place. 
 
 This was a very remarkable gathering, the like 
 of which we had not seen elsewhere. It con- 
 sisted of a great outpouring (or rather inpour- 
 ing) of the rural population, in their own con- 
 veyances. There was only one line of railroad 
 here, and only one special train on it. Yet, to my 
 eye, the crowd seemed larger than at either Ot- 
 tawa or Freeport, in fact the largest of the series, 
 except the one at Galesburg, which came later. 
 The campaign was now at its height, the previous 
 debates having stirred the people into a fever. 
 
 * As the reader of the Debate will observe, President 
 Buchanan and his Administration were hostile to Douglas 
 for his opposition to their Lecompton policy. — M. M. M.
 
 no DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 Both Lincoln and Douglas left the train at 
 Mattoon, distant some ten miles from Charles- 
 ton, to accept the escort of their respective par- 
 tisans. Mattoon was then a comparatively new 
 place, a station on the Illinois Central Railway 
 peopled by Northern men. Nearly the whole 
 population of this town turned out to escort Mr. 
 Lincoln along the dusty highway to Charleston. 
 In his procession was a chariot containing thirty- 
 two young ladies, representing the thirty-two 
 States of the Union, and carrying banners to 
 designate the same. Following this was one 
 young lady on horseback, holding aloft a banner 
 inscribed, "Kansas — I will be free." As she was 
 very good-looking, we thought that she would not 
 remain free always. The muses had been wide 
 awake also, for, on the side of the chariot, was 
 the stirring legend : 
 
 "Westward the star of empire takes its way; 
 The girls link-on to Lincoln, as their mothers did to 
 Clay." 
 
 The Douglas procession was likewise a formi- 
 dable one. He, too, had his chariot of young 
 ladies, and, in addition, a mounted escort. The 
 two processions stretched an almost interminable 
 distance along the road, and were marked by a 
 moving cloud of dust. 
 
 Before the Charleston debate, Mr. Lincoln had 
 received (from Senator Trumbull, I suppose) 
 certain official documents to prove that Douglas 
 had attempted, in 1856, to bring Kansas into the 
 Union without allowing the people to vote upon 
 her constitution, and with these he put the Little 
 Giant on the defensive, and pressed him so hard 
 that we all considered that our side had won a 
 substantial victory. ...
 
 INTRODUCTION iii 
 
 After the debate was ended and the country 
 people had mostly dispersed, the demand for 
 speeches was still far from being satisfied. Two 
 meetings were started in the evening, with blazing 
 bonfires in the street to mark the places. Richard 
 J. Oglesby, the Republican nominee for Congress 
 (afterward General, Governor, and Senator), ad- 
 dressed one of them. At the Douglas meeting, 
 Richard T. Merrick and U. F. Linder were the 
 speakers. Merrick was a young lawyer from 
 Maryland, who had lately settled in Chicago, and 
 a fluent and rather captivating orator. Linder 
 was an Old Line Whig, of much natural ability, 
 who had sided with the Democrats on the break- 
 up of his own party. Later in the campaign 
 Douglas wrote him a letter saying: 'Tor God's 
 sake, Linder, come up here and help me." This 
 letter got into the newspapers, and as a conse- 
 quence, the receivej- of it was immediately dubbed 
 'Tor-God's-Sake Linder," by which name he was 
 popularly known all the rest of his days. 
 
 There was nothing of special interest between 
 the Charleston debate and that which took place 
 at Galesburg, October 7. Here we had the 
 largest audience of the whole series and the worst 
 day, the weather being very cold and raw, not- 
 withstanding which the people flocked from far 
 and near. One feature of the Republican pro- 
 cession was a division of one hundred ladies and 
 an equal number of gentlemen on horseback as a 
 special escort to the carriage containing Mr. Lin- 
 coln. The whole country seemed to be swarming 
 and the crowd stood three hours in the college 
 grounds, in a cutting wind, listening to the debate. 
 Mr. Lincoln's speech at Galesburg was, in my 
 judgment, the best of the series.
 
 112 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 At Quincy, October 13, we had a fine day and a 
 very large crowd, although not so large as at 
 Galesburg. The usual processions and parapher- 
 nalia were on hand. Old Whiggery was largely 
 represented here, and in front of the Lincoln 
 procession was a live raccoon on a pole, em- 
 blematic of a by-gone day and a by-gone party. 
 When this touching reminder of the past drew 
 near the hotel where we were staying, an old 
 weather-beaten follower of Henry Clay, who was 
 standing near me, was moved to tears. After 
 mopping his face he made his way up to Mr. 
 Lincoln, wrung his hand, and burst into tears 
 again. The wicked Democrats carried at the head 
 of their procession a dead 'coon suspended by 
 its tail. This was more in accord with existing 
 facts than the other specimen, but our prejudices 
 ran in favor of live 'coons in that part of Illinois. 
 Farther north we did not set much store by them. 
 Here I saw Carl Schurz for the first time. He 
 was hotly in the fray, and was an eager listener 
 to the Quincy debate. Another rising star, Frank 
 P. Blair, Jr., was battling for Lincoln in the 
 southern part of the State. 
 
 The next day both Lincoln and Douglas, and 
 their retainers, went on board the steamer City 
 of Louisiana, bound for Alton. Here the last of 
 the joint debates took place, October 15. The 
 day was pleasant but the audience was the small- 
 est of the series, except the one at Jonesboro. 
 The debate passed off quietly and without any 
 incident worthy of note. 
 
 The campaign was now drawing to a close. 
 Everybody who had borne an active part in it 
 was pretty well fagged out, except Mr. Lincoln. 
 He showed no signs of fatigue. Douglas's voice
 
 INTRODUCTION 113 
 
 was worn down to extreme huskiness. He took 
 great pains to save what was left of his throat, 
 but to Hsten to him moved one's pity. Neverthe- 
 less, he went on doggedly, bravely, and with a 
 jaunty air of confidence. Mr. Lincoln's voice was 
 as clear and far-reaching as it was the day he 
 spoke at Beardstown, two months before — a high- 
 pitched tenor, almost a falsetto, that could be 
 heard at a greater distance than Douglas's heavy 
 basso. The battle continued till the election 
 (November 2), which took place in a cold, pelt- 
 ing rainstorm, one of the most uncomfortable in 
 the whole year. But nobody minded the weather. 
 The excitement was intense all day in all parts of 
 the State. The Republican State ticket was 
 elected by a small plurality, the vote being as 
 follows : 
 
 FOR STATE TREASURER. 
 
 Miller (Republican) 125,430 
 
 Fondey (Douglas Democrat), .... 121,609 
 Dougherty (Buchanan Democrat), . . . 5,0^^9 
 
 The Legislature consisted of twenty-five Sena- 
 tors and seventy-five Representatives. Thirteen 
 Senators held over from the preceding election. 
 Of these, eight were Democrats and five Re- 
 publicans. Of the twelve Senators elected this 
 year, the Democrats elected six and the Repub- 
 licans six. So the new Senate was composed of 
 fourteen Democrats and eleven Republicans. 
 
 Of the seventy-five members of the House of 
 Representatives, the Democrats elected forty and 
 the Republicans thirty-five. 
 
 On joint ballot, therefore, the Democrats had 
 fifty-four and the Republicans forty-six. And
 
 114 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 by this vote was Mr. Douglas re-elected Sena- 
 tor. . . . 
 
 What is more to the purpose, is that the Repub- 
 licans gained 29,241 votes, as against a Demo- 
 cratic gain of 21,332 (counting the Douglas and 
 Buchanan vote together), over the presidential 
 election of 1856. . . . 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, as he said at the Dixon Confer- 
 ence, had gone after "larger game," and he had 
 bagged it to a greater extent than he, or anybody, 
 then, imagined. But the immediate prize was 
 taken by his great rival. 
 
 I say great rival, with a full sense of the mean- 
 ing of the words. I heard Mr. Douglas deliver 
 his speech to the members of the Illinois Legis- 
 lature, April 25, 1861, in the gathering tumult 
 of arms. It was like a blast of thunder. I do not 
 think that it is possible for a human being to pro- 
 duce a more prodigious effect with spoken words, 
 than he produced on those who were within the 
 sound of his voice. He was standing in the same 
 place where I had first heard Mr. Lincoln. The 
 veins of his neck and forehead were swollen with 
 passion, and the perspiration ran down his face 
 in streams. His voice had recovered its clearness 
 from the strain of the previous year, and was fre- 
 quently broken with emotion. The amazing force 
 that he threw into the words : ''When hostile 
 armies are marching under new and odious ban- 
 ners against the government of our country, the 
 shortest way to peace is the most stupendous and 
 unanimous preparation for war," seemed to shake 
 the whole building. That speech hushed the 
 breath of treason in every corner of the State. 
 Two months later he was in his grave. He was 
 only forty-eight years old. . . .
 
 INTRODUCTION 115 
 
 Mention should be made of the services of 
 Senator Trumbull in the campaign. Mr. Trum- 
 bull was a political debater, scarcely, if at all, 
 inferior to either Lincoln or Douglas. He had 
 given Douglas more trouble in the Senate, during 
 the three years he had been there, than anybody 
 else in that body. He had known Douglas from 
 his youth, and he knew all the joints in his armor. 
 He possessed a courage equal to any occasion, 
 and he wielded a blade of tempered steel. He 
 was not present at any of the joint debates, or at 
 any of Mr. Lincoln's separate meetings, but ad- 
 dressed meetings wherever the State Central 
 Committee sent him. Mr. Lincoln often spoke 
 of him to me, and always in terms of admira- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 I think that this was the most important intel- 
 lectual wrestle that has ever taken place in this 
 country, and that it will bear comparison with any 
 which history mentions. Its consequences we all 
 know. It gave Mr. Lincoln such prominence in 
 the public eye that his nomination to the Presi- 
 dency became possible and almost inevitable. It 
 put an apple of discord in the Democratic party 
 which hopelessly divided it at Charleston, thus 
 making Republican success in i860 morally cer- 
 tain. This was one of Mr. Lincoln's designs, as 
 has been already shown. Perhaps the Charles- 
 ton schism would have taken place, even if Doug- 
 las had not been driven into a corner at Freeport, 
 and compelled to proclaim the doctrine of ''un- 
 friendly legislation," but it is more likely that the 
 break would have been postponed a few years 
 longer. . . ,
 
 ii6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 Correspondence in Regard to the Debate. 
 
 July 24 to July 31, 1858. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Douglas. 
 
 Chicago, 111., July 24, 1858. 
 Hon. S. A. Douglas. 
 
 My dear Sir : Will it be agreeable to you to 
 make an arrangement for you and myself to 
 divide time, and address the same audiences the 
 present canvass? Mr. Judd, who will hand you 
 this, is authorized to receive your answer; and, 
 if agreeable to you, to enter into the terms of 
 such arrangement. Your obedient servant, 
 
 A. Lincoln. 
 
 Mr. Douglas to Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 Hon A. Lincoln. Chicago, July 24, 1858. 
 
 Dear Sir : Your note of this date, in which you in- 
 quire if it would be agreeable to me to make an ar- 
 rangement to divide the time and address the same 
 audiences during the present canvass, was handed me 
 by Mr. Judd. Recent events have interposed difficulties 
 in the way of such an arrangement. 
 
 I went to Springfield last week for the purpose of con- 
 ferring with the Democratic State Central Committee 
 upon the mode of conducting the canvass, and with 
 them, and under their advice, made a list of appoint- 
 ments covering the entire period until late in October. 
 The people of the several localities have been notified of 
 the times and places of the meetings. Those appoint- 
 ments have all been made for Democratic meetings, and 
 arrangements have been made by which the Democratic 
 candidates for Congress, for the legislature, and other 
 offices will be present and address the people._ It is 
 evident, therefore, that these various candidates, in con- 
 nection with myself, will occupy the whole time of the 
 day and evening, and leave no opportunity for other 
 speeches. 
 
 Besides, there is another consideration which should 
 be kept in mind. It has been suggested recently that an
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 117 
 
 arrangement had been made to bring out a third candi- 
 date for the United States Senate, who, with yourself, 
 should canvass the State in opposition to me, with no 
 other purpose than to insure my defeat, by dividing the 
 Democratic party for your benefit. If I should make 
 this arrangement with you, it is more than probable that 
 this other candidate, who has a common object with 
 you, would desire to become a party to it, and claim the 
 right to speak from the same stand ; so that he and you 
 in concert might be able to take the opening and closing 
 speech in every case. 
 
 I cannot refrain from expressing my surprise, if it 
 was your original intention to invite such an arrange- 
 ment, that you should have waited until after I had 
 made my appointments, inasmuch as we were both here 
 in Chicago together for several days after my arrival, 
 and again at Bloomington, Atlanta, Lincoln, and Spring- 
 field, where it was well known I went for the purpose 
 of consulting with the State Central Committee, and 
 agreeing upon the plan of the campaign. 
 
 While under these circumstances I do not feel at lib- 
 erty to make any arrangements which would deprive the 
 Democratic candidates for Congress, State offices, and 
 the legislature, from participating in the discussion at 
 the various meetings designated by the Democratic 
 State Central Committee, I will, in order to accommo- 
 date you as far as it is in my power to do so, take the 
 responsibility of making an arrangement with you for a 
 discussion between us at one prominent point in each 
 congressional district in the State, except the second and 
 sixth districts, where we have both spoken, and in each 
 of which cases you had the concluding speech. If 
 agreeable to you, I will indicate the following places as 
 those most suitable in the several congressional dis- 
 tricts at which we should speak, to wit : Freeport, Otta- 
 wa, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton, Jonesboro and Charles- 
 ton. I will confer with you at the earliest convenient 
 opportunity in regard to the mode of conducting the 
 debate, the times of meeting at the several places, sub- 
 ject to the condition that where appointments have al- 
 ready been made by the Democratic State Central Com- 
 mittee at any of those places, I must insist upon you 
 meeting me at the time specified. Very respectfully, 
 your most obedient servant, 
 
 S. A. Douglas.
 
 ii8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Douglas. 
 
 Springfield, July 29, 1858. 
 
 Hon. S. A. Douglas. 
 
 Dear Sir : Yours of the 24th in relation to an 
 arrangement to divide time and address the same 
 audiences is received ; and in apology for not 
 sooner replying, allow me to say that when I sat 
 by you at dinner yesterday I was not aware that 
 you had answered my note, nor certainly that my 
 own note had been presented to you. An hour 
 after I saw a copy of your answer in the Chicago 
 Times, and reaching home I found the original 
 awaiting me. Protesting that your insinuations 
 of attempted unfairness on my part are unjust 
 and with the hope that you did not very consid- 
 erately make them, I proceed to reply. To your 
 statement that ''It has been suggested recently 
 that an arrangement had been made to bring 
 out a third candidate for the United States Sen- 
 ate, who, with yourself, should canvass the State 
 in opposition to me," etc., I can only say that such 
 suggestion must have been made by yourself, 
 for certainly none such has been made by or to 
 me, or otherwise, to my knowledge. Surely you 
 did not deliberately conclude, as you insinuate, 
 that I was expecting to drav/ you into an ar- 
 rangement of terms, to be agreed on by yourself, 
 by which a third candidate and myself "in con- 
 cert might be able to take the opening and closing 
 speech in every case." 
 
 As to your surprise that I did not sooner make 
 the proposal to divide time with you, I can only 
 say I made it as soon as I resolved to make it. I 
 did not know but that such proposal would come 
 from you ; I waited respectfully to see. It may
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 1 1 9 
 
 have been well known to you that you went to 
 Springfield for the purpose of agreeing on the 
 plan of campaign ; but it was not so known to me. 
 When your appointments were announced in the 
 papers, extending only to the 21st of August, I 
 for the first time considered it certain that you 
 would make no proposal to me, and then resolved 
 that, if my friends concurred, I would make one 
 to you. As soon thereafter as I could see and 
 consult with friends satisfactorily, I did make 
 the proposal. It did not occur to me that the 
 proposed arrangements could derange your 
 plans after the latest of your appointments 
 already made. After that, there was before 
 the election largely over two months of clear 
 time. 
 
 For you to say that we have already spoken at 
 Z^hicago and Springfield, and that on both occa- 
 sions I had the concluding speech, is hardly a 
 fair statement. The truth rather is this : At 
 Chicago, July 9, you made a carefully prepared 
 conclusion on my speech of June 16. Twenty- 
 four hours after, I made a hasty conclusion on 
 yours of the 9th. You had six days to prepare, 
 and concluded on me again at Bloomington on 
 the i6th. Twenty-four hours after, I concluded 
 again on you at Springfield. In the meantime, 
 you had made another conclusion on me at 
 Springfield which I did not hear, and of 
 the contents of which I knew nothing when I 
 spoke ; so that your speech made in day- 
 light, and mine at night, of the 17th, at Spring- 
 field, were both made in perfect independence of 
 each other. The dates of making all these 
 speeches will show, I think, that in the matter of 
 time for preparation the advantage has all been
 
 I20 SPEECHES tAug. 12 
 
 on your side, and that none of the external cir- 
 cumstances have stood to my advantage. 
 
 I agree to an arrangement for us to speak at 
 the seven places you have named, and at your 
 own times, provided you namie the times at once, 
 so that I, as well as you, can have to myself the 
 time not covered by the arrangement. As to the 
 other details, I wish perfect reciprocity, and no 
 more. 1 wish as much time as you, and that 
 conclusions shall alternate. That is all. Your 
 obedient servant, A. Lincoln. 
 
 P. S. As matters now stand, I shall be at no 
 more of your exclusive meetings ; and for about 
 a week from to-day a letter from you will reach 
 me at Springfield. A. L. 
 
 Mr. Douglas to Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 Bement, Piatt Co., 111., July 30, 1858. 
 
 Dear Sir: Your letter dated yesterday, accepting my 
 proposition for a joint discussion at one prominent point 
 in each congressional district, as stated in my previous 
 letter, was received this morning. 
 
 The times and places designated are as follows: 
 
 Ottawa, La Salle County August 21, 1858 
 
 Freeport, Stephenson County. . " 27, '^^ 
 
 Jonesboro, Union County .... September 15, " 
 
 Charleston, Coles County " 18, "^ 
 
 Galesburg. Knox County October 7, 
 
 Quincy, Adams County " i3> " 
 
 Alton, Madison County " i5> 
 
 I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately 
 open and close the discussion. I will speak at Ottawa 
 one hour; you can reply, occupying an hour and a half, 
 and I will then follow for half an hour. At Freeport, 
 you shall open the discussion and speak one hour; I 
 will follow for an hour and a half, and you can then 
 reply for half an hour. We will alternate in like man- 
 ner in each successive place. Very respectfully, your 
 obedient servant, S. A. Douglas. 
 
 Hon. A. Lincoln, Springfield, 111.
 
 i8s8} AT BEARDSTOWN 121: 
 
 Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Douglas. 
 
 Springfield, July 31, 1858. 
 Hon. S. A. Douglas. 
 
 Dear Sir : Yours of yesterday, naming places, 
 times, and terms for joint discussions between us, 
 was received this morning. Although by the 
 terms, as you propose, you take four openings 
 and closes to my three, I accede, and thus close 
 the arrangement. I direct this to you at Hills- 
 boro, and shall try to have both your letter and 
 this appear in the Journal and Register of Mon- 
 day morning. Your obedient servant, 
 
 A. Lincoln. 
 
 "The Conspiracy Charge." 
 
 Fragment of Speech in Rejoinder to the 
 Reply of Senator Douglas to Mr. Lin- 
 coln's Springfield Speeches of June 16 
 and July 17, 1858. Delivered at Beards- 
 town, III. August 12, 1858. 
 
 I made a speech in June last in which I 
 pointed out, briefly and consecutively, a series of 
 public measures leading directly to the national- 
 ization of slavery — the spreading of that institu- 
 tion over all the Territories and all the States, 
 old as well as new. North as well as South. I 
 enumerated the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
 promise, which, every candid man must acknowl- 
 edge, conferred upon emigrants to Kansas and 
 Nebraska the right to carry slaves there and hold 
 them in bondage, whereas formerly they had no 
 such right ; I alluded to the events which followed 
 that repeal, events in which Judge Douglas's
 
 122 SPEECHES [Aug. 12 
 
 name figures quite prominently ; I referred to the 
 Dred Scott decision and the extraordinary means 
 taken to prepare the pubHc mind for that decision ; 
 the efforts put forth by President Pierce to make 
 the people believe that^ in the election of James 
 Buchanan, they had indorsed the doctrine that 
 slavery may exist in the free Territories of the 
 Union — the earnest exhortation put forth by 
 President Buchanan to the people to stick to that 
 decision whatever it might be — the close-fitting 
 niche in the Nebraska bill, wherein the right of 
 the people to govern themselves is made ''subject 
 to the Constitution of the United States" — the 
 extraordinary haste made by Judge Douglas to 
 give this decision an indorsement at the capital 
 of Illinois. I alluded to other concurring circum- 
 stances, which I need not repeat now, and I said 
 that, though I could not open the bosoms of men 
 and find out their secret motives, yet, when I 
 found the framework of a barn, or a bridge, or 
 any other structure, built by a number of carpen- 
 ters — Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James 
 — and so built that each tenon had its proper 
 mortise, and the whole forming a symmetrical 
 piece of workmanship, I should say that those 
 carpenters all worked on an intelligible plan, and 
 understood each other from the beginning. This 
 embraced the main argument in my speech before 
 the Republican State Convention in June. Judge 
 Douglas received a copy of my speech some two 
 weeks before his return to Illinois. He had ample 
 time to examine it and reply to it, but he wholly 
 overlooked the body of my argument, and said 
 nothing about the ''conspiracy charge," as he 
 terms it. He made his speech up of complaints 
 against our tendencies to negro equality and amal-
 
 1858] AT BEARDSTOWN 123 
 
 gamation. Well, seeing that Douglas had had 
 the process served on him, that he had taken 
 notice of the process, that he had come into 
 court and pleaded to a part of the complaint, but 
 had ignored the main issue, I took a default on 
 him. I held that he had no plea to make to the 
 general charge. So when I was called on to reply 
 to him, twenty-four hours afterwards, I renewed 
 the charge as explicitly as I could. My speech 
 was reported and published on the following 
 morning, and, of course. Judge Douglas saw it. 
 He went from Chicago to Bloomington and there 
 made another and longer speech, and yet took no 
 notice of the ''conspiracy charge." He then went 
 to Springfield and made another elaborate argu- 
 ment, but was not prevailed upon to know any- 
 thing about the outstanding indictment. I made 
 another speech at Springfield, this time taking it 
 for granted that Judge Douglas was satisfied to 
 take his chances in the campaign with the im- 
 putation of the conspiracy hanging over him. It 
 was not until he went into a small town, Clinton, 
 in De Witt County, where he delivered his fourth 
 or fifth regular speech, that he found it convenient 
 to notice this matter at all. At that place (I was 
 standing in the crowd when he made his speech), 
 he bethought himself that he was charged with 
 something, and his reply was that his "self-respect 
 alone prevented him from calling it a falsehood." 
 Well, my friends, perhaps he so far lost his self- 
 respect in Beardstown as to actually call it a 
 falsehood. 
 
 But now I have this reply to make : that while 
 the Nebraska bill was pending. Judge Douglas 
 helped to vote down a clause giving the people of 
 the Territories the right to exclude slavery if they
 
 124 SPEECHES tAug. 17 
 
 chose; that neither while the bill was pending, 
 nor at any other time, would he give his opinion 
 whether the people had the right to exclude slav- 
 ery, though respectfully asked; that he made a 
 report, which I hold in my hand, from the Com- 
 mittee on Territories, in which he said the rights 
 of the people of the Territories, in this regard, 
 are "held in abeyance," and cannot be immediately 
 exercised ; that the Dred Scott decision expressly 
 denies any such right, but declares that neither 
 Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can keep 
 slavery out of Kansas and that Judge Douglas 
 indorses that decision. All these charges are 
 new ; that is, I did not make them in my original 
 speech. They are additional and cumulative 
 testimony. I bring them forward now and dare 
 Judge Douglas to deny one of them. Let him do 
 so and I wall prove them by such testimony as 
 shall confound himx forever. I say to you, that it 
 would be more to the purpose for Judge Douglas 
 to say that he did not repeal the Missouri Com- 
 promise; that he did not make slavery possible 
 where it was impossible before ; that he did not 
 leave a niche in the Nebraska bill for the Dred 
 Scott decision to rest in; that he did not vote 
 down a clause giving the people the right to ex- 
 clude slavery if they wanted to ; that he did not 
 refuse to give his individual opinion whether a 
 Territorial Legislature could exclude slavery; 
 that he did not make a report to the Senate, in 
 which he said that the rights of the people, in this 
 regard, were held in abeyance and could not be 
 immediately exercised ; that he did not make a 
 hasty indorsement of the Dred Scott decision over 
 at Springfield ;* that he does not now indorse that 
 
 * This refers to Douglas's speech on June 12, 1857.
 
 1858] AT LEIVISTON 125 
 
 decision; that that decision does not take away 
 from the Territorial Legislature the right to ex- 
 clude slavery ; and that he did not, in the original 
 Nebraska bill, so couple the words State and 
 Territory together that what the Supreme Court 
 has done in forcing open all the Territories to 
 slavery it may yet do in forcing open all the 
 States. I say it would be vastly more to the point 
 for Judge Douglas to say that he did not do some 
 of these things; that he did not forge some of 
 these links of testimony, than to go vociferating 
 about the country that possibly he may hint that 
 somebody is a liar. 
 
 "Back to the Declaration." 
 
 Speech at Lewiston, III. August 17, 1858.* 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was formed 
 by the representatives of American liberty from 
 thirteen States of the Confederacy, twelve of 
 which were slave-holding communities. We need 
 not discuss the way or the reason of their becom- 
 ing slave-holding communities. It is sufficient 
 for our purpose that all of them greatly deplored 
 the evil and that they placed a provision in the 
 Constitution which they supposed would gradu- 
 ally remove the disease by cutting off its source. 
 This was the abolition of the slave trade. So 
 general was the conviction, the public determina- 
 tion, to abolish the African slave trade, that the 
 provision which I have referred to as being placed 
 in the Constitution declared that it should not be 
 abolished prior to the year 1808. A constitu- 
 
 * Reported by the Chicago Press and Tribune.
 
 126 SPEECHES [Aug. 17 
 
 tional provision was necessary to prevent the peo- 
 ple, through Congress, from putting a stop to the 
 traffic immediately at the close of the war. Now 
 if slavery had been a good thing, would the fa- 
 thers of the republic have taken a step calculated 
 to diminish its beneficent influences among them- 
 selves,_ and snatch the boon wholly from their 
 posterity? These communities, by their repre- 
 sentatives in old Independence Hall, said to the 
 whole world of men : "We hold these truths to be 
 self-evident : that all men are created equal ; that 
 they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
 inalienable rights ; that among these are life, lib- 
 erty, and the ^pursuit of happiness." This was 
 their majestic interpretation of the economy of 
 the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and 
 noble understanding of the justice of the Creator 
 to his creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all his crea- 
 tures, to the whole great family of man. In their 
 enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Di- 
 vine image and likeness was sent into the world 
 to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted by 
 its fellows. They grasped not only the whole 
 race of man then living, but they reached forward 
 and seized upon the farthest posterity. They 
 erected a beacon to guide their children, and their 
 children's children, and the countless myriads 
 who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise 
 statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency 
 of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they estab- 
 lished these great self-evident truths, that when 
 in the distant future some man, some faction, 
 some interest, should set up the doctrine that none 
 but rich men, or none but white men, or none but 
 Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their pos-
 
 i858] AT LEWISTON 
 
 127 
 
 terity might look up again to the Declaration of 
 Independence and take courage to renew the bat- 
 tle which their fathers began, so that truth and 
 justice and mercy and all the humane and Chris- 
 tian virtues might not be extinguished from the 
 land ; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit 
 and circumscribe the great principles on which 
 the temple of liberty was being built. 
 
 Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught 
 doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of 
 the Declaration of Independence ; if you have 
 listened to suggestions which would take away 
 from its grandeur and mutilate the fair sym- 
 metry of its proportions ; if you have been inclined 
 to believe that all men are not created equal in 
 those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart 
 of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Re- 
 turn to the fountain whose waters spring close by 
 the blood of the revolution. Think nothing of 
 me — take no thought for the political fate of any 
 man whomsoever — but come back to the truths 
 that are in the Declaration of Independence. You 
 may do anything with me you choose, if you will 
 but heed these sacred principles. You may not 
 only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take 
 me and put me to death. While pretending no 
 indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be 
 actuated in this contest by something higher than 
 an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every 
 paltry and insignificant thought for any man's 
 success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge 
 Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that im- 
 m.ortal emblem of Humanity — the Declaration of 
 American Independence.
 
 128 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 First Joint Debate, at Ottawa. 
 
 August 21, 1858. 
 
 Mr. Douglas's Opening Speech. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I appear before you to-day 
 for the purpose of discussing the leading political 
 topics which now agitate the public mind. By an ar- 
 rangement between Mr. Lincoln and myself, we are 
 present here to-day for the purpose of having a joint 
 discussion, as the representatives of the two great 
 political parties of the State and Union, upon the 
 principles in issue between those parties; and this vast 
 concourse of people shows the deep feeling which per- 
 vades the public mind in regard to the questions dividing 
 us. 
 
 Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great 
 political parties, known as the Whig and Democratic 
 parties. Both were national and patriotic, advocating 
 principles that were universal in their application. An 
 old-line Whig could proclaim his principles in Louisiana 
 and Massachusetts alike. Whig principles had no 
 boundary sectional line — they were not limited by the 
 Ohio River, nor by the Potomac, nor by the line of the 
 free and slave States, but applied and were proclaimed 
 wherever the Constitution ruled or the American flag 
 waved over the American soil. So it was, and so it is 
 with the great Democratic party, which, from the days 
 of Jefferson until this period, has proven itself to be 
 the historic party of this nation. While the Whig and 
 Democratic parties differed in regard to a bank, the 
 tariff, distribution, the specie circular, and the sub- 
 treasury, they agreed on the great slavery question 
 which now agitates the Union. I say that the Whig 
 party and the Democratic party agreed on the slavery 
 question, while they differed on those matters of ex- 
 pediency to which I have referred. The Whig party 
 and the Democratic party jointly adopted the com- 
 promise measures of 1850 as the basis of a proper and 
 just solution of the slavery question in all its forms. 
 Clay was the great leader, with Webster on his right 
 and Cass on his left, and sustained by the patriots in 
 the Whig and Democratic ranks who had devised and 
 enacted the compromise measures of 1850.
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 129 
 
 In 1851 the Whig party and the Democratic party 
 united in Illinois in adopting resolutions indorsing and 
 approving the principles of the compromise measures of 
 1850, as the proper adjustment of that question. In 
 1852. when the Whig party assembled in convention at 
 Baltimore for the purpose of nominating a candidate 
 for the presidency, the first thing it did was to declare 
 the compromise measures of 1850, in substance and in 
 principle, a suitable adjustment of that question. [Here 
 the speaker 7vas interrupted by loud and long-continued 
 applause.] My friends, silence will be more acceptable to 
 me in the discussion of these questions than applause. I 
 desire to address myself to your judgment, your under- 
 standing, and your consciences, and not to your passions 
 or your enthusiasm. When the Democratic convention 
 assembled in Baltimore in the same year, for the pur- 
 pose of nominating a Democratic candidate for the 
 presidency, it also adopted the compromise measures 
 of 1850 as the basis of Democratic action. Thus you 
 see that up to 1853-54, the Whig party and the Demo- 
 cratic party both stood on the same platform with re- 
 gard to the slavery question. That platform was the 
 right of the people of each State and each Territory to 
 decide their local and domestic institutions for them- 
 selves, subject only to the Federal Constitution. 
 
 During the session of Congress of 1853-54, I intro- 
 duced into the Senate of the United States a bill to 
 organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on 
 that principle which had been adopted in the compro- 
 mise measures of 1850, approved by the Whig party and 
 the Democratic party in Illinois in 185 1, and indorsed 
 by the Whig party and the Democratic party in national 
 convention in 1852. In order that there might be no 
 misunderstanding in relation to the principle involved in 
 the Kansas and Nebraska bill, I put forth the true 
 intent and meaning of the act in these words: "It is 
 the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate 
 slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it 
 therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free 
 to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their 
 own way, subject only to the Federal Constitution." Thus 
 you see that up to 1854, when the Kansas and Nebraska 
 bill was brought into Congress for the purpose of 
 carrying out the principles which both parties had up to 
 that time indorsed and approved, there had been no
 
 I30 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 division in this country in regard to that principle ex- 
 cept the opposition of the Abolitionists. In the House 
 of Representatves of the Illinois legislature, upon a reso- 
 lution asserting that principle, every Whig and every 
 Democrat in the House voted in the affirmative, and 
 only four men voted against it, and those four were 
 old-line Abolitionists. 
 
 In 1854 Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Mr. Lyman Trum- 
 bull entered into an arrangement, one with the other, 
 and each with his respective friends, to dissolve the Old 
 Whig party on the one hand, and to dissolve the old 
 Democratic party on the other, and to connect the 
 members of both into an Abolition party, under the 
 name and disguise of a Republican party. The terms of 
 that arrangement between Lincoln and Trumbull have 
 been published by Lincoln's special friend, James H. 
 Matheny, Esq., and they were that Lincoln should 
 have General Shields's place in the United States Sen- 
 ate, which was then about to become vacant, and that 
 Trumbull should have my seat when my term expired. 
 Lincoln went to work to Abolitionize the Old Whig 
 party all over the State, pretending that he was then as 
 good a Whig as ever ; and Trumbull went to work in his 
 part of the State preaching Abolitionism in its milder 
 and lighter form, and trying to Abolitionize the Demo- 
 cratic party, and bring old Democrats handcuffed and 
 bound hand and foot into the Abolition camp. In pur- 
 suance of the arrangement, the parties met at Spring- 
 field in October, 1854. and proclaimed their new plat- 
 form. Lincoln was to bring into the Abolition camp 
 the old-line Whigs, and transfer them over to Giddings, 
 Chase, Fred Douglass, and Parson Lovejoy, who were 
 ready to receive them and christen them in their new 
 faith. They laid down on that occasion a platform for 
 their new Republican party, which was thus to be con- 
 structed. I have the resolutions of the State convention 
 then held, which was the first mass State convention 
 ever held in Illinois by the Black Republican party, and 
 I now hold them in my hands and will read a part of 
 them, and cause the others to be printed. Here are the 
 most important and material resolutions of this Aboli- 
 tion platform : 
 
 I. Resolved, That we believe this truth to be self-evident, 
 that when parties become subversive of the ends for which 
 they are established, or incapable of restoring the govern-
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 
 
 131 
 
 ment to the true principles of the Constitution, it is the 
 right and duty of the people to dissolve the political 
 bands by which they may have been connected therewith, 
 and to organize new parties upon such principles and 
 with such views as the circumstances and the exigencies of 
 the nation may demand. 
 
 2. Resolved, That the times imperatively demand the 
 reorganization of parties, and, repudiating all previous 
 party attachments, names, and predilections, we unite our- 
 selves together in defense of the liberty and Constitution 
 of the country, and will hereafter cooperate as the Repub- 
 lican party, pledged to the accomplishment of the follow- 
 ing purposes : To bring the administration of the govern- 
 ment back to the control of first principles ; to restore 
 Nebraska and Kansas to the position of free Territories ; 
 that, as the Con. 'itution of the United States vests in 
 the States, and not in Congress, the power to legislate 
 for the extradition of fugitives from labor, to repeal and 
 entirely abrogate the fugitive-slave law ; to restrict slavery 
 to these States in which it exists ; to prohibit the admis- 
 sion of any more slave States into the Union ; to abolish 
 slavery in the District of Columbia ; to exclude slavery 
 from all the Territories over which the general govern- 
 ment has exclusive jurisdiction ; and to resist the acquire- 
 ment of any more Territories unless the practice of 
 slavery therein forever shall have been prohibited. 
 
 3. Resolved, That in furtherance of these principles we 
 will use such constitutional and lawful means as shall 
 seem best adapted to their accomplishment, and that we 
 will support no man for office, under the general or State 
 government, who is not positively and fully committed to 
 the support of these principles, and whose personal charac- 
 ter and conduct is not a guaranty that he is reliable, 
 and who shall not have abjured old party allegiance and 
 ties. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered 
 every one of those propositions, and yet I venture to say 
 that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln to come out and say 
 that he is now in favor of eath one of them. That these 
 propositions, one and all, constitute the platform of the 
 Black Republican party of this day, I have no doubt ; 
 and when you were not aware for what purpose I was 
 reading them, your Black Republicans cheered them as 
 good Black Republican doctrines. My object in reading 
 these resolutions was to put the question to Abraham 
 Lincoln this day, whether he now stands and will stand 
 by each article in that creed, and carry it out. I desire 
 to know whether Mr. Lincoln to-day stands as he did in
 
 132 DEBATE JVITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugi- 
 tive-slave law. I desire him to answer whether he 
 stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against the ad- 
 mission of any more slave States into the Union, even 
 if the people want them. I want to know whether he 
 stands pledged against the admission of a new State 
 into the Union with such a constitution as the people 
 of that State may see fit to make. I want to know 
 whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of 
 slavery in the District of Columbia. I desire him to 
 answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of 
 the slave-trade between the different States. I desire 
 to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery 
 in all the Territories of the United States. North as 
 well as South of the Missouri Compromise line. I de- 
 sire him to answer whether he is opposed to the ac- 
 quisition of any more territory unless slavery is pro- 
 hibited therein. I want his answer to these questions. 
 Your affirmative cheers in favor of this Abolition plat- 
 form are not satisfactory. I ask Abraham Lincoln to 
 answer these questions, in order that when I trot him 
 down to lower Eg>'pt, I may put the same questions to 
 him. My principles are the same everywhere. I can 
 proclaim them alike in the North, the South, the East, 
 and the West. My principles will apply wherever the 
 Constitution prevails and the American flag waves. I 
 desire to know whether iMr. Lincoln's principles will 
 bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro? I put 
 these questions to him to-day distinctly, and ask an 
 answer. I have a right to an answer, for I quote from 
 the platform of the Republican party, made by himself 
 and others at the time that party was formed, and the 
 bargain made by Lincoln to dissolve and kill the Old 
 Whig party, and transfer its members, bound hand and 
 foot, to the Abolition party, under the direction of Gid- 
 dings and Fred Douglass. -In the remarks I have made 
 on this platform, and the position of Mr. Lincoln upon 
 it, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to 
 that gentleman. I have known him for nearly twenty- 
 five years. There were many points of sympathy be- 
 tween us when we first got acquainted. We were both 
 comparatively boys, and both struggling with poverty 
 in a strange land. I was a school-teacher in the town of 
 Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the 
 town of Salem. He was more successful in his occu-
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 133 
 
 pation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in 
 this world's goods. Lincoln is one of those peculiar 
 men who perform with admirable skill everj-thing which 
 they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I 
 could, and when a cabinet-maker I made a good bed- 
 stead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded 
 better with bureaus and secretaries than with anything 
 else : but I believe that Lincoln was always more suc- 
 cessful in business than I, for his business enabled him 
 to get into the legislature. I met him there, however, 
 and had sympathy with him. because of the up-hill 
 struggle we both had in life. He was then just as good 
 at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat anj- of the 
 boys wrestling, or running a foot-race, in pitching 
 quoits or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor than 
 all the boys of the town together, and the dignit>' and 
 impartiality with which he presided at a horse-race or 
 fist-fight excited the admiration and won the praise of 
 ever>-body that was present and participated. I sym- 
 pathized with him because he was struggling with 
 difficulties, and so was I. 'Sir. Lincoln ser\-ed with me 
 in the legislature in 1836. when we both retired, and he 
 subsided, or became submerged, and he was lost sight of 
 as a public man for some years. In 1846, when Wilmot 
 introduced his celebrated proviso, and the Abolition 
 tornado swept over the country-. Lincoln again turned 
 up as a member of Congress from the Sangamon dis- 
 trict. I was then in the Senate of the United States, 
 and was glad to welcome my old friend and com- 
 panion. Whilst in Congress, he distinguished himself 
 by his opposition to the Mexican war. taking the side of 
 the common enemy against his own countn,- ; and when 
 he returned home he found that the indignation of the 
 people followed him ever^-where. and he was again sub- 
 merged or obliged to retire into private life, forgotten 
 "by his former friends. He came up again in 1854. just 
 in time to make this Abolition or Black Republican 
 platform, in company with Giddings. Lovejoy. Chase, 
 and Fred Douglass, for the Republican party to stand 
 upon. Trumbull, too, was one of our own contempo- 
 raries. He was born and raised in old Connecticut, was 
 bred a Federalist, but removing to Georgia, turned 
 Kullifier when nullification was popular, and as soon as 
 he disposed of his clocks and wound up his business, 
 migrated to Illinois, turned politician and lawyer here,
 
 134 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 and made his appearance in 1841 as a member of the 
 legislature. He became noted as the author of the 
 scheme to repudiate a large portion of the State debt 
 of Illinois, which, if successful, would have brought 
 infamy and disgrace upon the fair escutcheon of our 
 glorious State. The odium attached to that measure 
 consigned him to oblivion for a time. I helped to do it. 
 I walked into a public meeting in the hall of the House 
 of Representatives, and replied to his repudiating 
 speeches, and resolutions were carried over his head 
 denouncing repudiation, and asserting the moral and 
 legal obligation of Illinois to pay every dollar of the 
 debt she owed and every bond that bore her seal. 
 Trumbull's malignity has followed me since I thus de- 
 feated his infamous scheme. 
 
 These two men having formed this combination to 
 Abolitionize the Old Whig party and the old Demo- 
 cratic party, and put themselves into the Senate of the 
 United States, in pursuance of their bargain, are now 
 carrying out that arrangement. Matheny states that 
 Trumbull broke faith ; that the bargain was that 
 Lincoln should be the senator in Shields's place, and 
 Trumbull was to wait for mine ; and the story goes 
 that Trumbull cheated Lincoln, having control of four 
 or five Abolitionized Democrats who were holding over 
 in the Senate ; he would not let them vote for Lincoln, 
 which obliged the rest of the Abolitionists to support 
 him in order to secure an Abolition senator. There are 
 a number of authorities for the truth of this besides 
 Matheny, and I suppose that even Mr. Lincoln will 
 not deny it. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln demands that he shall have the place in- 
 tended for Trumbull, as Trumbull cheated him and got 
 his, and Trumbull is stumping the State traducing me 
 for the purpose of securing the position for Lincoln, in 
 order to quiet him. It was in consequence of this ar- 
 rangement that the Republican convention was impan- 
 eled to instruct for Lincoln and nobody else, and it was 
 on this account that they passed resolutions that he was 
 their first, their last, and their only choice. Archy Wil- 
 liams was nowhere, Brov/ning was nobody, Wentworth 
 was not to be considered ; they had no man in the Re- 
 publican party for the place except Lincoln, for the 
 reason that he demanded that they should carry out the 
 arrangement.
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 135 
 
 Having formed this new party for the benefit of de- 
 serters from Whiggery and deserters from Democracy, 
 and having laid down the AboHtion platform which I 
 have read, Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims 
 his Abolition doctrines. Let me read a part of them. 
 In his speech at Springfield to the convention which 
 nominated him for the Senate, he said : 
 
 In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall 
 have been reached and passed. "A house divided against 
 itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot 
 endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not 
 expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the 
 house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. 
 It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the 
 opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it 
 and place it where the pviblic mind shall rest in the 
 belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or 
 its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike 
 lawful in all the States — old as well as new, North as well 
 as South. 
 
 ["Good," "good," and cheers.] 
 
 I am delighted to hear you Black Republicans say 
 *'good." I have no doubt that doctrine expresses your 
 sentiments, and I will prove to you now, if you listen 
 to me, that it is revolutionary and destructive of the ex- 
 istence of this government. Mr. Lincoln, in the extract* 
 from which I have read, says that this government cannot 
 endure permanently in the same condition in which it 
 was made by its framers — divided into free and slave 
 States. He says that it has existed for about seventy 
 years thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot 
 endure permanently on the same principles and in the 
 same relative condition in which our fathers made it. 
 Why can it not exist divided into free and slave States? 
 Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, 
 Jay, and the great men of that day made this govern- 
 ment divided into free States and slave States, and left 
 each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the sub- 
 ject of slavery. Why can it not exist on the same 
 principles on which our fathers made it? They knew 
 when they framed the Constitution that in a country as 
 wide and broad as this, with such a variety of climate, 
 production, and interest, the people necessarily required 
 different laws and institutions in different localities. 
 They knew that the laws and regulations which would suit
 
 136 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 the granite hills of New Hampshire would be unsuited 
 to the rice-plantations of South Carolina, and they 
 therefore provided that each State should retain its 
 own legislature and its own sovereignty, with the full 
 and complete power to do as it pleased within its own 
 limits, in all that was local and not national. One of the 
 reserved rights of the States was the right to regulate 
 the relations between master and servant, on the slavery 
 question. At the time the Constitution was framed, 
 there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of 
 which were slaveholding States and one a free State. 
 Suppose this doctrine of uniformity preached by Mr. 
 Lincoln, that the States should all be free or all be slave, 
 had prevailed, and what would have been the result? 
 Of course, the twelve slaveholding States would have 
 overruled the one free State, and slavery would have 
 been fastened by a constitutional provision on every inch 
 of the American republic, instead of being left, as our 
 fathers wisely left it, to each State to decide for itself. 
 Here I assert that uniformity in the local laws and in- 
 stitutions of the different States is neither possible nor 
 desirable. If uniformity had been adopted when the 
 government was established, it must inevitably have 
 been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the 
 uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality 
 everywhere. 
 
 We are told by Lincoln that he is utterly opposed to 
 the Dred Scott decision, and will not submit to it, for 
 the reason that he says it deprives the negro of the 
 rights and privileges of citizenship. That is the first 
 and main reason which he assigns for his warfare on the 
 Supreme Court of the United States and its decision. 
 I ask you, are you in favor of conferring upon the negro 
 the rights and privileges of citizenship? Do you desire 
 to strike out of our State constitution that clause which 
 keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State, and 
 allow the free negroes to flow in, and cover your prairies 
 with black settlements? Do you desire to turn this 
 beautiful State into a free negro colony, in order that 
 when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one 
 hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to 
 become citizens and voters, on an equality with your- 
 selves? If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire 
 to allow them to come into the State and settle with the 
 wl;>te man, if you desire them to vote on an equality
 
 i858] AT OTTAWA 137 
 
 with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to 
 •serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then sup- 
 port Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who 
 are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. For one, I 
 am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. 
 I believe this government was made on the white basis. 
 I believe it was made by white men, for the benefit of 
 white men and their posterity forever, and I am in 
 favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of 
 European birth and descent, instead of conferring it 
 upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the 
 little Abolition orators who go around and lecture in 
 the basements of schools and churches, reads from the 
 Declaration of Independence that all men were created 
 equal, and then asks how can you deprive a negro of 
 that equality which God and the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence award to him? He and they maintain that ne- 
 ^ro equality is guaranteed by the laws of God, and that 
 it is asserted in the Declaration of Independence. If 
 they think so, of course they have a right to say so, and 
 .so vote. I do not question Mr. Lincoln's conscientious 
 belief that the negro was made his equal, and hence is 
 his brother; but for my own part, I do not regard the 
 negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my 
 brother or any kin to me whatever. Lincoln has evi- 
 dently learned by heart Parson Lovejoy's catechism. 
 He can repeat it as well as Farnsworth, and he is 
 worthy of a medal from Father Giddings and Fred 
 Douglass for his Abolitionism. He holds that the negro 
 was born his equal and yours, and that he was endowed 
 with equality by the Almighty, and that no human law 
 can deprive him of these rights which were guaranteed 
 to him by the Supreme Ruler of the universe. Now, I 
 <io not believe that the Almighty ever intended the 
 negro to be the equal of the white man. If he did, he 
 has been a long time demonstrating the fact. For 
 thousands of years the negro has been a race upon the 
 earth, and during all that time, in all latitudes and 
 climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he 
 has been inferior to the race which he has there met. 
 He belongs to an inferior race, and must always oc- 
 cupy an inferior position. I do not hold that because 
 the negro is our inferior therefore he ought to be a 
 slave. By no means can such a conclusion be drawn
 
 138 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 from what I have said. On the contrary, I hold that 
 humanity and Christianity both require that the negra 
 shall have and enjoy every right, every privilege, and 
 every im^munity consistent with the safety of the society 
 in which he lives. On that point, I presume, there can 
 be no diversity of opinion. You and I are bound to ex- 
 tend to our inferior and dependent beings every right,, 
 every privilege, every facility and immunity consistent 
 with the public good. The question then arises, what 
 rights and privileges are consistent with the public 
 good? This is a question which each State and each 
 Territory must decide for itself — Illinois has decided it 
 for herself. We have provided that the negro shall not 
 be a slave, and we have also provided that he shall not 
 be a citizen, but protect him in his civil rights, in his 
 life, his person and his property, only depriving him of 
 all political rights whatsoever, and refusing to put him 
 on an equality with the white man. That policy of 
 Illinois is satisfactory to the Democratic party and to 
 me, and if it were to the Republicans, there would then 
 be no question upon the subject ; but the Republicans 
 say that he ought to be made a citizen, and when he 
 becomes a citizen he becomes your equal, with all your 
 rights and privileges. They assert the Dred Scott de- 
 cision to be monstrous because it denies that the negro 
 is or can be a citizen under the Constitution. 
 
 Now, I hold that Illinois had a right to abolish and 
 prohibit slavery as she did, and I hold that Kentucky 
 has the same right to continue and protect slavery that 
 Illinois had to abolish it. I hold that New York had as 
 much right to abolish slavery as Virginia has to con- 
 tinue it, and that each and every State of this Union 
 is a sovereign power, with the right to do as it pleases 
 upon this question of slavery, and upon all its domestic 
 institutions. Slavery is not the only question which 
 comes up in this controversy. There is a far more 
 important one to you, and that is, what shall be done 
 with the free negro? We have settled the slavery 
 question as far as we are concerned ; we have pro- 
 hibited it in Illinois forever, and in doing so, I think we 
 have done wisely, and there is no man in the State 
 who would be more strenuous in his opposition to the 
 introduction of slavery than I would ; but when we 
 settled it for ourselves, we exhausted all our power over 
 that subject. We have done our whole duty, and caa
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 
 
 139 
 
 do no more. We must leave each and every other State 
 to decide for itself the same question. In relation to 
 the policy to be pursued toward the free negroes, we 
 have said that they shall not vote ; whilst Maine, on the 
 other hand, has said that they shall vote. Maine is a 
 sovereign State, and has the power to regulate the 
 qualifications of voters within her limits. I would never 
 consent to confer the right of voting and of citizenship 
 upon a negro, but still I am not going to quarrel with 
 Maine for differing from me in opinion. Let Maine 
 take care of her own negroes, and fix the qualifications 
 of her own voters to suit herself, without interfering 
 with Illinois, and Illinois will not interfere with Maine. 
 So with the State of New York. She allows the negro 
 to vote provided he owns two hundred and fifty dollars' 
 worth of property, but not otherwise. While I would 
 not make any distinction whatever between a negro who 
 held property and one who did not, yet if the sovereign 
 State of New York chooses to make that distinction it 
 is her business and not mine, and I will not quarrel 
 with her for it. She can do as she pleases on this 
 question if she minds her own business, and we will do 
 the same thing. Now, my friends, if we will only act 
 conscientiously and rigidly upon this great principle of 
 popular sovereignty, which guarantees to each State and 
 Territory the right to do as it pleases on all things, 
 local and domestic, instead of Congress interfering, we 
 will continue at peace one with another. Why should 
 Illinois be at war with Missouri, or Kentucky with 
 Ohio, or Virginia with New York, merely because their 
 institutions differ? Our fathers intended that our insti- 
 tutions should differ. They knew that the North and 
 the South, having different climates, productions, and 
 interests, required different institutions. This doctrine 
 of Mr. Lincoln, of uniformity among the institutions of 
 the different States, is a new doctrine, never dreamed of 
 by Washington, Madison, or the framers of this govern- 
 ment. Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party set them- 
 selves up as wiser than these men who made this gov- 
 ernment, which has flourished for seventy years under 
 the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing the 
 right _ of each State to do as it pleased. Under that 
 principle we have grown from a nation of three or four 
 millions to a nation of about thirty millions of people; 
 we have crossed the Allegheny mountains and filled up
 
 I40 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 the whole Northwest, turning the prairie into a garden, 
 and building up churches and schools, thus spreading 
 civilization and Christianity where before there was 
 nothing but savage barbarism. Under that principle 
 we have become, from a feeble nation, the most powerful 
 on the face of the earth, and if we only adhere to that 
 principle, we can go forward increasing in territory, in 
 power, in strength, and in glory until the Republic of 
 America shall be the north star that shall guide the friends 
 of freedom throughout the civilized world. And why 
 can we not adhere to the great principle of self-govern- 
 ment upon which our institutions were originally based? 
 I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lin- 
 coln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. 
 They are trying to array all the Northern States in one 
 body against the South, to excite a sectional war be- 
 tween the free States and the slave States, in order that 
 the one or the other may be driven to the wall. 
 
 I am told that my time is out. Mr. Lincoln will now 
 address you for an hour and a half, and I will then 
 occupy a half hour in replying to him. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Reply. 
 
 My Fellow-citizens: \\'hen a man hears him- 
 self somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him — 
 at least, I find it so with myself; but when mis- 
 representation becomes very gross and palpable, 
 it is more apt to amuse him. The first thing I see 
 fit to notice is the fact that Judge Douglas al- 
 leges, after running through the history of the old 
 Democratic and the Old Whig parties, that Judge 
 Trumbull and myself made an arrangement in 
 1854, by which I was to have the place of General 
 Shields in the United States Senate, and Judge 
 Trumbull was to have the place of Judge Doug- 
 las. Now all I have to say upon that subject is 
 that I think no man — not even Judge Douglas — 
 can prove it, because it is not true. I have no 
 doubt he is ''conscientious" in saying it. As to 
 
 1
 
 i8s8] AT OTTAWA 141 
 
 those resolutions that he took such a length of 
 time to read, as being the platform of the Repub- 
 lican party in 1854, I say I never had anything to 
 do with them, and I think Trumbull never had. 
 Judge Douglas cannot show that either of us ever 
 did have anything to do with them. I believe 
 this is true about those resolutions. There was 
 a call for a convention to form a Republican 
 party at Springfield, and I think that my friend 
 Mr. Love joy, who is here upon this stand, had a 
 hand in it. I think this is true, and I think if he 
 will remember accurately he will be able to recol- 
 lect that he tried to get me into. it, and I would 
 not go in. I believe it is also true that I went 
 away from Springfield, when the convention was 
 in session, to attend court in Tazewell County. 
 It is true they did place my name, though without 
 authority, upon the committee, and afterward 
 wrote me to attend the meeting of the committee, 
 but I refused to do so, and I never had anything 
 to do with that organization. This is the plain 
 truth about all that matter of the resolutions. 
 
 Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells 
 of Trumbull bargaining to sell out the old Demo- 
 cratic party, and Lincoln agreeing to sell out the 
 Old Whig party, I have the means of knowing 
 about that ; Judge Douglas cannot have ; and I 
 know there is no substance to it whatever. Yet 
 I have no doubt he is ''conscientious" about it. 
 I know that after Mr. Love joy got into the legis- 
 lature that winter, he complained of me that I 
 had told all the Old Whigs of his district that the 
 Old Whig party was good enough for them, and 
 some of them voted against him because I told 
 them so. Now, I have no means of totally dis- 
 proving such charges as this which the judge
 
 142 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 makes. A man cannot prove a negative, but he 
 has a right to claim that when a man makes an 
 affirmative charge, he must offer some proof to 
 show the truth of what he says. I certainly 
 cannot introduce testimony to show the negative 
 about things, but I have a right to claim that if 
 a man says he knows a thing, then he must show 
 how he knows it. I always have a right to claim 
 this, and it is not satisfactory to me that he may 
 be ''conscientious" on the subject. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on 
 such things, but in regard to that general Abo- 
 lition tilt that Judge Douglas makes, when he 
 says that I was engaged at that time in selling out 
 and Abolitionizing the Old Whig party, I hope 
 you will permit me to read a part of a printed 
 speech that I made then at Peoria, which will 
 show altogether a different view of the position 
 I took in that contest of 1854. [Voice: ''Put on 
 your specs."] Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so. 
 I am no longer a young man. 
 
 This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The 
 foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in 
 every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so for 
 all the uses 1 shall attempt to make of it, and in it we 
 have before us the chief materials enabling us to cor- 
 rectly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
 promise is right or wrong. 
 
 I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; 
 wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas 
 and Nebraska — and wrong in its prospective principles, 
 allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide 
 world where men can be found inclined to take it. 
 
 This declared indifference, but, as I must think, 
 covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but 
 hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of 
 slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our 
 republican example of its just influence in the world;
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 
 
 143 
 
 enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibil- 
 ity, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends 
 of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially be- 
 cause it forces so many reall}- good men amongst our- 
 selves into an open war with the very fundamental 
 principles of civil liberty — criticising the Declaration 
 of Independence, and insisting that there is no right 
 principle of action but self-interest. 
 
 Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no 
 prejudice against the Southern people. They are just 
 what we would be in their situation. If slavery did 
 not now exist among them, they would not introduce 
 it. If it did now exist among us, we should not in- 
 stantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North 
 and South. Doubtless there are individuals on both 
 sides who would not hold slaves under any circum- 
 stances: and others who would gladly introduce 
 slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know 
 that some Southern men do free their slaves, go 
 North, and become tip-top Abolitionists; while some 
 Northern ones go South, and become most cruel slave- 
 masters. 
 
 When Southern people tell us they are no more 
 responsible for the origin of slavery than we. I ac- 
 knowledge the fact. When it is said that the institu- 
 tion exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it 
 any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate 
 the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing 
 what I should not know how to do myself. If all 
 earthly power were given me, I should not know what 
 to do as to the existing institution. ]\Iy first impulse 
 would be to free all the slaves, and send them to 
 Liberia — to their own native land. But a moment's 
 reflection would convince me that whatever of high 
 hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the 
 long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they 
 were all landed there in a da}^ they would all perish 
 in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping 
 and surplus money enough in the world to carry them 
 there in many times ten days. What then? Free 
 them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is 
 it quite certain that this betters their condition? I 
 think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet 
 the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people 
 upon. What next? Free them, and make them politi-
 
 144 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS tAug. 21 
 
 cally and socially our equals? My own feelings will 
 not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know 
 that those of the great mass of white people will not. 
 Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound 
 judgment is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any 
 part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill- 
 founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot 
 make them equals. It does seem to me that systems 
 of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for 
 their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge 
 our brethren of the South. 
 
 When they remind us of their constitutional rights, 
 I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, ^ but^ fully and 
 fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the 
 reclaiming of their fugitives which should not, in its 
 stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into 
 slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an 
 innocent one. 
 
 But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more 
 excuse for permitting slavery to go into our own free 
 territory than it would for reviving the African slave- 
 trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of 
 slaves from Africa, and that which has so long for- 
 bidden the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be 
 distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal 
 of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as 
 that of the latter. 
 
 I have reason to know that Judge Douglas 
 knows that I said this. I think he has the answer 
 here to one of the questions he put to me. I do 
 not mean to allow him to catechize me unless he 
 pays back for it in kind. I will not answer ques- 
 tions one after another, unless he reciprocates ; 
 but as he has made this inquiry, and I have an- 
 swered it before, he has got it without my getting 
 anything in return. He has got my answer on 
 the fugitive-slave law. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any 
 great length, but this is the true complexion of 
 all I have ever said in regard to the institution
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA ■ 145 
 
 of slavery and the black race. This is the whole 
 of it, and anything that argues me into his idea 
 of perfect social and political equality with the 
 negro is but a specious and fantastic arrange- 
 ment 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 pur- 
 pose, either directly or indirectly, to interfere 
 with the institution of slavery in the States v/here 
 it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do 
 so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have 
 no purpose to introduce political and social equal- 
 ity between the white and the black races. There 
 is a physical difference between the two, which, 
 in my judgment, will probably forever forbid 
 their living together upon the footing of perfect 
 equality ; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity 
 that there must be a difference, I, as well as 
 Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which 
 I belong having the superior position. I have 
 never said anything to the contrary, but I hold 
 that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason 
 in the world why the negro is not entitled to all 
 the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration 
 of Independence — the right to life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as 
 much entitled to these as the white man. I agree 
 with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many 
 respects — certainly not in color, perhaps not in 
 moral or intellectual endowment. But in the 
 right to eat the bread, without the leave of any- 
 body else, which his own hand earns, he is my 
 equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the 
 equal of every living man. 
 
 Now I pass on to consider one or two more of 
 these little follies. The judge is woefulfy at fault
 
 146 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 about his early friend Lincoln being a "grocery- 
 keeper."'^ I don't know that it would be a great 
 sin if I had been : but he is mistaken. Lincoln 
 never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It 
 is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of 
 one winter in a little still-house up at the head 
 of a hollow. And so I think my friend, the judge, 
 is equally at fault when he charges me at the 
 time when I was in Congress with having opposed 
 our soldiers who were fighting in the [Mexican 
 War. The judge did not make his charge very 
 distinctly, but I tell you what he can prove, by 
 referring to the record. You remember I was an 
 Old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party 
 tried to get me to vote that the war had been 
 righteously begun by the President, I would not 
 do it. But whenever they asked for any money, 
 or land-warrants, or an\thing to pay the soldiers 
 there, during all that time, I gave the same vote 
 that Judge Douglas did. You can think as you 
 please as to whether that was consistent. Such 
 is the truth ; and the judge has the right to make 
 all he can out of it. But when he. by a general 
 charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies 
 from the soldiers who were fighting in the ^lexi- 
 can War, or did an\'thing else to hinder the 
 soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and alto- 
 gether mistaken, as a consultation of the records 
 will prove to him. 
 
 As I have not used up so much of my time as 
 I had supposed, I will dwell a little longer upon 
 one or two of these minor topics upon which the 
 judge has spoken. He has read from my speech 
 in Springfield in which I say that ''a house di- 
 vided against itself cannot stand." Does the 
 
 * A term that then was equivalent to liquor-seller.
 
 185S] AT OTTAWA 147 
 
 ludsre sav it can stand ? I don't know whether he 
 does or not. The judge does not seem to be at- 
 tending to me just now, but I would like to know 
 if it is his opinion that a house divided against 
 itself can stand. If he does, then there is a ques- 
 tion of veracit}-, not betv.een him and m.e, but 
 between the judge and an authorit}- of a some- 
 what higher character. 
 
 Xow, my friends, I ask your attrr:: jn to this 
 matter for the purpose of 5a}Tng s: ::>ing seri- 
 ously. I know that the judge may r r :. i.\y enough 
 agree with m>e that the maxim which was put 
 forth by the Saviour is true, but he may allege 
 that I misapply it; and the judge has a right to 
 urge that in my appHcation I do misapply it, 
 and then I have a right to show that I do not mis- 
 apply it. When he undertakes to say that be- 
 cause I think this nation, so far as the question 
 of slavers* is concerned, will all become one thi n g 
 or all the other. I am in favor of bringing about 
 a dead uniformit}- in the various States in all 
 their institutions, he argues erroneously. The 
 great variety of the local institutions in the 
 States, springing from differences in the soil, dif- 
 ferences in the face cf the cotmtr\-, and in the 
 climate, are bonds of union. They do not make 
 *'a house divided against itself," but they make a 
 house united. If they produce in one section of 
 the country- what is called for by the wants of 
 another section, and this other section can supply 
 the wants of t::e f.rst, they are not matters 
 of discord but bends of union, true bonds 
 of union. But can this question of slavery 
 be considered as among these varieties in 
 the institutions of the cotrntrv? I leave it 
 to you to say whether, in the histor)* of
 
 148 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 our government, this institution of slavery has 
 not always failed to be a bond of union, and, on 
 the contrary, been an apple of discord and an 
 element of division in the house. I ask you to 
 consider whether, so long as the moral constitu- 
 tion of men's minds shall continue to be the same, 
 after this generation and assemblage shall sink 
 into the grave, and another race shall arise with 
 the same moral and intellectual development we 
 have — whether, if that institution is standing in 
 the same irritating position in which it now is, 
 it will not continue an element of division? 
 
 If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard 
 to this question, the Union is a house divided 
 against itself; and when the judge reminds me 
 that I have often said to him that the institution 
 of slavery has existed for eighty years in some 
 States, and yet it does not exist in some others, 
 I agree to the fact, and I account for it by look- 
 ing at the position in which our fathers originally 
 placed it — restricting it from the new Territories 
 where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off 
 its source by the abrogation of the slave-trade, 
 thus putting the seal of legislation against its 
 spread. The public mind did rest in the belief 
 that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. 
 But lately, I think — and in this I charge nothing 
 on the judge's motives — lately, I think, that he, 
 and those acting w^ith him, have placed that in- 
 stitution on a new basis, which looks to the per- 
 petuity and nationalization of slavery. And 
 while it is placed upon this new basis, I say, and 
 I have said, that I believe we shall not have peace 
 upon the question until the opponents of slavery 
 arrest the further spread of it, and place it where 
 the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is
 
 i858] AT OTTAWA I49 
 
 in the course of ultimate extinction ; or, on the 
 other hand, that its advocates will push it for- 
 ward until it shall become alike lawful in all the 
 States, old as well as new. North as well as South. 
 Now I believe if we could arrest the spread, and 
 place it where Washington and Jefferson and 
 Madison placed it, it would be in the course of 
 ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, 
 as for eighty years past, believe that it was in 
 the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis 
 would be past, and the institution might be let 
 alone for a hundred years — if it should live so 
 long — in the States where it exists, yet it would 
 be going out of existence in the way best for both 
 the black and the white races. [A voice: "Then 
 do you repudiate popular sovereignty f''] Well, 
 then, let us talk about popular sovereignty ! 
 What is popular sovereignty? Is it the right of 
 the people to have slavery or not have it, as they 
 see fit, in the Territories? I will state — and I 
 have an able man to watch me — my understand- 
 ing is that popular sovereignty, as now applied 
 to the question of slavery, does allow the people 
 of a Territory to have slavery if they want to, 
 but does not allow them not to have it if they do 
 not want it. I do not mean that if this vast con- 
 course of people were in a Territory of the United 
 States, any one of them would be obliged to have 
 a slave if he did not want one ; but I do say that, 
 as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any 
 one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way 
 of keeping that one man from holding them. 
 
 When I made my speech at Springfield, of 
 which the judge complains, and from which he 
 quotes, I really was not thinking of the things 
 which he ascribes to me at all. I had no thought
 
 I50 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 in the world that I was doing anything to bring 
 about a war between the free and slave States. 
 I had no thought in the world that I was doing 
 anything to bring about a political and social 
 equality of the black and white races. It 
 never occurred to me that I was doing 
 anything or favoring anything to reduce to a 
 dead uniformity all the local institutions of the 
 various States. But I must say, in all fairness to 
 him, if he thinks I am doing something which 
 leads to these bad results, it is none the better 
 that I did not mean it. It is just as fatal to the 
 country, if I have any influence in producing it, 
 whether I intend it or not. But can it be true, 
 that placing this institution upon the original basis 
 — the basis upon which our fathers placed it — can 
 have any tendency to set the Northern and the 
 Southern States at war with one another, or that 
 it can have any tendency to make the people of 
 Vermont raise sugar-cane because they raise it in 
 Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of 
 Illinois to cut pine logs on the Grand Prairie,* 
 where they will not grow, because they cut pine 
 logs in Maine, where they do grow? The judge 
 says this is a new principle started in regard to 
 this question. Does the judge claim that he is 
 working on the plan of the founders of the gov- 
 ernment ? I think he says in some of his speeches 
 — indeed, I have one here now — that he saw evi- 
 dence of a policy to allow slavery to be south of 
 a certain line, while north of it it should be ex- 
 cluded, and he saw an indisposition on the part 
 of the country to stand upon that policy, and 
 therefore he set about studying the subject upon 
 original principles, and upon original principles 
 he got up the Nebraska bill ! I am fighting it
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 
 
 151 
 
 upon these "original principles" — fighting it in 
 the Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, and Madisoni- 
 an fashion. 
 
 Now, my friends, I wish you to attend for a 
 little Vv^hile to one or two other things in that 
 Springfield speech. My main object was to show, 
 so far as my humble ability was capable of show- 
 ing to the people of this country, what I believed 
 was the truth — that there was a tendency, if not a 
 conspiracy, among those who have engineered 
 this slavery question for the last four or five 
 years, to make slavery perpetual and universal in 
 this nation. Having made that speech principally 
 for that object, after arranging the evidences that 
 I thought tended to prove my proposition, I con- 
 cluded with this bit of comment : 
 
 We cannot absolutely know that these exact adapta- 
 tions are the result of pre-concert, but when we see a 
 lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we 
 , know have been gotten out at different times and 
 places, and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, 
 Roger, and James, for instance; and when we see these 
 timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the 
 frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises 
 exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of 
 the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective 
 places, and not a piece too many or too few, — not 
 omitting even the scaffolding, — or if a single piece be 
 lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted 
 and prepared to yet bring such piece in — in such a case 
 we feel it impossible not to believe that Stephen and 
 Franklin, and Roger and James, all understood one 
 another from the beginning, and all worked upon a 
 common plan or draft drawn before the first blow was 
 struck. 
 
 When my friend. Judge Douglas, came to Chi- 
 cago on the 9th of July, this speech having been 
 delivered on the i6th of June, he made an
 
 152 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 harangue there in which he took hold of this 
 speech of mine, showing that he had carefully 
 read it; and while he paid no attention to this 
 matter at all, but complimented me as being a 
 *'kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman," not- 
 withstanding I had said this, he goes on and de- 
 duces, or draws out, from my speech this tend- 
 ency of mine to set the States at war with one 
 another, to make all the institutions uniform, and 
 set the niggers and white people to marry to- 
 gether. Then, as the judge had complimented 
 me with these pleasant titles (I must confess to 
 my weakness), I was a little "taken," for it came 
 from a great man. I was not very much accus- 
 tomed to flattery, and it came the sweeter to me. 
 I was rather like the Hoosier with the ginger- 
 bread, when he said he reckoned he loved it bet- 
 ter than any other man, and got less of it. As 
 the judge had so flattered me, I could not make 
 up my mind that he meant to deal imfairly 
 with me ; so I went to work to show 
 him that he misunderstood the whole scope 
 of my speech, and that I never really in- 
 tended to set the people at war with one another. 
 As an illustration, the next time I met him, which 
 was at Springfield, I used this expression, that I 
 claimed no right under the Constitution, nor had 
 I any inclination, to enter into the slave States 
 and interfere with the institutions of slavery. He 
 says upon that : Lincoln will not enter into the 
 slave States, but will go to the banks of the Ohio, 
 on this side, and shoot over ! He runs on, step by 
 step, in the horse-chestnut style of argument, un- 
 til in the Springfield speech he says, "Unless he 
 shall be successful in firing his batteries, until he 
 shall have extinguished slavery in all the States,
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 153 
 
 the Union shall be dissolved." Now I don't 
 think that was exactly the way to treat "a. kind, 
 amiable, intelligent gentleman." I know if I had 
 asked the judge to show when or where it was I 
 had said that if I didn't succeed in firing into 
 the slave States until slavery should be extin- 
 guished, the Union should be dissolved, he could 
 not have shown it. I understand what he would 
 do. He vvould sa}^ ''I don't mean to quote from 
 you, but this was the result of what you say." 
 But I have the right to ask, and I do ask now, 
 did you not put it in such a form that an ordinary 
 reader or listener would take it as an expression 
 from me? 
 
 In a speech at Springfield on the night of the 
 17th, I thought I might as well attend to my busi- 
 ness a little, and I recalled his attention as well as 
 I could to this charge of conspiracy to nationalize 
 slavery. I called his attention to the fact that he 
 had acknowledged in my hearing twice that he 
 had carefully read the speech ; and, in the lan- 
 guage of the lawyers, as he had twice read the 
 speech, and still had put in no plea or answer, I 
 took a default on him. I insisted that I had a 
 right then to renew that charge of conspiracy. 
 Ten days afterward I met the judge at Clinton — 
 that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the 
 discussion — and heard him make a speech. Then 
 he comes in with his plea to this charge, for the 
 first time, and his plea when put in, as well as 
 I can recollect it, amounted to this : that he never 
 had any talk with Judge Taney or the President 
 of the United States with regard to the Dred 
 Scott decision before it was made. I ought to 
 know that the man who makes a charge without 
 knowing it to be true falsifies as much as he who
 
 154 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 knowingly tells a falsehood ; and lastly, that he 
 would pronounce the whole thing a falsehood; 
 but he would make no personal application of 
 the charge of falsehood, not because of any re- 
 gard for the ''kind, amiable, intelligent gentle- 
 man," but because of his own personal self- 
 respect ! I have imderstood since then (but 
 [turning to Judge Douglas] will not hold the 
 judge to it if he is not willing) that he has broken 
 through the ''self-respect," and has got to saying 
 the thing out. The judge nods to me that it is so. 
 It is fortunate for me that I can keep as good- 
 humored as I do when the judge acknowledges 
 that he has been trying to make a question of 
 veracity with me. I know the judge is a great 
 man, while I am only a small man, but I feel that 
 I have got him. I demur to that plea. I waive 
 all objections that it was not filed till after default 
 was taken, and demur to it upon the merits. 
 What if Judge Douglas never did talk with Chief 
 Justice Taney and the President before the Dred 
 Scott decision was m^de ; does it follow that he 
 could not have had as perfect an understanding 
 without talking as with it ? I am not disposed to 
 stand upon my legal advantage. I am disposed 
 to take his denial as being like an answer in 
 chancery, and he neither had any knowledge, in- 
 formation, nor belief in the existence of such a 
 conspiracy. I am disposed to take his answer 
 as being as broad as though he had put it in these 
 words. And now, I ask, even if he had done so, 
 have not I a right to prove it on him, and to offer 
 the evidence of more than two witnesses, by 
 whom to prove it ; and if the evidence proves the 
 existence of the conspiracy, does his broad an- 
 swer, denying all knowledge, information, or be-
 
 i858] AT OTTAWA 155 
 
 lief, disturb the fact? It can only show that he 
 was used by conspirators, and was not a leader of 
 them. 
 
 Now, in regard to his reminding me of the 
 moral rule that persons who tell what they do not 
 know to be true falsify as much as those who 
 knowingly tell falsehoods. I remember the rule, 
 and it must be borne in mind that in what I have 
 read to you I do not say that I know such a con- 
 spiracy to exist. To that I reply, I believe it. If 
 the judge says that I do not believe it, then he 
 savs what he does not know, and falls within his 
 own rule that he who asserts a thing which he 
 does not know to be true falsifies as much as he 
 who knowingly tells a falsehood. I want to call 
 your attention to a little discussion on that branch 
 of the case, and the evidence which brought my 
 mind to the conclusion which I expressed as my 
 belief. If, in arraying that evidence, I had stated 
 anything which was false or erroneous, it needed 
 but that Judge Douglas should point it out, and 
 I would have taken it back with all the kindness 
 in the world. I do not deal in that way. If I 
 have brought forward anything not a fact, if he 
 will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take 
 it back. But if he will not point out anything er- 
 roneous in the evidence, is it not rather for him 
 to show by a comparison of the evidence that I 
 have reasoned falsely than to call the "kind, 
 amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar? If I have 
 reasoned to a false conclusion, it is the vocation of 
 an able debater to show by argument that I have 
 wandered to an erroneous conclusion. I want to 
 ask your attention to a portion of the Nebraska 
 bill which Judge Douglas has quoted : 'Tt being 
 the true intent and meaning of this act, not to
 
 156 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor 
 to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
 thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their 
 domestic institutions in their own way, subject 
 only to the Constitution of the United States." 
 Thereupon Judge Douglas and others began to 
 argue in favor of ''popular sovereignty" — the 
 right of the people to have slaves if they wanted 
 them, and to exclude slavery if they did not want 
 them. "But," said, in substance, a senator from 
 Ohio (Mr. Chase, I beHeve), 'Sve more than 
 suspect that you do not mean to allow 
 the people to exclude slavery if they wish 
 to; and if you do mean it, accept an 
 amendment which I propose expressly au- 
 thorizing the people to exclude slavery." I 
 believe I have the amendmient here before me, 
 which was offered, and under which the people 
 of the Territory, through their proper rep- 
 resentatives, might, if they saw fit, prohibit the 
 existence of slavery therein. And now I state 
 it as a fact, to be taken back if there is any mis- 
 take about it, that Judge Douglas and those act- 
 ing with him voted that amendment down. I now 
 think that those men who voted it down had a real 
 reason for doing so. They know what that rea- 
 son was. It looks to us, since we have seen the 
 Dred Scott decision pronounced, holding that, 
 ''under the Constitution," the people cannot ex- 
 clude slavery — I say it looks to outsiders, poor, 
 simple, "amiable, intelligent gentlemen," as 
 though the niche was left as a place to put that 
 Dred Scott decision in, a niche which would have 
 been spoiled by adopting the amendment. And 
 now I say again, if this was not the reason, it will 
 avail the judge much more to calmly and good-
 
 i858] AT OTTAWA 157 
 
 hiimoredly point out to these people what that 
 other reason was for voting the amendment down 
 than swelhng himself up to vociferate that he 
 may be provoked to call somebody a liar. 
 
 Again : there is in that same quotation from the 
 Nebraska bill this clause : ''It being the true in- 
 tent and meaning of this bill not to legislate slav- 
 ery into any Territory or State." I have always 
 been puzzled to know what business the word 
 "State" had in that connection. Judge Douglas 
 knows. He put it there. He knows what he put 
 it there for. We outsiders cannot say what he 
 put it there for. The law they were passing was 
 not about States, and was not making provision 
 for States. What was it placed there for? After 
 seeing the Dred Scott decision which holds that 
 the people cannot exclude slavery from a Terri- 
 tory, if another Dred Scott decision shall come, 
 holding that they cannot exclude it from a State, 
 we shall discover that when the word was origi- 
 nally put there, it was in view of something which 
 was to come in due time, we shall see that it was 
 the other half of something. I now say again, if 
 there is any dififerent reason for putting it there, 
 Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without 
 calling anybody a liar, can tell what the reason 
 was. 
 
 When the judge spoke at Clinton, he came very 
 near making a charge of falsehood against me. 
 He used, as I found it printed in a newspaper, 
 which, I remember was very nearly like the real 
 speech, the following language : 
 
 I did not answer the charge [of conspiracy] before 
 for the reason that I did not suppose there was a man 
 in America with a heart so corrupt as to beheve such 
 a charge could be true. I have too much respect for
 
 158 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 Mr. Lincoln to suppose he is serious in making the 
 charge. 
 
 I confess this is rather a curious view, that out 
 of respect for me he should consider I was mak- 
 ing what I deemed rather a grave charge in fun. 
 I confess it strikes me rather strangely. But I 
 let it pass. As the judge did not for a moment 
 believe that there was a man in America whose 
 heart was so "corrupt" as to make such a charge, 
 and as he places me among the "men in America" 
 who have hearts base enough to make such a 
 charge, I hope he will excuse me if I hunt out 
 another charge very like this ; and if it should 
 turn out that in hunting I should find that other, 
 and it should turn out to be Judge Douglas him- 
 self who made it, I hope he will reconsider this 
 question of the deep corruption of heart he has 
 thought fit to ascribe to me. In Judge Douglas's 
 speech of March 22, 1858, which I hold in my 
 hand, he says : 
 
 In this connection there is another topic to which I 
 desire to allude. I seldom refer to the course of news- 
 papers, or notice the articles which they publish in 
 regard to myself; but the course of the Washington 
 Union has been so extraordinary for the last two or 
 three m.onths that I think it well enough to make some 
 allusion to it. It has read me out of the Democratic 
 party every other day, at least for two or three months, 
 and keeps reading me out, and, as if it had not 
 succeeded, still continues to read me out, using such 
 terms as "traitor," "renegade," "deserter," and other 
 kind and polite epithets of that nature. Sir, I have no 
 vindication to make of my Democracy against the 
 Washington Union, or any other newspaper — I am will- 
 ing to allow my history and actions for the last twenty 
 years to speak for themselves as to my political princi- 
 ples, and my fidelity to political obligations. The 
 Washington Union has a personal grievance. When 
 the editor was nominated for public printer I declined
 
 i8s8] AT OTTAWA 
 
 159 
 
 to vote for him, and stated that at some time I might 
 give my reasons for doing so. Since I declined to 
 give that vote, this scurrilous abuse, these vindictive 
 and constant attacks, have been repeated almost daily 
 on me. Will my friend from Michigan read the article 
 to which I allude? 
 
 This is a part of the speech. Ycu must excuse 
 me from reading the entire article of the Wash- 
 ington Union, as Mr. Stuart read it for Mr. 
 Douglas. The judge goes on and sums up, as I 
 think, correctly : 
 
 Mr, President, you here find several distinct proposi- 
 tions advanced boldly by the Washington Union editori- 
 ally and apparently authoritatively, and any man who 
 questions any of them is denounced as an Abolitionist, 
 a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first, that 
 the primary object of all government at its original 
 institution is the protection of person and property; 
 second, that the Constitution of the United States de- 
 clares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled 
 to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the 
 several States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State 
 laws, whether organic or otherwise, which prohibit the 
 citizens of one State from settling in another with their 
 slave property, and especially declaring it forfeited, are 
 direct violations of the original intention of the govern- 
 ment and Constitution of the United States; and, fourth 
 that the emancipation of the slaves of the Northern 
 States was a gross outrage on the rights of property, 
 inasmuch as it was involuntarily done on the part of 
 the owner. 
 
 Remember that this article was published in the 
 Union on the 17th of November, and on the i8th ap- 
 peared the first article giving the adhesion of the 
 Union to the Lecompton constitution. It was in these 
 words: 
 
 "Kansas and her Constitution. The vexed ques- 
 tion is settled. The problem is solved. The dead 
 point of danger is passed. All serious trouble to 
 Kansas affairs is over and gone." 
 
 And a column nearly of the same sort. Then, when 
 you come to look into the Lecompton constitution, you
 
 i6o DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 find the same doctrine incorporated in it which was 
 put forth editorially in the Union. What is it? 
 
 "Article 7, Section i. The right of property is before 
 and higher than any constitutional sanction; and the 
 right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its in- 
 crease is the same and as inviolable as the right of the 
 owner of any property whatever." 
 
 Then in the schedule is a provision that the constitu- 
 tion may be amended after 1864 by a two-thirds vote. 
 
 "But no alteration shall be made to affect the right 
 of property in the ownership of slaves." 
 
 It will be seen by these clauses in the L'^.compton 
 constitution that they are identical in spirit with the 
 authoritative article in the Washington Union of the 
 day previous to its indorsement of this constitution. 
 
 I pass over some portions of the speech, and I 
 hope that any one who feels interested in this 
 matter will read the entire section of the speech, 
 and see whether I do the judge injustice. He 
 proceeds : 
 
 When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of 
 November, followed by the glorification of the Le- 
 compton constitution on the i8th of November, and 
 this clause in the constitution asserting the doctrine 
 that a State has no right to prohibit slavery within its 
 limits, I saw that there was a fatal blov/ being struck 
 at the sovereignty of the States of this Union. 
 
 I stop the quotation there, again requesting 
 that it may all be read. I have read all of the por- 
 tion I desire to comment upon. What is this 
 charge that the judge thinks I must have a very 
 corrupt heart to make ? It was a purpose on the 
 part of certain high functionaries to make it im- 
 possible for the people of one State to prohibit 
 the people of any other State from entering it 
 with their ''property," so called, and making it a 
 slave State. In other w^ords, it was a charge im- 
 plying a design to make the institution of slavery
 
 1858] AT OTTAWA 161 
 
 national. And now I ask your attention to what 
 Judge Douglas has himself done here. I know 
 he made that part of the speech as a reason why 
 he had refused to vote for a certain man for pub- 
 lic printer, but when we get at it, the charge it- 
 self is the very one I made against him, that he 
 thinks I am so corrupt for uttering. Now, whom 
 does he make that charge against ? Does he make 
 it against that newspaper editor merely? No ; he 
 says it is identical in spirit with the Lecompton 
 constitution, and so the framers of that constitu- 
 tion are brought in with the editor of the news- 
 paper in that "fatal blow being struck." He did 
 not call it a ^'conspiracy." In his language it is a 
 "fatal blow being struck." And if the words 
 carry the meaning better when changed from a 
 "conspiracy" into a "fatal blow being struck," 
 I will change my expression and call it "fatal 
 blow being struck." We see the charge made not 
 merely against the editor of the Union, but all 
 the framers of the Lecompton constitution ; and 
 not only so, but the article was an authoritative 
 article. By whose authority ? Is there any ques- 
 tion but that he means it was by the authority of 
 the President and his cabinet — the administra- 
 tion? Is there any sort of question but that he 
 means to make that charge? Then there are the 
 editors of the Union, the framers of the Lecomp- 
 ton constitution, the President of the United 
 States and his cabinet, and all the supporters of 
 the Lecompton constitution, in Congress and out 
 of Congress, who are all involved in this "fatal 
 blow being struck." I commend to Judge Doug- 
 las's consideration the question of how corrupt 
 a man's heart must be to make such a charge ? 
 Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the
 
 i62 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 subject, in the little time I have left, to which to 
 call your attention, and as I shall come to a close 
 at the end of that branch, it is probable that I 
 shall not occupy quite all the time allotted to me. 
 Although on these questions I would like to talk 
 twice as long- as I have, I could not enter upon 
 another head and discuss it properly without run- 
 ning over my time. I ask the attention of the 
 people here assembled and elsewhere, to the 
 course that Judge Douglas is pursuing every day 
 as bearing upon this question of making slavery 
 national. Not going back to the records, but tak- 
 ing the speeches he makes, the speeches he made 
 yesterday and day before, and makes constantly 
 all over the country — I ask your attention to 
 them. In the first place, what is necessary to 
 make the institution national ? Not war. There 
 is no danger that the people of Kentucky will 
 shoulder their muskets, and, with a young nigger 
 stuck on every bayonet, march into Illinois and 
 force them upon us. There is no danger of our 
 going over there and making war upon them. 
 Then what is necessary for the nationalization of 
 slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott deci- 
 sion. It is merely for the Supreme Court to de- 
 cide that no State under the Constitution can ex- 
 clude it, just as . they have already decided 
 that under the Constitution neither Congress 
 nor the territorial legislature can do it. When 
 that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole 
 thing is done. This being true, and this being the 
 way, as I think, that slavery is to be made na- 
 tional, let us consider what Judge Douglas is do- 
 ing every day to that end. In the first place, let 
 us see what influence he is exerting on public 
 sentiment. In this and like communities, public
 
 i858] AT OTTAWA 163 
 
 sentiment is everything-. With piibHc sentiment, 
 nothing can fail ; without it, nothing can succeed. 
 Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes 
 deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces 
 decisions. He makes statutes and decisions pos- 
 sible or impossible to be executed. This must be 
 borne in mind, as also the additional fact that 
 Judge Douglas is a man of vast influence, so 
 great that it is enough for many men to profess to 
 believe anything when they once find out that 
 Judge Douglas professes to believe it. Consider 
 also the attitude he occupies at the head of a large 
 party — a party which he claims has a majority of 
 all the voters in the country. 
 
 This man sticks to a decision which forbids the 
 people of a Territory to exclude slavery, and he 
 does so not because he says it is right in itself, — 
 he does not give any opinion on that, — but be- 
 cause it has been decided by the court, and, being 
 decided by the court, he is, and you are, bound 
 to take it in your political action as law — not that 
 he judges at all of its merits, but because a de- 
 cision of the court is to him a "Thus saith the 
 Lord." He places it on that ground alone, and 
 you will bear in mind that thus committing him- 
 self unreservedly to this decision commits him 
 to the next one just as firmly as to this. He did 
 not commit himself on account of the merit or 
 demerit of the decision, but it is a "Thus saith the 
 Lord." The next decision, as much as this, will 
 be a "Thus saith the Lord." There is nothing 
 that can divert or turn him away from this de- 
 cision. It is nothing that I point out to him that 
 his great prototype, General Jackson, did not be- 
 lieve in the binding force of decisions. It is 
 nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe. I
 
 i64 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 have said that I have often heard him approve of 
 Jackson's course in disregarding the decision of 
 the Supreme Court pronouncing a national bank 
 constitutional. He says I did not hear him say 
 so. He denies the accuracy of my recollection. I 
 say he ought to know better than I, but I will 
 make no question about this thing, though it still 
 seems to me that I heard him say it twenty times. 
 I will tell him, thougli, that he now claims to 
 stand on the Cincinnati platform, which affirms 
 that Congress cannot charter a national bank, in 
 the teeth of that old standing decision that Con- 
 gress can charter a bank. And I remind him of 
 another piece of history on the question of re- 
 spect for judicial decisions, and it is a piece of 
 Illinois history, belonging to a time when a large 
 party to which Judge Douglas belonged were dis- 
 pleased with a decision of the Supreme Court of 
 Illinois, because they had decided that a governor 
 could not remove a secretary of state. You will 
 find the whole story in Ford's ''History of Illi- 
 nois," and I know that Judge Douglas will not 
 deny that he was then in favor of overslaughing 
 that decision by the mode of adding five new 
 judges, so as to vote down the four old ones. 
 Not only so, but it ended in the judge's sitting 
 down on the very bench as one of the five new 
 judges to break down the four old ones. It was 
 in this way precisely that he got his title of judge. 
 Now, when the judge tells me that men ap- 
 pointed conditionally to sit as members of a court 
 will have to be catechised beforehand upon some 
 subject, I say, "You know, judge; you have tried 
 it." When he says a court of this kind will lose 
 the confidence of all men, will be prostituted and 
 disgraced by such a proceeding, I say, "You
 
 i85S] AT OTTAWA 165 
 
 know best, judge; you have been through the 
 mill." 
 
 But I cannot shake Judge Douglas's teeth loose 
 from the Dred Scott decision. Like some obsti- 
 nate animal (I mean no disrespect) that will 
 hang on when he has once got his teeth fixed, — 
 you may cut off a leg, or you may tear away an 
 arm, still he will not relax his hold. And so I may 
 point out to the judge, and say that he is bespat- 
 tered all over, from the beginning of his political 
 life to the present time, with attacks upon judicial 
 decisions, — I may cut off limb after limb of his 
 public record, and strive to wrench from him a 
 single dictum of the court, yet I cannot divert him 
 from it. He hangs to the last of the Dred Scott 
 decision. These things show there is a purpose 
 strong as death and eternity for which he ad- 
 heres to this decision, and for which he will ad- 
 here to all other decisions of the same court. 
 [A Hibernian: "Give us something besides Drid 
 Scott."] Yes; no doubt you want to hear some- 
 thing that don't hurt. Now, having spoken of 
 the Dred Scott decision, one more word and I 
 am done. Henry Clay, my beau ideal of a states- 
 man, the man for whom I fought all my humble 
 life — Henry Clay once said of a class of men who 
 would repress all tendencies to liberty and ulti- 
 mate emancipation, that they must, if they would 
 do this, go back to the era of our independence, 
 and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual 
 joyous return ; they must blow out the moral 
 lights around us ; they must penetrate the human 
 soul, and eradicate there the love of liberty ; and 
 then, and not till then, could they perpetuate 
 slavery in this country ! To my thinking, 
 Judge Douglas is, by his example and vast influ-
 
 i66 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 ence, doing that very thing in this community 
 when he says that the negro has nothing in the 
 Declaration of Independence. Henry Clay plainly 
 understood the contrary. Judge Douglas is go- 
 ing back to the era of our Revolution, and to the 
 extent of his ability muzzling the cannon which 
 thunders its annual joyous return. When he in- 
 vites any people, willing to have slavery, to es- 
 tablish it, he is blowing out the moral lights 
 around us. When he says he ''cares not whether 
 slavery is voted down or voted up" — that it is a 
 sacred right of self-government — he is, in my 
 judgment, penetrating the human soul and eradi- 
 cating the light of reason and the love of liberty 
 in this American people. And now I will only 
 say that when, by all these means and appliances, 
 Judge Douglas shall succeed in bringing public 
 sentiment to an exact accordance with his own 
 views — when these vast assemblages shall echo 
 back all these sentiments — when they shall come 
 to repeat his views and to avow his principles, 
 and to say all that he says on these mighty ques- 
 tions — then it needs only the formality of the 
 second Dred Scott decision, which he indorses in 
 advance, to make slavery alike lawful in all the 
 States — old as well as new, North as well as 
 South. 
 
 My friends, that ends the chapter. The judge 
 can take his half hour. 
 
 Mr. Douglas's Rejoinder. 
 
 Fellow-citizens: I will now occupy the half hour 
 allotted to me in replying to Mr. Lincoln. The first 
 point to which I will call your attention is, as to what 
 I said about the organization of the Republican party 
 in 1854, and the platform that was formed on the 5th
 
 i858] AT OTTAWA 167 
 
 of October of that year, and I will then put the ques- 
 tion to Mr. Lincoln, whether or not he approves of each 
 article in that platform, and ask for a specific answer. 
 I did not charge him with being a member of the 
 committee which reported that platform. I charged 
 that that platform was the platform of the Republican 
 party adopted by them. The fact that it was the plat- 
 form of the Republican party is not denied, but Mr. 
 Lincoln now says that although his name was on the 
 committee which reported it, he does not think he 
 was there, but thinks he was in Tazewell, holding 
 court. Now, I want to remind Mr. Lincoln that he 
 was at Springfield when that convention was held and 
 those resolutions adopted. 
 
 The point I am going to remind Mr. Lincoln of is 
 this: that after 1 had made my speech in 1854, during 
 the fair, he gave me notice that he was going to reply 
 to me the next day. I was sick at the time, but I 
 stayed over in Springfield to hear his reply and to 
 reply to him. On that day this very convention, the 
 resolutions adopted by which I have read, was to meet 
 in the Senate chamber. He spoke in the hall of the 
 House; and when he got through his speech — my 
 recollection is distinct, and I shall never forget it — • 
 Mr. Codding walked in as I took the stand to reply, 
 and gave notice that the Republican State convention 
 would meet instantly in the Senate chamber, and called 
 upon the Republicans to retire there and go into this 
 very convention, instead of remaining and listening to 
 me. 
 
 In the first place, Mr. Lincoln was selected by the 
 very men who made the Republican organization on 
 that day, to reply to me. He spoke for them and for 
 that party, and he was the leader of the party; and on 
 the very day he made his speech in reply to me, 
 preaching up this same doctrine of negro equality 
 under the Declaration of Independence, this Republi- 
 can party met in convention. Another evidence that 
 he was acting in concert with them is to be found in 
 the fact that that convention waited an hour after its 
 time of meeting to hear Lincoln's speech, and Cod- 
 ding, one of their leading men, marched in the moment 
 Lincoln got through, and gave notice that they did not 
 want to hear me, and would proceed with the business 
 of the convention. Still another fact. I have here a
 
 i68 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 newspaper printed at Springfield — Mr. Lincoln's own 
 town — in October, 1854, a few days afterward, publish- 
 ing these resolutions, charging Mr. Lincoln with enter- 
 taining these sentiments, and trying to prove that they 
 were also the sentiments of Mr. Yates, then candidate 
 for Congress. This has been published on Mr. Lin- 
 coln over and over again, and never before has he 
 denied it. 
 
 But, my friends, this denial of his that he did not 
 act on the committee, is a miserable quibble to avoid 
 the main issue, which is that this Republican platform 
 declares in favor of the unconditional repeal of the 
 fugitive-slave law. Has Lincoln answered whether he 
 indorsed that or not? I called his attention to it when 
 I first addressed you, and asked him for an answer, 
 and then predicted that he would not answer. How 
 does he answer? Why, that he was not on the com- 
 mittee that wrote the resolutions. I then repeated the 
 next proposition contained in the resolutions, which 
 was to restrict slavery in those States in which it 
 exists, and asked him whether he indorsed it. Does he 
 answer yes or no? He says in reply, "I was not on 
 the committee at the time; I was up in Tazewell." 
 The next question I put to him was, whether he was in 
 favor of prohibiting the admission of any more slave 
 States into the Union. I put the question to him 
 distinctly, whether, if the people of the Territory, 
 when they had sufficient population to make a State, 
 should form their constitution recognizing slavery, he 
 would vote for or against its admission. He is a 
 candidate for the United States Senate, and it is 
 possible, if he should be elected, that he would have to 
 vote directly on that question. I ask him to answer 
 me and you, whether he would vote to admit a State 
 into the Union, with slavery or without it, as its own 
 people might choose. He did not answer that ques- 
 tion. He dodges that question also, under cover that 
 he was not on the committee at the time, that he was 
 not present when the platform was made. I want to 
 know, if he should happen to be in the Senate when ?. 
 State applied for admission with a constitution accept- 
 able to her own people, whether he would vote to 
 admit that State if slavery was one of its institutions. 
 He avoids the answer. 
 
 It is true he gives the Abolitionists to understand
 
 i8s8] AT OTTAWA 169 
 
 by a hint that he would not vote to admit such a State. 
 And why? He goes on to say that the man who 
 would talk about giving each State the right to have 
 slavery or not, as it pleased, was akin to the man who 
 would muzzle the guns which thundered forth the 
 annual joyous return of the day of our independence. 
 He says that that kind of talk is casting a blight on 
 the glory of this country. What is the meaning of 
 that? That he is not in favor of each State to have 
 the right of doing as it pleases on the slavery ques- 
 tion? I will put the question to him again and again, 
 and I intend to force it out of him. 
 
 Then again, this platform which was made at Spring- 
 field by his own party, when he was its acknowledged 
 head, provides that Republicans will insist on the 
 abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and I 
 asked Lincoln specifically whether he agreed with them 
 in that. ["Did you get an answer?"] He is afraid 
 to answer it. He knows I will trot him down to 
 Egypt. I intend to make him answer there, or I will 
 show the people of Illinois that he does not intend to 
 answer these questions. The convention to which I 
 have been alluding goes a little further, and pledges 
 itself to exclude slavery from all the Territories over 
 which the General Government has exclusive jurisdic- 
 tion north of 36° 30', as well as south. Now I want 
 to know whether he approves that provision. I want 
 him to answer, and when he does, I want to know his 
 opinion on another point, which is, whether he will 
 redeem the pledge of this platform and resist the ac- 
 quirement of any more territory unless slavery therein 
 shall be forever prohibited. I want him to answer 
 this last question. All of the questions I have put to 
 him are practical questions — questions based upon the 
 fundamental principles of the Black Republican party; 
 and I want to know whether he is the first, last, and 
 only choice of a party with whom he does_ not agree 
 in principle. He does not deny that that principle was 
 unanimously adopted by the Republican party; he does 
 not deny that the whole Republican party is pledged 
 to it; he does not deny that a m.an who is not faithful 
 to it is faithless to the Republican party; and now I 
 want to know whether that party is unanimously in 
 favor of a man who does not adopt that creed and 
 agree with them in their principles: I want to know
 
 'Ajg. 
 
 M^knihi r - thr siE^ wbK Ams noit a@iuuL irxx 
 
 jgy^ I^ ~i''^ umiyis. JfilsSL sxd. <flUU|' CuOSOC €l£ tifcs^ 
 
 .J jFtrsiT' jpuLiiJi)>~ £^ swuz- '"Stai! tvRuwti Xftp ann^v^ 
 : . itiwmn iritiiir&i I fistre rsaA ibd j>ani molt ^Eoilf 
 
 IT? -xnc s. gmwuMiily ifflatt be fix 
 
 jiihiSu^a paisi^ 3&am^ gEfla^sd tib;^ 
 
 Jilt ~ ^^faE^^Maaaig, dbe ioe ciauM 
 
 3— rf l 2. fadk , and. mfttwii he 
 
 -n-i-.f]^ 1tBI> aantu wttflkuiiilt an 
 
 jKse 4gnESEl&BnSr he sat 
 
 
 "ET jiX lie - -TTgc -V 
 
 - 1 X 53 i
 
 ]85S] AT OTTAWA 171 
 
 against me. tlm5 :/ - ■ - - t widi mocal hn'pfUfiV 
 "VMien lie pat it in. rn?r lorm. i did -ay. r^ar rrKfiuntKh. 
 as fce repe^"^^ "= " r^ becsnse I isT : 
 
 deracd it. _ ,_-__:_: : lie opportnc- 
 
 erer nrpea.rirLg ix agairr by declariiig- tfest rt wa« ia 2II 
 rta besxniga an H-'^arn : t. He asja !ie wiU rrcesr 
 
 it rmTTT I --- — ^- '- T - - f -: T'^d^e t* "~ Sceccd. 
 
 and Fr^ _ - - i - : ^ : b. am . t5. 
 
 how pretrj it is. His -raxiitT £5 wcnu'ied becs-nrse i ~"— 
 not go into tn.it beannfcl figure ol his a": ■'■ - btsld- 
 frig of a botise. AH I hs.ire ro say :5 :: ^ "t: -:" 
 greoi eiocgii to Let r-H-n rrnVp- a :-i^_*^r ^-i-:_i ^r 
 acknowledges he does not knoTir to be rrias:. and -h-en 
 take np my tinie in ans-*eri=:g ri. when I " ' ■ ' 
 
 be false and nobody else knows rr to be rr-i:. 
 
 I have not brottght a charge qz — : ni rr-r - 1 : r 
 against hfm Whoi he. or any ochfr —.■'-- b~^? :ne 
 against me. instead of (f i : " : ng iz. I w-'' say ~~:?r is 
 is a lie. and let T iT n ■dtov; .: _: he ctir* 
 
 I have lived rsrenry-dve years in ^ :t5. I have 
 served yon with all the ndelity an'd abiliry which: I 
 possess, and ilr. Linccin is at hberty to arrack mv 
 public action, my votes, and rty crndnct; bet wnen he 
 dares to attack my m-rral httegritj. by a dbarse ot 
 conspiracy between m3rse'f. Chief Jnsdce Taney and 
 the S^rprer-^- ^ ir: ~- : Presidents of the Uaited 
 
 States, r ^ -._. ._ 
 
 Mr. Lincohi has not character enoc-gh fcr hrte-zrity 
 and tmth. merely on his own ifse diri, to arraign 
 President Bnchanan. Presideit Pie-^ = - : mne :n«dges 
 of the Supreme Conrt. not one . - _ : tt wocld ~be 
 complimented by being pet on an e^tna!-ry- with, h-r-rr. 
 There is an nnpardonable presamt 1 maim pnt- 
 
 tii^ himself tip before thocsands _- uaA pre- 
 
 tet«Eng that his i^se dixit, wrthool pr . . _. —r^ fiaOL 
 
 and withottt tmth. is enoogh to bring and 
 
 destFC" - -est and best t" -g merr, 
 
 reL:.. -1,' --"-my time is .-: - ;■ ~~r" ~ — nst fa.ss 
 en. Mr. L . '^rin-s to k- : v " _ z_ 3J-i'--ir^ 
 
 Mr. Chase's a : to the Nr : - - -n btH I will 
 
 teU him. In :_ ; - - :e. the bux ^ : : - o?nferrTgd
 
 172 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 21 
 
 all the power which Congress had, by giving the 
 people the whole power over the subject. Chase 
 offered a proviso that they might abolish slavery, 
 which by implication would convey the idea that they 
 could prohibit by not introducing that institution. 
 General Cass asked him to modify his amendment, so 
 as to provide that the people might either prohibit or 
 introduce slavery, and thus make it fair and equal. 
 Chase refused to so modify his proviso, and then 
 General Cass and all the rest of us voted it down. 
 Those facts appear on the journals and debates of 
 Congress, where Mr. Lincoln found the charge, and if 
 he had told the whole truth, there would have been no 
 necessity for me to occupy your time in explaining the 
 matter. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln wants to know why the word "■ State," 
 as well as "Territory," was put into the Nebraska bill? 
 I will tell him. It was put there to meet just such 
 false arguments as he has been adducing. That first, 
 not only the people of the Territories should do as 
 they pleased, but that when they come to be admitted 
 as States, they should come into the L'nion with or 
 without slavery, as the people determined. I meant to 
 knock in the head this Abolition doctrine of ^Ir. 
 Lincoln's, that there shall be no more slave States, 
 even if the people want them. And it does not do for 
 him to say. or or for any other Black Republican to 
 say. that there is nobody in favor of the doctrine of no 
 more slave States, and that nobody wants to interfere 
 with the right of the people to do as they please. 
 What was the origin of the Missouri difficulty and the 
 Missouri Compromise? The people of Missouri 
 formed a constitution as a slave State, and asked ad- 
 mission into the Union, but the Free-soil party of 
 the North, being in a majority, refused to admit her 
 because she had slavery as one of her institutions. 
 Hence this first slavery agitation arose upon a State 
 and not upon a Territory, and yet Mr. Lincoln does 
 not know why the word State was placed in the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill. The whole Abolition agitation 
 arose on that doctrine of prohibiting a State from 
 coming in with slavery or not, as it pleased, and that 
 same doctrine is here in this Republican platform of 
 1854; it has never been repealed; and every Black 
 Republican stands pledged by that platform never to
 
 1858] . AT OTTAWA 173 
 
 vote for any man who is not in favor of it. Yet Mr. 
 Lincoln does not know that there is a man in the 
 world who is in favor of preventing a State from com- 
 ing in as it pleases, notwithstanding the Springfield 
 platform says that they, the Republican party, will 
 not allow a State to come in under such circumstances. 
 He is an ignorant man. 
 
 Now you see that upon these verj- points I am as 
 far from bringing Mr. Lincoln up to the line as I 
 ever was before. He does not want to avow his prin- 
 ciples. I do want to avow mine, as clear as sunlight 
 in midday. Democracy is founded upon the eternal 
 principles of right. The plainer these principles are 
 avowed before the people, the stronger will be the 
 support which the}- will receive. I onlj- wish I had 
 the power to make them so clear that they would shine 
 in the heavens for every man. woman, and child to 
 read. The first of those principles that I would pro- 
 claim would be in opposition to Mr. Lincoln's doctrine 
 of uniformity between the different States, and I would 
 declare instead the sovereign right of each State to 
 decide the slavery- question as well as all other domes- 
 tic questions for themselves, without interference from 
 any other State or power whatsoever. 
 
 When that principle is recognized you will have peace 
 and harmony and fraternal feeling between all the 
 States of this L'nion: until you do recognize that doc- 
 trine there will be sectional warfare agitating and dis- 
 tracting the country-. What does Mr. Lincoln pro- 
 pose? He says that the Union cannot exist divided 
 into free and slave States. If it cannot endure thus 
 divided, then he must strive to make them all free or 
 all slave, which will inevitably bring about a dissolu- 
 tion of the L'nion. 
 
 Gentlemen. I am told that my time is out, and I am 
 obliged to stop.* 
 
 * Xext day C August 22. 1858). in a letter written from 
 Ottawa to t. O. Cunningham. Lincoln wrote : "Douglas 
 and I. for the first time this canvass, crossed swords here 
 yesterday ; the lire flew some, and I am giad to know 
 I am yet alive. There was a vast concourse of people- 
 more than could get near enough to hear."
 
 174 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 Second Joint Debate, at Freeport. 
 
 August 2y, 1858. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Opening Speech, 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: On Saturday last, 
 Judge Douglas and myself first met in public dis- 
 cussion. He spoke one hour, I an hour and a 
 half, and he replied for half an hour. The order 
 is now reversed. I am to speak an hour, he an 
 hour and a half, and then I am to reply for half 
 an hour. I propose to devote myself during the 
 first hour to the scope of what was brought with- 
 in the range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa. 
 Of course there was brought within the scope of 
 that half-hour's speech something of his own 
 opening speech. In the course of that opening 
 argument Judge Douglas proposed to me seven 
 distinct interrogatories. In my speech of an hour 
 and a half, I attended to some other parts of his 
 speech, and incidentally, as I thought, answered 
 one of the interrogatories then. I then distinctly 
 intimated to him that I would answer the rest of 
 his interrogatories on condition only that he 
 should agree to answer as many for me. He 
 made no intimation at the time of the proposition, 
 nor did he in his reply allude at all to that sug- 
 gestion of mine. I do him no injustice in saying 
 that he occupied at least half of his reply in deal- 
 ing with me as though I had refused to answer 
 his interrogatories. I now propose that I will 
 answer any of the interrogatories, upon condi- 
 tions that he will answer questions from me not 
 exceeding the same number. I give him an op- 
 portunity to respond. The judge remains silent. 
 I now say that I will answer his interrogatories,
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 175 
 
 whether he answers mine or not ; and that after 
 I have done so, I shall propound mine to him. 
 
 I have supposed myself, since the organization 
 of the Republican party at Bloomington, in ^lay, 
 1856, bound as a party man by the platforms of 
 the party then and since. If in any interroga- 
 tories which I shall answer I go beyond the scope 
 of what is within these platforms, it will be per- 
 ceived that no one is responsible but myself. 
 Having said this much, I will take up the judge's 
 interrogatories as I find them printed in the Chi- 
 cago Times, and answer them seriatim. In or- 
 der that there may be no mistake about it, I have 
 copied the interrogatories in writing, and also 
 my answers to them. The first one of these in- 
 terrogatories is in these words : 
 
 Question i. 'T desire to know whether Lin- 
 coin to-day stands as he did in 1854, in favor of 
 the unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave 
 law?" 
 
 Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in 
 favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive- 
 slave law. 
 
 O. 2. 'T desire him to answer whether he 
 stands pledged to-day as he did in 1854, against 
 the admission of any more slave States into the 
 Union, even if the people want them?" 
 
 A. I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged 
 against the admission of any more slave States 
 into the Union. 
 
 O. 3. *T want to know whether he stands 
 pledged against the admission of a new State 
 into the Union with such a constitution as the 
 people of that State may see fit to make?" 
 
 A. I do not stand pledged against the ad- 
 mission of a nevv' State into the Union with such
 
 176 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 2l constitution as the people of that State may see 
 fit to make. 
 
 Q. 4. "I want to know whether he stands to- 
 day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia ?" 
 
 A. I do not stand to-day pledged to the aboli- 
 tion of slavery in the District of Columbia. 
 
 O. 5. "I desire him to answer whether he 
 stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave- 
 trade between the different States." 
 
 A. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition 
 of the slave-trade between the different States. 
 
 O. 6. ''I desire to know whether he stands 
 pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories 
 of the United States, North as well as South of 
 the Missouri Compromise line?" 
 
 A. I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged 
 to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to 
 prohibit slavery in all the United States Terri- 
 tories. 
 
 O. 7. 'T desire him to answer whether he is 
 opposed to the acquisition of any new territory 
 unless slavery is first prohibited therein?" 
 
 A. I am not generally opposed to honest ac- 
 quisition of territory ; and, in any given case, I 
 would or would not oppose such acquisition, ac- 
 cordingly as I might think such acquisition would 
 or would not aggravate the slavery question 
 among ourselves. 
 
 Now, my friends, it will be perceived upon an 
 examination of these questions and answers that 
 so far I have only answered that I was not 
 pledged to this, that, or the other. The judge 
 has not framed his interrogatories to ask me 
 anything more than this, and I have answered in 
 strict accordance with the interrogatories, and
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 177 
 
 have answered truly that I am not pledged at all 
 upon any of the points to which I have answered. 
 But I am not disposed to hang upon the exact 
 form of his interrogatory. I am really disposed 
 to take up at least some of these questions, and 
 state what I reall}^ think upon them. 
 
 As to the first one, in regard to the fugitive- 
 slave law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do 
 not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the 
 Constitution of the United States, the people of 
 the Southern States are entitled to a congres- 
 sional fugitive-slave law. Having said that, I 
 have had nothing to say in regard to the existing 
 fugitive-slave law, further than that I think it 
 should have been framed so as to be free from 
 some of the objections that pertain to it, without 
 lessening its efficiency. And inasmuch as we are 
 not now in an agitation in regard to an alteration 
 or modification of that law, I would not be the 
 man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation 
 upon the general question of slavery. 
 
 In regard to the other question of whether I 
 am pledged to the admission of any more slave 
 States into the Union. I state to you very frankly 
 that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put 
 in a position of having to pass upon that question. 
 I should be exceedingly glad to know that there 
 would never be another slave State admitted into 
 the Union; but I must add that if slavery shall 
 be kept out of the Territories during the terri- 
 torial existence of any one given Territory, and 
 then the people shall, having a fair chance and a 
 clear field, when they come to adopt the Constitu- 
 tion, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt 
 a slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual 
 presence of the institution among them, I see no
 
 178 ' DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 alternative, if we own the country,* but to admit 
 them into the Union. 
 
 The third interrogatory is answered by the 
 answer to the second, it being, as I conceive, the 
 same as the second. 
 
 The fourth one is in regard to the aboHtion of 
 slavery in the District of Columbia. In relation 
 to that, I have my mind very distinctly made up. 
 I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abol- 
 ished in the District of Columbia. I believe that 
 Congress possesses the constitutional power to 
 abolish it. Yet as a member of Congress, I 
 should not with my present views be in favor of 
 endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District of 
 Columbia unless it would be upon these condi- 
 tions :. First, that the abolition should be gradu- 
 al ; second, that it should be on a vote of the 
 majority of qualified voters in the District ; and 
 third, that compensation should be made to un- 
 willing owners. With these three conditions, I 
 confess I would be exceedingly glad to see Con- 
 gress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, 
 and, in the language of Henry Clay, "sweep from 
 our capital that foul blot upon our nation." 
 
 In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must 
 say here that as to the question of the abolition 
 of the slave-trade between the different States, I 
 can truly answer, as I have, that I am pledged to 
 nothing about it. It is a subject to which I have 
 not given that mature consideration that would 
 make me feel authorized to state a position so as 
 to hold myself entirely bound by it. In other 
 v/ords, that question has never been prominently 
 enough before me to induce me to investigate 
 
 * A qualification intended to exempt Cuba, whose annex- 
 ation was contemplated by President Buchanan.
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 179 
 
 whether we really have the constitutional power 
 to do it. I could investigate it if I had sufficient 
 time to bring myself to a conclusion upon that 
 subject, but I have not done so, and I say so 
 frankly to you here and to Judge Douglas. I 
 must say, however, that if I should be of opinion 
 that Congress does possess the constitutional 
 power to abolish the slave-trade among the dif- 
 ferent States, I should still not be in favor of the 
 exercise of that power unless upon some conserv- 
 ative principle as I conceive it, akin to what I 
 have said in relation to the abolition of slavery 
 in the District of Columbia. 
 
 My answer as to whether I desire that slavery 
 should be prohibited in all the Territories of the 
 United States is full and explicit within itself, 
 and cannot be made clearer by any comments of 
 mine. So I suppose in regard to the question 
 whether I am opposed to the acquisition of any 
 more territory unless slavery is first prohibited 
 therein ;'^ my answer is such that I could add noth- 
 ing by way of illustration, or making myself bet- 
 ter understood, than the answer which I have 
 placed in writing. 
 
 Now in all this the judge has me, and he has 
 me on the record. I suppose he had flattered 
 himself that I was really entertaining one set of 
 opinions for one place and another set for another 
 place — that I was afraid to say at one place what 
 I uttered at another. What I am saying here I 
 suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tend- 
 ing to Abolitionism as any audience in the State 
 of Illinois, and I believe I am saying that which, 
 if it would be offensive to any persons and ren- 
 
 * The proposed annexation of Cuba is referred to.
 
 i8o DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 der them enemies to myself, would be offensive to 
 persons in this audience. 
 
 I now proceed to propound to the judge the 
 interrogatories so far as I have framed them. 
 I will bring forward a new instalment when I get 
 them ready. I will bring them forward now, 
 only reaching to number four. 
 
 The first one is : 
 
 Question i. If the people of Kansas shall, by 
 means entirely unobjectionable in all other re- 
 spects, adopt a State constitution, and ask ad- 
 mission into the Union under it, before they have 
 the requisite number of inhabitants according to 
 the English bill, — some ninety-three thousand, — 
 will you vote to admit them? 
 
 Q. 2. Can the people of a United States Ter- 
 ritory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any 
 citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from 
 its limits prior to the formation of a State consti- 
 tution ? 
 
 O. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United 
 States shall decide that States cannot exclude 
 slavery from their limits, are you in favor of ac- 
 quiescing in, adopting, and following such deci- 
 sion as a rule of political action ? 
 
 O. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional 
 territory, in disregard of how such acquisition 
 may affect the nation on the slavery question ? 
 
 As introductory to these interrogatories which 
 Judge Douglas propounded to me at Ottawa, he 
 read a set of resolutions which he said Judge 
 Trumbull and myself had participated in adopt- 
 ing, in the first Republican State convention, held 
 at Springfield, in October, 1854. He insisted that 
 I and Judge Trumbull, and perhaps the entire 
 Republican party, were responsible for the doc-
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT i8l 
 
 trines contained in the set of resolutions which 
 he read, and I understand that it was from 
 that set of resolutions that he deduced 
 the interrogatories which he propounded to 
 me, usins: these resolutions as a sort of author- 
 ity for propounding those questions to me. Now 
 I say here to-day that I do not answer his inter- 
 rogatories because of their springing at all from 
 that set of resolutions which he read. I answered 
 them because Judge Douglas thought fit to ask 
 them. I do not now, nor ever did, recognize any 
 responsibility upon myself in that set of resolu- 
 tions. When I replied to him on that occasion, I 
 assured him that I never had anything to do with 
 them. I repeat here to-day, that I never in any 
 possible form had anything to do with that set of 
 resolutions. It turns out, I beheve, that those 
 resolutions were never passed by any convention 
 held in Springfield. It turns out that they were 
 never passed at any convention or any public 
 meeting that I had any part in. I be- 
 lieve it turns out, in addition to all this, that 
 there was not, in the fall of 1854, any conven- 
 tion holding a session in Springfield calling 
 itself a Republican State convention ; yet it is 
 true there was a convention, or assemblage of 
 men calling themselves a convention, at Spring- 
 field, that did pass some resolutions. But 
 so little did I really know of the proceedings of 
 that convention, or what set of resolutions they 
 had passed, though having a general knowledge 
 that there had been such an assemblage of men 
 there, that when Judge Douglas read the resolu- 
 tions, I really did not know but that they had 
 been the resolutions passed then and there. I did 
 not question that they were the resolutions
 
 i82 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 adopted. For I could not bring myself to sup- 
 pose that Judge Douglas could say what he did 
 upon this subject without knowing that it was 
 true. I contented myself, on that occasion, with 
 denying, as I truly could, all connection with 
 them, not denying or affirming whether they 
 were passed at Springfield. Now it turns out 
 that he.had got hold of some resolutions passed at 
 some convention or public meeting in Kane 
 County. I wish to say here, that I don't conceive 
 that in any fair and just mind this discovery re- 
 lieves me at all. I had just as much to do with 
 the convention in Kane County as that at Spring- 
 field. I am just as much responsible for the reso- 
 lutions at Kane County as those at Springfield, 
 the amount of the responsibility being exactly 
 nothing in either case ; no more than there would 
 be in regard to a set of resolutions passed in the 
 moon. 
 
 I allude to this extraordinary matter in this 
 canvass for some further purpose than anything 
 yet advanced. Judge Douglas did not make his 
 statement upon that occasion as matters that he 
 believed to be true, but he stated them roundly 
 as being true, in such form as to pledge his verac- 
 ity for their truth. When the whole matter turns 
 out as it does, and when we consider who Judge 
 Douglas is, — that he is a distinguished senator of 
 the United States ; that he has served nearly 
 twelve years as such ; that his character is not at 
 all limited as an ordinary senator of the United 
 States, but that his name has become of world- 
 wide renown, — it is most extraordinary that he 
 should so far forget all the suggestions of justice 
 to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to 
 venture upon the assertion of that which the
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 183 
 
 Slightest investigation would have shown him to 
 be wholly false. I can only account for his hav- 
 ing done so upon the supposition that that evil 
 genius which has attended him through his life, 
 giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, 
 such as to lead very many good men to doubt 
 there being any advantage in virtue over vice — 
 I say I can only account for it on the supposition 
 that that evil genius has at last made up its mind 
 to forsake him. 
 
 And I may add that another extraordinary 
 feature of the judge's conduct in this canvass — 
 made more extraordinary by this incident — is, 
 that he is in the habit, in almost all the speeches 
 he makes, of charging falsehood upon his adver- 
 saries, mvself and others. I now ask whether he 
 is able to find in anything that Judge Trumbull, 
 for instance, has said, or in anything that I have 
 said, a justification at all compared with what we 
 have, in this instance, for that sort of vulgarity. 
 
 I have been in the habit of charging as a mat- 
 ter of belief on my part, that, in the introduction 
 of the Nebraska bill into Congress, there was a 
 conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and na- 
 tional. I have arranged from time to time the 
 evidence v/hich establishes and proves the truth 
 of this charge. I recurred to this charge at Ot- 
 tawa. I shall not now have time to dwell upon it 
 at very great length ; but inasmuch as Judge 
 Douglas in his reply of half an hour made some 
 points upon me in relation to it, I propose notic- 
 ing a few of them. 
 
 The judge insists that, in the first speech I 
 made, in which I very distinctly made that 
 charge, he thought for a good while I was in 
 fun — that I was playful — that I was not sincere
 
 1 84 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS I Aug. 27 
 
 about it — and that he only grew angry and some- 
 what excited when he found that I insisted upon 
 it as a matter of earnestness. He says he char- 
 acterized it as a falsehood as far as I implicated 
 his moral character in that transaction. Well, 
 I did not know, till he presented that view, that 
 I had implicated his moral character. He is very 
 much in the habit, when he argues me up into a 
 position I never thought of occupying, of very 
 cozily saying he has no doubt Lincoln is ''con- 
 scientious" in saying so. He should remember 
 that I did not know but what he was altogether 
 ''conscientious" in that matter. I can conceive 
 it possible for m.en to conspire to do a good 
 thing, and I really find nothing in Judge Doug- 
 las's course of arguments that is contrary to or 
 inconsistent with his belief of a conspiracy to 
 nationalize and spread slavery as being a good 
 and blessed thing, and so I hope he w411 under- 
 stand that I do not at all question but that in all 
 this matter he is entirely "conscientious." 
 
 But to draw your attention to one of the points 
 I made in this case, beginning at the beginning. 
 When the Nebraska bill was introduced, or a 
 short time afterward, by an amendment, I be- 
 lieve, it was provided that it must be considered 
 "the true intent and meaning of this act not to 
 legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or 
 to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
 thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their 
 own domestic institutions in their own way, sub- 
 ject only to the Constitution of the United 
 States."* I have called his attention to the fact 
 
 * Douglas proposed this amendment February 7, 1854, 
 two weeks after the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was introduced. 
 Senator Benton of Missouri characterized it as "a little
 
 i858] AT FREEPORT 185 
 
 that when he and some others began arguing 
 that they were giving an increased degree of 
 Hberty to the people in the Territories over and 
 above what they formerly had on the question of 
 slavery, a question was raised whether the law 
 was enacted to give such unconditional liberty 
 to the people ; and to test the sincerity of this 
 mode of argument, Mr. Chase, of Ohio, intro- 
 duced an amendment, in which he made the law 
 — if the amendment were adopted — expressly 
 declare that the people of the Territory should 
 have the power to exclude slavery if they saw 
 fit. I have asked attention also to the fact that 
 Judge Douglas, and those who acted with him, 
 voted that amendment down, notwithstanding it 
 expressed exactly the thing they said was the 
 true intent and meaning of the law. I have 
 called attention to the fact that in subsequent 
 times a decision of the Supreme Court has been 
 made in which it has been declared that a Terri- 
 torial Legislature has no constitutional right to 
 exclude slavery.''' Atid I have argued and said 
 that for men who did intend that the people of 
 the Territory should have the right to exclude 
 slavery absolutely and unconditionally, the 
 voting down of Chase's amendment is wholly 
 inexplicable. It is a puzzle — a riddle. But I 
 have said that with men who did look forward 
 to such a decision, or who had it in contempla- 
 tion that such decision of the Supreme Court 
 would or might be made, the voting down of 
 that amendment would be perfectly rational and 
 
 stump speech injected into the belly of the bill." The 
 bill, as amended, repealed in effect the Missouri Compro- 
 mise of 1820, which prohibited slaverj' north of latitude 
 36° 30'. 
 
 * The Dred Scott decision, rendered March 6, 1857.
 
 1 86 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 intelligible. It would keep Congress from com- 
 ing in collision with the decision when it was 
 made. Anybody can conceive that if there was 
 an intention or expectation that such a decision 
 was to follow, it would not be a very desirable 
 party attitude to get into for the Supreme Court 
 — all or nearly all its members belonging to the 
 same party — to decide one way, when the party 
 in Congress had decided the other way. Hence 
 it would be very rational for men expecting such 
 a decision to keep the niche in that law clear for 
 it. After pointing this out, I tell Judge Douglas 
 that it looks to me as though here was the reason 
 why Chase's amendment was voted down. I tell 
 him that as he did it, and knows why he did it, 
 if it was done for a reason different from this, 
 he knows what that reason was, and can tell us 
 what it was. I tell him, also, it will be vastly 
 more satisfactory to the country for hrni to give 
 some other plausible, intelligible reason' why it 
 was voted down than to stand upon his dignity 
 and call people liars. Weh, on Saturday he did 
 make his answer, and what do you think it was ? 
 He says if I had only taken upon myself to tell 
 the whole truth about that amendment of 
 Chase's, no explanation would have been neces- 
 sary on his part — or words to that effect. Now 
 I say here that I am quite unconscious of having 
 suppressed anything material to the case, and I 
 am very frank to admit if there is any sound 
 reason other than that which appeared to me 
 material, it is quite fair for him to present it. 
 What reason does he propose? That when 
 Chase came forward with his amendment ex- 
 pressly authorizing the people to exclude slavery 
 from the limits of every Territory, General Cass
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 187 
 
 proposed to Chase, if he (Chase) would add to 
 his amendment that the people should have the 
 power to introduce or exclude, they would let 
 it go. 
 
 This is absolutely all of his reply. And be- 
 cause Chase would not do that they voted his 
 amendment down. Well, it turns out, I believe, 
 upon examination, that General Cass took some 
 part in the little running debate upon that 
 amendment, and then ran away and did not vote 
 on it at all. Is not that the fact? So confident, 
 as I think, was General Cass that there was a 
 snake somewhere about, he chose to run away 
 from the whole thing. This is an inference I 
 draw from the fact that though he took part in 
 the debate his name does not appear in the ayes 
 and noes. But does Judge Douglas's reply 
 amount to a satisfactory answer? [Cries of 
 "Yesr ''Yesr and ''No;' ''No."] There is 
 some little difference of opinion here. But I 
 ask attention to a few more views bearing on the 
 question of whether it amounts to a satisfactory 
 answer. The men who were determined that 
 that amendment should not get into the bill, and 
 spoil the place where the Dred Scott decision 
 was to come in, sought an excuse to get rid of 
 it somewhere. One of these ways — one of these 
 excuses — was to ask Chase to add to his pro- 
 posed amendment a provision that the people 
 might introduce slavery if they wanted to. They 
 very well knew Chase would do no such thing — 
 that Mr. Chase was one of the men differing 
 from them on the broad principle of his insisting 
 that freedom was better than slavery — a man 
 who would not consent to enact a law penned 
 with his own hand, by which he was made to
 
 i88 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 recognize slavery on the one hand and liberty 
 on the other as precisely equal ; and when they 
 insisted on his doing this, they very well knew 
 they insisted on that which he would not for a 
 moment think of doing, and that they were only 
 bluffing him. I believe — I have not, since he 
 made his answer, had a chance to examine the 
 journals or Congressional Globe, and therefore 
 speak from memory — I believe the state of the 
 bill at that time, according to parliamentary 
 rules, was such that no member could propose 
 an additional amendment to Chase's amendment. 
 I rather think this is the truth — the judge shakes 
 his head. Very well. I would like to know then, 
 if they wanted Chase's amendment fixed over, 
 why somebody else could not have offered to do 
 it? If they wanted it amended, why did they not 
 offer the amendment ? Why did they stand there 
 taunting and quibbling at Chase ? Why did they 
 not put it in themselves ? But to put it on the 
 other ground : suppose that there was such an 
 amendment oft'ered, and Chase's was an amend- 
 ment to an amendment ; until one is disposed of 
 by parliamentary law, you cannot pile another 
 on. Then all these gentlemen had to do was to 
 vote Chase's on, and then, in the amended form 
 in which the whole stood, add their own amend- 
 ment to it if they wanted to put it in that shape. 
 This was all they were obliged to do, and the 
 ayes and noes show that there were thirty-six 
 who voted it down, against ten who voted in 
 favor of it. The thirty-six held entire sway and 
 control. They could in some form or other have 
 put that bill in the exact shape they wanted. If 
 there was a rule preventing their amending it at 
 the time, they could pass that, and then, Chase's
 
 i858] AT FREEPORT 189 
 
 amendment being merged, put it in the shape 
 they wanted. They did not choose to do so, but 
 they went into a quibble with Chase to get him 
 to add what they knew he would not add, and 
 because he would not, they stand upon that 
 flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued 
 was the meaning and intent of their own bill. 
 They left room thereby for this Dred Scott deci- 
 sion, which goes very far to make slavery na- 
 tional throughout the United States. 
 
 I pass one or two points I have because my 
 time will very soon expire, but I must be allowed 
 to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he did 
 upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity 
 of Lincoln — an insignificant individual like Lin- 
 coln — upon his ipse dixit charging a conspiracy 
 upon a large number of members of Congress, 
 the Supreme Court, and two Presidents, to na- 
 tionalize slavery. I want to say that, in the first 
 place, I have made no charge of this sort upon 
 my ipse dixit. I have only arrayed the evidence 
 tending to prove it, and presented it to the un- 
 derstanding of others, saying what I think it 
 proves, but giving you the means of judging 
 whether it proves it or not. This is precisely 
 what I have done. I have not placed it upon my 
 ipse dixit at all. On this occasion, I wish to re- 
 call his attention to a piece of evidence which I 
 brought forward at Ottawa on Saturday, show- 
 ing that he had made substantially the same 
 charge against substantially the same persons, 
 excluding his dear self from the category. I ask 
 him to give some attention to the evidence which 
 I brought forward, that he himself had discov- 
 ered a "fatal blow being struck" against the right 
 of the people to exclude slavery from their
 
 190 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 limits, which fatal blow he assumed as in evi- 
 dence in an article in the Washington Union, 
 published "by authority." I ask by whose au- 
 thority ? He discovers a similar or identical pro- 
 vision in the Lecompton constitution. Made by 
 whom? The framers of that constitution. Ad- 
 vocated by whom? By all the members of the 
 party in the nation, who advocated the introduc- 
 tion of Kansas into the Union under the Le- 
 compton constitution. 
 
 I have asked his -attention to the evidence that 
 he arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was 
 being struck, and to the facts which he brought 
 forward in support of that charge — being identi- 
 cal with the one Vv^hich he thinks so villainous in 
 me. He pointed it not at a newspaper editor 
 merely, but at the President and his cabinet, and 
 the members of Congress advocating the Le- 
 compton constitution, and those framing that in- 
 strument. I must again be permitted to remind 
 him, that although my ipse dixit may not be as 
 great as his, yet it somewhat reduces the force 
 of his calling my attention to the enormity of my 
 making a like charge against him. 
 
 Go on. Judge Douglas. 
 
 Mr. Douglas's Reply. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: The silence with which you 
 have listened to Mr. Lincoln during his hour is credita- 
 ble to this vast audience, composed of men of various 
 political parties. Nothing is more honorable to any 
 large mass of people assembled for the purpose of a fair 
 discussion, than that kind and respectful attention that 
 is yielded not only to your political friends, but to those 
 who are opposed to you in politics. 
 
 I am glad that at last I have brought Mr. Lincoln to 
 4he conclusion that he had better define his position on
 
 i858] AT FREEPORT 191 
 
 certain political questions to which I called his attention 
 at Ottawa. He there showed no disposition, no inclina- 
 tion, to answer them. I did not present idle questions 
 for him to answer merely for my gratification. I laid 
 the foundation for those interrogatories by showing that 
 they constituted the platform of the party whose nomi- 
 nee he is for the Senate. I did not presume that I had 
 the right to catechise him as I saw proper, unless I 
 showed that his party, or a majority of it, stood upon 
 the platform, and were in favor of the propositions 
 upon which my questions were based. I desired simply 
 to know, inasmuch as he had been nominated as the first, 
 last, and only choice of his party, whether he concurred 
 in the platform which that party had adopted for its 
 government. In a few moments I will proceed to re- 
 view the answers which he has given to these interroga- 
 tories, but in order to relieve his anxiety I will first 
 respond to these which he has presented to me. Mark 
 you, he has not presented interrogatories which have 
 ever received the sanction of the party with which I am 
 acting, and hence he has no other foundation for them 
 than his own curiosity. 
 
 First, he desires to know if the people of Kansas 
 shall form a constitution by means entirely proper and 
 unobjectionable and ask admission into the Union as a 
 State, before they have the requisite population for a 
 member of Congress, whether I will vote for that ad- 
 mission. Well, now, I regret exceedingly that he did 
 not answer that interrogatory himself before he put it 
 to me, in order that we might understand, and not be 
 left to infer, on which side he is. Mr. Trumbull, during 
 the last session of Congress, voted from the beginning 
 to the end against the admission of Oregon, although 
 a free State, because she had not the requisite population 
 for a member of Congress. Mr. Trumbull would not 
 consent, under any circumstances, to let a State, free or 
 slave, come into the Union until it had the requisite 
 population. As Mr. Trumbull is in the field, fighting 
 for Mr. Lincoln, I would like to have Mr. Lincoln 
 answer his own question and tell me whether he is 
 fighting Trumbull on that issue or not. But I will an- 
 swer his question. In reference to Kansas, it is my 
 opinion that as she has population enough to constitute 
 a slave State, she has people enough for a free State. 
 I will not make Kansas an exceptional case to the other
 
 192 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 States of the Union. I hold it to be a sound rule of 
 universal application to require a Territory to contain 
 the requisite population for a member of Congress, be- 
 fore it is admitted as a State into the Union. I made 
 that proposition in the Senate in 1856, and I renewed 
 it during the last session, in a bill providing that no 
 Territory of the United States should form a constitu- 
 tion and apply for admission until it had the requisite 
 population. On another occasion I proposed that 
 neither Kansas, nor any other Territory, should be ad- 
 mitted until it had the requisite population. Congress 
 did not adopt any of my propositions containing this 
 general rule, but did make an exception of Kansas. I 
 will stand by that exception. Either Kansas must come 
 in as a free State, with whatever population she may 
 have, or the rule must be applied to all the other Terri- 
 tories alike. I therefore answer at once that, it having 
 been decided that Kansas has people enough for a slave 
 State, I hold that she has enough for a free State. I 
 hope Mr. Lincoln is satisfied with my answer ; and now 
 I would like to get his answer to his own interrogatory 
 — whether or not he will vote to admit Kansas before 
 she has the requisite population. I want to know 
 whether he will vote to admit Oregon before that Terri- 
 tory has the requisite population. Mr. Trumbull will 
 not, and the same reason that commits Mr. Trumbull 
 against the admission of Oregon commits him against 
 Kansas, even if she should apply for admission as a 
 free State. If there is any sincerity, any truth, in the 
 argument of IMr. Trumbull in the Senate, against the 
 admission of Oregon because she had not 93,420 people, 
 although her population was larger than that of Kan- 
 sas, he stands pledged against the admission of both 
 Oregon and Kansas until they have 93,420 inhabitants. 
 I would like ivIr.Lincoln to answer this question. I would 
 like him to take his own medicine. If he differs with 
 Mr. Trumbull, let him answer his argument against the 
 admission of Oregon, instead of poking questions at me. 
 The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln 
 is : Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, 
 against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, 
 exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation 
 of a State constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. 
 Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from 
 every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 
 
 '93 
 
 of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery 
 from their limits prior to the formation of a State con- 
 stitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that 
 question over and over again. He heard me argue the 
 Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State in 
 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for 
 pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that 
 question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court 
 may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether 
 slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Con- 
 stitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce 
 it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that 
 slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless 
 it is supported by local regulations. Those police regu- 
 lations can only be established by the local legislature, 
 and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect 
 representatives to that body who will by unfriendl}'' 
 legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into 
 their m.idst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their 
 legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter 
 what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that 
 abstract question, still the right of the people to make a 
 slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and com- 
 plete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln 
 deems my answer satisfactory on that point.* 
 
 * This was the avowal that Lincoln had been playing 
 for. In a letter to Henry Asbury, written July 31, 1858, 
 the day the arrangements for the debates had been con- 
 cluded, Mr. Lincoln said : "The points you propose to 
 press upon Douglas he will be very hard to get up to, 
 but I think you labor under a mistake when you say no 
 one cares how he answers. This implies that it is equal 
 with him whether he is injured here or at the South. 
 This is a mistake. He cares nothing for the South ; he 
 knows he is alread}' dead there. He only leans Southward 
 more to keep the Buchanan party from growing in Illinois. 
 You shall have hard work to get him directly to the point 
 whether a territorial legislature has or has not the power 
 to exclude slavery. But if you succeed in bringing him 
 to it — though he will be compelled to say it possesses no 
 such power — he will instantly take ground that slavery 
 cannot actually exist in the Territory unless the people 
 desire it. and so give it protection by territorial legis- 
 lation. If this offends the South, he will let it oft'end 
 them, as at all events he means to hold on to his chances 
 in Illinois." 
 
 The position of Douglas became known as the "Free-
 
 194 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 In this connection I will notice the charge which he 
 has introduced in relation to Mr. Chase's amendment. 
 I thought that I had chased that amendment out of Mr. 
 Lincoln's brain at Ottawa; but it seems still to haunt 
 his imagination, and he is not yet satisfied. I had sup- 
 posed that he would be ashamed to press that question 
 further. He is a lawyer, and has been a member of 
 Congress, and has occupied his time and amused you by 
 telling you about parliamentary proceedings. He ought 
 to have known better than to try to palm off his misera- 
 ble impositions upon this intelligent audience. The Ne- 
 
 port theory of unfriendly legislation." Of it J. F. Rhodes, 
 in his "History of the United States," remarks: "This 
 answer attracted more attention than any statement of 
 Douglas during the campaign ; and, while he could not 
 have been elected Senator without taking that position, 
 the enunciation of the doctrine was an insuperable 
 obstacle to cementing the division in the Democratic 
 party." 
 
 At a conference of Republican leaders the night before 
 the Freeport debate Lincoln announced his intention of 
 forcing this declaration from Douglas. He was counseled 
 not to do so, since the theory would be popular with the 
 Illinois voters and would probably win the Senatorship for 
 Douglas. Lincoln replied that the South would never 
 accept the man who enunciated the doctrine as President. 
 "I am after larger game," he said; "the battle of i860 
 is worth a hvmdred of this." 
 
 Events fulfilled Lincoln's prophecy. The South accused 
 Douglas of violating a bargain with it. Senator Judah P. 
 Benjamin, of Louisiana, said (in a speech in the Senate, 
 May 22, i860) : 
 
 We accuse him [Douglas] for this: to wit, that having 
 bargained with us upon a point upon which we were at 
 issue that it shotild be considered a judicial point ; that 
 he would abide by the decision ; that he wovild act under 
 the decision, and consider it a doctrine of the party ; 
 that having said that to us here in the Senate, he went 
 home, and under the stress of a local election, his knees 
 gave way ; his whole person trembled. His adversary 
 stood upon principle and was beaten ; and lo ! he is the 
 candidate of a mightv party for the Presidency of the 
 United States. The Senator from Illinois faltered. He 
 got the prize for which he faltered ; but lo ! the grand 
 prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp because 
 of his faltering in his former contest, and his success 
 in the canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble 
 prize, has cost him the loss of the Presidency of the 
 United States.
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 195 
 
 braska bill provided that the legislative power and au- 
 thority of the said Territory should extend to all right- 
 ful subjects of legislation consistent with the organic 
 act and the Constitution of the United States. It did 
 not make any exception as to slavery, but gave all the 
 power that it was possible for Congress to give, without 
 violating the Constitution, to the territorial legislature, 
 with no exception or limitation on the subject of slavery 
 at all. The language of that bill which I have quoted 
 gave the full power and the full authority over the 
 subject of slavery, afhrmatively and negatively, to intro- 
 duce it or exclude it, so far as the Constitution of the 
 United States would permit. What more could Mr. 
 Chase give by his amendment? Nothing. He offered 
 his amendment for the identical purpose for which Mr. 
 Lincoln is using it, to enable demagogues in the country 
 to try and deceive the people. 
 
 His amendment was to this effect. It provided that 
 the legislature should have the power to exclude 
 slavery; and General Cass suggested, "Why not give 
 the power to introduce as well as exclude?" The an- 
 swer was, they have the power already in the bill to do 
 both. Chase was afraid his amendment would be 
 adopted if he put the alternative proposition and so 
 make it fair both ways, but would not yield. He offered 
 it for the purpose of having it rejected. He offered it, 
 as he has himself avowed over and over again, simply 
 to make capital out of it for the stump. He expected 
 that it would be capital for small politicians in the 
 country, and that they would make an effort to deceive 
 the people with it ; and he was not mistaken, for Lin- 
 .:oln is carrying out the plan admirably. Lincoln knows 
 that the Nebraska bill, without Chase's amendment, 
 gave all the power which the Constitution would permit. 
 Could Congress confer any more? Could Congress go 
 beyond the Constitution of the country? We gave all 
 — a full grant, with no exception in regard to slavery 
 one way or the other. We left that question as we left 
 all others, to be decided by the people for themselves, 
 just as they pleased. I will not occupy my time on this 
 question. I have argued it before all over Illinois. I 
 have argued it in this beautiful city of Freeport ; I 
 have argued it in the North, the South, the East, and 
 the West, avowing the same sentiments and the same 
 principles. I have not been afraid to avow my senti-
 
 196 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 2? 
 
 ments up here for fear I would be trotted down into 
 Egypt. 
 
 The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is, if 
 the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide 
 that a State of this Union cannot exclude slavery from 
 its own limits, will I submit to it? I am amazed that 
 Lincoln should ask such a question. [''A schoolboy 
 knozvs better."] Yes, a schoolboy does know better. 
 Mr. Lincoln's object is to cast an imputation upon the 
 Supreme Court. He knows that there never was but 
 one man in America claiming any degree of intelligence 
 or decency, who ever for a moment pretended such a 
 thing. It is true that the Washington Union, in an 
 article published on the 17th of last December, did put 
 forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article on the 
 floor of the Senate, in a speech which Mr. Lincoln now 
 pretends was against the President. The Union had 
 claimed that slavery had a right to go into the free 
 States, and that any provision in the constitution or 
 laws of the free States to the contrary was null and 
 void. I denounced it in the Senate, as I said before, 
 and I was the first man who did. Lincoln's friends, 
 Trumbull, and Seward, and Hale, and Wilson, and the 
 whole Black Republican side of the Senate were silent. 
 They left it to me to denounce it. And what was the 
 reply made to me on that occasion? Mr. Toombs, of 
 Georgia, got up and undertook to lecture me on the 
 ground that I ought not to have deemed the article wor- 
 thy of notice, and ought not to have replied to it ; that 
 there was not one man, woman, or child south of the 
 Potomac, in any slave State, who did not repudiate any 
 such pretension. Mr. Lincoln knows that that reply 
 was made on the spot, and yet now he asks this ques- 
 tion. He might as well ask me, suppose Mr. Lincoln 
 should steal a horse, would I sanction it? and it would 
 be as genteel in me to ask him, in the event he stole a 
 horse, what ought to be done with him. He casts an 
 imputation upon the Supreme Court of the United 
 States by supposing that they would violate the Con- 
 stitution of the United States. I tell him that such a 
 thing is not possible. It would be an act of moral 
 treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to. 
 Mr. Lincoln himself would never in his partisan feelings 
 so far forget what was right as to be guilty of such an 
 act.
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 197 
 
 The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is : Are you in 
 favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard as 
 to how such acquisition may affect the Union on the 
 slavery question? This question is very ingeniously 
 and cunningly put. 
 
 The Black Republican creed lays it down expressly, 
 that under no circumstances shall we acquire any more 
 territory unless slavery is first prohibited in the country. 
 I ask Mr. Lincoln whether he is in favor of that propo- 
 sition. Are you [addressing Mr. Lincoln] opposed to 
 the acquisition of any more territory, under any circum- 
 stances, unless slavery is prohibited in it? That he does 
 not like to answer. When I ask him whether he stands 
 up to that article in the platform of his party, he turns, 
 Yankee-fashion, and, without answering it, asks me 
 whether I am in favor of acquiring territory without 
 regard to how it may affect the Union on the slavery 
 question. I answer that whenever it becomes necessary, 
 in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, 
 that I am in favor of it, without reference to the ques- 
 tion of slavery, and when we have acquired it, I will 
 leave the people free to do as they please, either to make 
 it slave or free territory, as they prefer. It is idle to tell 
 me or you that we have territory enough. Our fathers 
 supposed that we had enough when our territory ex- 
 tended to the Mississippi River, but a few years' growth 
 and expansion satisfied them that we needed more, and 
 the Louisiana territory, from the west branch of the 
 Mississippi to the British possessions, was acquired. 
 Then we acquired Oregon, then California and New 
 Mexico. We have enough now for the present, but this 
 is a young and a growing nation. It swarms as often as 
 a hive of bees, and as new swarms are turned out each 
 year, there must be hives in which they can gather and 
 make their honey. In less than fifteen years, if the same 
 progress that has distinguished this country for the last 
 fifteen years continues, every foot of vacant land be- 
 tween this and the Pacific ocean, owned by the United 
 States, will be occupied. Will you not continue to in- 
 crease at the end of fifteen years as well as now? I tell 
 you, increase, and multiply, and expand, is the law of 
 this nation's existence. You cannot limit this great re- 
 public by mere boundary lines, saying, "Thus far shalt 
 thou go, and no further." Any one of you gentlemen 
 might as well say to a son twelve years old that he is
 
 198 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 big enough, and must not grow any larger, and in order 
 to prevent his growth put a hoop around him to keep 
 him to his present size. V/hat would be the result? 
 Either the hoop must burst and be rent asunder, or the 
 child must die. So it would be with this great nation. 
 With our natural increase, growing with a rapidity 
 unknown in any other part of the globe, with the tide 
 of immigration that is fleeing from despotism in the Old 
 World to seek refuge in our own, there is a constant 
 torrent pouring into this country that requires more 
 land, more territory upon which to settle, and just as 
 fast as our interests and our destiny require additional 
 territory in the North, in the South, or on the islands 
 of the ocean, I am for it, and when we acquire it, will 
 leave the people, according to the Nebraska bill, free to 
 do as they please on the subject of slavery and every 
 other question. 
 
 I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem himself an- 
 swered on his four points. He racked his brain so much 
 in devising these four questions that he exhausted him- 
 self, and had not strength enough to invent others. As 
 soon as he is able to hold a council with his advisors, 
 Lovejoy, Farnsworth, and Fred Douglass, he will frame 
 and propound others. ["Good, good."] You Black Re- 
 publicans who say good, I have no doubt think that they 
 are all good men. I have reason to recollect that some 
 people in this county think that Fred Douglass is a 
 very good man. The last time I came here to make a 
 speech, while talking from the stand to you. people of 
 Freeport, as I am doing to-day, I sav/ a carriage, and a 
 magnificent one it was, drive up and take a position on 
 the outside of the crowd; a beautiful young lady was 
 sitting on the box-seat, whilst Fred Douglass and her 
 mother reclined inside, and the owner of the carriage 
 acted as driver. I saw this in your own town. ['IVJiat 
 of it?"] All I have to say of it is this, that if you Black 
 Republicans think that the negro ought to be on a social 
 equality with your wives and daughters, and ride in a 
 carriage with your wife, whilst you drive the team, you 
 have a perfect right to do so. I am told that one of 
 Fred Douglass's kinsmen, another rich black negro, is 
 now traveling in this part of the State making speeches 
 for his friend Lincoln as the champion of black men. 
 {"What have you to say against it?"] All I have to 
 say on that subject is, that those of you who believe that
 
 1S58] AT FREEPORT 199 
 
 the negro is your equal and ought to be on an equality 
 with you socially, politically, and legally, have a right 
 to entertain those opinions, and of course will vote for 
 Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 I have a word to say on Mr. Lincoln's answer to 
 the interrogatories contained in my speech at Ottawa, 
 and which he has pretended to reply to here to-day. 
 Mr. Lincoln makes a great parade of the fact that I 
 quoted a platform as having been adopted by the Black 
 Republican party at Springfield in 1854, which, it turns 
 out, was adopted at another place. Mr. Lincoln loses 
 sight of the thing itself in his ecstasies over the mis- 
 take I made in stating the place where it was done. 
 He thinks that that platform was not adopted on the 
 right "spot." 
 
 When I put the direct questions to Mr. Lincoln to 
 ascertain whether he now stands pledged to that creed 
 — to the unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law, 
 a refusal to admit any more slave States into the Union 
 even if the people want them, a determination to apply 
 the Wilmot proviso, not only to all the territory we 
 now have, but all that we may hereafter acquire — he 
 refused to answer, and his followers say, in excuse, 
 that the resolutions upon which I based my interroga- 
 tories were not adopted at the right "spot." Lincoln 
 and his political friends are great on "spots." In 
 Congress, as a representative of this State, he declared 
 the Mexican war to be unjust and infamous, and would 
 not support it, or acknowledge his own country to be 
 right in the contest, because he said that American 
 blood was not shed on American soil in the right 
 "spot." * And now he cannot answer the questions 
 I put to him at Ottawa because the resolutions I read 
 were not adopted at the right "spot." It may be 
 possible that I was led into an error as to the spot on 
 which the resolutions I then read were proclaimed, 
 but I was not, and am not in error as to the fact of 
 their forming the basis of the creed of the Republican 
 party when that party was first organized. I will state 
 to you the evidence I had, and upon which I relied for 
 my statement that the resolutions in question were 
 adopted at Springfield on the 5th of October, 1854. 
 
 * See the "Spot Resolutions," page 113, volume two, 
 present edition.
 
 200 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 Although I was aware that such resolutions had been 
 passed in this district, and nearly all the northern 
 congressional districts and county conventions, I had 
 not noticed whether or not they had been adopted by 
 any State convention. In 1856 a debate arose in Con- 
 gress between Major Thomas L. Harris, of the Spring- 
 field district, and Mr. Norton, of the Joliet district, 
 on political matters connected with our State, in the 
 course of which Major Harris quoted those resolu- 
 tions as having been passed by the first Republican 
 State convention that ever assembled in Illinois. I 
 knew that Major Harris was remarkable for his ac- 
 curacy, that he was a very conscientious and sincere 
 man, and I also noticed that Norton did not question 
 the accuracy of this statement. I therefore took it for 
 granted that it was so, and the other day when I con- 
 cluded to use the resolutions at Ottawa, I wrote to 
 Charles H. Lanphier, editor of the State Register, at 
 Springfield, calling his attention to them, telling him 
 that I had been informed that Major Harris was lying 
 sick at Springfield, and desiring him to call upon him 
 and ascertain all the facts concerning the resolutions, 
 the time and the place where they were adopted. In 
 reply Mr. Lanphier sent me two copies of his paper, 
 which I have here. The first is a copy of the State 
 Register, published at Springfield, Mr. Lincoln's own 
 town, on the i6th of October, 1854, only eleven days 
 after the adjournment of the convention, from which I 
 desire to read the following: 
 
 During the late discussions in this city, Lincoln made 
 a speech, to which Judge Douglas replied : In Lincoln's 
 speech he took the broad ground that, according to the 
 Declaration of Independence, the whites and blacks are 
 equal. From this he drew the conclusion, which he sev- 
 eral times repeated, that the white man had no right 
 to pass laws for the government of the black man without 
 the nigger's consent. This speech of Lincoln's was heard 
 and applauded by all the Abolitionists assembled in Spring- 
 field. So soon as Mr. Lincoln was done speaking. Mr. 
 Codding arose and requested all the delegates to the 
 Black Republican convention to withdraw into the Senate 
 chamber. They did so, and after long deliberation, they 
 laid down the following Abolition platform as the plat- 
 form on which they stood. We call the particular atten- 
 tion of our readers to it.
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 201 
 
 Then follows the identical platform, word for word, 
 which I read at Ottawa. Now, that was published in 
 Mr. Lincoln's own town, eleven days after the conven- 
 tion was held, and it has remained on record up to 
 this day never contradicted. 
 
 When I quoted the resolutions at Ottawa and ques- 
 tioned Mr. Lincoln in relation to them, he said that 
 his name was on the committee that reported them, 
 but he did not serve, nor did he think he served, be- 
 cause he was, or thought he was, in Tazewell County 
 at the time the convention was in session. He did not 
 deny that the resolutions were passed by the Spring- 
 field convention. He did not know better, and evi- 
 dently thought that they were, but afterward his friends 
 declared that they had discovered that they varied in 
 some respects from the resolutions passed by that 
 convention. I have shown you that I had good evi- 
 dence for believing that the resolutions had been 
 passed at Springfield. Mr. Lincoln ought to have 
 known better; but not a word is said about his 
 ignorance on the subject, whilst I, notwithstanding the 
 circumstances, am accused of forgery. 
 
 Now, I will show you that if I have made a mistake 
 as to the place where these resolutions were adopted — 
 and when I get down to Springfield I will investigate 
 the matter and see whether or not I have — the princi- 
 ples they enunciate were adopted as the Black Re- 
 publican platform {"White, white"], in the various 
 counties and congressional districts throughout the 
 north end of the State in 1854. This platform was 
 adopted in nearly every county that gave a Black Re- 
 publican majority for the legislature in that year, and 
 here is a man [pointing to Mr. Denio, who sat on the 
 stand near Deacon Bross] who knows as well as any 
 living man that it was the creed of the Black Re- 
 publican party at that time. I would be willing to call 
 Denio as a witness, or any other honest man belonging 
 to that party. I will now read the resolutions adopted 
 at the Rockford convention on the 30th of August, 
 1854, which nominated Washburne for Congress. You 
 elected him on the following platform: 
 
 Resolved, That the continued and increasing aggressions 
 of slavery in our country are destructive of the be3t rights 
 of a free people, and that such aggressions cannot be
 
 202 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS EAug. 27 
 
 successfully resisted without the united political action of 
 all good men. 
 
 Resolved. That the citizens of the United States hold 
 in their hands peaceful, constitutional, and efficient remedy 
 against the encroachments of the slave power, the ballot- 
 box; and if that remedy is boldly and wisely applied, the 
 principles of liberty and eternal justice will be established. 
 
 Resolved, That we accept this issue forced upon us by 
 the slave power, and, in defense of freedom, will cooperate 
 and be known as Republicans, pledged to the accomplish- 
 ment of the following purposes : 
 
 To bring the administration of the government back to 
 the control of first principles ; to restore Kansas and 
 Nebraska to the position of free Territories ; to repeal 
 and entirelj^ abrogate the fugitive-slave law ; to restrict 
 slavery to those States in which it exists ; to prohibit the 
 admission of any more slave States into the Union ; to 
 exclude slavery from all the Territories over which the 
 General Government has exclusive jurisdiction, and to 
 resist the acquisition of any more Territories unless the 
 introduction of slavery therein forever shall have been 
 prohibited. 
 
 Resolved, That in furtherance of these principles we will 
 use such constitutional and lawful means as shall seem 
 best adapted to their accomplishment, and that we will 
 support no .man for office under the General or State 
 Government who is not positively committed to the sup- 
 port of these principles, and whose personal character and 
 conduct is not a guaranty that he is reliable and shall 
 abjure all party allegiance and ties. 
 
 Resolved, That we cordially invite persons of all former 
 political parties whatever in favor of the object expressed 
 in the above resolutions to unite with us in carrying them 
 into effect. 
 
 Well, you think that is a very good platform, do you 
 not? If yon do, if you approve it now, ancj think it 
 is all right, you will not join with those men who say 
 that I libel you by calling these your principles, will 
 you? Now, Mr. Lincoln complains; Mr. Lincoln 
 charges that I did you and him injustice by saying that 
 this was the platform of your party. I am told that 
 Washburne made a speech in Galena last night, in 
 which he abused me awfully for bringing to light this 
 platform, on which he was elected to Congress. He 
 thought that you had forgotten it, as he and Mr. Lin 
 coin desire to. He did not deny but that you had 
 adopted it, and that he had subscribed to and was 
 pledged by it, but he did not think it was fair to call
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 203 
 
 it up and remind the people that it was their plat- 
 form. 
 
 But I am glad to find that you are more honest in 
 your Abolitionism than your leaders, by avowing that 
 it is your platform, and right in your opinion. 
 
 In the adoption of that platform, you not only de- 
 clared that you would resist the admission of any 
 more slave States, and work for the repeal of the 
 fugitive-slave law, but you pledged yourself not to vote 
 for any man for State or Federal offices who was not 
 committed to these principles. You were thus com- 
 mitted. Similar resolutions to those were adopted in 
 your county convention here; and now with your ad- 
 missions that they are your platform and embody your 
 sentiments new as they did then, what do you think of 
 Mr. Lincoln, your candidate for the United States 
 Senate, who is attempting to dodge the responsibility 
 of this platform, because it was not adopted in the 
 right spot? I thought thai it was adopted in Spring- 
 field, but it turns out it was not, that it was adopted 
 at Rockford, and in the various counties which com- 
 prise this congressional district. When I get into the 
 next district, I will show that the same platform was 
 adopted there, and so on through the State, until I 
 nail the responsibility of it upon the back of the Black 
 Republican party throughout the State. [A voice: 
 "Couldn't you modify and call it brozvnf"] Not a bit. 
 I thought that you were becoming a little brown when 
 your members in Congress voted for the Crittenden- 
 Montgomery bill, but since you have backed out from 
 that position, and gone back to Abolitionism, you are 
 black and not brown. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have shown you what your platform was 
 in 1854. You still adhere to it. The same platform 
 was adopted by nearly all the counties where the Black 
 Republican party had a majority in 1854. I wish now 
 to call your attention to the action of your representa- 
 tives in the legislature when they assembled together at 
 Springfield. In the first place you must remember that 
 this was the organization of a new party. It is so de- 
 clared in the resolutions themselves, which say that you 
 are going to dissolve all old party ties and call the new 
 party Republican. The Old Whig party was to have 
 its throat cut from ear to ear, and the Democratic party 
 was to be annihilated and blotted out of existence,
 
 204 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 whilst in lieu of these parties the Black Republican 
 party was to be organized on this Abolition platform. 
 You know who the chief leaders were in breaking up 
 and destroying these two great parties. Lincoln on the 
 one hand and Trumbull on the other, being disappointed 
 politicians, and having retired or been driven to ob- 
 scurity by an outraged constituency because of their 
 political sins, formed a scheme to Abolitionize the two 
 parties, and lead the old-line Whigs and old-line Demo- 
 crats captive, bound hand and foot, into the Abolition 
 camp. Giddings, Chase, Fred Douglass, and Love joy 
 were here to christen them whenever they were brought 
 in. Lincoln went to work to dissolve the old-line Whig 
 party. Clay was dead, and although the sod was not 
 yet green on his grave, this man undertook to bring into 
 disrepute those great compromise measures of 1850, 
 with which Clay and Webster were identified. Up to 
 1854 the Old Whig party and the Democratic party had 
 stood on a common platform so far as this slavery ques- 
 tion was concerned. You Whigs and we Democrats 
 differed about the bank, the tariff, distribution, the 
 specie circular, and the subtreasury, but we agreed on 
 this slavery question and the true mode of preserving 
 the peace and harmony of the Union. The compromise 
 measures of 1850 were introduced by Clay, were de- 
 fended by Webster, and supported by Cass, and were 
 approved by Fillmore, and sanctioned by the national 
 men of both parties. They constituted a common plank 
 upon which both Whigs and Democrats stood. In 1852 
 the Whig party, in its last national convention at Balti- 
 more, indorsed and approved these measures of Clay, and 
 so did the national convention of the Democratic party 
 held that same year. Thus the old-line Whigs and the 
 old-line Democrats stood pledged to the great principle 
 of self-government, which guarantees to the people of 
 each Territory the right to decide the slavery question 
 for themselves. In 1854, after the death of Clay and 
 Webster, Mr. Lincoln, on the part of the Whigs, under- 
 took to Abolitionize the Whig party by dissolving it, 
 transferring the members into the Abolition camp and 
 making them train under Giddings, Fred Douglass, 
 Lovejoy, Chase, Farnsworth, and other Abolition lead- 
 ers. Trumbull undertook to dissolve the Democratic 
 party by taking old Democrats into the Abolition camp. 
 Mr. Lincoln was aided in his efforts by many leading
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 205 
 
 Whigs throughout the State — your member of Congress, 
 Mr. Washburne, bemg one of the most active. Trum- 
 bull was aided by many renegades from the Democratic 
 party, among whom were John Wentworth, Tom 
 Turner, and others with whom you are familiar. 
 
 Mr, Turner, who was one of the moderators, here 
 interposed, and said that he had drawn the resolutions 
 which Senator Douglas had read. 
 
 Mr. Douglas : Yes, and Turner says that he drew 
 these resolutions. [''Hurrah for Turner!" "Hurrah 
 for Douglas!"] That is right; gi^e Turner cheers for 
 drawing the resolutions, if you approve them. If he 
 drew those resolutions, he will not deny that they are 
 the creed of the Black Republican party, 
 
 Mr. Turner : They are our creed exactly. 
 
 Mr. Douglas : And yet Lincoln denies that he stands 
 on them. Mr. Turner says that the creed of the Black 
 Republican party is the admission of no more slave 
 States, and yet Mr. Lincoln declares that he would not 
 like to be placed in a position where he would have to 
 vote for them. All I have to say to friend Lincoln is, 
 that I do not think there is much danger of his being 
 placed in such a position. As Mr. Lincoln would be 
 very sorry to be placed in such an embarrassing position 
 as to be obliged to vote on the admission of any more 
 slave States, I propose, out of mere kindness, to relieve 
 him from any such necessity. When the bargain be- 
 tween Lincoln and Trumbull was completed for Aboli- 
 tionizing the Whig and Democratic parties, they 
 "spread" over the State, Lincoln still pretending to be 
 an old-line Whig, in order to "rope in" the Whigs, and 
 Trumbull pretending to be as good a Democrat as he 
 ever was, in order to coax the Democrats over into the 
 Abolition ranks. They played the part that "decoy 
 ducks" play down on the Potomac River, In that part 
 of the country they make artificial ducks, and put them 
 on the water in places where the wild ducks are to be 
 found, for the purpose of decoying them. Well, Lincoln 
 and Trumbull played the part of these "decoy ducks," 
 and deceived enough old-line Whigs and old-line Dem- 
 ocrats to elect a Black Republican legislature. When 
 that legislature met, the first thing it did was to elect as 
 Speaker of the House the very man who is now boasting 
 that he wrote the Abolition platform on which Lincoln 
 ,will not stand. I want to know of Mr. Turner whether
 
 2o6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 or not, when he was elected, he was a good embodiment 
 of Republican principles? 
 
 Mr. Turner : I hope I was then and am now. 
 
 Mr. Douglas : He swears that he hopes he was then 
 and is now. He wrote that Black Republican platform, 
 and is satisfied with it now. I admire and acknowledge 
 Turner's honesty. Every man of you knows what he 
 sa3^s about these resolutions being the platform of the 
 Black Republican party is true, and you also know that 
 each one of these men who are shuffling and trying to 
 deny it is only trying to cheat the people out of their 
 votes for the purpose of deceiving them still more after 
 the election. I propose to trace this thing a little 
 further, in order that you can see what additional evi- 
 dence there is to fasten this revolutionary platform upon 
 the Black Republican party. When the legislature as- 
 sembled, there was a United States senator to elect in 
 the place of General Shields, and before they proceeded 
 to ballot, Lovejoy insisted on laying down certain prin- 
 ciples by which to govern the party. It has been pub- 
 lished to the world and satisfactorily proven that there 
 was, at the time the alliance was made between Trum- 
 bull and Lincoln to Abolitionize the two parties, an 
 agreement that Lincoln should take Shields' s place in 
 the L^nited States Senate, and Trumbull should have 
 mine so soon as they could conveniently get rid of me. 
 When Lincoln was beaten for Shields's place, in a man- 
 ner I will refer to in a few minutes, he felt very sore 
 and restive ; his friends grumbled, and some of them 
 came out and charged that the most infamous treachery 
 had been practised against him ; that the bargain was 
 that Lincoln was to have Shields's place, and Trum- 
 bull was to have waited for mine, but that Trumbull, 
 having the control of a few Abolitionized Democrats, 
 prevented them from voting for Lincoln, thus keeping 
 him within a few votes of an election until he succeeded 
 in forcing the party to drop him and elect Trumbull. 
 Well, Trumbull having cheated Lincoln, his friends 
 m^ade a fuss, and in order to keep them and Lincoln 
 quiet, the party were obliged to come forward, in ad- 
 vance, at the last State election, and make a pledge that 
 they would go for Lincoln and nobody else. Lincoln 
 could not be silenced in any other way. 
 
 Now, there are a great many Black Republicans of 
 you who do not know this thing was done. ["White,
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 207 
 
 white," afid great clamor.] I wish to remind you that 
 while Mr. Lincoln was speaking there was not a Demo- 
 crat vulgar and blackguard enough to interrupt him. 
 But I know that the shoe is pinching you. I am clinch- 
 ing Lincoln now, and you are scared to death for the 
 result. I have seen this thing before. I have seen men 
 make appointments for joint discussions, and, the mo- 
 ment their man has been heard, try to interrupt and 
 prevent a fair hearing of the other side. I have seen 
 your mobs before, and defy their wrath. {Tremendous 
 applause.] My friends, do not cheer, for I need my 
 whole time. The object of the opposition is to occupy 
 my attention in order to prevent me from giving the 
 whole evidence and nailing this double-dealing on the 
 Black Republican party. As I have before said, Love- 
 joy demanded a declaration of principles on the part of 
 the Black Republicans of the legislature before going 
 into an election for United States senator. He offered 
 the following preamble and resolutions which I hold in 
 my hand : 
 
 Whereas, Human slavery is a violation of the principles 
 of natural and revealed rights ; and whereas, the fathers 
 of the Revolution, fully imbued with the spirit of these 
 principles, declared freedom to be the inalienable birth- 
 right of all men ; and whereas, the preamble to the Con- 
 stitution of the United States avers that that instrument 
 v.'as ordained to establish justice and secure the blessings 
 of liberty to ourselves and our posterity; and whereas, in 
 furtherance of the above principles, slavery was forever 
 prohibited in the old Northwest Territory, and more 
 recently in all that territory lying west and north of the 
 State of Missouri by the act of the Federal Government ; 
 and whereas, the repeal of the prohibition last referred to 
 was contrary to the wishes of the people of Illinois, a 
 violation of an implied compact, long deemed sacred by 
 the citizens of the United States, and a wide departure 
 from^ the uniform action of the General Government in 
 relation to the extension of slavery ; therefore. 
 
 Resolved, by the House of Representatives, the Senate 
 concurring therein, That our senators in Congress be in- 
 structed, and our representatives requested to introduce, 
 if not otherwise introduced, and to vote for a bill to 
 restore such prohibition to the aforesaid Territories, and 
 also to extend a similar prohibition to all territory which 
 now belongs to the United States, or which may hereafter 
 come under their jurisdiction. 
 
 Resolved, That our senators in Congress be instructed, 
 and our representatives requested, to vote against the
 
 2o8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS tAug. 27 
 
 admission of any State into the Union, the constitution 
 of which does not prohibit slavery, whether the territory 
 out of which such State may have been formed shall have 
 been acquired by conquest, treaty, purchase, or from orig- 
 inal territory of the United States. 
 
 Resolved, That our senators in Congress be instructed, 
 and our representatives requested, to introduce and vote 
 for a bill to repeal an act entitled "An act respecting 
 fugitives from justice and persons escaping from the 
 services of their masters' ; and, failing in that, for such 
 a modification of it as shall secure the right of habeas 
 corpus and trial by jury before the regularly constituted 
 authorities of the State, to all persons claimed as owing 
 service or labor. 
 
 Those resolutions were introduced by Mr. Lovejoy 
 immediately preceding the election of senator. They 
 declared first, that the Wilmot proviso must be applied 
 to all territory north of 36° 30'; secondly, that it must 
 be applied to all territory south of 36° 30' ; thirdly, that 
 it must be applied to all the territory now owned by the 
 United States ; and finally, that it must be applied to all 
 territory hereafter to be acquired by the United States. 
 The next resolution declares that no more slave States 
 shall be admitted into this Union under any circum- 
 stances whatever, no matter whether they are formed 
 out of territory now owned by us or that we may here- 
 after acquire, by treaty, by Congress, or in any manner 
 whatever. The next resolution demands the uncondi- 
 tional repeal of the fugitive-slave law, although its un- 
 conditional repeal would leave no provision for carry- 
 ing out that clause of the Constitution of the United 
 States which guarantees the surrender of fugitives. If 
 they could not get an unconditional repeal, they de- 
 manded that that law should be so modified as to make 
 it as nearly useless as possible. Now, I want to show 
 you who voted for these resolutions. When the vote 
 was taken on the first resolution, it was decided in the 
 affirmative — yeas 41, nays 32. You will find that this is 
 a strict party vote, between the Democrats on the one 
 hand, and the Black Republicans on the other. [Cries 
 of ''White, white," and clamor.] I know your name, 
 and always call things by their right name. The point 
 I wish to call your attention to is this : that these reso- 
 lutions were adopted on the 7th day of February, and 
 that on the 8th they went into an election for a United
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 209 
 
 States senator, and that day every man who voted for 
 these resolutions, with but two exceptions, voted for 
 Lincoln for the United States Senate. ["Give us their 
 jianies."] I will read the names over to you if you want 
 them, but I believe your object is to occupy my time. 
 
 On the next resolution the vote stood, yeas 33, nays 
 40 ; and on the third resolution, yeas 35, nays 47. I 
 wish to impress upon you that every man who voted 
 for those resolutions, with but two exceptions, voted 
 on the next day for Lincoln for United States senator. 
 Bear in mind that the members who thus voted for 
 Lincoln were elected to the legislature pledged to vote 
 for no man for office under the State or Federal Gov- 
 ernment who was not committed to this Black Repub- 
 lican platform. They were all so pledged. Mr. Turner, 
 who stands by me, and who then represented you, and 
 who says that he wrote those resolutions, voted for 
 Lincoln, when he was pledged not to do so unless 
 Lincoln v/as in favor of those resolutions. I now ask 
 Mr. Turner [turning to Mr. Turner], did you violate 
 your pledge in voting for Mr. Lincoln, or did he com- 
 mit himself to your platform before you cast your vote 
 for him? 
 
 I could go through the whole list of names here and 
 shov/ you that all the Black Republicans in the legisla- 
 ture, who voted for Mr. Lincoln, had voted on the day 
 previous for these resolutions. For instance, here are 
 the names of Sargent and Little, of Jo Daviess and Car- 
 roll ; Thomas J. Turner, of Stephenson ; Lawrence, of 
 Boone and McHenry ; Swan, of Lake ; Pinckney, of 
 Ogle County ; and Lyman, of Winnebago. Thus you 
 see every member from your congressional district 
 voted for Mr. Lincoln, and they were pledged not to 
 vote for him unless he was committed to the doctrine of 
 no more slave States, the prohibition of slavery in the 
 Territories, and the repeal of the fugitive-slave law. 
 Mr. Lincoln tells you to-day that he is not pledged to 
 any such doctrine. Either Mr. Lincoln was then com- 
 mitted to those propositions, or Mr. Turner violated his 
 pledges to you when he voted for him. Either Lincoln 
 was- pledged to each one of those propositions, or else 
 every Black Republican representative from this con- 
 gressional district violated his pledge of honor to his 
 constituents by voting for him. I ask you which horn 
 of the dilemma will you take? Will you hold Lincoln
 
 2 TO DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 up to the platform of his party or will you accuse every 
 representative you had in the legislature of violating his 
 pledge of honor to his constituents? There is no escape 
 for you. Either JMr. Lincoln was committed to those 
 proDOsitions. or your members violated their faith. 
 Take either horn of the dilemma you choose. There is 
 no dodging the question; I want Lincoln's answer. He 
 says he was not pledged to repeal the fugitive-slave law, 
 that he does not quite like to do it ; he will not intro- 
 duce a law to repeal it, but thinks there ought to be some 
 law ; he does not tell what it ought to be ; upon the 
 whole, he is altogether undecided, and don't know what 
 to think or do. That is the substance of his answer 
 upon the repeal of the fugitive-slave law. I put the 
 question to him distinctly, whether he indorsed that part 
 of the Black Republican platform which calls for the 
 entire abrogation and repeal of the fugitive-slave law. 
 He answers, no ! — that he does not indorse that ; but he 
 does not tell what he is for, or what he will vote for. 
 His answer is, in fact, no answer at all. Why cannot 
 he speak out and say what he is for and what he will 
 do? 
 
 In regard to there being no more slave States, he is 
 not pledged to that. He would not like, he says, to be 
 put in a position where he would have to vote one way 
 or another upon that question. I pray you, do not put 
 him in a position that would embarrass him so much. 
 Gentlemen, if he goes to the Senate he may be put_ in 
 that position, and which way will he vote? [zi voice: 
 "How will you vote?"] I will vote for the admission 
 cf just such a State as by the form of their constitu- 
 tion the people show they want. If they want slavery, 
 they shall have it; if they prohibit slavery, it shall be 
 prohibited. They can form their institutions to please 
 themselves, subject only to the Constitution ; and I for 
 one stand ready to receive them into the Union. Why 
 cannot your Black Republican candidates talk out as 
 plain as that when they are questioned? 
 
 I do not want to cheat any man out of his vote. No 
 man is deceived in regard to my principles if I have the 
 power to express myself in terms explicit enough to 
 convey my ideas. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln made a speech when he was nominated 
 for the United States Senate which covers all these 
 Abolition platforms. He there lays down a proposition
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 211 
 
 so broad in its Abolitionism as to cover the whole 
 ground. 
 
 In my o-oinion it [fJie slavery agifafionl 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. 
 
 There you find that Mr. Lincoln lays down the doc- 
 trine that this Union cannot endure divided as our 
 fathers made it, with free and slave States. He says 
 they must all become one thing or all the other ; that 
 they must all be free or all slave, or else the Union 
 cannot continue to exist. It being his opinion that to 
 admit any more slave States, to continue to divide the 
 Union into free and slave States, will dissolve it, I want 
 to know of Mr. Lincoln whether he will vote for the ad- 
 mission of another slave State. 
 
 He tells you the Union cannot exist unless the States 
 are all free or all slave; he tells you that he is opposed to 
 making them all slave, and hence he is for making them 
 all free, in order that the Union may exist ; and yet he 
 will not say that he will not vote against another slave 
 State, knowing that the Union must be dissolved if he 
 votes for it. I ask you if that is fair dealing? The 
 true intent and inevitable conclusion to be drawn from 
 his first Springfield speech is, that he is opposed to the 
 admission of any more slave States under any circum- 
 stances. If he is so opposed, why not say so? If he 
 believes this Union cannot endure divided into free and 
 slave States, that they must all become free in order to 
 save the Union, he is bound as an honest man, to vote 
 against any more slave States. If he believes it he is 
 bound to do it. Show me that it is my duty in order to 
 save the Union to do a particular act, and I will do it 
 if the Constitution does not prohibit it. I am not for 
 the dissolution of the Union under any circumstances. 
 I will pursue no course of conduct that will give just
 
 2 12 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 cause for the dissolution of the Union. The hope of the 
 friends of freedom throughout the world rests upon the 
 perpetuity of this Union. The downtrodden and op- 
 pressed people who are suffering under European des- 
 potism all look with hope and anxiety to the American 
 Union as the only resting-place and permanent home 
 of freedom and self-government. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln says that he believes that this Union 
 cannot continue to endure with slave States in it, and 
 yet he will not tell you distinctly whether he will vote 
 for or against the admission of any more slave States, 
 but says he would not like to be put to the test. I 
 do not think he will be put to the test. I do not think 
 that the people of Illinois desire a man to represent 
 them who would not like to be put to the test on the 
 performance of a high constitutional duty. I will re- 
 tire in shame from the Senate of the United States 
 when I am not willing to be put to the test in the 
 performance of my duty. I have been put to severe 
 tests. I have stood by my principles in fair weather 
 and in foul, in the sunshine and in the rain. I have 
 defended the great principles of self-government here 
 among you when Northern sentiment ran in a torrent 
 against me, and I have defended that same great 
 principle when Southern sentiment came down like an 
 avalanche upon me. I was not afraid of any test they 
 put to me. I knew I was right — I knew my principles 
 were sound — I knew that the people would see in the 
 end that I had done right, and I knew that the God 
 of Heaven would smile upon me if I was faithful in the 
 performance of my duty. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln makes a charge of corruption against 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, and two 
 Presidents of the United States, and attempts to bol- 
 ster it up by saying that I did the same against the 
 Washington Union. Suppose I did make that charge 
 of corruption against the Washington Union, when 
 it was true, does that justify him in making a false 
 charge agamst me and others? That is the question 
 I would put. He says that at the time the Nebraska 
 bill was introduced, and before it was passed, there 
 was a conspiracy between the judges of the Supreme 
 Court, President Pierce, President Buchanan, and my- 
 self by that bill, and the decision of the court, to 
 break down the barrier and establish slavery all over
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 213 
 
 the Union. Does he not know that that charge is 
 historically false as against President Buchanan? He 
 knows that Mr. Buchanan was at that time in England, 
 representing this country with distinguished ability at 
 the Court of St. James, that he was there for a long 
 time before, and did not return for a year or more 
 after. He knows that to be true, and that fact proves 
 his charge to be false as against Mr. Buchanan. Then 
 again, I wish to call his attention to the fact that at the 
 time the Nebraska bill was passed, the Dred Scott 
 case was not before the Supreme Court at all; it was 
 not upon the docket of the Supreme Court; it had not 
 been brought there, and the judges in all probability 
 knew nothing of it. Thus the history of the country 
 proves the charge to be false as against them. As to 
 President Pierce, his high character as a man of integ- 
 rity and honor is enough to vindicate him from such 
 a charge; and as to myself, I pronounce the charge an 
 infamous lie, whenever and wherever made, and by 
 whomsoever made. I am willing that Mr. Lincoln 
 should go and rake up every public act of mine, every 
 measure I have introduced, report I have made, speech 
 delivered, and criticise them; but when he charges upon 
 me a corrupt conspiracy for the purpose of perverting 
 the institutions of the country, I brand it as it deserves. 
 I say the history of the country proves it to be false, 
 and that it could not have been possible at the time. 
 But now he tries to protect himself in this charge, 
 because I made a charge against the Washington 
 Union. My speech in the Senate against the Washing- 
 ton Union was made because it advocated a revolu- 
 tionary doctrine, by declaring that the free States had 
 not the right to prohibit slavery within their own 
 limits. Because I made that charge against the Wash- 
 ington Union, Mr. Lincoln says it was a charge against 
 Mr. Buchanan. Suppose it was ; is Lincoln the 
 peculiar defender of Mr. Buchanan? Is he so in- 
 terested in the Federal administration, and so bound 
 to it, that he must jump to the rescue and defend it 
 from every attack that I may make against it? I un- 
 derstand the whole thing. The Washington Union, 
 under that most corrupt of all men, Cornelius Wendell, 
 is advocating Mr. Lincoln's claim to the Senate. Wen- 
 dell was the printer of the last Black Republican 
 House of Representatives; he was a candidate before
 
 214 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 the present Democratic House, but was ignominiously 
 kicked out, and then he took the money which he had 
 made out of the pubHc printing by means of the Black 
 RepubHcans, bought the Washington Union, and is 
 now pubhshing it in the name of the Democratic party, 
 and advocating Mr. Lincoln's election to the Senate. 
 Mr. Lincoln therefore considers an attack upon Wen- 
 dell and his corrupt gang as a personal attack upon 
 him. This only proves what I have charged, that 
 there is an alliance between Lincoln and his sup- 
 porters, and the Federal office-holders of this State, 
 and presidential aspirants out of it, to break me down 
 at home. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln feels bound to come in to the rescue of 
 the Washington Union. In that speech which I de- 
 livered in answer to the Washington Union, I made it 
 distinctly against the Union alone. I did not choose 
 to go beyond that. If I have occasion to attack the 
 President's conduct, I will do it in language that will 
 not be misunderstood. When I differed with the 
 President I spoke out so that you all heard me. That 
 question passed away; it resulted in the triumph of my 
 principle by allowing the people to do as they please, 
 and there is an end of the controversy. Whenever the 
 great principle of self-government — the right of the 
 people to make their own constitution, and come into 
 the Union with slavery or without it, as they see 
 proper — shall again arise, you will find me standing 
 firm in defense of that principle, and fighting whoever 
 fights it. If Mr. Buchanan stands, as I doubt not he 
 will, by the recommendation contained in his message, 
 that hereafter all State constitutions ought to be sub- 
 mitted to the people before the admission of the State 
 into the Union, he will find me standing by him firmly, 
 shoulder to shoulder, in carrying it out. I know Mr. 
 Lincoln's object; he wants to divide the Democratic 
 party, in order that he may defeat me and go to the 
 Senate. 
 
 [Mr. Douglas's time here expired, and he stopped on 
 the 77ioment/\ 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Rejoinder. 
 
 My Friends: It will readily occur to you that 
 I cannot in half an hour notice all the things that
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 215 
 
 so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an 
 hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there 
 be anything that he has said upon which you 
 v>^ould like to hear something from me, but which 
 I omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind 
 that it would be expecting an impossibility for me 
 to go over his whole ground. I can but take up 
 some of the points that he has dwelt upon, and 
 employ my half hour specially on them. 
 
 The first thing I have to say to you is a word 
 in regard to Judge Douglas's declaration about 
 the "vulgarity and blackguardism" in the audi- 
 ence — that no such thing, as he says, was shown 
 by any Democrat while I was speaking. Now I 
 only wish, by way of reply on this subject, to say 
 that while I was speaking I used no ''vulgarity 
 or blackguardism" toward any Democrat. 
 
 Now, my friends, I come to all this long por- 
 tion of the judge's speech — perhaps half of it — 
 which he has devoted to the various resolutions 
 and platforms that have been adopted in the dif- 
 ferent counties, in the different congressional dis- 
 tricts, and in the Illinois legislature — which he 
 supposes are at variance with the positions I have 
 assumed before you to-day. It is true that many 
 of these resolutions are at variance with the posi- 
 tions I have here assumed. All I have to ask 
 is that we talk reasonably and rationally about it. 
 I happen to know, the judge's opinion to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding, that I have never tried to 
 conceal my opinions, nor tried to deceive any one 
 in reference to them. He may go and examine 
 all the members who voted for me for United 
 States senator in 1855, after the election of 1854. 
 They were pledged to certain things here at home, 
 and were determined to have pledges from me,
 
 2i6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS tAug. 27 
 
 and if he will find any of these persons who will 
 tell him anything inconsistent with what I say 
 now, I will retire from the race, and give him no 
 more trouble. 
 
 The plain truth is this. At the introduction of 
 the Nebraska policy, we believed there was a new 
 era being introduced in the history of the repub- 
 lic, which tended to the spread and perpetuation 
 of slavery. But in our opposition to that measure 
 we did not agree with one another in everything. 
 The people in the north end of the State were 
 for stronger measures of opposition than we of 
 the central and southern portions of the State, 
 but we were all opposed to the Nebraska doctrine. 
 We had that one feelmg and that one sentiment 
 in common. You at the north end met in your 
 conventions and passed your resolutions. We in 
 the middle of the State and further south did not 
 hold such conventions and pass the same resolu- 
 tions, although we had in general a common view 
 and a common sentiment. So that these meetings 
 which the judge has alluded to, and the resolu- 
 tions he has read from, were local, and did not 
 spread over the whole State. We at last met to- 
 gether in 1856, from all parts of the State, and 
 we agreed upon a common platform. You who 
 held more extreme notions, either yielded those 
 notions, or if not wholly yielding them, agreed 
 to yield them practically, for the sake of embody- 
 ing the opposition to the measures which the op- 
 posite party were pushing forward at that time. 
 We met you then, and if there was anything 
 yielded, it was for practical purposes. We agreed 
 then upon a platform for the party throughout 
 the entire State of Illinois, and now we are all 
 bound, as a party, to that platform. And I say
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 217 
 
 here to you, if any one expects of me, in the case 
 of my election, that I will do anything not signi- 
 fied by our Republican platform and my answers 
 here to-day, I tell you very frankly that person 
 will be deceived. I do not ask for the vote of any 
 one who supposes that I have secret purposes or 
 pledges that I dare not speak out. Cannot the 
 judge be satisfied? If he fears, in the unfortu- 
 nate case of my election, that my going to Wash- 
 ington will enable me to advocate sentiments con- 
 trary to those which I expressed when you voted 
 for and elected me, I assure him that his fears are 
 wholly needless and groundless. Is the judge 
 really afraid of any such thing? I'll tell you 
 what he is afraid of. He is afraid we'll all pull 
 together. This is what alarms him more than 
 anything else. For my part, I do hope that all of 
 us, entertaining a common sentiment in opposi- 
 tion to what appears to us a design to national- 
 ize and perpetuate slavery, will waive minor dif- 
 ferences on questions which either belong to the 
 dead past or the distant future, and all pull to- 
 gether in this struggle. What are your senti- 
 ments? If it be true that on the ground which 
 I occupy — ground which I occupy as frankly and 
 boldly as Judge Douglas does his — miy views, 
 though partly coinciding with yours, are not as 
 perfectly in accordance with your feelings as his 
 are, I do say to you in all candor, go for him and 
 not for me. I hope to deal in all things fairly 
 with Judge Douglas, and with the people of the 
 State, in this contest. And if I should never be 
 elected to any office, I trust I may go down with 
 no stain of falsehood upon my reputation, not- 
 withstanding the hard opinions Judge Douglas 
 chooses to entertain of me.
 
 2i8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 The judge has again addressed himself to the 
 AboHtion tendencies of a speech of mine, made 
 at Springfield in June last. I have so often tried 
 to answer what he is always saying on that mel- 
 ancholy theme, that I almost turn with disgust 
 from the discussion — from the repetition of an 
 answer to it. I trust that nearly all of this intelli- 
 gent audience have read that speech. If you 
 have, I may venture to leave it to you to inspect 
 it closely, and see whether it contains any of those 
 "bugaboos" which frighten Judge Douglas. 
 
 The judge complains that I did not fully an- 
 swer his questions. If I have the sense to com- 
 prehend and answer those questions, I have done 
 so fairly. If it can be pointed out to me how I 
 can more fully and fairly answer him, I v/ill do 
 it — but I aver I have not the sense to see how it 
 is to be done. He says I do not declare I would 
 in any event vote for the admission of a slave 
 State into the Union. If I have been fairly re- 
 ported, he will see that I did give an explicit an- 
 swer to his interrogatories. I did not merely say 
 that I would dislike to be put to the test, but I 
 said clearly, if I were put to the test, and a 
 Territory from which slavery had been excluded 
 should present herself with a State constitution 
 sanctioning slavery, — a most extraordinary thing 
 and wholly unlikely to happen, — I did not see how 
 I could avoid voting for her admission. But he re- 
 fuses to understand that I said so, and he wants 
 this audience to understand that I did not say so. 
 Yet it will be so reported in the printed speech 
 that he cannot help seeing it. 
 
 He says if I should vote for the admission of 
 a slave State I would be voting for a dissolution 
 of the Union, because I hold that the Union can-
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 215 
 
 not permanently exist half slave and half free. I 
 repeat that I do not believe this government can 
 endure permanently half slave and half free, yet 
 I do not admit, nor does it at all follow, that the 
 admission of a single slave State will permanently 
 fix the character and establish this as a universal 
 slave nation. The judge is very happy indeed at 
 working up these quibbles. Before leaving the 
 subject of answering questions, 1 aver as my con- 
 fident belief, when you come to see our speeches 
 in print, that you will find every question which 
 he has asked me more fairly and boldly and fully 
 answered than he has answered those which I put 
 to him. Is not that so? The two speeches may 
 be placed side by side ; and I will venture to leave 
 it to impartial judges whether his questions have 
 not been more directly and circumstantially an- 
 swered than mine. 
 
 Judge Douglas says he made a charge upon the 
 editor of the Washington Union, alone, of enter- 
 taining a purpose to rob the States of their power 
 to exclude slavery from their limits. I undertake 
 to say, and I make the direct issue, that he did 
 not m.ake his charge against the editor of the 
 Union alone. I will undertake to prove by the 
 record here that he made that charge against 
 more and higher dignitaries than the editor of 
 the Washington Union. I am quite aware that he 
 was shirking and dodging around the form in 
 which he put it, but I can make it manifest that he 
 leveled his "fatal blow" against more persons 
 than this Washington editor. Will he dodge it 
 now by alleging that I am trying to defend Mr. 
 Buchanan against the charge ? Not at all. Am I 
 not making the same charge myself? I am try- 
 ing to show that you, Judge Douglas, are a wit-
 
 220 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 ness on my side. I am not defending Buchanan, 
 and I will tell Judge Douglas that in my opinion 
 when he made that charge he had an eye farther 
 north than he was to-day.* He was then fight- 
 ing against people who called him a Black Repub- 
 lican and an Abolitionist. It is mixed all through 
 his speech, and it is tolerably manifest that his eye 
 was a great deal farther north than it is to-day. 
 The judge says that though he made this charge, 
 Toombs got up and declared there was not a man 
 in the United States, except the editor of the 
 Union, who was in favor of the doctrines put 
 forth in that article. And thereupon I under- 
 stand that the judge withdrew the charge. Al- 
 though he had taken extracts from the news- 
 paper, and then from the Lecompton constitution, 
 to show the existence of a conspiracy to bring 
 about a ''fatal blow," by which the States were to 
 be deprived of the right of excluding slavery, 
 it all went to pot as soon as Toombs got up and 
 told him it was not true. It reminds mic of the 
 story that John Phoenix, the California railroad 
 surveyor, tells. He says they started out from 
 the Plaza to the mission of Dolores. They had 
 two ways of determining distances. One was by 
 a chain and pins taken over the ground ; the other 
 was by a "go-it-ometer," — an invention of his 
 own, — a three-legged instrument, with which he 
 computed a series of triangles between the points. 
 At night he turned to the chain-man to ascertain 
 what distance they had come, and found that by 
 some mistake he had merely dragged the chain 
 
 * A hint at the charge, made at the time of Douglas's 
 break with Buchanan on the Lecompton matter, that the 
 Senator was preparing to enter the Republican party 
 when circumstances became propitious.
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 221 
 
 over the ground without keeping any record. By 
 the "go-it-ometer" he found he had made ten 
 miles. Being skeptical about this, he asked a dray- 
 man who was passing how far it was to the 
 Plaza. The drayman replied it was just half a 
 mile, and the surveyor put it down in his book — 
 just as Judge Douglas says, after he had made his 
 calculations and computations, he took Toombs's 
 statement. I have no doubt that after Judge 
 Douglas had made his charge, he was as easily 
 satisfied about its truth as the surveyor was of 
 the drayman's statement of the distance to the 
 Plaza. Yet it is a fact that the man who put forth 
 all that matter which Douglas deemed a "fatal 
 blow" at State sovereignty, was elected by the 
 Democrats as public printer. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, you may take Judge Doug- 
 las's speech of March 22, 1858, beginning about 
 the middle of page 21, and reading to the bottom 
 of page 24, and you will find the evidence on 
 which I say that he did not make his charge 
 against the editor of the Union alone. I cannot 
 stop to read it, but I will give it to the reporters. 
 Judge Douglas said : 
 
 Mr. President, you here find several distinct prop- 
 ositions advanced boldly by the Washington Union 
 editorially, and apparently authoritatively, and every 
 man who questions any of them is denounced as an 
 Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The proposi- 
 tions are: first, that the primary object of all govern- 
 ment at its original institution is the protection of 
 persons and property; second, that the Constitution 
 of the United States declares that the citizens of each 
 State shall be entitled to all the privileges and im- 
 munities of citizens in the several States; and 
 that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether organic 
 or otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State 
 from settling in another with their slave property, and
 
 222 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 especially declaring it forfeited, are direct violations of 
 the original intention of the government and Constitu- 
 tion of the United States; and fourth, that the emanci- 
 pation of the slaves of the Northern States was a gross 
 outrage on the rights of property, inasmuch as it was 
 involuntarily done on the part of the owner. 
 
 Remember that this article was published in the 
 Union on the 17th of November, and on the i8th ap- 
 peared the first article giving the adhesion of the Union 
 to the Lecompton constitution. It was in these words: 
 
 "Kansas and her Constitution. — The vexed ques- 
 tion is settled. The problem is solved. The dead 
 point of danger is passed. All serious trouble to 
 Kansas affairs is over and gone." 
 
 And a column nearly, of the same sort. Then, when 
 you come to look into the Lecompton constitution, you 
 find the same doctrine incorporated in it which was 
 put forth editorially in the Union. What is it? 
 
 "Article 7, Section i. The right of property is be- 
 fore and higher than any constitutional sanction; and 
 the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its 
 increase is the same and as invariable as the right of 
 the owner of any property whatever." 
 
 Then in the schedule is a provision that the constitu- 
 tion may be amended after 1864 by a two-thirds vote. 
 
 "But no alteration shall be made to afifect the right 
 of property in the ownership of slaves." 
 
 It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton 
 constitution that they are identical in spirit with this 
 authoritative article in the Washington Union of the 
 day previous to its indorsement of this constitution. 
 
 When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of 
 November, followed by the glorification of the Le- 
 compton constitution on the 18th of November, and 
 this clause in the constitution asserting the doctrine 
 that a State has no right to prohibit slavery within its 
 limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow being struck 
 at the sovereignty of the States of this Union. 
 
 Here he says, "Mr. President, you here find 
 several distinct propositions advanced boldly, and 
 apparently authoritatively." By whose authority, 
 Judge Douglas ? Again, he says in another place, 
 "It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecomp-
 
 i8s8] AT FREEPORT 223 
 
 ton constitution that they are identical in spirit 
 with this authoritative article." By whose au- 
 thority? Who do you mean to say authorized 
 the publication of these articles ? He knows that 
 the Washington Union is considered the organ 
 of the administration. I demand of Judge Doug- 
 las by whose authority he meant to say those 
 articles were published, if not by the authority of 
 the President of the United States and his cab- 
 inet? I defy him to show whom he referred to, 
 if not to these high functionaries in the Federal 
 Government. More than this, he says the articles 
 in that paper and the provisions of the Lecomp- 
 ton constitution are ''identical," and being identi- 
 cal, he argues that the authors are cooperating 
 and conspiring together. He does not use the 
 word "conspiring," but what other construction 
 can you put upon it ? He winds up with this : 
 
 When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of 
 November, followed by the glorification of the Le- 
 compton constitution on the i8th of November, and 
 this clause in the constitution asserting the doctrine 
 that a State has no right to prohibit slavery within its 
 limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow being struck 
 at the sovereignty of the States of this Union. 
 
 I ask him if all this fuss was made over the 
 editor of this newspaper. It would be a terribly 
 ''fatal blow" indeed which a single man could 
 strike, when no President, no cabinet officer, no 
 member of Congress, was giving strength and 
 efficiency to the movement. Out of respect to 
 Judge Douglas's good sense I must believe he 
 didn't manufacture his idea of the "fatal" char- 
 acter of that blow out of such a miserable scape- 
 grace as he represents that editor to be. But the 
 judge's eye is farther south now. Then, it was
 
 224 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Aug. 27 
 
 very peculiarly and decidedly north. His hope 
 rested on the idea of enlisting the great ''Black 
 Republican" party, and making it the tail of his 
 new kite. He knows he was then expecting from 
 day to day to turn Republican and place himself 
 at the head of our organization. He has found 
 that these despised "Black Republicans" estimate 
 him by a standard which he has taught them only 
 too well. Hence he is crawling back into his old 
 camp, and you will find him eventually installed 
 in full fellowship among those whom he was then 
 battling, and with whom he now pretends to be at 
 such fearful variance. [Loud applause, and cries 
 of "Go on, go on/'] I cannot, gentlemen, my 
 time has expired. 
 
 "Fooling the People." 
 
 Between the second and third debates with 
 Douglas, Lincoln spoke at Clinton, 111., on the 
 afternoon of September 8. In this he uttered his 
 famous expression : "You can fool all the people 
 some of the time, and some of the people all of 
 the time, but you cannot fool all the people all 
 the time," pointing the epigram at Senator Doug- 
 las. A report of the substance of his opening 
 remarks appeared in the Bloomington Panta- 
 graph the next day. From this it appears that, 
 after proposing to show the commanding import- 
 ance of the slavery question, he returned upon the 
 senator himself Douglas's charge that he, Lin- 
 coln, was a disturber of national peace. "On the 
 fourth of January, 1854," said Lincoln, "Judge. 
 Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
 He initiated a new policy which he claimed was to 
 put an end to the agitation of the slavery ques-
 
 1858] AT FREEPORT 225 
 
 tion. Whether that was his object or not I will 
 not stop to discuss, but at all events some kind of 
 a policy was initiated ; and what has been the re- 
 sult? Instead of the quiet times and good feel- 
 ing which was promised us by the self-styled 
 author of Popular Sovereignty, we have had 
 nothing but ill-feeling and agitation. According 
 to Judge Douglas, the passage of the Nebraska 
 bill would tranquilize the whole country — there 
 would be no slavery agitation in or out of Con- 
 gress, and the vexed question would be left en- 
 tirely to the people of the Territories. Such was 
 the opinion of Judge Douglas, and such were the 
 opinions of the leading men of the Democratic 
 party. Even as late as the spring of 1856, Mr. 
 Buchanan, nominee for President, said that Kan- 
 sas would be tranquil in less than six weeks. 
 
 "Did the angry debates in Congress last winter 
 over the admission of Kansas into the Union with 
 a constitution detested by ninety-nine of every 
 hundred of her citizens, lead you to suppose that 
 the slavery agitation was settled?" 
 
 Mr. Lincoln then took up Douglas's charge 
 that the Republicans believe in social equality of 
 whites and blacks. Here Lincoln read from a 
 speech he had made in Peoria in 1854 (see page 
 249, volume two, present edition). \ I he editor 
 of the Pantagraph states that ''the audience, after 
 hearing the extracts read and comparing their 
 conservative sentiments zvith these nozv advo- 
 cated by Mr. Lincoln, testified their approval by 
 loud applause. How any reasonable man can 
 hear one of Mr. Lincoln s speeches zvithout being 
 converted to Republicanism is something that we 
 can't account for/']
 
 226 SPEECHES [Sept. 13 
 
 "Popular Sovereignty" the Right to Flog 
 
 Negroes. 
 
 Fragment of Speech at Paris, III. Septem- 
 ber 8, 1858. 
 
 Let us inquire what Judge Douglas really in- 
 vented when he introduced the Nebraska bill. 
 He called it popular sovereignty. What does 
 that mean? It means the sovereignty of the 
 people over their own affairs — in other words, 
 the right of the people to govern themselves. 
 Did Judge Douglas invent this ? Not quite. The 
 idea of popular sovereignty was floating about 
 several ages before the author of the Nebraska 
 bill was born — indeed, before Columbus set foot 
 on this continent. In the year 1776 it took form 
 in the noble words which you are all familiar 
 with : "We hold these truths to be self-evident, 
 that all men are created equal," etc. Was not this 
 the origin of popular sovereignty, as applied to 
 the American people? Here we are told that 
 governments are instituted among men deriving 
 their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
 erned. If that is not popular sovereignty, then I 
 have no conception of the meaning of words. If 
 Judge Douglas did not invent this kind of popu- 
 lar sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find 
 out what kind he did invent. Was it the right of 
 emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska to govern 
 themselves, and a lot of ''niggers," too, if they 
 wanted them? Clearly, this was no invention of 
 his, because General Cass put forth the same doc- 
 trine in 1848 in his so-called Nicholson letter, six 
 years before Douglas thought of such a thing. 
 Then what was it that the ''Little Giant" in-
 
 i858] AT EDWARDSVILLE 227 
 
 vented? It never occurred to General Cass to 
 call his discovery by the odd name of popular 
 sovereig^nty. He had not the face to say that the 
 right of the people to govern "niggers" was the 
 right of the people to govern themselves. His 
 notions of the fitness of things were not moulded 
 to the brazenness of calling the right to put a 
 hundred "niggers" through under the lash in 
 Nebraska a "sacred" right of self-government. 
 And here I submit to you was Judge Douglas's 
 discovery, and the whole of it : He discovered 
 that the right to breed and flog negroes in Ne- 
 braska was popular sovereignty. 
 
 The Issue Between the Parties, 
 
 and 
 Justice the Bulv/ark of American Democracy. 
 
 Fragments of Speech at Edwardsville, III. 
 September 13, 1858. 
 
 I have been requested to give a concise state- 
 ment of the difference, as I understand it, be- 
 tween the Democratic and Republican parties, 
 on the leading issue of the campaign. This 
 question has been put to me by a gentleman 
 whom. I do not know. I do not even know 
 whether he is a friend of mine or a supporter of 
 Judge Douglas in this contest, nor does that 
 make any difference. His question is a proper 
 one. Lest I should forget it, I will give you my 
 answer before proceeding with the line of argu- 
 ment I have marked out for this discussion. 
 
 The difference between the Republican and the 
 Democratic parties on the leading issues of the 
 contest, as I understand it, is that the former con-
 
 228 SPEECHES [Sept. 13 
 
 sider slavery a moral, social, and political wrong, 
 while the latter do not consider it either a moral, 
 a social, or a political wrong; and the action of 
 each, as respects the growth of the country and 
 the expansion of our population, is squared to 
 meet these views. I will not affirm that the Dem- 
 ocratic party consider slavery morally, socially, 
 and politically right, though their tendency to 
 that view has, in my opinion, been constant and 
 unmistakable for the past five years. I prefer 
 to take, as the accepted maxim of the party, the 
 idea put forth by Judge Douglas, that he "don't 
 care whether slavery is voted down or voted up." 
 I am quite willing to believe that many Demo- 
 crats would prefer that slavery should be always 
 'Voted down," and I know that some prefer that 
 it be always "voted up" ; but I have a right to in- 
 sist that their action, especially if it be their con- 
 stant action, shall determiine their ideas and pref- 
 erences on this subject. Every measure of the 
 Democratic party of late years, bearing directly 
 or indirectly on the slavery question, has corre- 
 sponded Vv'ith this notion of utter indifference 
 whether slavery or freedom shall outrun in the 
 race of empire across to the Pacific — every meas- 
 ure, I say, up to the Dred Scott decision, where, 
 it seems to me, the idea is boldly suggested that 
 slavery is better than freedom. The Republican 
 party, on the contrary, hold that this government 
 was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, 
 and that slavery is an unqualified evil to the 
 negro, to the white man, to the soil, and to the 
 State. Regarding it as an evil, they will not 
 molest it in the States where it exists, they will 
 not overlook the constitutional guards which our 
 fathers placed around it; they will do nothing
 
 i8s8] AT EDIVARDSVILLE 229 
 
 that can ^ive proper offence to those who hold 
 slaves by legal sanction ; but they will use every 
 constitutional method to prevent the evil from 
 becoming larger and involving more negroes, 
 more white men, more soil, and more States in 
 its deplorable consequences. They will, if pos- 
 sible, place it where the public mind shall rest 
 in the belief that it is in course of ultimate peace- 
 able extinction in God's own good time. And to 
 this end they will, if possible, restore the govern- 
 ment to the policy of the fathers — the policy of 
 preserving the new Territories from the baneful 
 influence of human bondage, as the Northwestern 
 Territories were sought to be preserved by the 
 Ordinance of 1787, and the Compromise Act of 
 1820. They will oppose, in all its length and 
 breadth, the modern Democratic idea, that slav- 
 ery is as good as freedom, and ought to have 
 room for expansion all over the continent, if 
 people can be found to carry it. All, or nearly 
 all, of Judge Douglas's arguments are logical, if 
 you admit that slavery is as good and as right as 
 freedom, and not one of them is worth a rush if 
 you deny it. This is the difference, as I under- 
 stand it, between the Republican and Democratic 
 parties. 
 
 ■ • • • * 
 
 ]\Iy friends, I have endeavored to show you 
 the logical consequences of the Dred Scott de- 
 cision, which holds that the people of a Territory 
 cannot prevent the establishment of slavery in 
 their midst. I have stated, which cannot be gain- 
 said, that the grounds upon which this decision 
 is made are equally applicable to the free States 
 as to the free Territories, and that the peculiar 
 reasons put forth by Judge Douglas for endors-
 
 230 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 ing this decision commit him, in advance, to the 
 next decision and to all other decisions coming 
 from the same source. And when, by all these 
 means, you have succeeded in dehumanizing- the 
 negro ; when you have put him down and made 
 it impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the 
 field ; when vou have extins^uished his soul in this 
 world and placed him where the ray of hope is 
 blown out as in the darkness of the damned, are 
 you quite sure that the demon you have roused 
 will not turn and rend you? What constitutes 
 the bulwark of our own liberty and independ- 
 ence? It is not our frowning battlements, our 
 bristling seacoasts, our army and our navy. 
 These are not our reliance against tyranny. All 
 of those may be turned against us without mak- 
 ing us w^eaker for the struggle. Our reliance is 
 in the love of liberty which God has planted in 
 us. Our defence is in the spirit wdiich prized 
 liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands 
 everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have 
 planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. 
 Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bond- 
 age and you prepare your own limbs to wear 
 them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of 
 others, you have lost the genius of your own in- 
 dependence and become the fit subjects of the 
 first cunning tyrant v/ho rises among 3^ou. And 
 let me tell you, that all these things are prepared 
 for you by the teachings of history, if the elec- 
 tions shall promise that the next Dred Scott de- 
 cision and all future decisions will be quietly ac- 
 quiesced in by the people.
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 231 
 
 Third Joint Debate, at Jonesboro. 
 
 September 15, 1858. 
 
 Air. Douglas's Opening Speech. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I appear before you to-day in 
 pursuance of a previous notice, and have made ar- 
 rangements with Air. Lincoln to divide time, and dis- 
 cuss with him the leading political topics that now 
 agitate the country. 
 
 Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great 
 political parties known as Whig and Democratic. 
 These parties differed from each other on certain 
 questions which were then deemed to be important to 
 the best interests of the republic. Whigs and Demo- 
 crats differed about a bank, the tariff, distribution, the 
 specie circular, and the subtreasury. On those issues 
 we went before the country, and discussed the prin- 
 ciples, objects, and measures of the two great parties. 
 Each of the parties could proclaim its principles in 
 Louisiana as well as in Massachusetts, in Kentucky as 
 well as in Illinois. Since that period, a great revolu- 
 tion has taken place in the formation of parties, by 
 which they now seem to be divided by a geographical 
 line, a large party in the North being arrayed under 
 the Abolition or Republican banner, in hostility to the 
 Southern States, Southern people, and Southern in- 
 stitutions. It becomes important for us to inquire 
 how this transformation of parties has occurred, made 
 from those of national principles to geographical 
 factions. You remember that in 1850 — this country 
 was agitated from its center to its circumference about 
 this slavery question — it became necessary for the 
 leaders of the great Whig party and the leaders of the 
 great Democratic party to postpone for the time being 
 their particular disputes, and unite first to save the 
 Union before they should quarrel as to the mode in 
 which it was to be governed. During the Congress 
 of 1849-50, Henry Clay was the leader of the Union 
 men, supported by Cass and Webster, and the leaders 
 of the Democracy and the leaders of the Whigs, in op- 
 position to Northern Abolitionists or Southern Dis- 
 unionists. The great contest of 1850 resulted in the 
 establishment of the compromise measures of that
 
 232 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 year, which measures rested on the great principle that 
 the people of each State and each Territory of this 
 Union ought to be permitted to regulate their own 
 domestic institutions in their own way, subject to no 
 other Hmitation than that which the Federal Constitu- 
 tion imposes. 
 _ I now wish to ask you whether that principle was 
 right or wrong which guaranteed to every State and 
 every community the right to form and regulate their 
 domestic institutions to suit themselves. These meas- 
 ures were adopted, as I have previously said, by the 
 joint action of the Union Whigs and Union Democrats 
 in opposition to Northern Abolitionists and Southern 
 Disunionists. In 1858, when the Whig party as- 
 sembled at Baltimore in national convention for the 
 last time, they adopted the principle of the compromise 
 measures of 1850 as their rule of party action in the 
 future. One month thereafter the Democrats assem- 
 bled at the same place to nominate a candidate for the 
 presidency, and declared the same great principle as 
 the rule of action by which the Democracy would be 
 governed. The presidential election of 1852 was 
 fought on that basis. It is true that the Whigs 
 claimied special merit for the adoption of those 
 measures, because they asserted that their great Clay 
 originated them, their godlike Webster defended them, 
 and their Fillmore signed the bill making them the law 
 of the land; but on the other hand, the Democrats 
 claimed special credit for the Democracy upon the 
 ground that we gave twice as many votes in both 
 houses of Congress for the passage of these measures 
 as the Whig party. 
 
 Thus you see that in the presidential election of 
 1852 the Whigs were pledged by their platform and 
 their candidate to the principle of the compromise 
 measures of 1850, and the Democracy were likewise 
 pledged by our principles, our platform, and our 
 candidate to the same line of policy, to preserve peace 
 and quiet between the dififerent sections of this Union. 
 Since that period the Whig party has been transformed 
 into a sectional party, under the name of the Republican 
 party, whilst the Democratic party continues the same 
 national party it was at that day. All sectional men, 
 all men of Abolition sentiments and principles, no 
 matter whether they were old Abolitionists or had
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 233 
 
 been Whigs or Democrats, rally under the sectional 
 Republican banner, and consequently all national men, 
 all Union-loving men, whether Whigs, Democrats, or 
 by whatever name they have been known, ought .to 
 rally under the Stars and Stripes in defense of the 
 Constitution as our fathers made it, and of the Union 
 as it has existed under the Constitution. 
 
 How has this departure from the faith of the 
 Dem.ocracy and the faith of the Whig party been ac- 
 complished? In 1854, certain restless, ambitious, and 
 disappointed politicians throughout the land took ad- 
 vantage of the temporary excitement created by the 
 Nebraska bill to try and dissolve the Old Whig party 
 and the old Democratic party, to Abolitionize their 
 members, and lead them, bound hand and foot, cap- 
 tives into the Abolition camp. In the State of New 
 York a convention was held by some of these men, 
 and a platform adopted, every plank of which was as 
 black as night, each one relating to the negro, and not 
 one referring to the interests of the white man. That 
 example was followed throughout the Northern States, 
 the effort being made to combine all the free States in 
 hostile array against the slave States. The men who 
 thus thought that they could build up a great sectional 
 part}', and through its organization control the politi- 
 cal destinies of this country, based all their hopes on 
 the single fact that the North was the stronger division 
 of the nation, and hence, if the North could be com- 
 bined against the South, a sure victory awaited their 
 efforts. I am doing no more than justice to the truth 
 of history when I say that in this State Abraham 
 Lincoln, on behalf of the Whigs, and Lyman Trum- 
 bull, on behalf of the Democrats, were the leaders who 
 undertook to perform this grand scheme of Abolition- 
 izing the two parties to which they belonged. They 
 had a private arrangement as to what should be the 
 political destiny of each of the contracting parties be- 
 fore they went into the operation. The arrangement 
 was that Mr. Lincoln was to take the old-line Whigs 
 with him, claiming that he was still as good a Whig as 
 ever, over to the Abolitionists, and Mr. Trumbull was 
 to run for Congress in the Belleville district, and, 
 claiming to be a good Democrat, coax the old Demo- 
 crats into the Abolition camp, and when, by the joint 
 efforts of the Abolitionized Whigs, the Abolitionized
 
 234 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 Democrats, and the old-line Abolition and Free-soil 
 party of this State, they should secure a majority in 
 the legislature, Lincoln was then to be made United 
 States senator in Shields's place, Trumbull remaining in 
 Congress until I should be accommodating enough to 
 die or resign, and give him a chance to follow Lincoln. 
 That was a very nice little bargain so far as Lincoln 
 and Trumbull were concerned, if it had been carried 
 out in good faith, and friend Lincoln had attained to 
 senatorial dignity according to the contract. They went 
 into the contest in every part of the State, calling upon 
 all disappointed politicians to join in the crusade 
 against the Democrac3% and appealed to the prevailing 
 sentiments and prejudices in all the northern counties 
 of the State. In three congressional districts in the 
 north end of the State they adopted, as the platform of 
 this new party thus formed by Lincoln and Trumbull 
 in connection with the Abolitionists, all of those 
 principles which aimed at a warfare on the part of the 
 North against the South. They declared in that plat- 
 form that the Wilmot proviso was to be applied to all 
 the Territories of the United States, North as well as 
 South of 36° 30', and not only to all the territory we 
 then had, but all that we might hereafter acquire; that 
 hereafter no more slave States should be admitted into 
 this Union, even if the people of such States desired 
 slavery; that the fugitive-slave law should be absolutely 
 and unconditionally repealed; that slavery should be 
 abolished in the District of Columbia; that the slave- 
 trade should be abolished between the different States, 
 and, in fact, every article in their creed related to this 
 slavery question, and pointed to a Northern geo- 
 graphical party in hostility to the Southern States of 
 this Union. 
 
 Such were their principles in northern Illinois. A 
 little further south they became bleached and grew 
 paler just in proportion as public sentiment moderated 
 and changed in this direction. They were Republicans 
 or Abolitionists in the North, anti-Nebraska men 
 down about Springfield, and in this neighborhood they 
 contented themselves with talking about the inex- 
 pediency of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 
 In the extreme northern counties they brought out 
 men to canvass the State whose complexion suited 
 their political creed, and hence Fred Douglass, the
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 235 
 
 negro, was to be found there, following General Cass, 
 and attempting to speak on behalf of Lincoln, Trum- 
 bull, and Abolitionism, against that illustrious senator. 
 Why, they brought Fred Douglass to Freeport, when 
 I was addressing a meeting there, in a carriage driven 
 by the white owner, the negro sitting inside with the 
 white lady and her daughter. When I got through 
 canvassing the northern counties that year, and 
 progressed as far south as Springfield, I was met and 
 opposed in discussion by Lincoln, Lovejoy, Trumbull, 
 and Sidney Breese, who were on one side. Father 
 Giddings. the high priest of Abolitionism, had just been 
 there, and Chase came about the time I left. {''Why 
 didn't you shoot himr'] I did take a running shot at 
 them, but as I was single-handed against the white, 
 black, and mixed drove. I had to use a shot-gun and 
 fire into the crowd instead of taking them off singly 
 with a rifle. Trumbull had for his lieutenants in aid- 
 ing him to Abolitionize the Democracy, such men as 
 John Wentworth of Chicago, Governor Reynolds of 
 Belleville, Sidney Breese of Carlisle, and John 
 Dougherty of Union, each of whom modified his 
 opinions to suit the locality he was in. Dougherty, 
 for instance, would not go much further than to talk 
 about the inexpediency of the Nebraska bill, whilst his 
 allies at Chicago advocated negro citizenship and 
 negro equality, putting the white man and the negro 
 on the same basis under the law. Now these men, 
 four years ago, were engaged in a conspiracy to break 
 down the Democracy; to-day they are again acting 
 together for the same purpose! They do not hoist the 
 same flag; they do not own the same principles, or 
 profess the same faith; but conceal their union for the 
 sake of policy. In the northern counties you find 
 that all the conventions are called in the name of the 
 Black Republican party; at Springfield they dare not 
 call a Republican convention, but invite all the enemies 
 of the Democracy to unite, and when they get down 
 into Egypt, Trumbull issues notices calling upon the 
 "Free Democracy" to assemble and hear him speak. 
 I have one of the handbills calling a Trumbull meeting 
 at Waterloo the other day, which I received there, 
 which is in the following language: 
 
 A meeting of the Free Democracy will take place in 
 Waterloo, on Monday, Sept. 13th inst., whereat Hon.
 
 236 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 Lyman Trumbull, Hon. Jehu Baker, and others will address 
 the people upon the different political topics of the day. 
 Members of all parties are cordially invited to be present 
 and hear and determine for themselves. 
 
 The Monroe Free Democracy. 
 
 What is that name of "Free Democrats" put forth 
 for unless to deceive the people, and make them 
 believe that Trumbull and his follow^ers are not the 
 same party as that which raises the black flag of 
 Abolitionism in the northern part of this State, and 
 makes war upon the Democratic part}'- throughout the 
 State? When I put that question to them at Waterloo 
 on Saturday last, one of them rose and stated that they 
 had changed their name for political effect in order 
 to get votes. There was a candid admission. Their 
 object in changing their party organization and prin- 
 ciples in dififerent localities was avowed to be an 
 attempt to cheat and deceive some portion of the 
 people until after the election. Why cannot a political 
 party that is conscious of the rectitude of its purposes 
 and the soundness of its principles declare them every- 
 where alike? I would disdain to hold any political 
 principles that I could not avow in the same terms in 
 Kentucky that I declared in Illinois, in Charleston as 
 well as in Chicago, in New Orleans as well as in New- 
 York. So long as we live under a constitution com- 
 mon to all the States, our political faith ought to be 
 as broad, as liberal, and just as that constitution itself, 
 and should be proclaimed alike in every portion of the 
 Union. But it is apparent that our opponents find it 
 necessary for partisan efTect, to change their colors 
 in different counties in order to catch the popular 
 breeze, and hope with these discordant materials com- 
 bined together to secure a majority in the legislature 
 for the purpose of putting down the Democratic party. 
 This combination did succeed in 1854 so far as to elect 
 a majority of their confederates to the legislature, and 
 the first important act which they performed was to 
 elect a senator in the place of the eminent and gallant 
 Senator Shields. His term expired in the United 
 States Senate at that time, and he had to be crushed by 
 the Abolition coalition for the simple reason that he 
 would not join in their conspiracy to wage war against 
 one half of the Union. That was the only objection to
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 237 
 
 General Shields. He had served the people of the 
 State with ability in the legislature, he had served you 
 with fidelity and ability as auditor, he had performed 
 his duties to the satisfaction of the whole country at 
 the head of the Land Department at Washington, he 
 had covered the State and the Union with immortal 
 glory on the bloody fields of Mexico in defense of the 
 honor of our flag, and yet he had to be stricken down 
 by this unholy combination. And for what cause? 
 Merely because he would not join a combination of 
 one half of the States to make war upon the other half, 
 after having poured out his heart's blood for all the 
 States in the Union. Trumbull was put in his place 
 by Abolitionism. How did Trumbull get there? 
 
 Before the Abolitionists would consent to go into 
 an election for United States senator, they required all 
 the members of this new combination to show their 
 hands upon this question of Abolitionism. Lovejoy, 
 one of their high priests, brought in resolutions de- 
 fining the Abolition creed, and required them to com- 
 mit themselves on it by their votes — yea or nay. In 
 that creed as laid down by Lovejoy, they declared first, 
 that the Wilmot proviso must be put on all the Ter- 
 ritories of the United States, north as well as south of 
 36° 30', and that no more territory should ever be 
 acquired unless slavery was at first prohibited therein; 
 second, that no more States should ever be received 
 into the Union unless slavery was first prohibited, by 
 constitutional provision, in such States; third, that the 
 fugitive-slave law must be immediately repealed, or, 
 failing in that, then such amendments were to be made 
 to it as would render it useless and inefficient for the 
 objects for which it was passed, etc. The next day 
 after these resolutions were offered they were voted 
 upon, part of them carried, and the others defeated, 
 the same men who voted for them, with only two ex- 
 ceptions, voting soon after for Abraham Lincoln as 
 their candidate for the United States Senate. He came 
 within one or two votes of being elected, but he could 
 not quite get the number required, for the simple rea- 
 son that his friend Trumbull, who was a party to the 
 bargain by which Lincoln was to take Shields's place, 
 controlled a few Abolitionized Democrats in the legis- 
 lature, and would not allow them all to vote for him, 
 thus wronging Lincoln by permitting him on each
 
 238 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 ballot to be almost elected, but not quite, until he 
 forced them to drop Lincoln and elect him (Trum- 
 bull), in order to unite the party. Thus you find that 
 although the legislature was carried that year by the 
 bargain between Trumbull, Lincoln, and the Aboli- 
 tionists, and the union of these discordant elements in 
 one harmonious party, yet Trumbull violated his 
 pledge, and played a Yankee trick on Lincoln when 
 they came to divide the spoils. Perhaps you would 
 like a little evidence on this point. If you would, I 
 will call Colonel James H. Matheny of Springfield, 
 to the stand, Mr. Lincoln's especial confidential friend 
 for the last twenty years, and see what he will say 
 upon the subject of this bargain. Matheny is now the 
 Black Republican or Abolition candidate for Congress 
 in the Springfield district against the gallant Colonel 
 Harris, and is making speches all over that part of 
 the State against me and in favor of Lincoln, in con- 
 cert with Trumbull. He ought to be a good witness, 
 and I will read an extract from a speech which he 
 made in 1856, when he was mad because his friend Lin- 
 coin had been cheated. It is one of numerous speeches 
 of the same tenor that were made about that time, 
 exposing this bargain between Lincoln, Trumbull, and 
 the Abolitionists. Matheny then said: 
 
 The Whigs, Abolitionists, Know-nothings, and renegade 
 Democrats made a solemn compact for the purpose of 
 carrying this State against the Democracy on this plan : 
 First, that they would all combine and elect Mr. Trum- 
 bull to Congress, and thereby carry his district for the 
 legislature, in order to throw all the strength that could 
 be obtained into that body against the Democrats ; second, 
 that when the legislature should meet, the officers of that 
 body, such as speaker, clerks, doorkeepers, etc., M'ould 
 be given to the Abolitionists ; and third, that the Whigs 
 were to have the United States senator. That, accordingly, 
 in good faith, Trumbull was elected to Congress, and his 
 district carried for the legislature, and, when it convened 
 the Abolitionists got all the officers of that body, and thus 
 far the "bond" was fairly executed. The Whigs, on their 
 part, demanded the election of Abraham Lincoln to the 
 United States Senate, that the bond might be fulfilled, the 
 other parties to the contract having already secured to 
 themselves all that was called for. But, in the most 
 perfidious manner, they refused to elect Mr. Lincoln ; 
 and the mean, low-lived, sneaking Trumbull succeeded,
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 
 
 239 
 
 by pledging all that was required by any party, in thrusting 
 Lincoln aside and foisting himself, an excrescence from 
 the rotten bowels of the Democracy, into the United States 
 Senate; and thus it has ever been, that an honest man 
 makes a bad bargain when he conspires or contracts with 
 rogues. 
 
 Matheny thought his friend Lincoln made a bad 
 bargain when he conspired and contracted with such 
 rogues as Trumbull and his Abolition associates in 
 that campaign. Lincoln was shoved off the track, and 
 he and his friends all at once began to mope; became 
 sour and mad, and disposed to tell, but dare not; and 
 thus they stood for a long time, until the Abolitionists 
 coaxed and flattered him back by their assurances that 
 he should certainly be a senator in Douglas's place. 
 In that way the Abolitionists have been able to hold 
 Lincoln to the alliance up to this time, and now they 
 have brought him into a fight against me, and he is to 
 see if he is again to be cheated by them. Lincoln this 
 time, though, required more of them than a promise, 
 and holds their bond, if not security, that Lovejoy 
 shall not cheat him as Trumbull did. 
 
 When the Republican convention assembled at Spring- 
 field in June last, for the purpose of nominating State 
 officers only, the Abolitionists could not get Lincoln and 
 his friends into it until they would pledge themselves that 
 Lincoln should be their candidate for the Senate ; and 
 you will find, in proof of this, that that convention 
 passed a resolution unanimously declaring that Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was the "first, last, and only choice" of the 
 Republicans for United States senator. He was not 
 willing to have it understood that he was merely their 
 first choice, or their last choice, but their only 
 choice. The Black Republican party had nobody 
 else. Brov/ning was nowhere ; Governor Bissell was 
 of no account ; Archie Williams was not taken 
 into consideration; John Wentworth was uot worth 
 mentioning; John M. Palmer was degraded; and 
 their party presented the extraordinary spectacle 
 of having but one — the first, the last, and only 
 choice for the Senate. Suppose that Lincoln should die, 
 what a horrible condition the Republican party would 
 be in ! They would have nobody left. They have no 
 other choice, and it was necessary for them to put 
 themselves before the world in this ludicrous, ridiculous
 
 240 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 attitude of having no other choice in order to quiet 
 Lincoln's suspicions, and assure him that he was not 
 to be cheated by Lovejoy, and the trickery by which 
 Trumbull out-generaled him. Well, gentlemen, I think 
 they will have a nice time of it before they get thtough. 
 I do not intend to give them any chance to cheat Lin- 
 coln at all this time. I intend to relieve him of all 
 anxiety upon that subject, and spare them the mortifica- 
 tion of more exposures of contracts violated, and the 
 pledged honor of rogues forfeited. 
 
 But I wish to invite your attention to the chief points 
 at issue between Mr. Lincoln and myself in this discus- 
 sion. Mr. Lincoln, knowing that he was to be the candi- 
 date of his party on account of the arrangement of 
 which I have already spoken, knowing that be was to 
 receive the nomination of the convention for the United 
 States Senate, had his speech, accepting that nomination, 
 all written and committed to memory, ready to be deliv- 
 ered the moment the nomination was announced. Ac- 
 cordingly when it was made he was in readiness and 
 delivered his speech, a portion of which I will read in 
 order that I may state his political principles fairly, by 
 repeating them in his own language : 
 
 We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was 
 instituted for the avowed object, and with the confident 
 promise of putting an end to slavery agitation ; under the 
 operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not 
 ceased, but has constantly augmented. I believe it will 
 not cease tmtil a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 
 "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe 
 this government cannot endure permanently half slave 
 and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
 solved — 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. J^ither the opponents of slavery will 
 arrest the 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 
 until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, North as 
 well as South. 
 
 There you have Mr. Lincoln's first and main pro- 
 position, upon which he bases his claims, stated in his 
 own language. He tells you that this republic can- 
 not endure permanently divided into slave and free 
 States, as our fathers made it. He says that they must
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 241 
 
 all become free or all become slave, that they must all 
 be one thing or all be the other, or this government 
 cannot last. Why can it not last, if we will execute the 
 governmient in the same spirit and upon the same prin- 
 ciples upon which it is founded? Lincoln, by his propo- 
 sition, says to the South, *'If you desire to maintain 
 your institutions as they are now, you must not be satis- 
 fied with minding your own business, but you must in- 
 vade Illinois and all the other Northern States, estab- 
 lish slavery in them, and make it universal" ; and in the 
 same language he says to the North, "Vou must not be 
 content with regulating your own affairs, and minding 
 3'our own business, but if you desire to maintain your 
 freedom, you must invade the Southern States, abolish 
 slavery there and everywhere, in order to have the 
 States all one thing or all the other." I say that this is 
 the inevitable and irresistible result of Mr. Lincoln's 
 argument, inviting a warfare between the North and the 
 South, to be carried on with ruthless vengeance, until 
 the one section or the other shall be driven to the wall, 
 and become the victim of the rapacity of the other. 
 What good would follow such a system of warfare? 
 Suppose the North should succeed in conquering the 
 South, how much would she be the gainer? or suppose 
 the South should conquer the North, could the Union 
 be preserved in that way? Is this sectional warfare to 
 be waged between Northern States and Southern States 
 until they all shall become uniform in their local and 
 domestic institutions merely because ^Ir. Lincoln says 
 that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and pre- 
 tends that this scriptural quotation, this language of our 
 Lord and ]\Iaster, is applicable to the American Union 
 and the American Constitution? Washington and his 
 compeers, in the convention that framed the Constitu- 
 tion, made this government divided into free and slave 
 States. It was composed then of thirteen sovereign and 
 independent States, each having sovereign authority over 
 its local and domestic institutions, and all bound together 
 by the Federal Constitution. ]Mr. Lincoln likens that 
 bond of the Federal Constitution, joining free and slave 
 States together, to a house divided against itself, and 
 says that it is contrary to the law of God and cannot 
 stand. When did he learn, and by what authority does 
 he proclaim, that this government is contrary to the law 
 of God and cannot stand? It has stood thus divided
 
 242 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 into free and slave States from its organization up to 
 this day. 
 
 During that period we have increased from four mil- 
 lions to thirty millions of people ; we have extended our 
 territory from the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean; we 
 have acquired the Floridas and Texas, and other terri- 
 tory sufficient to double our geographical extent ; we 
 have increased in population, in wealth, and in power 
 beyond any example on earth ; we have risen from a 
 weak and feeble power to become the terror and admi- 
 ration of the civilized world; and all this has been done 
 under a Constitution which Mr. Lincoln, in substance, 
 says is in violation of the law of God, and under a Union 
 divided into free and slave States, which Mr. Lincoln 
 thinks, because of such division, cannot stand. Surely, 
 Mr. Lincoln is a wiser man than those who framed the 
 government. Washington did not believe, nor did his 
 compatriots, that the local laws and domestic institutions 
 that were well adapted to the Green Mountains of Ver- 
 mont were suited to the rice plantations of South Caro- 
 lina ; they did not believe at that day that in a republic 
 so broad and expanded as this, containing such a variety 
 of climate, soil, and interest, uniformity in the local 
 laws and domestic institutions was either desirable or 
 possible. They believed then, as our experience has 
 proved to us now, that each locality, having different 
 interests, a different climate, and different surroundings, 
 required different local laws, local policy, and local 
 institutions, adapted to the wants of that locality. Thus 
 our government was formed on the principle of diver- 
 sity in the local institutions and laws, and not on that 
 of uniformity. 
 
 As my time flies, I can only glance at these points and 
 not present them as fully as I would wish, because I 
 desire to bring all the points in controversy between the 
 two parties before you in order to have Mr. Lincolh's 
 reply. He makes Avar on the decision of the Supreme 
 Court, in the case known as the Dred Scott case. I 
 wish to say to you. fellow-citizens, that I have no war 
 to make on that decision, or any other ever rendered by 
 the Supreme Court. I am content to take that decision 
 as it stands delivered by the highest judicial tribunal on 
 earth, a tribunal established by the Constitution of the 
 United States for that purpose, and hence that decision 
 becomes the law of the land, binding on you, on me,
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 243 
 
 and on every other good citizen, whether we like it or 
 not. Hence I do not choose to go into an argument to 
 prove, before this audience, wdiether or not Chief 
 Justice Taney understood the law better than Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln objects to that decision, first and mainly 
 because it deprives the negro of the rights of citizenship, 
 I am as much opposed to his reason for that objection 
 as I am to the objection itself. I hold that a negro is 
 not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. 
 I hold that this government was made on the white 
 basis, by white men for the benefit of white men and 
 their posterity forever, and should be administered by 
 white men, and none others. I do not believe that the 
 Almighty made the negro capable of self-government. 
 I am aware that all the Abolition lecturers that you find 
 traveling about through the country, are in the habit of 
 reading the Declaration of Independence to prove that 
 all m.en were created equal and endowed by their 
 Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which 
 are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. 
 Lincoln is very much in the habit of following in the 
 track of Lovejoy in this particular, by reading that part 
 of the Declaration of Independence to prove that the 
 negro was endowed by the Almighty with the inaliena- 
 ble right of equality with white men. Now, I say to 
 you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion the signers 
 of the Declaration had no reference to the negro what- 
 ever, wheu they declared all men to be created equal. 
 They desired to express by that phrase white men, men 
 of European birth and European descent, and had no 
 reference either to the negro, the savage Indians, the 
 Feejee, the Malay, or any other inferior and degraded 
 race, when they spoke of the equality of men. One great 
 evidence that such was their understanding, is to be 
 found in the fact that at that time every one of the 
 thirteen colonies was a slaveholding colony, every signer 
 of the Declaration represented a slaveholding constitu- 
 ency, and we know that no one of them emancipated his 
 slaves, much less offered citizenship to them, when they 
 signed the Declaration ; and yet, if they intended to 
 declare that the negro was the equal of the white man, 
 and entitled by divine right to an equality with him, 
 they were bound, as honest men, that day and hour to 
 have put their negroes on an equality with themselves.
 
 244 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 Instead of doing so, with uplifted eyes to heaven the)^ 
 implored the divine blessing upon them, during the 
 seven years' bloody war they had to fight to maintain 
 that Declaration, never dreaming that they were violat- 
 ing divine law by still holding the negroes in bondage 
 and depriving them of equality. 
 
 My friends, I am in favor of preserving this govern- 
 ment as our fathers made it. It does not follow by any 
 means that because a negro is not your equal or mine, 
 that hence he must necessarily be a slave. On the con- 
 trary, it does follow that we ought to extend to the 
 negro every right, every privilege, every immunity 
 which he is capable of enjoying, consistent with the 
 good of society. When you ask me what these rights 
 are, what their nature and extent is, I tell you that that 
 is a question which each State of this Union must decide 
 for itself. Illinois has already decided the question. 
 We have decided that the negro must not be a slave 
 within our limits ; but we have also decided that the 
 negro shall not be a citizen within our limits ; that he 
 shall not vote, hold office, or exercise any political 
 rights. I maintain that Illinois, as a sovereign State, 
 has a right thus to fix her policy with reference to the 
 relation between the white man and the negro ; but 
 while we had that right to decide the question for our- 
 selves, we must recognize the same right in Kentucky 
 and in every other State to make the same decision, or a 
 different one. Having decided our own policy with 
 reference to the black race, we must leave Kentucky and 
 Missouri and every other State perfectly free to make 
 just such a decision as they see proper on that 
 question. 
 
 Kentucky has decided that question for herself. She 
 has said that within her limits a negro shall not exer- 
 cise any political rights, and she has also said that a por- 
 tion of the negroes under the laws of that State shall 
 be slaves. She had as much right to adopt that as her 
 policy as we had to adopt the contrary for our policy. 
 New York has decided that in that State a negro may 
 vote if he has two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of 
 property, and if he owns that much he may vote upon 
 an equality with the white man. I, for one, am utterly 
 opposed to negro suffrage anyv/here and under any cir- 
 cumstances ; yet, inasmuch as the Supreme Court has 
 decided in the celebrated Dred Scott case that a State
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 245 
 
 has a right to confer the privilege of voting upon free 
 negroes, I am not going to make war upon New York 
 because she has adopted a poHcy repugnant to my feel- 
 ings. But New York must mind her own business, and 
 keep her negro suffrage to herself, and not attempt to 
 force it upon us. 
 
 In the State of Maine they have decided that a negro 
 may vote and hold office on an equality with a white 
 man. I had occasion to say to the senators from Maine, 
 in a discussion last session, that if they thought that the 
 white people within the limits of their State were no 
 better than negroes, I would not quarrel with them for 
 it, but they must not say that my white constituents of 
 Illinois were no better than negroes, or we would be 
 sure to quarrel. 
 
 The Dred Scott decision covers the whole question, 
 and declares that each State has the right to settle this 
 question of suffrage for itself, and all questions as to 
 the relations between the white man and the negro. 
 Judge Taney expressly lays down the doctrine. I re- 
 ceive it as law, and I say that while those States are 
 adopting regulations on that subject disgusting and ab- 
 horrent, according to my views, I will not make war on 
 them if they will mind their own business and let us 
 alone. 
 
 I now come back to the question, why cannot this 
 Union exist forever divided into free and slave States, 
 as our fathers made it? It can thus exist if each State 
 will carry out the principles upon which our institutions 
 were founded — to wit, the right of each State to do as 
 it pleases, without meddling with its neiglibors._ Just 
 act upon that great principle, and this Union will not 
 only live forever, but it will extend and expand until it 
 covers the whole continent, and makes this confederacy 
 one grand, ocean-bound republic. We must bear in 
 mind that we are yet a young nation, growing with a 
 rapidity unequaled in the history of the world, that our 
 national increase is great, and that the emigration from 
 the Old World is increasing, requiring us to expand 
 and acquire new territory from time to time, in order 
 to give our people land to live upon. 
 
 If we live up to the principle of State rights and State 
 sovereignty, each State regulating its own affairs and 
 minding its own business, we can go on and extend 
 indefinitely, just as fast and as far as we need the terri-
 
 246 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 tory. The time may come, indeed has now come, when 
 our interests would be advanced by the acquisition of the 
 island of Cuba. When we get Cuba we must take it as 
 we find it, leaving the people to decide the question of 
 slavery for themselves, without interference on the part 
 of the Federal Government, or of any State of this 
 Union. So when it becomes necessary to acquire any 
 portion of Mexico or Canada, or of this continent or 
 the adjoining islands, we must take them as we find them, 
 leaving the people free to do as they please — to have 
 slavery or not, as they choose. I never have inquired, 
 and never will inquire, whether a new State applying for 
 admission has slavery or not for one of her institutions. 
 If the constitution that is presented be the act and deed 
 of the people, and embodies their will, and they have 
 the requisite population, I will admit them with slavery 
 or without it, just as that people shall determine. My 
 objection to the Lecompton constitution did not consist 
 in the fact that it made Kansas a slave State. I would 
 have been as much opposed to its admission under such 
 a constitution as a free State as I was opposed to its ad- 
 mission under it as a slave State. I hold that that was 
 a question which that people had a right to decide for 
 themselves, and that no power on earth ought to have 
 interfered with that decision. In my opinion, the Le- 
 compton constitution was not th^ act and deed of the 
 people of Kansas, and did not embody their will, and 
 the recent election in that Territory, at which it was 
 voted down by nearly ten to one, shows conclusively 
 that I was right in saying, when the constitution was 
 presented, that it was not the act and deed of the people, 
 and did not embody their will. 
 
 If we wish to preserve our institutions in their purity 
 and transmit them unimpaired to our latest posterity, we 
 must preserve with religious good faith that great prin- 
 ciple of self-government which guarantees to each and 
 every State, old and new, the right to make just such 
 constitutions as they desire, and come into the Union 
 with their own constitution, and not one palmed upon 
 them. Whenever you sanction the doctrine that Con- 
 gress may crowd a constitution down the throats of an 
 unwilling people, against their consent, you will subvert 
 the great fundamental principle upon which all our free 
 institutions rest. In the future I have no fear that the 
 attempt will ever be made. President Buchanan de-
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 247 
 
 dared in his annual message, that hereafter the rule 
 adopted in the Minnesota case, requiring a constitution 
 to be submitted to the people, should be followed in all 
 future cases, and if he stands by that recommendation 
 there will be no division in the Democratic party on that 
 principle in the future. Hence the great mission of the 
 Democracy is to unite the fraternal feeling of the whole 
 country, restore peace and quiet by teaching each State 
 to mind its own business and regulate its own domestic 
 affairs, and all to unite in carrying out the Constitution 
 as our fathers made it, and thus to preserve the Union 
 and render it perpetual in all time to come. Why should 
 we not act as our fathers who made the government? 
 There was no sectional strife in Washington's army. 
 They were all brethren of a common confederacy; they 
 fought under a common flag that they might bestow 
 upon their posterity a common destiny, and to this end 
 they poured out their blood in common streams, and 
 shared, in some instances, a common grave. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Reply. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: There is very much 
 in the principles that Judge Douglas has here 
 enunciated that I most cordially approve, and 
 over which I shall have no controversy with him. 
 In so far as he has insisted that all the States 
 have the right to do exactly as they please about 
 all their domestic relations, including that of 
 slavery, I agree entirely with him. He places 
 me wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I 
 repeat it again and again, insisting that I have 
 made no difference with him upon this subject. 
 I have made a great many speeches, some of 
 which have been printed, and it will be utterly 
 impossible for him to find anything that I have 
 ever put in print contrary to what I now say 
 upon this subject. I hold myself under constitu- 
 tional obligations to allow the people in all the 
 States, without interf'^^'ence, direct or indirect.
 
 248 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS LSept. 15 
 
 to do exactly as they please, and I deny that I 
 have any inclination to interfere with then?, even 
 if there were no such constitutional obligation. 
 I can only say again that I am placed improperly 
 — altogether improperly, in spite of all I can say 
 — when it is insisted that I entertain any other 
 view or purpose in regard to that matter. 
 
 While I am upon this subject, I will make 
 some answers briefly to certain propositions that 
 Judge Douglas has put. He says, "Why can't 
 this Union endure permanently, half slave and 
 half free?" I have said that I supposed it could 
 not, and I will try, before this new audience, to 
 give briefly some of the reasons for entertaining 
 that opinion. Another form of his question is, 
 ''Why can't we let it stand as our fathers placed 
 it?" That is the exact difficulty between us. I 
 say that Judge Douglas and his friends have 
 changed it from the position in which our fathers 
 originally placed it. I say, in the way our fathers 
 originally left the slavery question, the institu- 
 tion was in the course of ultimate extinction, and 
 the public mind rested in the belief that it was 
 in the course of ultimate extinction. I say when 
 this government was first established, it was the 
 policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of 
 slavery into the new Territories of the United 
 States, where it had not existed. But Judge 
 Douglas and his friends have broken up that 
 policy, and placed it upon a new basis by which 
 it is to become national and perpetual. All I 
 have asked or desired anywhere is that it should 
 be placed back again upon the basis that the 
 fathers of our government originally placed it 
 upon. I have no doubt that it would become ex- 
 tinct, for all time to come, if we but readopted
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 249 
 
 the policy of the fathers by restricting it to the 
 limits it has already covered — restricting it from 
 the new Territories. 
 
 I do not wish to dwell at great length on this 
 branch of the subject at this time, but allow me 
 to repeat one thing that I have stated before. 
 Brooks, the man who assaulted Senator Sumner 
 on the floor of the Senate, and who was compli- 
 mented with dinners, and silver pitchers, and 
 gold-headed canes, and a good many other things 
 for that feat, in one of his speeches declared that 
 when this government was originally established, 
 nobody expected that the institution of slavery 
 would last until this day. That was but the 
 opinion of one man, but it was such an opinion 
 as we can never get from Judge Douglas, or any- 
 body in favor of slavery in the North at all. You 
 can sometimes get it from a Southern man. He 
 said at the same time that the framers of our 
 government did not have the knowledge that ex- 
 perience has taught us — that experience and the 
 invention of the cotton-gin have taught us that 
 the perpetuation of slavery is a necessity. He 
 insisted, therefore, upon its being changed from 
 the basis upon which the fathers of the govern- 
 ment left it to the basis of its perpetuation and 
 nationalization. 
 
 I insist that this is the difference between 
 Judge Douglas and myself — that Judge Douglas 
 is helping that change along. I insist upon this 
 government being placed where our fathers orig- 
 inally placed it. 
 
 I remember Judge Douglas once said that he 
 saw the evidences on the statute-books of Con- 
 gress of a policy in the origin of government to 
 divide slavery and freedom by a geographical
 
 2SO DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. is 
 
 line — that he saw an indisposition to maintain 
 that poHcy, and therefore he set about studying 
 up a way to settle the institution on the right 
 basis — the basis which he thought it ought to 
 have been placed upon at first ; and in that speech 
 he confesses that he seeks to place it, not upon 
 the basis that the fathers placed it upon, but upon 
 one gotten up on ''original principles." When 
 he asks me why we cannot get along with it in 
 the attitude where our fathers placed it, he had 
 better clear up the evidences that he has himself 
 changed it from that basis ; that he has himself 
 been chiefly instrumental in changing the policy 
 of the fathers. Any one who will read his speech 
 of the 22d of last March will see that he there 
 makes an open confession, showing that he set 
 about fixing the institution upon an altogether 
 different set of principles. I think I have fully 
 answered him when he asks me why we cannot 
 let it alone upon the basis where our fathers left 
 it, by showing that he has himself changed the 
 whole policy of the government in that regard. 
 
 Now, fellow-citizens, in regard to this matter 
 about a contract that was made between Judge 
 Trumbull and myself, and all that long portion 
 of Judge Douglas's speech on this subject, I wish 
 simply to say what I have said to him before, ' 
 that he cannot know whether it is true or not, 
 and I do know that there is not a word of truth 
 in it. And I have told him so before. I don't 
 want any harsh language indulged in, but I do 
 not know how to deal with this persistent insist- 
 ing on a story that I know to be utterly without 
 truth. It used to be a fashion amongst men that 
 when a charge was made, some sort of proof was 
 brought forward to establish it, and if no proof
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 251 
 
 was found to exist, the charge was dropped. I 
 don't know how to meet this kind of an argu- 
 ment. I don't want to have a fight with Judge 
 Douglas, and I have no way of making an argu- 
 ment up into the consistency of a corn-cob and 
 stopping his mouth with it. All I can do is, 
 good-humoredly, to say that from the beginning 
 to the end of all that story about a bargain be- 
 tween Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a 
 word of truth in it. I can only ask him to show 
 some sort of evidence of the truth of his story. 
 He brings forward here and reads from what he 
 contends is a speech by James H. Matheny, 
 charging such a bargain between Trumbull and 
 myself. My own opinion is that Matheny did 
 do some such immoral thing as to tell a story 
 that he knew nothing about. I believe he did. I 
 contradicted it instantly, and it has been con- 
 tradicted by Judge Trumbull, while nobody has 
 produced any proof, because there is none. 
 Now, whether the speech which the judge brings 
 forward here is really the one Matheny made, 
 I do not know, and I hope the judge will pardon 
 me for doubting the genuineness of this docu- 
 ment, since his production of those Springfield 
 resolutions at Ottawa. I do not wish to dwell 
 at any great length upon this matter. I can say 
 nothing when a long story like this is told, ex- 
 cept that it is not true, and demand that he who 
 insists upon it shall produce some proof. That 
 is all any man can do, and I leave it in that way, 
 for I know of no other way of dealing with it. 
 The judge has gone over a long account of the 
 Old Whig and Democratic parties, and it con- 
 nects itself with this charge against Trumbull 
 and myself. He says that they agreed upon a
 
 252 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 compromise in regard to the slavery question in 
 1850; that in a national Democratic convention 
 resolutions were passed to abide by that com- 
 promise as a finality upon the slavery question. 
 He also says that the Whig party in national 
 convention agreed to abide by and regard as a 
 finality the compromise of 1850. I understand 
 the judge to be altogether right about that; I 
 understand that part of the history of the coun- 
 try as stated by him to be correct. I recollect 
 that I, as a member of that party, acquiesced in 
 that compromise. I recollect in the presidential 
 election which followed, when we had General 
 Scott up for the presidency, Judge Douglas was 
 around berating us Whigs as Abolitionists, pre- 
 cisely as he does to-day — not a bit of difference. 
 I have often heard him. We could do nothing 
 when the Old Whig party was alive that was 
 not Abolitionism, but it has got an extremely 
 good name since it has passed away. 
 
 When that compromise was made, it did not 
 repeal the old Missouri Compromise. It left a 
 region of United States territory half as large as 
 the present territory of the United States, north 
 of the line of 36^ 30', in which slavery was pro- 
 hibited by act of Congress. This compromise 
 did not repeal that one. It did not affect or pro- 
 pose to repeal it. But at last it became Judge 
 Douglas's duty, as he thought (and I find no 
 fault with him), as chairman of the Committee 
 on Territories, to bring in a bill for the organiza- 
 tion of a territorial government — first of one, 
 then of two Territories north of that line. When 
 he did so it ended in his inserting a provision 
 substantially repealing the Missouri Compro- 
 mise. That was because the compromise of 1850
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 253 
 
 had not repealed it. And now I ask why he 
 could not have left that compromise alone? We 
 were quiet from the ag'itation of the slavery- 
 question. We were making no fuss about it. 
 All had acquiesced in the compromise measures 
 of 1850. We never had been seriously disturbed 
 by any Abolition agitation before that period. 
 When he came to form governments for the 
 Territories north of 36° 30', why could he not 
 have let that matter stand as it was standing? 
 Was it necessary to the organization of a Terri- 
 tory? Not at all. Iowa lay north of the line 
 and had been organized as a Territory, and came 
 into the Union as a State without disturbing that 
 compromise. There was no sort of necessity for 
 destroying it to organize these Territories. But, 
 gentlemen, it would take up all my time to meet 
 all the little quibbling arguments of Judge Doug- 
 las to show that the Missouri Compromise was 
 repealed by the compromise of 1850. My own 
 opinion is that a careful investigation of all the 
 arguments to sustain the position that that com- 
 promise was virtually repealed by the compro- 
 mise of 1850 would show that they are the mer- 
 est fallacies. I have the report that Judge Doug- 
 las first brought into Congress at the time of 
 the introduction of the Nebraska bill, which in 
 its original form did not repeal the Missouri 
 Compromise, and he there expressly stated that 
 he had forborne to do so because it had not been 
 done by the compromise of 1850. I close this 
 part of the discussion on my part by asking him 
 the question again, ''Why, when we had peace 
 under the Missouri Compromise, could you not 
 have let it alone?" 
 
 In complaining of what I said in my speech at
 
 254 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 Springfield, in which he says I accepted my nom- 
 ination for the senatorship (where, by the way, 
 he is at fault, for if he will examine it, he will 
 find no acceptance in it), he again quotes that 
 portion in which I said that "a house divided 
 against itself cannot stand." Let me say a word 
 in regard to that matter. 
 
 He tries to persuade us that there must be a 
 variety in the different institutions of the States 
 of the Union ; that that variety necessarily pro- 
 ceeds from the variety of soil, climate, of the 
 face of the country, and the difference in the 
 natural features of the States. I agree to all 
 that. Have these very matters ever produced 
 any difficulty amongst us? Not at all. Have 
 we ever had any quarrel over the fact that they 
 have laws in Louisiana designed to regulate the 
 commerce that springs from the production of 
 sugar ? or because we have a different class rela- 
 tive to the production of flour in this State? 
 Have they produced any differences? Not at 
 all. They are the very cements of this Union. 
 They don't make the house a house divided 
 against itself. They are the props that hold up 
 the house and sustain the Union. 
 
 But has it been so with this element of slavery? 
 Have we not always had quarrels and difficulties 
 over it? And when will we cease to have quar- 
 rels over it? Like causes produce like effects. 
 It is worth while to observe that we have gener- 
 ally had a comparative peace upon the slavery 
 question, and that there has been no cause for 
 alarm until it was excited by the effort to spread 
 it into new territory. Whenever it has been lim- 
 ited to its present bounds, and there has been no 
 effort to spread it, there has been peace. All the
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 255 
 
 trouble and convulsion has proceeded from ef- 
 forts to spread it over more territory. It was 
 thus at the date of the Missouri Compromise. 
 It was so again with the annexation of Texas ; 
 so with the territory acquired by the Mexican 
 war ; and it is so now. Whenever there has been 
 an effort to spread it there has been agitation 
 and resistance. Now, I appeal to this audience 
 (very few of whom are my political friends), as 
 rational men, whether we have reason to expect 
 that the agitation in regard to this subject will 
 cease while the causes that tend to reproduce 
 agitation are actively at work? Will not the 
 same cause that produced agitation in 1820, when 
 the Missouri Compromise was formed, — that 
 which produced the agitation upon the annexa- 
 tion of Texas, and at other times, — work out the 
 same results always? Do you think that the na- 
 ture of man will be changed— that the same 
 causes that produced agitation at one time will 
 not have the same effect at another? 
 
 This has been the result so far as my observa- 
 tion of the slavery question and my reading in his- 
 tory extend. What right have we then to hope 
 that the trouble will cease, that the agitation will 
 come to an end ; until it shall either be placed 
 back where it originally stood, and where the 
 fathers originally placed it, or, on the other 
 hand, until it shall entirely master all opposition? 
 This is the view I entertain, and this is the rea- 
 son why I entertained it, as Judge Douglas has 
 read from my Springfield speech. 
 
 Now, my friends, there is one other thing that 
 I feel under some sort of obligation to mention. 
 Judge Douglas has here to-day — in a very 
 rambling way, I was about saying — spoken of
 
 256 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 the platforms for which he seeks to hold me re- 
 sponsible. He says, "Why can't you come out 
 and make an open avowal of principles in all 
 places alike?" and he reads from an advertise- 
 ment that he says was used to notify the people 
 of a speech to be made by Judge Trumbull at 
 Waterloo. In commenting on it he desires to 
 know whether we cannot speak frankly and man- 
 fully as he and his friends do ! How, I ask, do 
 his friends speak out their own sentiments? A 
 convention of his party in this State met on the 
 2 1 St of April, at Springfield, and passed a set of 
 resolutions which they proclaim to the country 
 as their platform. This does constitute their 
 platform, and it is because Judge Douglas claims 
 it is his platform — that these are his principles 
 and purposes — that he has a right to declare 
 that he speaks his sentiments "frankly and man- 
 fully." On the 9th of June, Colonel John Dough- 
 erty, Governor Reynolds, and others, calling 
 themselves National Democrats, met in Spring- 
 field, and adopted a set of resolutions which are 
 as easily understood, as plain and as definite in 
 stating to the country and to the world what 
 they believed in and would stand upon, as Judge 
 Douglas's platform. Now, what is the reason 
 that Judge Douglas is not v/illing that Colonel 
 Dougherty and Governor Reynolds should stand 
 upon their own written and printed platform as 
 well as he upon his ? Why must he look farther 
 than their platform when he claims himself to 
 stand by his platform? 
 
 Again, in reference to our platform : On the 
 1 6th of June the Republicans had their conven- 
 tion and published their platform, which is as 
 clear and distinct as Judge Douglas's. In it they
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 257 
 
 spoke their principles as plainly and as definitely 
 to the world. What is the reason that Judge 
 Douglas is not willing that I should stand upon 
 that platform ? Why must he go around hunting 
 for some one who is supporting me, or has sup- 
 ported me at some time in his life, and who has 
 said something at some time contrary to that 
 platform? Does the judge regard that rule as a 
 good one? If it turn out that the rule is a good 
 one for me, — that I am responsible for any and 
 every opinion that any man has expressed who is 
 my friend, — then it is a good rule for him. I 
 ask, is it not as good a rule for him as it is for 
 me? In my opinion, it is not a good rule for 
 either of us. Do you think differently, judge? 
 
 Mr. Douglas : I do not. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln : Judge Douglas says he does not 
 think differently. I am glad of it. Then can he 
 tell me why he is looking up resolutions of five 
 or six years ago, and insisting that they were my 
 platform, notwithstanding my protest that they 
 are not, and never were, my platform, and my 
 pointing out the platform of the State conven- 
 tion which he delights to say nominated me for 
 the Senate ? I cannot see what he means by 
 parading these resolutions, if it is not to hold me 
 responsible for them in some way. If he says to 
 me here, that he does not hold the rule to be 
 good, one way or the other, I do not comprehend 
 how he could answer me more fully if he an- 
 swered me at greater length. I will therefore 
 put in as my answer to the resolutions that he 
 has hunted up against me what I, as a lawyer, 
 would call a good plea to a bad declaration. I 
 understand that it is a maxim of law, that a poor 
 plea may be a good plea to a bad declaration. I
 
 258 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 think that the opinions the judge brings from 
 those who support me, yet differ from me, are 
 a bad declaration against me, but if I can bring 
 the same things against him, I am putting in a 
 good plea to that kind of declaration, and now I 
 propose to try it. 
 
 At Freeport Judge Douglas occupied a large 
 part of his time in producing resolutions and 
 documents of various sorts, as I understood, to 
 make me somehow responsible for them ; and I 
 propose now doing a little of the same sort of 
 thing for him. In 1850 a very clever gentleman 
 by the name of Thompson Campbell, a personal 
 friend of Judge Douglas and myself, a political 
 friend of Judge Douglas and an opponent of 
 mine, was a candidate for Congress in the 
 Galena district. He was interrogated as to his 
 views on this same slavery question. I have 
 here before me the interrogatories, and Camp- 
 bell's answers to them. I will read them : 
 
 Interrogatories. 
 
 1. Will you, if elected, vote for and cordially support 
 a bill prohibiting slavery in the Territories of the 
 United States? 
 
 2. Will you vote for and support a bill abolishing 
 slavery in the District of Columbia? 
 
 3. Will you oppose the admission of any slave States 
 which may be formed out of Texas or the Territories? 
 
 4. Will you vote for and advocate the repeal of the 
 fugitive-slave law passed at the recent session of 
 Congress? 
 
 5. Will you advocate and vote for the election of a 
 Speaker of the House of Representatives who shall be 
 willing to organize the committees of that House so as 
 to give the free States their just influence in the busi- 
 ness of legislation? 
 
 6. What are your views, not only as to the constitu- 
 tional right of Congress to prohibit the slave-trade
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 259 
 
 between the States, but also as to the expediency of 
 exercising that right immediately? 
 
 Campbell's Reply. 
 
 To the first and second interrogatories, I answer 
 unequivocally in the affirmative. 
 
 To the third interrogatory, I reply that I am op- 
 posed to the admission of any more slave States into 
 the Union, that may be formed out of Texan or any 
 other territory. 
 
 To the fourth and fifth interrogatories, I unhesitat- 
 ingly answer in the affirmative. 
 
 To the sixth interrogatory, I reply that so long as the 
 slave States continue to treat slaves as articles of com- 
 merce, the Constitution confers power on Congress to 
 pass laws regulating that peculiar commerce, and that 
 the protection of human rights imperatively demands 
 the interposition of every constitutional means to pre- 
 vent this most inhuman and iniquitous traffic. 
 
 T. Campbell. 
 
 I want to say here that Thompson Campbell 
 was elected to Congress on that platform, as the 
 Democratic candidate in the Galena district, 
 against Martin P. Sweet. 
 
 Judge Douglas : Give me the date of the letter. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln : The time Campbell ran was in 
 1850. I have not the exact date here. It was 
 some time in 1850 that these interrogatories were 
 put and the answer given. Campbell was elected 
 to Congress, and served out his term. I think 
 a second election came up before he served out 
 his term, and he was not reelected. Whether de- 
 feated or not nominated, I do not know. [Mr. 
 Campbell was nominated for reelection by the 
 Democratic party, by acclamation.] At the end 
 of his term his very good friend, Judge Douglas, 
 got him a high office from President Pierce, and 
 sent him off to California. Is not that the fact?
 
 26o DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 Just at the end of his term In Congress it ap- 
 pears that our mutual friend Judge Douglas got 
 our mutual friend Campbell a good office, and 
 sent him to California upon it. And not only so, 
 but on the 27th of last month, when Judge Doug- 
 las and myself spoke at Freeport in joint dis- 
 cussion, there was his same friend Campbell, 
 come all the way from California, to help the 
 judge beat me; and there was poor Martin P. 
 Sweet standing on the platform, trying to help 
 poor me to be elected. That is true of one of 
 Judge Douglas's friends. 
 
 So again, in that same race of 1850, there was 
 a congressional convention assembled at Joliet, 
 and it nominated R. S. Molony for Congress, 
 and unanimously adopted the following resolu- 
 tion : 
 
 Resolved, That we are uncompromisingly opposed to 
 the extension of slavery; and while we would not make 
 such opposition a ground of interference with the 
 interests of the States where it exists, yet we moder- 
 ately but firmly insist that it is the duty of Congress 
 to oppose its extension into territory now free by all 
 means compatible with the obligations of the Con- 
 stitution, and with good faith to our sister States; that 
 these principles were recognized by the ordinance of 
 1787, which received the sanction of Thomas Jefferson, 
 who is acknowledged by all to be the great oracle and 
 expounder of our faith. 
 
 Subsequently the same interrogatories were 
 propounded to Dr. Molony which had been ad- 
 dressed to Campbell, as above, with the excep- 
 tion of the sixth, respecting the interstate slave- 
 trade, to which Dr. Molony, the Democratic 
 nominee for Congress, replied as follows : 
 
 I received the interrogatories this day, and as you 
 will see by the La Salle Democrat and Ottawa Free
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO a6i 
 
 Trader, I took at Peru on the 5th and at Ottawa on 
 the 7th, the affirmative side of interrogatories ist and 
 2d; and in relation to the admission of any more slave 
 States from free territory, my position taken at these 
 meetings, as correctly reported in said papers, was em- 
 phatically and distinctly opposed to it. In relation to 
 the admission of any more slave States from Texas, 
 whether I shall go against it or not will depend upon 
 the opinion that I may hereafter form of the true mean- 
 ing and nature of the resolutions of annexation. If 
 by said resolutions the honor and good faith of the 
 nation is pledged to admit more slave States from 
 Texas when she (Texas) may apply for admission of 
 such State, then I should, if in Congress, vote for 
 their admission. But if not so pledged and bound by 
 sacred contract, then a bill for the admission of more 
 slave States from Texas would never receive my vote. 
 
 To your fourth interrogatory I answer most deci- 
 dedly in the affirmative, and for reasons set forth in my 
 reported remarks at Ottawa last Monday. 
 
 To your fifth interrogatory I also reply in the af- 
 firmative, most cordially, and that I will use my ut- 
 most exertions to secure the nomination and election 
 of a man who will accomplish the objects of said in- 
 terrogatories. I most cordially approve of the resolu- 
 tions adopted at the union meeting held at Princeton 
 on the 27th September ult. Yours, etc. 
 
 R. S. Molony. 
 
 All I have to say in regard to Dr. Molony is 
 that he was the regularly nominated Democratic 
 candidate for Congress in his district; was 
 elected at that time ; at the end of his term was 
 appointed to a land-ofifice at Danville. (I never 
 heard anything of Judge Douglas's instrumen- 
 tality in this.) He held this ofifice a considerable 
 time, and when we were at Freeport the other 
 day, there were handbills scattered about notify- 
 ing the public that after our debate was over R. 
 S. Molony would make a Democratic speech in 
 favor of Judge Douglas. That is all I know of
 
 262 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 my own personal knowledge. It is added here 
 to this resolution (and truly, I believe) that 
 "among those whose participated in the Joliet 
 convention, and who supported its nominee, with 
 his platform as laid down in the resolution of 
 the convention, and in his reply as above given, 
 we call at random the following names, all of 
 which are recognized at this day as leading Dem- 
 ocrats : Cook County — E. B. Williams, Charles 
 McDonell, Arno Voss, Thomas Hoyne, Isaac 
 Cook," — I reckon we ought to except Cook, — 
 ''F. C. Shermxan. Will— Joel A. Matteson, S. 
 W. Bowen. Kane — B. F. Hall, G. W. Renwick, 
 A. M. Herrington, Elijah Wilcox. McHenry — 
 W. M. Jackson, Enos W. Smith, Neil Donnelly. 
 LaSalle— John Hise, William Reddick"— Will- 
 iam Reddick — another one of Judge Douglas's 
 friends that stood on the stand with him at Ot- 
 tawa at the time the judge says my knees 
 trembled so that I had to be carried away ! The 
 names are all here : **DuPage — Nathan Allen. 
 DeKalb— Z. B. Mayo." 
 
 Here is another set of resolutions which I 
 think are apposite to the matter in hand. 
 
 On the 28th of February of the same year, a 
 Democratic district convention was held at Na- 
 perville, to nominate a candidate for circuit 
 judge. Among the delegates were Bowen and 
 Kelly, of Will ; Captain Naper, H. H. Cody, Na- 
 than Allen, of DuPage; W. M. Jackson, J. M. 
 Strode, P. W. Piatt, and Enos W. Smith, of Mc- 
 Henry; J. Horsman and others, of Winnebago. 
 Colonel Strode presided over the convention. 
 The following resolutions were unanimously 
 adopted — the first on motion of P. W. Piatt, the 
 second on motion of William M. Jackson:
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 263 
 
 Resolved, That this convention is in favor of the 
 Wilmot proviso, both in principle and practice, and 
 that we know of no good reason why any person 
 should oppose the largest latitude in free soil, free 
 territory, and free speech. 
 
 Resolved, That in the opinion of this convention, the 
 time has arrived when all men should be free, whites 
 as well as others. 
 
 Judge Douglas : What is the date of those 
 resolutions. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln : I understand it was in 1850, 
 but I do not know it. I do not state a thing and 
 say I know it when I do not. But I have the 
 highest belief that this is so. I know of no way 
 to arrive at the conclusion that there is an error 
 in it. I mean to put a case no stronger than the 
 truth will allow. But what I was going to com- 
 ment upon is an extract from a newspaper in De- 
 Kalb County, and it strikes me as being rather 
 singular, I confess, under the circumstances. 
 There is a Judge Mayo in that county, who is a 
 candidate for the legislature, for the purpose, if 
 he secures his election, of helping to reelect 
 Judge Douglas. He is the editor of a newspaper 
 [Dekalb County Sentinel], and in that paper I 
 find the extract I am going to read. It is part 
 of an editorial article in which he was election- 
 eering as fiercely as he could for Judge Douglas 
 and against me. It was a curious thing, I think, 
 to be in such a paper. I will agree to that, and 
 the judge may make the most of it: 
 
 Our education has been such that we have ever been 
 rather in favor of this equality of the blacks; that is, 
 that they should enjoy all the privileges of the whites 
 where they reside. We are aware that this is not a 
 very popular doctrine. We have had many a confab 
 with some who are now strong "Republicans," we
 
 264 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 taking the broad ground of equality and they the op- 
 posite ground. 
 
 We were brought up in a State where blacks were 
 voters, and we do not know of any inconvenience 
 resulting from it, though perhaps it v/ould not work 
 so well where the blacks are more numerous. We 
 have no doubt of the right of the whites to guard 
 against such an evil, if it is one. Our opinion is that 
 it would be best for all concerned to have the colored 
 population in a State by themselves [in this I agree 
 with him] ; but if within the jurisdiction of the United 
 States, we say by all means they should have the right 
 to have their senators and their representatives in 
 Congress, and to vote for President. With us "worth 
 makes the man, and want of it the fellow." We have 
 seen many a "nigger" that we thought more of than 
 some white men. 
 
 That is one of Judge Douglas's friends. Now 
 I do not want to leave myself in an attitude 
 where I can be misrepresented, so I will say I 
 do not think the judge is responsible for this 
 article ; but he is quite as responsible for it as I 
 would be if one of my friends had said it. I 
 think that is fair enough. 
 
 I have here also a set of resolutions passed by 
 a Democratic State convention in Judge Doug- 
 las's own good old State of Vermont, and that, 
 I think, ought to be good for him too. 
 
 Resolved, That liberty is a right inherent and inalien- 
 able in man, and that herein all men are equal. 
 
 Resolved, That we claim no authority in the Federal 
 Government to abolish slavery in the several States. 
 But we do claim for it constitutional power perpetually 
 to prohibit the introduction of slavery into territory 
 now free, and abolish it wherever, under the jurisdic- 
 tion of Congress, it exists. 
 
 Resolved, That this power ought immediately to be 
 exercised in prohibiting the introduction and existence 
 of slavery in New Mexico and California, in abolishing 
 slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia,
 
 I858I AT JONESBORO 265 
 
 •on the high seas, and wherever else, under the Consti- 
 tution, it can be reached. 
 
 Resolved, That no more slave States should be ad- 
 mitted into the Federal Union. 
 
 Resolved, That the government ought to return to its 
 ancient policy, not to extend, nationalize, or encour- 
 age, but to limit, localize, and discourage slavery. 
 
 At Freeport I answered several interrogato- 
 ries that had been propounded to me by Judge 
 Douglas at the Ottawa meeting. The judge has 
 yet not seen fit to find any fault with the position 
 that I took in regard to those seven interrogato- 
 ries, which were certainly broad enough, in all 
 conscience, to cover the entire ground. In my 
 answers, which have been printed, and all have 
 had the opportunity of seeing, I take the ground 
 that those who elect m.e must expect that I will 
 do nothing which will not be in accordance with 
 those answers. I have some right to assert that 
 Judge Douglas has no fault to find with them. 
 But he chooses to still try to thrust me upon dif- 
 ferent^round without paying any attention to 
 my aiSvvers, the obtaining of which from me 
 cost him so much trouble and concern. At the 
 same time, I propounded four interrogatories to 
 him, claiming it as "a right that he should answer 
 as many interrogatories for me as I did for him, 
 and I would reserve myself for a future instal- 
 ment when I got them ready. The judge, in an- 
 swering me upon that occasion, put in what I 
 suppose he intends as answers to all four of my 
 interrogatories. The first one of these interroga- 
 tories I have before me, and it is in these words : 
 
 Question i. If the people of Kansas shall, by means 
 entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a 
 State constitution, and ask admission into the Union
 
 266 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 under it, before they have the requisite number of 
 inhabitants according to the English bill, — some 
 ninety-three thousand, — will you vote to admit them? 
 
 As I read the judge's answer in the newspaper,, 
 and as I remember it ai; pronounced at the time, 
 he does not give any answer which is equivalent 
 to yes or no — I will or I won't. He answers at 
 very considerable length, rather quarreling with 
 me for asking the question, and insisting that 
 Judge Trumbull had done something that I ought 
 to say something about ; and finally getting out 
 such statements as induce me to infer that he 
 means to be understood he will, in that supposed 
 case, vote for the admission of Kansas. I only 
 bring this forward now for the purpose of saying 
 that, if he chooses to put a different construc- 
 tion upon his answer, he may do it. But if he 
 does not, I shall from this time forward assume 
 that he will vote for the admission of Kansas 
 in disregard of the English bill. He has the 
 right to remove any misunderstanding I may 
 have. I only mention it now that I ma,^ here- 
 after assume this to be the true construction of 
 his answer, if he does not now choose to correct 
 me. 
 
 The second interrogatory that I propounded 
 to him was this : 
 
 Question 2. Can the people of a United States Ter- 
 ritory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any 
 citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its 
 limits prior to the formation of a State constitution? 
 
 To this Judge Douglas answered that they can 
 lawfully exclude slavery from the Territory prior 
 to the formation of a constitution. He goes on 
 to tell us how it can be done. As I understand
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 267 
 
 him, he holds that it can be done by the territo- 
 rial legislature refusing to make any enactments 
 for the protection of slavery in the Territory, 
 and especially by adopting unfriendly legislation 
 to it. For the sake of clearness, I state it again : 
 that they can exclude slavery from the Territory 
 — first, by withholding what he assumes to be 
 an indispensable assistance to it in the way of 
 legislation ; and, second, by unfriendly legisla- 
 tion. If I rightly understand him, I wish to ask 
 your attention for a while to his position. 
 
 In the first place, the Supreme Court of the 
 United States has decided that any congressional 
 prohibition of slavery in the Territories is uncon- 
 stitutional — they have reached this proposition as 
 a conclusion from their former proposition, that 
 the Constitution of the United States expressly 
 recognizes property in slaves ; and from that 
 other constitutional provision, that no person 
 shall be deprived of property without due proc- 
 ess of law. Hence they reach the conclusion 
 that as the Constitution of the United States ex- 
 pressly recognizes property in slaves, and pro- 
 hibits any person from being deprived of prop- 
 erty without due process of law, to pass an act 
 of Congress by which a man who owned a slave 
 on one side of a line would be deprived of him 
 if he took him on the other side is depriving him 
 of that property without due process of law. 
 That I understand to be the decision of the Su- 
 preme Court. I understand also that Judge 
 Douglas adheres most firmly to that decision; 
 and the dif^culty is, how is it possible for any 
 power to exclude slavery from the Territory un- 
 less in violation of that decision? That is the 
 difficulty.
 
 268 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 In the Senate of the United States, in 1856, 
 Judge Trumbull, in a speech, substantially, if not 
 directly, put the same interrogatory to Judge 
 Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory 
 had the lawful power to exclude slavery prior to 
 the formation of a constitution? Judge Douglas 
 then answered at considerable length, and his 
 answer will be found in the Congressional Globe, 
 under the date of June 9, 1856. The judge said 
 that whether the people could exclude slavery 
 prior to the formation of a constitution or not 
 was a question to be decided by the Supreme 
 Court. He put that proposition, as will be seen 
 by the Congressional Globe, in a variety of 
 forms, all running to the same thing in substance 
 — that it was a question for the Supreme Court. 
 I maintain that when he says, after the Supreme 
 Court has decided the question, that the people 
 may yet exclude slavery by any means whatever, 
 he does virtually say that it is not a question for 
 the Supreme Court. He shifts his ground. I 
 appeal to you whether he did not say it was a 
 question for the Supreme Court? Has not the 
 Supreme Court decided that question? When 
 he now says that the people may exclude slavery, 
 does he not make it a question for the people? 
 Does he not virtually shift his ground and say 
 that it is not a question for the court, but for 
 the people? This is a very simple proposition — 
 a very plain and naked one. It seems to me that 
 there is no difficulty in deciding it. In a variety 
 of ways he said that it was a question for the 
 Supreme Court. He did not stop then to tell us 
 that, whatever the Supreme Court decides, the 
 people can by withholding necessary ''police reg- 
 ulations" keep slavery out. He did not make
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 269 
 
 any such answer. I submit to you now, whether 
 the new state of the case has not induced the 
 judge to sheer away from his original ground. 
 Would not this be the impression of every fair- 
 minded man? 
 
 I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot 
 enter a new country without police regulations 
 is historically false. It is not true at all. I hold 
 that the history of this country shows that the 
 institution of slavery was originally planted upon 
 this continent without these ''police regulations" 
 which the judge now thinks necessary for the 
 actual establishment of it. Not only so, but is 
 there not another fact — how came this Dred 
 Scott decision to be made? It was made upon 
 the case of a negro being taken and actually held 
 in slavery in Minnesota Territory, claiming his 
 freedom because the act of Congress prohibited 
 his being so held there. Will the judge pretend 
 that Dred Scott was not held there without police 
 regulations ? There is at least one matter of rec- 
 ord as to his having been held in slavery in the 
 Territory, not only without police regulations, 
 but in the teeth of congressional legislation sup- 
 posed to be valid at the time. This shows that 
 there is vigor enough in slavery to plant itself in 
 a new country even against unfriendly legisla- 
 tion. It takes not only law but the enforcement 
 of law to keep it out. That is the history of this 
 country upon the subject. 
 
 I wish to ask one other question. It being un- 
 derstood that the Constitution of the United 
 States guarantees property in slaves in the Ter- 
 ritories, if there is any infringement of the right 
 of that property, would not the United States 
 courts, organized for the government of the Ter-
 
 270 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 ritory, apply such remedy as might be necessary 
 in that case? It is a maxim held by the courts, 
 that there is no wrong without its remedy; and 
 the courts have a remedy for whatever is ac- 
 knowledged and treated as a wrong. 
 
 Again : I will ask you, my friends, if you were 
 elected members of the legislature, what would 
 be the first thing you would have to do before 
 entering upon your duties? Swear to support 
 the Constitution of the United States. Suppose 
 you believe, as Judge Douglas does, that the 
 Constitution of the United States guarantees to 
 your neighbor the right to hold slaves in that 
 Territory, — that they are his property, — how can 
 you clear your oaths unless you give him such 
 legislation as is necessary to enable him to enjoy 
 that property? What do you understand by 
 supporting the Constitution of a State, or of the 
 United States? Is it not to give such constitu- 
 tional helps to the rights established by that 
 Constitution as may be practically needed ? Can 
 you, if you swear to support the Constitution, 
 and believe that the Constitution establishes a 
 right, clear your oath, without giving it support ? 
 Do you support the Constitution if, knowing or 
 believing there is a right established under it 
 which needs specific legislation, you withhold 
 that legislation? Do you not violate and disre- 
 gard your oath? I can conceive of nothing 
 plainer in the world. There can be nothing in 
 the words "support the Constitution," if you may 
 run counter to it by refusing support to any right 
 established under the Constitution. And what 
 I say here will hold with still more force against 
 the judge's doctrine of ''unfriendly legislation." 
 How could you, having sworn to support the
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 271 
 
 Constitution, and believing that it guaranteed the 
 right to hold slaves in the Territories, assist in 
 legislation intended to defeat that right? That 
 would be violating your own view of the Con- 
 stitution. Not only so, but if you were to do so, 
 how long would it take the courts to hold your 
 votes unconstitutional and void? Not a moment. 
 
 Lastly I would ask — Is not Congress itself un- 
 der obligation to give legislative support to any 
 right that is established under the United States 
 Constitution? I repeat the question — Is not 
 Congress itself bound to give legislative support 
 to any right that is established in the United 
 States Constitution? A member of Congress 
 swears to support the Constitution of the United 
 States, and if he sees a right established by that 
 Constitution which needs specific legislative pro- 
 tection, can he clear his oath without giving that 
 protection? Let me ask you why many of us 
 who are opposed to slavery upon principle give 
 our acquiescence to a fugitive-slave law? Why 
 do we hold ourselves under obligations to pass 
 such a law, and abide by it when it is passed? 
 Because the Constitution makes provision that 
 the owners of slaves shall have the right to 
 reclaim them. It gives the right to reclaim 
 slaves, and that right is, as Judge Douglas says, 
 a barren right, unless there is legislation that will 
 enforce it. 
 
 The mere declaration, ''No person held to 
 service or labor in one State under the laws 
 thereof, escaping into another, shall in conse- 
 quence of any law or regulation therein be dis- 
 charged from such service or labor, but shall be 
 delivered up on claim of the party to whom such 
 service or labor may be due," is powerless with-
 
 272 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 out specific legislation to enforce it. Now, on 
 what ground would a member of Congress who 
 is opposed to slavery in the abstract vote for a 
 fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do ? 
 Because there is a constitutional right which 
 needs legislation to enforce it. And although it 
 is distasteful to me, I have sworn to support the 
 Constitution, and having so sworn, I cannot con- 
 ceive that I do support it if I withhold from that 
 right any necessary legislation to make it practi- 
 cal. And if that is true in regard to a fugitive- 
 slave law, is the right to have fugitive slaves 
 reclaimed any better fixed in the Constitution 
 than the right to hold slaves in the Territories? 
 For this decision is a just exposition of the Con- 
 stitution, as Judge Douglas thinks. Is the one 
 right any better than the other? Is there any 
 man who, while a member of Congress, would 
 give support to the one any more than the other ? 
 If I wished to refuse to give legislative support 
 to slave property in the Territories, if a member 
 of Congress, I could not do it, holding the view 
 that the Constitution establishes that right. If 
 I did it at all, it would be because I deny that 
 this decision properly construes the Constitution. 
 But if I acknowledge, with Judge Douglas, that 
 this decision properly construes the Constitution, 
 I cannot conceive that I would be less than a 
 perjured man if I should refuse in Congress to 
 give such protection to that property as in its 
 nature it needed. 
 
 At the end of what I have said here I propose 
 to give the judge my fifth interrogatory, which 
 he may take and answer at his leisure. My fifth 
 interrogatory is this : 
 
 If the slaveholding citizens of a United States
 
 i858] AT J0NES30R0 273 
 
 Territory should need and demand congressional 
 legislation for the protection of their slave prop- 
 erty in such Territory, would you as a member 
 of Congress, vote for or against such legislation? 
 
 Judge Douglas : Will you repeat that ? I want 
 to answer that question. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln : If the slaveholding citizens of a 
 United States Territory should need and demand 
 congressional legislation for the protection of 
 their slave property in such Territory, would 
 you, as a member of Congress, vote for or 
 against such legislation? 
 
 I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge 
 Douglas has made, he has spoken as if he did 
 not know or think that the Supreme Court had 
 decided that a territorial legislature cannot ex- 
 clude slavery. Precisely what the judge would 
 say upon the subject — whether he would say 
 definitely that he does not understand they have 
 so decided, or whether he would say he does 
 understand that the court have so decided, I do 
 not know ; but I know that in his speech at 
 Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not 
 decided yet ; and in his answer to me at Freeport, 
 he spoke of it again, so far as I can comprehend 
 it, as a thing that had not yet been decided. Now 
 I hold that if the judge does entertain that view, 
 I think that he is not mistaken in so far as it can 
 be said that the court has not decided anything 
 save the mere question of jurisdiction. I know 
 the legal arguments that can be made — that after 
 a court has decided that it cannot take jurisdic- 
 tion in a case, it then has decided all that is be- 
 fore it, and that is the end of it. A plausible argu- 
 ment can be made in favor of that proposition, 
 but I know that Judge Douglas has said in one
 
 274 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 of his speeches that the court went forward, Hke 
 honest men as they were, and decided all the 
 points in the case. If any points are really extra- 
 judicially decided because not necessarily before 
 them, then this one as to the power of the terri- 
 torial legislature to exclude slavery is one of 
 them, as also the one that the Missouri Compro- 
 mise was null and void. They are both extra- 
 judicial, or neither is, according as the court held 
 that they had no jurisdiction in the case between 
 the parties, because of want of capacity of one 
 party to maintain a suit in that court. I want, if 
 I have sufficient time, to show that the court did 
 pass its opinion, but that is the only thing actually 
 done in the case. If they did not decide, they 
 showed what they were ready to decide when- 
 ever the matter was before them, \yhat is that 
 opinion? After having argued that Congress 
 had no power to pass a law excluding slavery 
 from a United States Territory, they then used 
 language to this effect : That inasmuch as Con- 
 gress itself could not exercise such a power, it 
 followed as a matter of course that it could not 
 authorize a territorial government to exercise it, 
 for the territorial legislature can do no more than 
 Congress could do. Thus it expressed its opin- 
 ion emphatically against the power of a terri- 
 torial legislature to exclude slavery, leaving us 
 in just as little doubt on that point as upon any 
 other point they really decided. 
 
 Now, fellow-citizens, my time is nearly out. I 
 find a report of a speech made by Judge Douglas 
 at Joliet, since we last met at Freeport, — pub- 
 lished, I believe, in the Missouri Republican, — 
 on the gth of this month, in which Judge Doug- 
 las says :
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 275 
 
 You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked 
 him if he concurred in each and all of the principles 
 set forth in it. He would not answer these questions. 
 At last I said frankly, "I wish you to answer them, 
 because when I get them up here where the color of 
 your principles is a little darker than in Egypt, I in- 
 tend to trot you down to Jonesboro." The very notice 
 that I was going to take him down into Egypt made 
 him tremble in the knees so that he had to be carried 
 from the platform. He laid up seven days, and in the 
 mean time held a consultation with his political physi- 
 cians; they had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the 
 leaders of the Abolition party. They consulted it all 
 over, and at last Lincoln came to the conclusion that 
 he would answer; so he came to Freeport last Friday. 
 
 Now that statement altogether furnishes a 
 subject for philosophical contemplation. I have 
 been treating it in that way, and I have really 
 come to the conclusion that I can explain it in no 
 other way than by believing the judge is crazy. 
 If he was in his right mind, I cannot conceive 
 how he would have risked disgusting the four or 
 five thousand of his own friends who stood there 
 and knew, as to my having been carried from the 
 platform, that there was not a word of truth in it. 
 
 Judge Douglas: Didn't they carry you off? 
 
 Mr. Lincoln : There ; that question illustrates 
 the character of this man Douglas, exactly. He 
 smiles now and says, "Didn't they carry you 
 ofif?" But he said then, "He had to be carried 
 off" ; and he said it to convince the country that 
 he had so completely broken me down by his 
 speech that I had to be carried away. Now he 
 seeks to dodge it, and asks, "Didn't they carry 
 you off?" Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, 
 v/hy didn't you tell the truth? I would like to 
 know why you didn't tell the truth about it. 
 And then again, "He laid up seven days." He
 
 276 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 puts this in print for the people of the country 
 to read as a serious document. I think if he had 
 been in his sober senses he would not have risked 
 that barefacedness in the presence of thousands 
 of his own friends, who knew that I made 
 speeches within six of the seven days at Henry, 
 Marshall County; Augusta, Hancock County; 
 and Macomb, McDonough County, including all 
 the necessary travel to meet him again at Free- 
 port at the end of the six days. Now, I say, 
 there is no charitable way to look at that state- 
 ment, except to conclude that he is actually 
 crazy. There is another thing in that statement 
 that alarmed me very greatly as he states it — 
 that he was going to ''trot me down to Egypt." 
 Thereby he would have you to infer that I would 
 not come to Egypt unless he forced me — that I 
 could not be got here, unless he, giant-like, had 
 hauled me down here. That statement he makes, 
 too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I made 
 the stipulation to come down here, and that he 
 himself had been very reluctant to enter into the 
 stipulation. More than all this. Judge Douglas, 
 when he made that statement, must have been 
 crazy, and wholly out of his sober senses, or else 
 he would have known that, when he got me down 
 here, that promise — that windy promise — of his 
 powers to annihilate me wouldn't amount to 
 anything. Now, how little do I look like being 
 carried away trembling? Let the judge go on, 
 and after he is done with his half hour, I want 
 you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay 
 and rot here; and if anything happens to the 
 judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel and put 
 him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, 
 then, there is something extraordinary in this
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 277 
 
 statement. I ask you if you know any other 
 living man who would make such a statement? 
 I will ask my friend Casey, over there, if he 
 would do such a thing? Would he send that 
 out and have his men take it as the truth? Did 
 the judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt to 
 scare me to death? Why, I know this people 
 better than he does. I was raised just a little 
 east of here. I am a part of this people. But 
 the judge was raised further north, and perhaps 
 he has some horrid idea of what this people 
 might be induced to do. But really I have talked 
 about this matter perhaps longer than I ought, 
 for it is no great thing, and yet the smallest are 
 often the most difficult things to deal with. The 
 judge has set about seriously trying to make the 
 impression that when we meet at different places 
 I am literally in his clutches — that I am a poor, 
 helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do noth- 
 ing at all. This is one of the ways he has taken 
 to create that impression. I don't know any 
 other way to meet it, except this. I don't want 
 to quarrel with him, — to call him a liar, — but 
 when I come square up to him I don't know what 
 else to call him, if I must tell the truth out. I 
 want to be at peace, and reserve all my fighting 
 powers for necessary occasions. My time, now, 
 is very nearly out, and I give up the trifle that is 
 left to the judge to let him set my knees trembling 
 again — if he can. 
 
 Mr. Douglas's Rejoinder. 
 
 My friends, while I am very grateful to you for the 
 enthusiasm which you show for me, I will say in all 
 candor, that your quietness will be much more agree-
 
 278 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 able than your applause, inasmuch as you deprive me 
 of some part of my time whenever you cheer. 
 
 I will commence where Mr. Lincoln left of¥, and 
 make a remark upon this serious complaint of his 
 about my speech at Joliet. I did say there in a play- 
 ful manner that when I put these questions to Mr. 
 Lincoln at Ottawa, he failed to answer, and that he 
 trembled, and had to be carried off the stand, and re- 
 quired seven days to get up his reply. That he did 
 not walk off from that stand he will not deny. That 
 when the crowd went away from the stand with me, a 
 few persons carried him home on their shoulders and 
 laid him down, he will admit. I wish to say to you 
 that whenever I degrade my friends and myself by 
 allowing them to carry me on their backs along 
 through the public streets, when I am able to walk, I 
 am willing to be deemed crazy. I did not say whether 
 I beat him or he beat me in the argument. It is true 
 I put these questions to him, and I put them not as 
 mere idle questions, but showed that I based them 
 upon the creed of the Black Republican party, as 
 declared by their conventions in that portion of the 
 State which he depends upon to elect him, and desired 
 to know whether he indorsed that creed. He would not 
 answer. When I reminded him that I intended bring- 
 ing him into Egypt and renewing my questions if he 
 refused to answer, he then consulted, and did get up 
 his answers one week after — answers which I may refer 
 to in a few minutes, and show you how equivocal they 
 are. My object was to make him avow whether or not 
 he stood by the platform of his party; the resolutions 
 I then read, and upon which I based my questions, 
 had been adopted by his party in the Galena congres- 
 sional district, and the Chicago and Bloomington 
 congressional districts, composing a large majority of 
 the counties in this State that give Republican or 
 Abolition majorities. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln cannot and will not deny that the doc- 
 trines laid down in these resolutions were in substance 
 put forth in Lovejoy's resolutions, which were voted 
 for by a majority of his party, some of them, if not 
 all, receiving the support of every man of his party. 
 Hence I laid a foundation for my questions to him 
 before I asked him whether that was or was not the 
 platform of his party. He says that he answered my
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 279 
 
 questions. One of them was whether he would vote 
 to admit any more slave States into the Union. The 
 creed of the Republican party, as set forth in the 
 resolutions of their various conventions, was that they 
 would under no circumstances vote to admit another 
 slave State. It was put forth in the Lovejoy resolu- 
 tions in the legislature; it was put forth and passed in 
 a majority of all the counties of this State which give 
 Abolition or Republican majorities, or elect members 
 to the legislature of that school of politics. I had a 
 right to know whether he would vote for or against 
 the admission of another slave State in the event the 
 people wanted it. He first answered that he was not 
 pledged on the subject, and then said: 
 
 In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged 
 to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, 
 I state to you very frankly that I would be exceedingly 
 sorry ever to be put in the position of having to pass 
 on that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know 
 that there would never be another slave State admitted 
 into the Union ; but I must add that if slavery shall be 
 kept out of the Territories during the territorial existence 
 of any one given Territory, and then the people, having 
 a fair chance and clear field when they come to adopt a 
 constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as adopt a 
 slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of 
 the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we 
 own the country, but to admit them into the Union. 
 
 Now analyze that answer. In the first place he says 
 he would be exceedingly sorry to be put in a position 
 where he would have to vote on the question of the 
 admission of a slave State. Why is he a candidate for 
 the Senate if he would be sorry to be put in that 
 position? I trust the people of Illinois will not put 
 him in a position which he would be so sorry to 
 occupy. The next position he takes is that he would 
 be glad to know that there would never be another 
 slave State, yet, in certain contingencies, he might 
 have to vote for one. What is that contingency? "If 
 Congress keeps slavery out by law while it is a Terri- 
 tory, and then the people should have a fair chance and 
 should adopt slavery, uninfluenced by the presence of 
 the institution," he supposed he would have to admit 
 the State. Suppose Congress should not keep slavery
 
 28o DEBATE PVITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 out during their territorial existence, then how would 
 he vote when the people applied for admission into the 
 Union with a slave constitution? That he does not 
 answer, and that is the condition of every Territory 
 we have now got. Slavery is not kept out of Kansas 
 by act of Congress, and when I put the question to Mr. 
 Lincoln, whether he will vote for the admission with 
 or without slavery, as her people may desire, he will 
 not answer, and you have not got an answer from 
 him. In Nebraska slavery is not prohibited by act of 
 Congress, but the people are allowed, under the Ne- 
 braska bill, to do as they please on the subject; and 
 when I ask him whether he will vote to admit Ne- 
 braska with a slave constitution if her people desire 
 it, he will not answer. So with New Mexico, Wash- 
 ington Territory, Arizona, and the four new States to 
 be admitted from Texas. You cannot get an answer 
 from him to these questions. His answer only applies 
 to a given case, to a condition — things which he 
 knows do not exist in any one Territory in the Union. 
 He tries to give you to understand that he would 
 allow the people to do as they please, and yet he 
 dodges the question as to every Territory in the 
 Union. I now ask why cannot Mr. Lincoln answer to 
 each of those Territories? He has not done it, and he 
 will not do it. The Abolitionists up North understand 
 that this answer is made with a view of not commit- 
 ting himself on any one Territory now in existence. 
 It is so understood there, and you cannot expect an 
 answer from him on a case that applies to any one 
 Territory, or applies to the new States which by com- 
 pact we are pledged to admit out of Texas, when they 
 have the requisite population and desire admission. I 
 submit to you whether he has made a frank answer, so 
 that you can tell how he would vote in any one of these 
 cases. "He would be sorry to be put in the position." 
 Why would he be sorry to be put in this position if 
 his duty required him to give the vote? If the people 
 of a Territory ought to be permitted to come into the 
 Union as a State, with slavery or without it, as they 
 please, why not give the vote admitting them cheer- 
 fully? If in his opinion they ought not to come in 
 with slavery, even if they wanted to, why not say that 
 he would cheerfully vote against their admission? His 
 intimation is that conscience would not let him vote
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 281 
 
 "No," and he would be sorry to do that which his 
 conscience would compel him to do as an honest man. 
 
 In regard to the contract or bargain between Trum- 
 bull, the Abolitionists, and him, which he denies, I 
 wish to say that the charge can be proved by notorious 
 historical facts. Trumbull, Lovejoy, Giddings, Fred 
 Douglass, Hale, and Banks were traveling the State at 
 that time making speeches on the same side and in the 
 same cause with him. He contents himself with the 
 same denial that no such thing occurred. Does he 
 deny that he, and Trumbull, and Breese, and Giddings, 
 and Chase, and Fred Douglass, and Lovejoy, and all 
 those Abolitionists and deserters from the Democratic 
 party, did make speeches all over this State in the 
 same common cause? Does he deny that Jim Matheny 
 was then, and is now, his confidential friend, and does 
 he deny that Matheny made the charge of the bargain 
 and fraud in his own language, as I have read it from 
 his printed speech? Matheny spoke of his own per- 
 sonal knowledge of that bargain existing between 
 Lincoln, Trumbull, and the Abolitionists. He still 
 remains Lincoln's confidential friend, and is now a 
 candidate for Congress, and is canvassing the Spring- 
 field district for Lincoln. I assert that I can prove the 
 charge to be true in detail if I can ever get it where I 
 can summon and compel the attendance of witnesses. 
 I have the statement of another man to the same efifect 
 as that made by Matheny, which I am not permitted 
 to use yet, but Jim Matheny is a good witness on that 
 point, and the history of the country is conclusive 
 upon it. That Lincoln up to that time had been a 
 Whig, and then undertook to Abolitionize the Whigs 
 and bring them into the Abolition camp, is beyond 
 denial; that Trumbull up to that time had been a Demo- 
 crat, and deserted, and undertook to Abolitionize the 
 Democracy, and take them into the Abolition camp, is 
 beyond denial; that they are both now active, leading, 
 distinguished members of this Abolition Republican 
 party, in full communion, is a fact that cannot be 
 questioned or denied. 
 
 But Lincoln is not willing to be responsible for the 
 creed of his party. He complains because I hold him 
 responsible, and in order to avoid the issue he at- 
 tempts to show that individuals in the Democratic 
 party, many years ago, expressed Abolition senti-
 
 282 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. ig 
 
 ments. It is true that Tom Campbell, when a candi- 
 date for Congress in 1850, published the letter which 
 Lincoln read. When I asked Lincoln for the date of 
 that letter he could not give it. The date of the letter 
 has been suppressed by other speakers who have used 
 it, though I take it for granted that Lincoln did not 
 know the date. If he will take the trouble to examine, 
 he will find that the letter was published only two days 
 before the election, and was never seen until after it, 
 except in one county. Tom Campbell would have been 
 beat to death by the Democratic party if that letter 
 had been made public in his district. As to Molony, 
 it is true that he uttered sentiments of the kind referred 
 to by Mr. Lincoln, and the best Democrats would not 
 vote for him for that reason. I returned from Wash- 
 ington after the passage of the compromise measures 
 in 1850, and when I found Molony running under John 
 Wentworth's tutelage, and on his platform, I de- 
 nounced him, and declared that he was no Democrat. 
 In my speech at Chicago, just before the election that 
 year, I went before the infuriated people of that city 
 and vindicated the compromise measures of 1850. Re- 
 member, the city council had passed resolutions nullify- 
 ing acts of Congress and instructing the police to 
 withhold their assistance from the execution of the 
 laws, and as I was the only man in the city of Chicago 
 who was responsible for the passage of the compro- 
 mise measures, I went before the crowd, justified each 
 and every one of those measures, and let it be said to 
 the eternal honor of the people of Chicago, that when 
 they were convinced by my exposition that those 
 measures were right, and that they had done wrong in 
 opposing them, they repealed their nullifying resolu- 
 tions, and declared that they would acquiesce in and 
 support the laws of the land. These facts are well 
 known, and Mr. Lincoln can only get up individual 
 instances, dating back to 1849-50, which are con- 
 tradicted by the whole tenor of the Democratic creed. 
 But Mr. Lincoln does not want to be held responsi- 
 ble for the Black Republican doctrine of no more slave 
 States. Farnsworth is the candidate of his party to- 
 day in the Chicago district, and he made a speech in 
 the last Congress in which he called upon God to 
 palsy his right arm if he ever voted for the admission 
 of another slave State, whether the people wanted it
 
 1858] AT JONESBORO 283 
 
 or not. Lovejoy is making speeches all over the 
 State for Lincoln now, and taking ground against any 
 more slave States. Washburne, the Black Republican 
 candidate for Congress in the Galena district, is mak- 
 ing speeches in favor of this same Abolition platform 
 declaring no more slave States. Why are men run- 
 ning for Congress in the northern districts, and taking 
 that Abolition platform for their guide, when Mr. 
 Lincoln does not want to be held to it down here in 
 Egypt and in the center of the State, and objects to 
 it so as to get votes here? Let me tell Mr. Lincoln 
 that his party in the northern part of the State hold 
 to that Abolition platform, and that if they do not in 
 the south and in the center, they present the extraor- 
 dinary spectacle of a "house divided against itself," 
 and hence "cannot stand." I now bring down upon 
 him the vengeance of his own Scripture quotation, 
 and give it a more appropriate application than he did, 
 when I say to him that his party. Abolition in one end 
 of the State and opposed to it in the other, is a house 
 divided against itself, and cannot stand, and ought not 
 to stand, for it attempts to cheat the American people 
 out of their votes by disguising its sentiments. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln attempts to cover up and get over his 
 Abolitionism by telling you that he was raised a little 
 east of you, beyond the Wabash in Indiana, and he 
 thinks that makes a mighty sound and good man of 
 him on all these questions. I do not know that the 
 place where a man is born or raised has much to do 
 with his political principles. The worst Abolitionists 
 I have ever known in Illinois have been men who have 
 sold their slaves in Alabama and Kentucky, and have 
 come here and turned Abolitionists while spending the 
 money got for the negroes they sold, and I do not 
 know that an Abolitionist from Indiana or Kentucky 
 ought to have any more credit because he was born 
 and raised among slave-holders. I do not know that 
 a native of Kentucky is more excusable because raised 
 among slaves; his father and mother having owned 
 slaves, he comes to Illinois, turns Abolitionist, and 
 slanders the graves of his father and mother, and 
 breathes curses upon the institutions under which he 
 was born, and his father and mother were bred. True, 
 I was not born out West here. I was born away down 
 in Yankee land; I was born in a valley in Vermont,
 
 284 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 15 
 
 with the high mountains around me. I love the old 
 green mountains and valleys of Vermont, v^here I was 
 born, and where I played in my childhood. I went 
 up to visit them some seven or eight years ago, for the 
 first time for twenty odd years. When I got there 
 they treated me very kindly. They invited me to the 
 commencement of their college, placed me on the seats 
 with their distinguished guests, and conferred upon 
 me the degree of LL. D. in Latin (doctor of laws), 
 the same as they did Old Hickory, at Cambridge, 
 many years ago, and I give you my word and honor 
 I understood just as much of the Latin as he did. 
 When they got through conferring the honorary de- 
 gree, they called upon me for a speech, and I got up 
 with my heart full and swelling with gratitude for their 
 kindness, and I said to them, "My friends, Vermont 
 is the most glorious spot on the face of this globe for 
 a man to be born in, provided he emigrates when he is 
 very young." 
 
 I emigrated when I was very young. I came out 
 here when I was a boy, and found my mind liberalized, 
 and my opinions enlarged when I got on these broad 
 prairies, with only the heavens to bound my vision, in- 
 stead of having them circumscribed by the little narrow 
 ridges that surrounded the valley where I was born. 
 But I discard all flings at the land where a man was 
 born. I wish to be judged by my principles, by those 
 great public measures and constitutional principles upon 
 which the peace, the happiness, and the perpetuity of 
 this republic now rest. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has framed another question, propounded 
 it to me, and desired my answer. As I have said before, 
 I did not put a question to him that I did not first lay a 
 foundation for by showing that it was a part of the 
 platform of the party whose votes he is now seeking, 
 adopted in a majority of the counties where he now 
 hopes to get a majority, and supported by the candidates 
 of his party now running in those counties. But I will 
 answer his question. It is as follows : "If the slave- 
 holding citizens of a United States Territory should 
 need and demand congressional legislation for the pro- 
 tection of their slave property in such Territory, would 
 you, as a member of Congress, vote for or against such 
 legislation?" I answer him that it is a fundamental 
 article in the Democratic creed that there should be
 
 i858] AT JONESBORO 285 
 
 non-interference and non-intervention by Congress with 
 slavery in the States or Territories. Mr. Lincoln could 
 have found an answer to his question in the Cincinnati 
 platform, if he had desired it. The Democratic party 
 have always stood by that great principle of non-inter- 
 ference and non-intervention by Congress with slavery 
 in the States or Territories alike, and I stand on that 
 platform now. 
 
 Now I desire to call your attention to the fact that 
 Lincoln did not define his own position in his own 
 question. How does he stand on that question? He 
 put the question to me at Freeport whether or not I 
 would vote to admit Kansas into the Union before she 
 had 93,420 inhabitants. I answered him at once that 
 it having been decided that Kansas had now population 
 enough for a slave State, she had population enough for 
 a free State. 
 
 I answered the question unequivocally, and then I 
 asked him whether he would vote for or against the 
 admission of Kansas before she had 93,420 inhabitants, 
 and he would not answer me. To-day he has called 
 attention to the fact that, in his opinion, my answer on 
 that question was not quite plain enough, and yet he 
 has not answered it himself. He now puts a question 
 in relation to congressional interference in the Terri- 
 tories to me. I answer him direct, and yet he has not 
 answered the question himself. I ask you whether a 
 man has any right, in common decency^ to put ques- 
 tions, in these public discussions, to his opponent, which 
 he will not answer himself when they are pressed home 
 to him. I have asked him three times, whether he 
 would vote to admit Kansas whenever the people ap- 
 plied with a constitution of their own making and their 
 own adoption, under circumstances that were fair, just, 
 and unexceptionable, but I cannot get an answer from 
 him. Nor will he answer the question which he put to 
 me, and which I have just answered, in relation to 
 congressional interference in the Territories, by making 
 a slave code there. 
 
 It is true that he goes on to answer the question by 
 arguing that under the decision of the Supreme Court 
 it is the duty of a man to vote for a slave code in the 
 Territories. He says that it is his duty, under the 
 decision that the court has made, and if he believes in 
 that decision he would be a perjured man if he did not
 
 286 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 give the vote. I want to know v/hether he is not bound 
 to a decision which is contrary to his opinions just as 
 much as to one in accordance with his opinions. If the 
 decision of the Supreme Court, the tribunal created by 
 the Constitution to decide the question, is final and 
 binding, is he not bound by it just as strongly as if he 
 was for it instead of against it originally? Is every man 
 in this land allowed to resist decisions he does not 
 like, and only support those that meet his approval ? 
 What are important courts worth unless their decisions 
 are binding on all good citizens? It is the fundamental 
 principle of the judiciary that its decisions are final. 
 It is created for that purpose, so that when you cannot 
 agree among yourselves on a disputed point you appeal 
 to the judicial tribunal, which steps in and decides for 
 you, and that decision is then binding on every good 
 citizen. It is the law of the land just as much with 
 Mr. Lincoln against it as for it. And yet he says if that 
 decision is binding he is a perjured man if he does not 
 vote for the slave code in the different Territories of 
 this Union. Well, if you [turning to Mr. Lincoln] are 
 not going to resist the decision, if you obey it, and do 
 not intend to array m^ob law against the constituted 
 authorities, then according to your own statement, you 
 will be a perjured man if you do not vote to establish 
 slavery in these Territories. My doctrine is, that even 
 taking Mr. Lincoln's view that the decision recognizes 
 the right of a man to carry his slaves into the Terri- 
 tories of the United States, if he pleases, yet after he 
 gets there he needs affirmative law to make that right of 
 any value. The same doctrine not only applies to slave 
 property, but all other kinds of property. Chief Justice 
 Taney places it upon the ground that slave property is 
 on an equal footing with other property. Suppose one 
 of your merchants should move to Kansas and open a 
 liquor-store ; he has a right to take groceries and liquors 
 there, but the mode of selling them, and the circum- 
 stances under which they shall be sold, and all the 
 remedies, must be prescribed by local legislation, and if 
 that is unfriendly it will drive him out just as effectually 
 as if there was a constitutional provision against the 
 sale of liquor. So the absence of local legislation to 
 encourage and support slave property in a Territory 
 excludes it practically just as effectually as if there was 
 a positive constitutional provision against it. Hence I
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 287 
 
 assert that under the Dred Scott decision you cannot 
 maintain slavery a day in a Territory where there is an 
 unwilHng people and unfriendly legislation. If the peo- 
 ple are opposed to it, our right is a barren, worthless, 
 useless right ; and if they are for it, they will support 
 and encourage it. We come right back, therefore, to 
 the practical question, if the people of a Territory want 
 slavery they will have it, and if they do not want it you 
 cannot force it on them. And this is the practical 
 question, the great principle, upon which our institutions 
 rest. I am willing to take the decision of the Supreme 
 Court as it was pronounced by that august tribunal, 
 without stopping to inquire whether I would have de- 
 cided that way or not. I have had many a decision 
 made against me on questions of law which I did not 
 like, but I was bound by them just as much as if I had 
 had a hand in making them, and approved them. Did 
 you ever see a lawyer or a client lose his case that he 
 approved the decision of the court? They always think 
 the decision unjust when it is given against them. In 
 a government of laws like ours we must sustain the 
 Constitution as our fathers made it, and maintain the 
 rights of the States as they are guaranteed under the 
 Constitution, and then we will have peace and har- 
 mony between the different States and sections of this 
 glorious Union. 
 
 Fourth Joint Debate, at Charleston. 
 
 September 18, 1858. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Opening Speech. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: It will be very dififi- 
 cult for an audience so large as this to hear dis- 
 tinctly what a speaker says, and consequently it 
 is important that as profound silence be pre- 
 served 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 equal- 
 ity between the negroes and white people. .While
 
 288 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 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, or 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 qual- 
 ifying 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 for- 
 ever forbid the two races living together on 
 terms of social and political equality. And in- 
 asmuch as they cannot so live, while they do re- 
 main together there must be the position of su- 
 perior 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 oc- 
 casion that 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 sa
 
 i858] - AT CHARLESTON 289 
 
 frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its cor- 
 rectness, 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 ap- 
 prehension 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 fur- 
 ther word, which is this : that I do not under- 
 stand that there is any place where an altera- 
 tion 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 appre- 
 hend the approach of any such thing myself, and 
 as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant hor- 
 ror that some such danger is rapidly approach- 
 ing, I propose, as the best means to prevent itj 
 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 the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 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
 
 290 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 18 
 
 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 mat- 
 ter. 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 be- 
 heved 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 oc- 
 casion. 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 substanti- 
 ate it. This speech was published at length, and 
 subsequently at Jacksonville Judge Douglas al- 
 luded 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
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 291 
 
 the character of Trumbull for veracity, he should 
 hold him (Lincoln) responsible for the slan- 
 ders." 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 orig- 
 inally been my purpose to discuss that matter at 
 all. But inasmuch 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 Jack- 
 son, and to the just extent I take the responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 I wish to say at the beginning that I will hand 
 to the reporters the 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 rea- 
 son 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 en- 
 tered into to have a constitution formed for Kan- 
 sas, 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 evi- 
 dence 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 deter- 
 mined to have an Enabling Act passed for the
 
 292 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 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 sub- 
 mitting the constitution to a vote of the people 
 after it should be formed. He then brings for- 
 ward evidence to show, and showing, as he 
 deemed, that Judge Douglas reported the bill 
 back to the Senate vv^ith that clause stricken out. 
 He then shows that there was a new clause in- 
 serted into the bill, which would in its nature pre- 
 vent 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 : ''Sup- 
 pose 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 pro- 
 vision, 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 hav- 
 ing 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
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 293 
 
 that they once had their enabhng acts framed 
 with an express provision for submitting^ the 
 constitution to be framed to a vote of the people, 
 and then that it was stricken out when Congress 
 did not mean to alter the effect of the law. That 
 there have been bills which never had the pro- 
 vision in, I do not question ; but when was that 
 provision taken out of one that it was in? More 
 especially does this 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 cer- 
 tain 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 meet- 
 ing 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 giv- 
 ing the people any opportunity of voting 
 upon it. 
 
 But I must hurry on. The next proposition 
 that Judge Douglas puts is this : ''But upon ex- 
 amination 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
 
 294 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 to ask this question — why did not Judge Douglas 
 say that these words were not stricken out of the 
 Toombs bill, or this bill from which it is alleged 
 the provision was stricken out — a bill which goes 
 by the name of Toombs, 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 m.ade 
 in his speech, and say it was not stricken out? 
 Trumbull has given the exact words that he says 
 were in the Toombs 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 
 stricken out, but he says there was no provision 
 in the Toombs 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 Toombs 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
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 295 
 
 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 said 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 ?" That is Trumbull's 
 argument. Now, Judge Douglas does not meet 
 the charge at all, but stands up and says there 
 was no such proposition in that bill for submit- 
 ting 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 pro- 
 vision. 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 was 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
 
 296 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 18 
 
 in a speech in the Senate that he supposed the 
 constitution to be made would have to be submit- 
 ted to the people. He asks, if Trumbull thought 
 so then, what ground is there for anybody think- 
 ing 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 be- 
 long. 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 Toombs bill. I have not the evidence on 
 that point, except a sort of inference I draw from 
 the general course of business there. What al- 
 terations, or what provisions in the way of alter- 
 ing, were going on in committee, Trumbull had 
 no means of knowing, until the altered bill was 
 reported back. Soon afterward, when it was re- 
 ported back, there was a discussion over it, and 
 perhaps Trumbull in reading it hastily in the al- 
 tered 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 
 w^as 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 Trum- 
 bull had been in the plot with these other men, 
 would that let Douglas out of it? Would it ex- 
 onerate Douglas that Trumbull didn't then per- 
 ceive he was in the plot ? He also asks the ques- 
 tion : Why didn'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
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 297 
 
 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 Trum- 
 bull did bring the notice of the Senate at that 
 time to 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 Trum- 
 bull'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 pros- 
 ecuting 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 this was missing when he reported the 
 bill to the Senate, and that in a public speech he 
 had subsequently said the alteration in the bill 
 was made while it was in committee, and that it
 
 298 - DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 18 
 
 was made in consultation between him (Judge 
 Douglas) and Toombs. 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 ex- 
 amine 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 pre- 
 cisely as he originally made it. Then, in addi- 
 tion thereto, he brought in a new piece of evi- 
 dence. He shifted no ground. He brought no 
 new piece of evidence inconsistent with his for- 
 mer testimony, but he brought a new piece tend- 
 ing, as he thought, and as I think, to prove his 
 proposition. To illustrate : A man brings an ac- 
 cusation 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 
 
 _j
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 299 
 
 thing, and in addition gives further testimony 
 corroborative of the charge. So with Trumbull. 
 There was no shifting of ground, nor inconsist- 
 ency of testimony between the new piece of evi- 
 dence 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 sub- 
 stitute 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 : 'T am 
 speaking of the bill as Judge Douglas reported 
 it back. It was amended somewhat in the Sen- 
 ate 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 Toombs. 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 didn't take 
 it out again. It is said that a bear is sometimes 
 hard enough pushed to drop a cub, and so I pre- 
 sume 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
 
 300 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 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 pro- 
 vision 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 conspired 
 to render it vastly expedient for Judge Douglas 
 to take the 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 un- 
 less 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 rec- 
 ord he endeavors to bolster up his false charge. '^ 
 Well, that is a pretty serious statement. Trum- 
 bull 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 7ip a paper]. He 
 says that is a copy of the Toombs bill — the 
 amendment offered by Toombs. 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 Doug- 
 las says he forged it from beginning to end ! 
 That is the ''beginning," we will say. Does
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 301 
 
 Douglas say that is a forgery? Let him say it 
 to-day, and we will have a subsequent examina- 
 tion 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 sweeping charge ? Does he say so 
 now ? If he does not, then take this Toombs 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 Toombs 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 ques- 
 tion 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
 
 302 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 that Territory, [and] the danger of any experiment at 
 that time of a popular vote, it would be better there 
 should be no such provision in the Toombs 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 21 st Decem- 
 ber, 1857 [Congressional Globe, same volume, page 
 113], Senator Bigler said: "Nothing was further 
 from my mind than to allude to any social or confiden- 
 tial 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 accom- 
 plishing 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, provid- 
 ing 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 com- 
 mittee 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
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 303 
 
 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 Congres- 
 sional 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 Trum- 
 bull forges his evidence from beginning to end? 
 So again he says, in another place, that Judge 
 Douglas, in his speech December 9, 1857 [Con- 
 gressional Globe, Part I, page 15], stated: 
 
 That during the last session of Congress, I [Mr. 
 Douglas] reported a bill from the committee on Terri- 
 tories, to authorize the people of Kansas to assemble 
 and form a constitution for themselves. Subsequently 
 the senator from Georgia [Mr. Toombs] brought for- 
 ward a substitute for my bill, which, after being modi- 
 fied 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 Con- 
 gressional 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 zvill."] Well, sir, you had better not com- 
 mit 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
 
 304 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. 18 
 
 the Toombs bill, and in the Union, from any quarter, 
 that the constitution was not to be submitted to the 
 public. 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 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 de- 
 bate, 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 state- 
 ment just before made, that had the point been made it 
 •would have been yielded to, or that it was a new dis- 
 covery, you will determine. 
 
 So I say. I do not know whether Judge Doug- 
 las will dispute this, and yet maintain his posi-
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 305 
 
 tion 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, 'T declare that this par- 
 ticular thing which Trumbull has uttered is not 
 to be found where he says it is," then my atten- 
 tion 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 for- 
 gery? 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 efifect when it is altogether untrue. 
 If you come forward with my note for one hun- 
 dred 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 a 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 I presume I
 
 3o6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 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 every one I meet 
 candidly and honestly. If I have made any as- 
 sertion 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 calumni- 
 ated, and the evidence he has brought forward 
 branded in general terms "a forgery from begin- 
 ning to end." This is not the legal way of meet- 
 ing a charge, and I submit to all intelligent per- 
 sons, both friends of Judge Douglas and of my- 
 self, 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
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 307 
 
 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 sub- 
 mitted 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 in- 
 fer 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 al- 
 though he took out the other provision prevent- 
 ing 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 Trum- 
 bull alleges was in the bill? If he admits that 
 he did take it out, 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. 
 
 Extract from Mr. TrumhidVs Speech Made at 
 Alton, Referred to by Mr. Lincoln in His 
 Opening at Charleston. 
 
 I come now to another extract from a speech of Mr. 
 Douglas, made at Beardstown, and reported in the 
 Missouri Republican. This extract has reference to a 
 statement made by me at Chicago, wherein I charged 
 that an agreement had been entered into by the very 
 persons now claiming credit for opposing a constitution
 
 3o8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS tSept. i8 
 
 not submitted to the people, to have a constitution 
 formed and put in force without giving the people of 
 Kansas an opportunity to pass upon it. Without meet- 
 ing this charge, which I substantiated by a reference to 
 the record, my colleague is reported to have said : 
 
 For when this charge was once made in a much milder 
 form in the Senate of the United States I did brand it as 
 a He in the presence of Mr. Trumbull, and Mr. Trumbull 
 sat and heard it thus branded, without daring to say it 
 was true. I tell you he knew it to be false when he uttered 
 it at Chicago ; and yet he says he is "going to cram the lie 
 down his throat until he should cry enough." The miser- 
 able, craven-hearted wretch ! he would rather have both 
 ears cut off than to use that language in my presence, 
 where I could call him to account. I see the object is to 
 draw me into a personal controversy, with the hope 
 thereby of concealing from the public the enormity of the 
 principles to which they are committed. I shall not allow 
 much of my time in this canvass to be occupied by these 
 personal assaults. I have none to make on Mr. Lincoln ; I 
 have none to make on Mr. Trumbull ; I have none to make 
 on any other political opponent. If I cannot stand on my 
 own public record, on my own private and public character 
 as history will record it, I will not attempt to rise by 
 traducing the characters of other men. I will not make a 
 blackguard of myself by imitating the course they have 
 pursued against me. I have no charges to make against 
 them. 
 
 This is a singular statement, taken altogether. After 
 indulging in language which would disgrace a loafer in 
 the filthiest purlieus of a fish-market, he winds up by 
 saying that he will not make a blackguard of himself, 
 that he has no charges to make against me. So I sup- 
 pose he considers that to say of another that he knew a 
 thing to be false when he uttered it, that he was a 
 "miserable craven-hearted wretch," does not amount to 
 a personal assault, and does not make a man a black- 
 guard. A discriminating public will judge of that for 
 themselves; but as he says he has "no charges to make 
 on Mr. Trumbull," I suppose politeness requires I 
 should believe him. At the risk of again offending this 
 mighty man of war, and losing something more 
 than my ears, I shall have the audacity to again read the 
 record upon him, and prove and pin upon him, so that 
 he cannot escape it, the truth of every word I uttered
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 309 
 
 at Chicago. You, fellow-citizens, are the judges to 
 determine whether I do this. My colleague says he is 
 willing to stand on his public record. By that he shall 
 be tried, and if he had been able to discriminate be- 
 tween the exposure of a public act by the record, and a 
 personal attack upon the individual, he would have dis- 
 covered that there was nothing personal in my Chicago 
 remarks, unless the condemnation of himself by his 
 own public record is personal, and then you must judge 
 who is most to blame for the torture his public record 
 inflicts upon him, he for making, or I for reading it 
 after it was made. As an individual I care very little 
 about Judge Douglas one way or the other. It is his 
 public acts with which I have to do, and if they con- 
 demn, disgrace, and consign him to oblivion, he has only 
 himself, not me, to blame. 
 
 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 pass 
 upon it, and that Mr. Douglas was in the plot. This is 
 as susceptible of proof by the record as is the fact that 
 the State of Minnesota was admitted into the Union at 
 the last session of Congress. 
 
 On the 25th of June, 1856, a bill was pending in the 
 United States Senate to authorize the people of Kansas 
 to form a constitution and come into the Union. On 
 that day Mr. Toombs offered an amendment which he 
 intended to propose to the bill, which was ordered to be 
 printed, and, with the original bill and other amend- 
 ments, recommended to the Committee on Territories, 
 of which Mr. Douglas was chairman. This amendment 
 of Mr. Toombs, printed by order of the Senate, and a 
 copy of which I have here present, provided for the 
 appointment of commissioners, who were to take a cen- 
 sus of Kansas, divide the Territory into election dis- 
 tricts, and superintend the election of delegates to form 
 a constitution, and contains a clause in the i8th section 
 which I will read to you, requiring the constitution 
 which should be formed to be submitted to the people 
 for adoption. It 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 rejec- 
 tion ; which, if accepted by the convention and ratified 
 by the people at the election for the adoption of the con-
 
 3IO DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 stitution, shall be obligatory upon the United States, and 
 upon the said State of Kansas, etc. 
 
 It has been contended by some of the newspaper press 
 that this section did not require the constitution which 
 should be formed to be submitted to the people for ap- 
 proval, and that it was only the land propositions which 
 were to be submitted. You will observe the language 
 is that the propositions are to be "ratified by the people 
 at the election for the adoption of the constitution." 
 Would it have been possible to ratify the land propo- 
 sitions "at the election for the adoption of the constitu- 
 tion," unless such an election was to be held? 
 
 When one thing is required by a contract or law to be 
 done, the doing of which is made dependent upon, and 
 cannot be performed without, the doing of some other 
 thing, is not that other thing just as much required by 
 the contract or law as the first? It matters not in what 
 part of the act, nor in what phraseology, the intention 
 of the legislature is expressed, so you can clearly ascer- 
 tain what it is ; and whenever that intention is ascer- 
 tained from an examination of the language used, such 
 intention is part of and a requirement of the law. Can 
 any candid, fair-minded man read the section I have 
 quoted, and say that the intention to have the constitu- 
 tion which should be formed submitted to the people 
 for their adoption is not clearly expressed? In my 
 judgment there can be no controversy among honest 
 men upon a proposition so plain as this. Mr. Douglas 
 has never pretended to deny, so far as I am aware, 
 that the Toombs amendment, as originally introduced, 
 did require a submission of the constitution to the peo- 
 ple. This amendment of Mr. Toombs was referred to 
 the committee of which Mr. Douglas was chairman, and 
 reported back by him on the 30tli of June, with the 
 words "and ratified by the people at the election for the 
 adoption of the constitution" stricken out. I have here 
 a copy of the bill as reported back by Mr. Douglas to 
 substantiate the statement I make. Various other alter- 
 ations were also made in the bill to which I shall pres- 
 ently have occasion to call attention. There was no 
 other clause in the original Toombs bill requiring a sub- 
 mission of the constitution to the people than the one I 
 have read, and there was no clause whatever, after that 
 .was struck out, in the bill, as reported back by Judge
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 311 
 
 Douglas, requiring a submission. I will now introduce 
 a witness whose testimony cannot be impeached, he ac- 
 knowledging himself to have been one of the conspira- 
 tors, and privy to the fact about which he testifies. 
 
 Senator Bigler, alluding to the Toombs bill, as it was 
 called, and which, after sundry amendments, passed the 
 Senate, and to the propriety of submitting the constitu- 
 tion which should be formed to a vote of the people, 
 made the following statement in his place in the Senate, 
 December 9, 1897. I read from Part I, Congressional 
 Globe of last session, paragraph 21 : 
 
 I was present when that subject was discussed by sen- 
 ators, 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 the most intelligent on the subject that in 
 view of all the difficulties surrounding that Territory, 
 [and'l the danger of any experiment at that time of a 
 popular vote, it would be better that there should be no 
 such provision in the Toombs bill ; and it is my under- 
 standing, in all the intercourse I had, that the convention 
 would make a constitution and send it here without sub- 
 mitting it to the popular vote. 
 
 In speaking of this meeting again on the 21st of De- 
 cember, 1857 (Congressional Globe, same volume, page 
 113), Senator Bigler said: 
 
 Nothing was farther 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 the convention. This impression was 
 the stronger because I thought the spirit of the bill in- 
 fringed upon the doctrine of non-intervention, to which I 
 had great aversion ; but with the hope of accomplishing 
 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 be- 
 fore 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 :
 
 312 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 "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 rejec- 
 tion ; which, if accepted by the convention and ratified by 
 the people at the election for the adoption of the consti- 
 tution, shall be obligatory upon the United States, and upon 
 the said State of Kansas." 
 
 The bill read in 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 confer- 
 ence 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. 
 
 I am not now seeking to prove that Douglas was in 
 the plot to force a constitution upon Kansas without 
 allowing the people to vote directly upon it. I shall at- 
 tend to that branch of the subject by and by.' My ob- 
 ject now is to prove the existence of the plot, what the 
 design was, and I ask if I have not already done so. 
 Here are the facts : 
 
 The introduction of a bill on the 7th of March, 1856, 
 providing for the calling of a convention in Kansas to 
 form a State constitution, and providing that the con- 
 stitution should be submitted to the people for adoption ; 
 an amendment to this bill, proposed by Mr. Toombs, 
 containing the same requirement ; a reference of these 
 various bills to the Committee on Territories ; a con- 
 sultation of senators to determine whether it was ad- 
 visable to have the constitution submitted for ratifica- 
 tion ; the determination that it was not advisable ; and a 
 report of the bill back to the Senate next morning, with 
 the clause providing for the submission stricken out — 
 could evidence be more complete to establish the first 
 part of the charge I have made of a plot having been 
 entered into by somebody to have a constitution adopted 
 without submitting it to the people? 
 
 Now, for the other part of the charge. That Judge 
 Douglas was in this plot, whether knowingly or igno- 
 rantly, is not material to my purpose. The charge is 
 that he was an instrument cooperating in the project to 
 have a constitution formed and put into operation with-
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 313 
 
 out affording the people an opportunity to pass upon 
 it. The first evidence to sustain the charge is the fact 
 that he reported back the Toombs amendment with the 
 clause providing for the submission stricken out : this, 
 in connection with his speech in the Senate on the 9th 
 of December, 1857 {Congressional Globe, Part I, page 
 14), wherein he stated : 
 
 That during the last Congress, I [Mr. Douglas'] re- 
 ported 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. 
 
 This of itself ought to be sufficient to show that my 
 colleague was an instrument in the plot to have a con- 
 stitution put in force without submitting it to the people, 
 and to forever close his mouth from attempting to deny. 
 No man can reconcile his acts and former declarations 
 with his present denial, and the only charitable conclu- 
 sion would be that he was being used by others with- 
 out knowing it. Whether he is entitled to the benefit of 
 even this excuse, you must judge on a candid hearing of 
 the facts I shall present. When the charge was first 
 made in the United States Senate, by Mr. Bigler, that 
 my colleague had voted for an Enabling Act which put 
 a government in operation without submitting the con- 
 stitution to the people, my colleague {Congressional 
 Globe, last session. Part I, page 24) stated: 
 
 I will ask the senator to show me an intimation from 
 any one member of the Senate, in the whole deoate 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 oppo- 
 nents 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. 
 
 I knew, at the time this statement was made, that I 
 had urged the very objection to the Toombs bill two 
 years before, that it did not provide for the submission
 
 314 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 of the constitution. You will find my remarks, made 
 on the 2d of July, 1856, in the appendix to the Con- 
 gressional Globe of that year, page 179, urging this very 
 objection. Do you ask why I did not expose him at the 
 time? I will tell you. Mr. Douglas was then doing 
 good service against the Lecompton iniquity. The Re- 
 publicans were then engaged in a hand-to-hand fight 
 with the National Democracy, to prevent the bringing of 
 Kansas into the Union as a slave State against the 
 wishes of its inhabitants, and of course I was unwilling 
 to turn our guns from the common enemy to strike 
 down an ally. 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 
 the submission of the constitution to the people, made 
 another statement, which is to be found in the same 
 volume of the Congressional Globe, page 22, in which he 
 says: 
 
 That the bill was silent on the subject is 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 constitu- 
 tion would be submitted to the people. 
 
 Whether this statement is consistent with the state- 
 ment just before made, that had the point been made it 
 would have been yielded to, or that it was a new dis- 
 covery, you will determine ; for if the public records do 
 not convict and condemn him, he may go uncondemned, 
 so far as I am concerned. I make no use here of the 
 testimony of Senator Bigler to show that Judge Doug- 
 las must have been privy to the consultation held at his 
 house, when it was determined not to submit the consti- 
 tution to the people, because Judge Douglas denies it, 
 and I wish to use his own acts and declarations, which 
 are abundantly sufficient for my purpose. 
 
 I come to a piece of testimony which disposes of all 
 these various pretenses which have been set up for strik- 
 ing out of the original Toombs proposition the clause re- 
 quiring a submission of the constitution to the people, 
 and shows that it was not done either by accident, by 
 inadvertence, or because it was believed that the bill, 
 being silent on the subject, the constitution would 
 necessarily be submitted to the people for approval.
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 315 
 
 What will you think, after listening to the facts already 
 presented to show that there was a design with those 
 who concocted the Toombs bill, as amended, not to sub- 
 mit the constitution to the people, if I now bring before 
 you the amended bill as Judge Douglas reported it back, 
 and show the clause of the original bill requiring sub- 
 mission was not only struck out, but that other clauses 
 were inserted in the bill putting it absolutely out of the 
 power of the convention to submit the constitution to 
 the people for approval, had they desired to do so? If I 
 can produce such evidence as that, will you not all agree 
 that it clinches and establishes forever all I charged at 
 Chicago, and more too? 
 
 I propose now to furnish that evidence. It will be 
 remembered that Mr. Toombs's bill provided for holding 
 an election for delegates to form a constitution under the 
 supervision of commissioners to be appointed by the 
 President, and in the bill, as reported back by Judge 
 Douglas, these words, not to be found in the original 
 bill, are inserted at the close of the nth section, viz.: 
 
 And until the complete execution of this act no other 
 election shall be held in said Territory. 
 
 This clause put it out of the power of the convention 
 to refer to the people for adoption ; it absolutely pro- 
 hibited the holding of any other election than that for 
 the election of delegates, till that act was completely 
 executed, which would not have been until Kansas ^yas 
 admitted as a State, or, at all events, till her constitution 
 was fully prepared and ready for submission to Con- 
 gress for admission. Other amendments reported by 
 Judge Douglas to the original Toombs bill clearly show 
 that the intention was to enable Kansas to become a 
 State without any further action than simply a resolu- 
 tion of admission. The amendment reported by Mr. 
 Douglas, that "until the next congressional apportion- 
 ment the said State shall have one representative," 
 clearly shows this, no such provision being contained in 
 the original Toombs bill. For what other earthly pur- 
 pose could the clause to prevent any other election in 
 Kansas, except that of delegates, till it was admitted as 
 a State, have been inserted except to prevent a submis- 
 sion of the constitution, when formed, to the people? 
 
 The Toombs bill did not pass in the exact shape in 
 which Judge Douglas reported it. Several amendments
 
 3i6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. iS 
 
 were made to it in the Senate. I am now dealing with 
 the action of Judge Douglas as connected with that bill, 
 and speak of the bill as he recommended it. The facts 
 I have stated in regard to this matter appear upon the 
 records, which I have here present to show to any man 
 who wishes to look at them. They establish, beyond the 
 power of controversy, all the charges I have made, and 
 show that Judge Douglas was made use of as an instru- 
 ment by others, or else knowingly was a party to the 
 scheme to have a government put in force over the 
 people of Kansas, without giving them an opportunity 
 to pass upon it. That others high in position m the so- 
 called Democratic party were parties to such a scheme is 
 confessed by Governor Bigler ; and the only reason why 
 the scheme was not carried, and Kansas long ago forced 
 into the Union as a slave State, is the fact that the Re- 
 publicans were sufficiently strong in the House of Rep- 
 resentatives to defeat the measure. 
 
 Extract from Mr. Douglas's Speech Made at 
 Jacksonville, and Referred to by Mr. Lincoln 
 in His Opening at Charleston. 
 
 I have been reminded by a friend behind me that 
 there is another topic upon which there has been a 
 desire expressed that I should speak. I am told that 
 Mr. Lyman Trumbull, who has the good fortune to 
 hold a seat in the United States Senate, in violation of 
 the bargain between him and Lincoln, was here the 
 other day and occupied his time in making certain 
 charges against me, involving, if they be true, moral 
 turpitude. I am also informed that the charges he 
 made here were substantially the same as those made 
 by him in the city of Chicago, which were printed in 
 the newspapers of that city. I now propose to answer 
 those charges and to annihilate every pretext that an 
 honest man has ever had for repeating them. 
 
 In order that I may meet these charges fairly, I will 
 read them, as made by Mr. Trumbull in his Chicago 
 speech, in his own language. He says: 
 
 Now, fellow-citizens, I make the distinct charge that 
 there was a preconcerted arrangement and plot entered into 
 by the very men who now claim credit for opposing a 
 constitution not submitted to the people, to have a con-
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 317 
 
 stitution formed and put in force without giving the people 
 an opportunity to pass upon it. This, my friends, is a 
 serious charge, but I charge it to-night, that the very men 
 who traverse the country under banners, proclaiming pop- 
 ular sovereignty, by design concocted a bill on purpose 
 to force a constitution upon that people. 
 
 Again, speaking to some one in the crov^d, he says : 
 
 And you want to satisfy yourself that he was in the 
 plot to force a constitution upon that people ? I will sat- 
 isfy you. I will cram the truth down any honest man's 
 throat, until he cannot deny it, and to the man who does 
 deny it, I will cram the lie down his throat till he shall 
 cry enough ! It is preposterous — it is the most damnable 
 effrontery that man ever put on to conceal a scheme to 
 defraud and cheat the people out of their rights, and then 
 claim credit for it. 
 
 That is polite and decent language for a senator of 
 the United States. Remember that that language w^as 
 used without any provocation whatever from me. I 
 had not alluded to him in any manner in a'ny speech 
 that I had made ; hence it was w^ithout provocation. 
 As soon as he sets his foot within the State, he makes 
 the direct charge that I was a party to a plot to force 
 a constitution upon the people of Kansas against their 
 will, and knowing that it would be denied, he talks 
 about cramming the lie down the throat of any man 
 who shall deny it, until he cries enough. 
 
 Why did he take it for granted that it would be 
 denied, unless he knew it to be false? Why did he 
 deem it necessary to make a threat in advance that he 
 would "cram the lie" down the throat of any man that 
 should deny it? I have no doubt that the entire Aboli- 
 tion party consider it very polite for Mr. Trumbull to 
 go round uttering calumnies of that kind, bullying and 
 talking of cramming lies down men's throats ; but if I 
 deny any of his lies by calling him a liar, they are 
 shocked at the indecency of the language; hence, to- 
 day, instead of calling him a liar, I intend to prove that 
 he is one. 
 
 I wish, in the first .place, to refer to the evidence 
 adduced by Trumbull, at Chicago, to sustain his 
 charge. He there declared that Mr. Toombs, of 
 Georgia, introduced a bill into Congress authorizing 
 the people of Kansas to form a constitution and come
 
 3i8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 into the Union, that, when introduced, it contained a 
 clause requiring the constitution to be submitted to 
 the people, and that I struck out the words of that 
 clause. 
 
 Suppose it were true that there was such a clause in 
 the bill, and that I struck it out, is that proof of a plot 
 to force a constitution upon a people against their will? 
 Bear in mind that, from the days of George Washing- 
 ton to the administration of Franklin Pierce, there has 
 pever been passed by Congress a bill requiring the 
 submission of a constitution to the people. If Trum- 
 bull's charge, that I struck out that clause, were true, 
 it would only prove that I had reported the bill in the 
 exact shape of every bill of like character that passed 
 under Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jack- 
 son, or any other president, to the time of the then 
 present administration. I ask you would that be 
 evidence of a design to force a constitution on a people 
 against their will? If it were so, it would be evidence 
 against Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Van 
 Buren, arid every other president. 
 
 But upon examination, it turns out that the Toombs 
 bill never did contain a clause requiring the constitu- 
 tion to be submitted. Hence no such clause was ever 
 stricken out by me or anybody else. It is true, how- 
 ever, that the Toombs bill and its authors all took it 
 for granted that the constitution would be submitted. 
 There had never been in the history of this government 
 any attempt made to force a constitution upon an un- 
 willing people, and nobody dreamed that any such at- 
 tempt would be made, or deemed it necessary to pro- 
 vide for such a contingency. If such a clause was neces- 
 sary in Mr. Trumbull's opinion, why did he not offer an 
 amendment to that effect? 
 
 In order to give more pertinency to that question, I 
 will read an extract from Trumbull's speech in the 
 Senate, on the Toombs bill, made on the 2d day of 
 July, 1856. He said: 
 
 We are asked to amend this bill, and make it perfect, 
 and a liberal spirit seems to be manifested on the part 
 of some senators to have a fair bill. Tt is difficult, I 
 admit, to frame a bill that will give satisfaction to all ; 
 but to approach it, or come near it, I think two things 
 must be done.
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 319 
 
 The first, then, he goes on to say, was the application 
 of the Wilmot proviso to the Territories, and the 
 second the repeal of all the laws passed by the ter- 
 ritorial legislature. He did not then say that it was 
 necessary to put in a clause requiring the submission 
 of the constitution. Why, if he thought such a pro- 
 vision necessary, did he not introduce it? He says in 
 his speech that he was invited to offer amendments. 
 Why did he not do so? He cannot pretend that he 
 had no chance to do this, for he did ofTer some amend- 
 ments, but none requiring submission, 
 
 I now proceed to show that Mr. Trumbull knew at 
 the time that the bill was silent as to the subject of 
 submission, and also that he, and everybody else, took 
 it for granted that the constitution would be sub- 
 mitted. Now for the evidence. In the second speech he 
 says : "The bill in many of its features meets my appro- 
 bation." So he did not think it so very bad. 
 
 Further on he says: 
 
 In regard to the measure introduced by the senator 
 from Georgia IMr. Toombs^, and recommended by the 
 committee. I regard it, in many respects, as a most excel- 
 lent bill ; but we must look at it in the light of surrounding 
 circumstances. In the condition of things now existing in 
 the country, I do not consider it as a safe measure, nor one 
 which will give peace, and I will give my reasons. First, 
 it aflfords no immediate relief. It provides for taking 
 a census of the voters in the Territory, for an election 
 in November, and the assembling of a convention in 
 December, to form, if it thinks proper, a constitution for 
 Kansas, preparatory to its admission into the Union as a 
 State. It is not until December that the convention is to 
 meet. It would take some time to form a constitution. I 
 suppose that constitution would have to be ratified by the 
 people before it becomes valid. 
 
 He there expressly declared that he supposed, under 
 the bill, the constitution would have to be submitted to 
 the people before it became valid. He went on to say: 
 
 No provision is made in this bill for such a ratification. 
 This is objectionable to my mind. I do not think the 
 people should be bound by a constitution, without passing 
 upon it directly, themselves. 
 
 Why did he not ofifer an amendment providing for 
 such a submission, if he thought it necessary? Not- 
 withstanding the absence of such a clause, he took it
 
 320 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 for granted that the constitution would have to be 
 ratified by the people, under the bill. 
 
 In another part of the same speech, he says : 
 
 There is nothing said in this bill, so far as I have dis- 
 covered, about submitting the constitution which is to be 
 framed to the people, for their sanction or rejection. 
 Perhaps the convention would have the right to submit it, 
 if it should think proper ; but it is certainly not com- 
 pelled to do so, according to the provisions of the bill. If 
 it is to be submitted to the people, it will take time, and 
 it will not be until some time next j-ear that this new 
 constitution, affirmed and ratified by the people, would 
 be submitted here to Congress for its acceptance, and 
 what is to be the condition of that people in the mean 
 time? 
 
 You see that his argument then was that the Toombs 
 bill would not get Kansas into the Union quick 
 enough, and was objectionable on that account. He 
 had no fears about this submission, or why did he not 
 introduce an amendment to meet the case? [A voice: 
 ''Why didn't you? You were chairman of the committee."] 
 I will answer that question for you. 
 
 In the first place, no such provision had ever before 
 been put in any similar act passed by Congress. I 
 did not suppose that there was an honest man who 
 would pretend that the omission of such a clause 
 furnished evidence of a conspiracy or attempt to impose 
 on the people. It could not be expected that such of us 
 as did not think that omission was evidence of such a 
 scheme would offer such an amendment; but if Trum- 
 bull then believed what he now says, why did he not 
 offer the amendment, and try to prevent it, when he 
 was, as he says, invited to do so? 
 
 In this connection I will tell you what the main point 
 of discussion was. There was a bill pending to admit 
 Kansas whenever she should have a population of 
 93,420, that being the ratio required for a member of 
 Congress. Under that bill Kansas could not have be- 
 come a State for some years, because she could not 
 have had the requisite population. Mr. Toombs took 
 it into his head to bring in a bill to admit Kansas then, 
 with only twenty-five or thirty thousand people, and 
 the question was whether we would allow Kansas to 
 come in under this bill, or keep her out under mine 
 until she had 93,420 people. The committee considered
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 321 
 
 that question, and overruled me by deciding in favor 
 of the immediate admission of Kansas and I reported 
 accordingly. I hold in my hand a copy of the report 
 which I made at that time. I will read from it: 
 
 The point upon which your committee have entertained 
 the most serious and grave doubts in regard to the pro- 
 priety of indorsing the proposition relates to the fact that, 
 in the absence of any census of the inhabitants, there is 
 reason to apprehend that the Territory does not contain 
 sufficient population to entitle them to demand admission 
 under the treaty with France, if we take the ratio of rep- 
 resentation for a member of Congress as the rule. 
 
 Thus you see that in the written report accompany- 
 ing the bill, I said that the great difficulty with the 
 committee was the question of population. In the 
 same report I happened to refer to the question of 
 submission. Now, listen to what I said about that: 
 
 In the opinion of your committee, whenever a consti- 
 tution shall be formed in any Territory, preparatory to 
 its admission into the Union as a State, justice, the 
 genius of our institutions, the whole theory of our 
 republican system, imperatively demand that the voice of 
 the people shall be fairly expressed, and their will em- 
 bodied in that fundamental law without fraud or violence, 
 or intimidation, or any other improper or unlawful influ- 
 ence, and subject to no other restrictions than those im- 
 posed by the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 I read this from the report I made at the time on the 
 Toombs bill. I will read yet another passage from the 
 same report. After setting out the features of the 
 Toombs bill, I contrast it with the proposition of 
 Senator Seward, saying: 
 
 The revisal proposition of the senator from Georgia 
 refers all matters in dispute to the decision of the present 
 population, with guarantees of fairness and safeguards 
 against frauds and violence, to which no reasonable man 
 can find just grounds of exception, while the senator from 
 New York, if his proposition is designed to recognize 
 and impart vitality to the Topeka constitution, proposes 
 to disfranchise not only all the emigrants who have arrived 
 in the Territory this year, but all the law-abiding men 
 who reftised to join in the act of open rebellion against 
 the constituted authorities of the Territory last year, by 
 making the unauthorized and unlawful action of a political 
 party the fundamental law of the whole people.
 
 322 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 ^ Then, again, I repeat that under that bill the ques- 
 tion is to be referred to the present population to 
 decide for or against coming into the Union under the 
 constitution they may adopt. 
 
 Mr. Trumbull, when at Chicago, rested his charge 
 upon the allegation that the clause requiring submis- 
 sion was originally in the bill, and was stricken out by 
 me. When that falsehood was exposed by a publica- 
 tion of the record, he went tc Alton and made another 
 speech, repeating the charge, and referring to other 
 and different evidence to sustain it. He saw that he 
 was caught in his first falsehood, so he changed the 
 issue, and instead of resting upon the allegation of 
 striking out, he made it rest upon the declaration that 
 I had introduced a clause into the bill prohibiting the 
 people from voting upon the constitution. I am told 
 that he made the same charge here that he made at 
 Alton, that I had actually introduced and incorporated 
 into the bill a clause which prohibited the people from 
 voting upon their constitution. I hold his Alton 
 speech in my hand, and will read the amendment which 
 he alleges that I offered. It is in these words : 
 
 And until the complete execution of this act no other 
 election shall be held in said Territory. 
 
 Trum.bull says the object of that amendment v/as to 
 prevent the convention from submitting the constitu- 
 tion to a vote of the people. I will read what he said 
 at Alton on that subject: 
 
 This clause put it out of the power of the convention, 
 had it been so disposed, to submit the constitution to the 
 people for adoption ; for it absolutely prohibited the hold- 
 ing of any other election, than that for the election of 
 delegates, till that act was completely executed, which 
 would not have been till Kansas was admitted as a State, 
 or, at all events, till her constitution was fully prepared 
 and ready for submission to Congress for admission. 
 
 Now, do you suppose that Mr. Trumbull supposed 
 that that clause prohibited the convention from sub- 
 mitting the constitution to the people, when, in his 
 speech in the Senate, he declared that the convention 
 had a right to submit it? In his Alton speech, as will 
 be seen by the extract which I have read, he declared 
 that the clause put it out of the power of the conven-
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 323 
 
 tion to submit the constitution, and in his speech in 
 the Senate he said: 
 
 There is nothing said in this bill, so far as I have dis- 
 covered, about submitting the constitution which is to be 
 formed to the people, for their sanction or rejection. 
 Perhaps the convention could have the right to submit 
 it, if it should think proper, but it is certainly not com- 
 pelled to do so according to the provisions of the bill. 
 
 Thus you see that, in Congress, he declared the bill 
 to be silent on the subject, and a few days since, at 
 Alton, he made a speech, and said that there was a 
 provision in the bill prohibiting submission. 
 
 I have two answers to make to that. In the first 
 place, the amendment which he quotes as depriving the 
 people of an opportunity to vote upon the constitution 
 was stricken out on my motion — absolutely stricken 
 out and not voted on at all! In the second place, in 
 lieu of it, a provision was voted in authorizing the 
 convention to order an election whenever it pleased. I 
 will read. After Trumbull had made his speech in the 
 Senate, declaring that the constitution would probably 
 be submitted to the people, although the bill was silent 
 upon that subject, I made a few remarks, and offered 
 two amendments, which you may find in the appendix 
 to the Congressional Globe, Volume XXXIII, first 
 session of the thirty-fourth Congress, page 795. 
 
 I quote: 
 
 Mr. Douglas : I have an amendment to offer from the 
 Committee on Territories. On page 8, section 11, strike out 
 the words "until the complete execution of this act no 
 other election shall be held in said Territory," and insert 
 the amendment which I hold in my hand.' 
 
 The amendment was as follows: 
 
 That all persons who shall possess the other qualifica- 
 tions prescribed for voters uiider this act, and who shall 
 have been bona fide inhabitants of said Territory since 
 its organization, and who shall have absented themselves 
 therefrom in consequence of the disturbances therein, and 
 who shall return before the first day of October next, 
 and become bona fide inhabitants of the Territory, with 
 the intent of making it their permanent home, and shall 
 present satisfactory evidence of these facts to the Board 
 of Commissioners, shall be entitled to vote at said election.
 
 324 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 and shall have their names placed on said corrected list 
 of voters for that purpose.' 
 
 That amendment was adopted unanimously. After 
 its adoption, the record shows the following: 
 
 Mr. Douglas : I have another amendment to offer from 
 the committee to follow the amendment which has been 
 adopted. The bill reads now : "And until the complete exe- 
 cution of this act, no other election shall be held in said 
 Territory." It has been suggested that it should be modi- 
 fied in this way ; "And to avoid all conflict in the complete 
 execution of this act, all other elections in said Territory 
 are hereby postponed until such time as said convention 
 shall appoint" ; so that they can appoint the day in the 
 event that there should be a failure to come into the 
 Union. 
 
 This amendment was also agreed to without dissent. 
 
 Thus you see that the amendment quoted by Trum- 
 bull at Alton as evidence against me, instead of being 
 put to the bill by me, was stricken out on my mo- 
 tion and never became a part thereof at all. You 
 also see that the substituted clause expressly author- 
 ized the convention to appoint such day of election as 
 it should deem proper. 
 
 Mr. Trumbull, when he made that speech, knew 
 these facts. He forged his evidence from beginning 
 to end, and by falsifying the record he endeavors to 
 bolster up his false charge. I ask you what you think 
 of Trumbull thus going around the country, falsifying 
 and garbling the public records? I ask you whether 
 you will sustain a man who will descend to the in- 
 famy of such conduct? 
 
 Mr. 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.
 
 PART II 
 
 SPEECHES AND DEBATES 
 
 1858-1859
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface ......... vii 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Lincoln the Ideal American. By Charles Evans 
 Hughes ........ ix 
 
 Joint Debate with Douglas — Concluded 
 
 Fourth Joint Debate, at Charleston — Concluded. 
 September i8, 1858 ...... i 
 
 Fifth Joint Debate, at Galesburg. October 7, 
 1858 36 
 
 Sixth Joint Debate, at Quincy. October 13, 
 1858 85 
 
 Seventh and Last Joint Debate at Alton. Oc- 
 tober 15, 1858 ....... 136 
 
 Speeches (March i, 1859, to September 30, 1859) 
 Speech at Chicago on the Night of the Mu- 
 nicipal Election. March i, 1859 . . . 193 
 
 Speech at Columbus, Ohio. September 16, 1859, . 201" 
 
 Address to Kentuckians on Douglas's Fallacies, 
 Delivered at Cincinnati, Ohio. September 17, 
 1859 240 
 
 Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural 
 Society, at Milwaukee. September 30, 1859 . 277
 
 4
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In this volume are comprised Douglas's 
 Reply and Lincoln's Rejoinder in their Fourth 
 Joint Debate, at Charleston, 111., together with 
 the last three debates. The memorable forensic 
 contest was formally closed at Alton on October 
 15, 1858, but as a matter of fact it was continued 
 throughout the next year : by Douglas in a 
 speech-making tour through the South, with 
 Presidential designs, and in an article in Harper's 
 Magazine ; and by Lincoln in speeches at Chi- 
 cago, Columbus, and Cincinnati. These three 
 addresses of Lincoln are also included in the 
 present volume, as well as an address before the 
 Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, in which 
 he attacked slavery as the enemy of free labor. 
 
 Vll
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Lincoln the Ideal American.^ 
 
 By Charles Evans Hughes. 
 
 There is one man who presents to the Ameri- 
 can people above all others in his many-sided 
 greatness the type, the representative, of those 
 qualities which distinguish American character 
 and make possible the maintenance of our na- 
 tional strength, and in Abraham Lincoln we rec- 
 ognize not simply one who gave his life for his 
 country and rendered the most important service 
 that any man could render in the preservation of 
 the Union but one who seemed to have centred 
 in himself those many attributes which we recog- 
 nize as the sources of our national power. He 
 is, par excellence, the true American. 
 
 I wish in our colleges and wherever young 
 men are trained, particularly for political life, 
 that there could be a course in Lincoln. I wish 
 our young men could be taken through the long 
 efforts of his career, I wish they could become 
 more intimately acquainted with the addresses 
 that he delivered, I wish that they could get in 
 closer touch with that remarkable personality, 
 then they would never find it possible to take 
 a low or morbid view of American opportunity. 
 
 ^From an extemporaneous address delivered before 
 the Republican Club of New York. 
 
 ix
 
 X INTRODUCTION 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was an acute man, but we 
 erect no monuments to shrewdness. We have no 
 memorials by which we desire to perpetuate the 
 records of American smartness. Skill in manipu- 
 lation, acuteness in dealing for selfish purposes, 
 may win their temporary victories, but the acute- 
 ness that the American people admire is that 
 acuteness which is devoted to the solution of 
 problems affecting their posterity and directly re- 
 lated to their interests, and which is employed 
 unselfishly and for the benefit of the people, apart 
 from any individual interest. 
 
 I have long been a student of Lincoln. I have 
 marveled at the ability which he displayed. 
 There has been no greater exponent of that 
 shrewdness of intellect which so pre-eminently 
 characterizes the American ; but Abraham Lin- 
 coln devoted all his talents, his extraordinary per- 
 spicacity, to the welfare of the people. He was 
 a man of principle. He was a man, all of whose 
 acts were founded upon a recognition of the 
 fundamental principles which underlie our Re- 
 public. Said he on one occasion, *^I have no 
 sentiments except those which I have derived 
 from a study of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence." He was profoundly an apostle of liber- 
 ty. I have said that he was a man of principle. 
 Rarely has the doctrine of the relation of the 
 nation to the States, and of government to the 
 individual, been more lucidly expounded than he 
 expounded it : "The nation must control what- 
 ever concerns the nation. The States or any 
 minor political community must control what- 
 ever exclusively concerns them. The individual 
 shall control whatever exclusively concerns him. 
 That is real popular sovereignty.'*
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 AN EXPERT LOGICIAN 
 
 He was an expert logician. He brought to 
 bear upon his opponents the batteries of remorse- 
 less logic. He had a profound confidence in 
 the reasoning judgment of the American people. 
 He disdained all efl:'orts to capture the populace 
 by other means. There is nothing more illumi- 
 nating than his conduct in that grand campaign 
 against Douglas in 1858. He developed his line 
 of attack in a question. He brought to bear upon 
 his opponents an extraordinary ability of analy- 
 sis. He eviscerated the subject of discussion 
 and he presented the whole matter that was then 
 before the great American nation in its bare 
 bones, in a perfectly cool and logical considera- 
 tion ; and, while he lost the campaign for the 
 senatorship, he made himself the apostle of 
 thinking America in its opposition to the exten- 
 sion of slavery. He had one foundation prin- 
 ciple, and that was this : ''Slavery," he said, "is 
 wrong. It may be recognized where it consti- 
 tutionally exists, but shall it be extended ?" And 
 to every proposition that was presented by his 
 skilful, adroit opponent he presented not abuse, 
 not any appeal to the emotions of the multitude, 
 but cogent reasoning from which none could 
 escape ; and, while he lost the senatorship, he ap- 
 peared before the American people as represent- 
 ing their ideal of straightforward, honest repre- 
 sentation of the truth applicable to their crisis, 
 and received the highest honors within their gift. 
 
 There never has been an illustration, I venture 
 to say, within the memory of man where intellect 
 has exerted so potent a magnetism and where 
 loyalty has been commended simplv because rea-
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 son exerted its sway. I love to dwell upon these 
 historic events. Any American who has failed 
 to take advantage of their study has lost largely 
 his opportunity. 
 
 A HUMBLE MAN 
 
 Whenever you are tempted to think in a dis- 
 couraging manner of the future of the American 
 Republic you should read the annals of those 
 times when the Union itself was in the balance, 
 and you should realize how inevitably to the 
 demand of reason the American public respond 
 and how necessarily anything that cannot stand 
 against honest judgment must fail in this en- 
 lightened Republic. Lincoln was a humble man, 
 unpretentious and of lowly birth. He was with- 
 out affectation ; he was the most democratic of 
 men. No one that has ever lived among us has 
 been so much a brother to every man, however 
 lowly born or unfortunately circumstanced. His 
 was not the early training of those who, like many 
 of our distinguished men, had the advantages 
 afforded by parentage with noble traditions, 
 although in poor, circumstances, with schooling 
 and environment which would stimulate the lofti- 
 est of aspirations. He sprang from conditions 
 which would seem to stifle ambition. He simply 
 was a man, a great American, superior to all 
 the disadvantages which surrounded his birth 
 and early training, and there is no man who 
 walks in any station of life in any part of the 
 country but can call Lincoln his brother, his 
 friend, a man of like passions and like experiences 
 with himself. 
 
 We recognize some men for the services they 
 have rendered. They have deserved well of their
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 country. We recognize Lincoln for his service. 
 No one has deserved better of his country. He 
 rendered a service which cannot be eulogized in 
 too extravagant terms ; but we forget any- 
 thing that Lincoln ever did or anything that Lin- 
 coln ever said in the recognition of the great 
 manhood that was his, which transcended any- 
 thing he did because of what he was. He 
 was a progressive man ; he was sensitive to the 
 demands of his day. Three or four years after 
 the outbreak of the war, he said : "I have not 
 controlled events ; I confess events have con- 
 trolled me. After three years we find ourselves 
 in a situation which neither party and no man 
 devised or expected." He was a man who met 
 each demand as it arose. To the radicals he was 
 too conservative ; to the conservatives he was too 
 radical. Few in the community praised him dur- 
 ing his life. Probably no man in the whole his- 
 tory of the Republic was ever so severely criti- 
 cised and lampooned as was Lincoln in the dark 
 days of 1864, when through years of trouble he 
 had sustained a burden which would have broken 
 down an ordinary man. He said in August of 
 that year that it seemed there were no friends, 
 and he looked forward to the next election as al- 
 most certain to go against the party which he 
 represented. 
 
 A MAN OF GRIEF 
 
 Without cacrilege I may say he was ''a man 
 of sorrows and acquainted with grief." And, fre- 
 quently alone, without the sustaining encourage- 
 ment of even those who were close to him in his 
 official family, he endeavored to exercise that 
 judgment which history commends and that ex-
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 traordinary talent for analyzing difficult situa- 
 tions which is the marvel of our later day. 
 
 GENTLE BUT FIRM 
 
 He was a humane man, a man of emotion, 
 which he never allowed to control his reason ; a 
 man of sentiment, of deep feeling. He was 
 a lowly man, never asserted himself as superior 
 to his fellows, but he could rise in the dignity 
 of his manhood to a majesty that has seldom been 
 equaled by any ruler of any people under any 
 form of government. When Lee sent to Grant 
 and suggested that there might be some talk with 
 regard to the disposition that might be made of 
 public affairs in the interest of peace, and Grant 
 forwarded the communication, or the substance 
 of it, to the President, the President, without a 
 moment's hesitation, and without consultation 
 with any one, wrote in Stanton's name : "The 
 President directs me to say that he wishes you 
 to have no conference with General Lee unless 
 it be for capitulation of General Lee's army, or 
 on some minor or purely military matter. He 
 instructs me to say that you are not to decide, 
 discuss or confer upon any political questions. 
 Such questions the President holds in his own 
 hands, and will submit them to no military 
 conferences or conventions." 
 
 It was not an assertion of any superiority 
 which he felt above his brother man. It was 
 simply the realization of the dignity of his office 
 and its responsibility in a supreme crisis, and the 
 willingness to assume that responsibiJity before
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 the American people, with that innate confidence 
 of which his supreme intellect could never suffer 
 him to be deprived. 
 
 TRUST IN THE PEOPLE 
 
 We see in Lincoln patience, the reasoning 
 faculty, humanity, the democratic sentiment, pa- 
 tient consideration, all combined; and we may 
 well learn from him the lesson which at every 
 hour of our history we should well study. There 
 may be those who look with uncertainty upon our 
 future, who feel oppressed with the problems of 
 the day. I am not one of them. 
 
 "Why," said Lincoln, "should we not have pa- 
 tient confidence in the ultimate justice of the 
 American people?" 
 
 Why not, indeed? Who are the American 
 people? They are the most intelligent people 
 organized into any civil society on the face of this 
 broad earth. They have abundant opportunities 
 for education. They are keen and alert. They 
 are those whom you meet in every walk of life. 
 Their common sense is of general recognition 
 among all the people of the world. Why not 
 have patient confidence in the ultimate justice of 
 the American people? If we can only feel as 
 Lincoln felt, and derive our political sentiments 
 from a study of the principles of the Declaration 
 of Independence, and proceed as Lincoln did, 
 with remorseless logic, to the consideration of the 
 demands of every exigency, there can be no ques- 
 tion but what each problem will be solved, that 
 every decade of American history will witness 
 a further advance, and that the prosperity of the 
 future will far transcend anything that we have 
 realized in the past.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 ABUSES MUST BE CURED 
 
 Undoubtedly abuses exist; undoubtedly abuses 
 must be cured. If there is any man who 
 stands, or any set of men who think that by 
 astuteness they may stand in the way of progress, 
 and may prevent the correction of evils that exist, 
 let them beware ; they will find themselves impo- 
 tent. Progress will take no account of them. 
 The American people will advance step by step 
 surely and inevitably to a realization of their 
 ideals, and nothing whatever will stand in the 
 way in the course of time of that equality of op- 
 portunity and of equal rights before the law 
 which the Declaration of Independence an- 
 nounced and which the Constitution was intended 
 to conserve. 
 
 What we need to-day is a definition of evils. 
 What we need to-day is a delimiting of abuses ; 
 and let the whole power and strength of the Re- 
 public, as represented by those who are naturally 
 its leaders, be devoted to the careful and calm 
 consideration of remedies in order that we may 
 save our prosperity and at the same time render 
 every condition which threatens us impotent. 
 The will of the people, in the interest of the 
 people, the deliberate expression of the popu- 
 lar judgment, must in this country at all times be 
 supreme. There is plenty of coal on board; 
 every man is at his post ; steam is up, and the 
 only question is as to the direction and how to 
 avoid the sand-bars and shoals. It is a question 
 of the selection of the right course. I believe 
 most thoroughly in the judgment of the Ameri- 
 can people. Every man in this country worthy 
 of his citizenship desires to work.
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 He desires to get a fair opportunity to show 
 what is in him. He desires to have the advantages 
 which from boyhood he has been taught that this 
 American Repubhc affords. He desires to have 
 hurdles and obstacles which may have been put in 
 his way by special privilege or by a perversion of 
 government removed. He desires to have no dis- 
 advantage created by any ill-considered inter- 
 ference with government relations. But, on the 
 other hand, he intends to have the fullest advan- 
 tage and opportunity for the exercise of his in- 
 dividual power, with recognition of the equal 
 right of every other man to the exercise of his 
 individual power; so that all may be prosperous 
 and all may succeed ; and all that we need is to 
 put a stop to those things which are inimical to 
 our common advantage, insist upon our common 
 rights, reason together in regard to what is fair 
 and what is just, and accomplish things with full 
 ascertainment of the facts because they are right 
 and because the people, in their deliberate judg- 
 ment, demand that they should be accomplished. 
 
 A GRAND INHERITANCE 
 
 We are all fortunate that we have a Lincoln. 
 What would the country be if we were all a lot 
 of sordid money-grabbers, with nothing to point 
 to but the particular sharpness of A, or the special 
 success in some petty manipulation of B ? What 
 a grand thing it is that we have the inheritance 
 of the memory of a man who had everything that 
 we could aspire to in intellectual attainments, 
 who was endowed with a strength of moral pur- 
 pose, who was perfectly sincere in the interest 
 of the people, and who gave his life work and
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 eventually his life itself in order that our Union, 
 with its opportunities, might survive. 
 
 I am proud to have had an opportunity to 
 study Lincoln's life. If any have failed to take 
 advantage of that opportunity let them not allow 
 another year go by without making a thorough 
 study of that career. It is an epitome of Ameri- 
 canism. It will realize all that they have dreamed 
 of and all that they can possibly imagine. It is 
 simply a representation of a man upon whose 
 brow God had written the line of superiority, who 
 never arrogated it to himself except in his great 
 function of discharging the highest office of gov- 
 ernment. Defeated again and again, failing to 
 realize the ambition that was next to him, again 
 and again he arose, by sheer force of intellect and 
 character, until he came to the point where a 
 nation's burden was put upon him, and he carried 
 it so nobly that forever he will be to us the 
 nation's representative of the typical American. 
 
 -*.▼•
 
 LINCOLN THE CANDIDATE 
 
 (June, i860) 
 
 From a Photogravure after a Photograph by Hesler
 
 SPEECHES AND DEBATES 
 
 (1858-1859) 
 
 Fourth Joint Debate with Douglas at 
 Charleston — Concluded. 
 
 September i8, 1858. 
 Senator Douglas's Reply. 
 
 Ladies and Gentkmen: I had supposed that we as- 
 sembled here to-day for the purpose of a joint dis- 
 cussion between Mr. Lincoln and myself, upon the 
 political questions which now agitate the whole coun- 
 try. The rule of such discussions is, that the opening 
 speaker shall touch upon all the points he intends to 
 discuss, in order that his opponent, in reply, shall have 
 the opportunity of answering them. Let me ask you 
 what questions of public policy, relating to the wel- 
 fare of this State or the Union, has Mr. Lincoln dis- 
 cussed before you? Mr. Lincoln simply contented 
 himself at the outset by saying, that he was not in 
 favor of social and political equality between the white 
 man and the negro, and did not desire the law so 
 changed as to make the latter voters or eligible to 
 office. I am glad that I have at last succeeded in 
 getting an answer out of him upon this subject of 
 negro-citizenship and eligibility to office, for I have 
 been trying to bring him to the point on it ever since 
 this canvass commenced. 
 
 I will now call your attention to the question which 
 Mr. Lincoln has occupied his entire time in discussing. 
 He spent his whole hour in retailing a charge made 
 by Senator Trumbull against me. The circumstances 
 out of which that charge was manufactured, occurred 
 prior to the last presidential election, over two years
 
 2 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 ago. If the charge was true, why did not Trumbull 
 make it in 1856, when I was discussing the ques- 
 tions of that day all over this State with Lincoln and 
 him, and when it was pertinent to the then issue? He 
 was then as silent as the grave on the subject. If the 
 charge was true, the time to have brought it forward 
 was the canvass ol 1856, the year when the Toombs 
 bill passed the Se: ate. When the facts were fresh in 
 the public mind, when the Kansas question was the 
 paramount question of the day, and when such a 
 charge would have had a material bearing on the elec- 
 tion, why did he and Lincoln remain silent then, know- 
 ing that such a charge could be made and proved if 
 true? Were they not false to you and false to the 
 country in going through that entire campaign, conceal- 
 ing their knowledge of this enormous conspiracy which, 
 Mr. Trumbull says, he then knew and would not tell ? Mr, 
 Lincoln intimates, in his speech, a good reason why 
 Mr. Trumbull would not tell; for he says that it might 
 be true, as I proved that it was at Jacksonville, that 
 Trumbull was also in the plot, yet that the fact of 
 Trumbull's being in the plot would not in any way 
 relieve me. He illustrates this argument by suppos- 
 ing himself on trial for murder, and says that it would 
 be no extenuating circumstance if, on his trial, another 
 man was found to be a party to his crime. Well, if 
 Trumbull was in the plot, and concealed it in order 
 to escape the odium which would have fallen upon 
 himself, I ask you whether you can believe him now 
 when he turns State's evidence, and avows his own 
 infamy in order to implicate me. I am amazed that 
 Mr. Lincoln should now come forward and indorse 
 that charge, occupying his whole hour in reading Mr. 
 Trumbull's speech in support of it. Why, I ask, 
 does not Mr. Lincoln make a speech of his own in- 
 stead of taking up his time reading Trumbull's speech 
 at Alton? I supposed that Mr. Lincoln was capable of 
 making a public speech on his own account, or I should 
 not have accepted the banter from him for a joint 
 discussion. {"How about the charges f"] Do not 
 trouble yourselves; I am going to make my speech in 
 my own way, and I trust, as the Democrats listened 
 patiently and respectfully to Mr. Lincoln, that his 
 friends will not interrupt me when I am answering 
 him. When Mr. Trumbull returned from the East,
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 3 
 
 the first thing he did when he landed at Chicago was to 
 make a speech wholly devoted to assaults upon my 
 public character and public action. Up to that time 
 I had never alluded to his course in Congress, or to 
 him directly or indirectly; and hence his assaults upon 
 me were entirely without provocation and without ex- 
 cuse. Since then he has been traveling from one end 
 of the State to the other repeating his vile charge. I 
 propose now to read it in his own language: 
 
 Now, fellow-citizens, I make the distinct charge that 
 there was a preconcerted arrangement and plot entered into 
 by the very men who now claim credit for opposing a con- 
 stitution formed and put in force without giving the people 
 any opportunity to pass upon it. This, my friends, is a 
 serious charge, but I charge it to-night that the very men 
 who traverse the country under banners proclaiming pop- 
 ular sovereignty, by design concocted a bill on purpose to 
 force a constitution upon that people. 
 
 In answer to some in the crowd, who asked him a 
 question, Trumbull said: 
 
 And you want to satisfy yourself that he was in the plot 
 to force a constitution upon that people ? I will satisfy 
 you. I will cram the truth down any honest man's throat 
 until he cannot deny it. And to the man who does deny it, 
 I will cram the lie down his throat till he shall cry 
 enough. 
 
 It is preposterous — it is the most damnable effrontery 
 that man ever put on — to conceal a scheme to defraud 
 and cheat the people out of their rights, and then claim 
 credit for it. 
 
 That is the polite language Senator Trumbull applied 
 to me, his colleague, when I was two hundred miles 
 ofif. Why did he not speak out as boldly in the Senate 
 of the United States, and cram the lie down my throat 
 when I denied the charge, first made by Bigler, and 
 made him take it back? You all recollect how Bigler 
 assaulted me when I was engaged in a hand-to-hand 
 fight, resisting a scheme to force a constitution on the 
 people of Kansas against their will. He then attacked 
 me with this charge; but I proved its utter falsity, 
 nailed the slander to the counter, and made him take 
 the back track. There is not an honest man in 
 America who read that debate who will pretend that
 
 4 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 the charge is true. Trumbull was then present in the 
 Senate, face to face with me, and why did he not then 
 rise and repeat the charge, and say he would cram the 
 lie down my throat? I tell you that Trumbull then 
 knew it was a lie. He knew that Toombs denied that 
 there ever was a clause in the bill he brought forward, 
 calling for and requiring a submission of the Kansas 
 constitution to the people. I will tell you what the 
 facts of the case were. I introduced a bill to author- 
 ize the people of Kansas to form a constitution and 
 come into the Union as a State whenever they should 
 have the requisite population for a member of Con- 
 gress, and Mr. Toombs proposed a substitute, author- 
 izing the people of Kansas, with their then population 
 of only 25,000 to form a constitution, and come in at 
 once. The question at issue was, whether we would 
 admit Kansas with a population of 25,000, or make her 
 wait until she had the ratio entitling her to a represent- 
 ative in Congress, which was 93,420. That was the 
 point of dispute in the Committee on Territories, to 
 which both my bill and Mr. Toombs's substitute had 
 been referred. I was overruled by a majority of the 
 committee, my proposition rejected, and Mr. Toombs's 
 proposition to admit Kansas then, with her population 
 of 25,000, adopted. Accordingly a bill to carry out his 
 idea of immediate admission was reported as a substi- 
 tute for mine — the only points at issue being, as I have 
 already said, the question of population, and the adop- 
 tion of safeguards against frauds at the election. 
 Trumbull knew this, — the whole Senate knew it, — and 
 hence he was silent at that time. He waited until I 
 became engaged in this canvass, and finding that I was 
 showing up Lincoln's Abolitionism and negro-equality 
 doctrines, that I was driving Lincoln to the wall, and 
 white men would not support his rank Abolitionism, 
 he came back from the East and trumped up a system 
 of charges against me, hoping that I would be com- 
 pelled to occupy my entire time in defending myself, 
 so that I would not be able to show up the enormity 
 of the principles of the Abolitionists. Now the only 
 reason, and the true reason, why Mr. Lincoln has oc- 
 cupied the whole of his first hour in this issue between 
 Trumbull and myself, is to conceal from this vast 
 audience the real questions which divide the two great 
 parties.
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 5 
 
 I am not going to allow them to waste much of my 
 time with these personal matters. I have lived in this 
 State twenty-five years, most of that time have been in 
 public life, and my record is open to you all. If that 
 record is not enough to vindicate me from these petty, 
 malicious assaults, I despise ever to be elected to office 
 by slandering my opponents and traducing other men. 
 Mr. Lincoln asks you to elect him to the United States 
 Senate to-day solely because he and Trumbull can 
 slander me. Has he given any other reason? Has he 
 avowed what he was desirous to do in Congress on 
 any one question? He desires to ride into office, 
 not upon his own merits, not upon the merits and 
 soundness of his principles, but upon his success in 
 fastening a stale old slander upon me. 
 
 I wish you to bear in mind that up to the time of the 
 introduction of the Toombs bill, and after its introduc- 
 tion, there had never been an act of Congress for the 
 admission of a new State which contained a clause re- 
 quiring its constitution to be submitted to the people. 
 The general rule made the law silent on the subject, 
 taking it for granted that the people would demand 
 and compel a popular vote on the ratification of their 
 constitution. Such was the general rule under Wash- 
 ington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, and Polk, under 
 the Whig presidents and the Democratic presidents 
 from the beginning of the government down, and no- 
 body dreamed that an effort would ever be made to 
 abuse the power thus confided to the people of a 
 Territory. For this reason our attention was not 
 called to the fact of whether there was or was not a 
 clause in the Toombs bill compelling submission, but 
 it was taken for granted that the constitution would be 
 submitted to the people whether the law compelled it 
 or not. 
 
 Now I will read from the report by me as chairman 
 of the Committee on Territories at the time I reported 
 back the Toombs substitute to the Senate. It con- 
 tained several things which I had voted against in 
 committee, but had been overruled by a majority of the 
 members, and it was my duty as chairman of the com- 
 mittee to report the bill back as it was agreed upon by 
 them. The main point upon which I had been over- 
 ruled was the question of population. In my report 
 accompanying the Toombs bill, I said:
 
 6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 In the opinion of your committee, whenever a consti- 
 tution shall be formed in any Territory, preparatory to 
 its admission into the Union as a State, justice, the genius 
 of our institutions, the whole theory of our republican 
 system, imperatively demand that the voice of the people 
 shall be fairly expressed, and their will embodied in that 
 fundamental law, without fraud, or violence, or intimida- 
 tion, or any other improper or unlawful influence, and 
 subject to no other restrictions than those imposed by 
 the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 There you find that we took it for granted that the 
 constitution was to be submitted to the people, whether 
 the bill was silent on the subject or not. Suppose I 
 had reported it so, following the example of Washing- 
 ton, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, 
 Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, 
 Fillmore, and Pierce, would that fact have been evi- 
 dence of conspiracy to force a constitution upon the 
 people of Kansas against their will? If the charge 
 which Mr, Lincoln makes be true against me, it is true 
 against Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, and every 
 Whig president, as well as every Democratic president, 
 and against Henry Clay, who, in the Senate or House, 
 for forty years advocated bills similar to the one I 
 reported, no one of them containing a clause compell- 
 ing the submission of the constitution to the people. 
 Are Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Trumbull prepared to charge 
 upon all those eminent men from the beginning of the 
 government down to the present day, that the absence 
 of a provision compelling submission, in the various 
 bills passed by them, authorizing the people of Terri- 
 tories to form State constitutions, is evidence of a 
 corrupt design on their part to force a constitution 
 upon an unwilling people? 
 
 I ask you to reflect on these things, for I tell you 
 that there is a conspiracy to carry this election for the 
 Black Republicans by slander, and not by fair means. 
 Mr, Lincoln's speech this day is conclusive evidence of 
 the fact. He has devoted his entire time to an issue 
 between Mr, Trumbull and myself, and has not uttered 
 a word about the politics of the day. Are you going 
 to elect Mr, Trumbull's colleague upon an issue be- 
 tween Mr, Trumbull and me? I thought I was run- 
 nmg against Abraham Lincoln, that he claimed to be 
 my opponent, and challenged me to a discussion of
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 7 
 
 the public questions of the day with him, and was 
 discussing these questions with me ; but it turns out 
 that his only hope is to ride into office on Trumbull's 
 back, who will carry him by falsehood. 
 
 Permit me to pursue this subject a little further. An 
 examination of the record proves that Trumbull's 
 charge — that the Toombs bill originally contained a 
 clause requiring the constitution to be submitted to the 
 people — is false. The printed copy of the bill which 
 Mr. Lincoln held up before you, and which he pretends 
 contains such a clause, merely contains a clause re- 
 quiring a submission of the land grant, and there is no 
 clause in it requiring a submission of the constitution. 
 Mr. Lincoln cannot find such a clause in it. My re- 
 port shows that we took it for granted that the people 
 would require a submission of the constitution, and 
 secure it for themselves. There never was a clause in 
 the Toombs bill requiring the constitution to be sub- 
 mitted; Trumbull knew it at the time, and his speech 
 made on the night of its passage discloses the fact 
 that he knew it was silent on the subject; Lincoln 
 pretends, and tells you that Trumbull has not changed 
 his evidence in support of his charge since he made his 
 speech in Chicago. Let us see. The Chicago Times 
 took up Trumbull's Chicago speech, compared it with 
 the official records of Congress, and proved that 
 speech to be false in its charge that the original 
 Toombs bill required a submission of the constitution 
 to the people. Trumbull then saw that he was caught, 
 and his falsehood exposed, and he went to Alton, 
 and, under the very walls of the penitentiary, made a 
 new speech, in which he predicated his assault upon 
 me in the allegation that I had caused to be voted 
 into the Toombs bill a clause which prohibited the 
 convention from submitting the constitution to the 
 people, and quoted what he pretended was the clause. 
 Now, has not Mr. Trumbull entirely changed the 
 evidence on which he bases his charge? The clause 
 which he quoted in his Alton speech (which he has 
 published and circulated broadcast over the State) as 
 having been put into the Toombs bill by me, is in the 
 following words: "And until the complete execution 
 of this act, no other election shall be held in said 
 Territory." 
 
 Trumbull says that the object of that amendment
 
 8 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 was to prevent the convention from submitting the 
 constitution to a vote of the people. 
 
 Now I will show you that when Trumbull made that 
 statement at Alton he knew it to be untrue. I read 
 from Trumbull's speech in the Senate on the Toombs 
 bill on the night of its passage. He then said : 
 
 There is nothing said in this bill, so far as I have dis- 
 covered, about submitting the constitution, which is to 
 be formed, to the people for their sanction or rejection. 
 Perhaps the convention will have the right to submit it, 
 if it should think proper ; but it is certainly not compelled 
 to do so according to the provisions of the bilk 
 
 Thus you see that Trumbull, when the bill was on its 
 passage in the Senate, said that it was silent on the sub- 
 ject of submission, and that there was nothing in the 
 bill one way or the other on it. In his Alton speech he 
 says there was a clause in the bill preventing its sub- 
 mission to the people, and that I had it voted in as an 
 amendment. Thus I convict him of falsehood and 
 slander by quoting from him on the passage of the 
 Toombs bill in the Senate of the United State?, his own 
 speech, made on the night of July 2, 1856, and reported 
 in the Congressional Globe for the first session of the 
 Thirty-fourth Congress, Vol. XXXIII. What will you 
 think of a man who makes a false charge and falsifies 
 the records to prove it ? I will now show you that the 
 clause which Trumbull says was put in the bill on my 
 motion, was never put in at all by me, but was stricken 
 out on my motion and another substituted in its place. 
 I call your attention to the same volume of the Con- 
 gressional Globe to which I have already referred, page 
 795, where you will find the following report of the pro- 
 ceedings of the Senate : 
 
 Mr. Douglas : I have an amendment to offer from the 
 Committee on Territories. On page 8, section 11, strike out 
 the words "until the complete execution of this act, no 
 other election shall be held in said Territory," and insert 
 the amendment which I hold in my hand. 
 
 You see from this that I moved to strike out the very 
 words that Trumbull says I put in. The Committee on 
 Territories overruled me in committee, and put the clause 
 in ; but as soon as I got the bill back into the Senate, I 
 moved to strike it out, and put another clause in its place.
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 9 
 
 On the same page you will find that my amendment was 
 agreed to unanimously. I then offered another amend- 
 ment, recognizing the right of the people of Kansas, 
 under the Toombs bill, to order just such elections as 
 they saw proper. You can find it on page 796 of the 
 same volume. I will read it : 
 
 Mr. Douglas : I have another amendment to offer from 
 the committee, to follow the amendment which has been 
 adopted. The bill reads now : "And until the complete 
 execution of this act, no other election shall be held in 
 said Territory." It has been suggested that it should be 
 modified in this way : "And to avoid conflict in the com- 
 plete execution of this act, all other elections in said 
 Territory are hereby postponed until such time as said 
 convention shall appoint"; so that they can appoint the day 
 in the event that there should be a failure to come into 
 the Union. 
 
 The amendment was unanimously agreed to — clearly 
 and distinctly recognizing the right of the convention to 
 order just as many elections as they saw proper in the 
 execution of the act. Trumbull concealed in his Alton 
 speech the fact that the clause he quoted had been 
 stricken out on my motion, and the other fact that this 
 other clause was put in the bill on my motion, and made 
 the false charge that I incorporated into the bill a clause 
 preventing submission, in the face of the fact that, on 
 my motion, the bill was so amended before it passed as 
 to recognize in express words the right and duty of sub- 
 mission. 
 
 On this record that I have produced before you, I re- 
 peat my charge that Trumbull did falsify the public 
 records of the country, in order to make his charge 
 against me, and I tell Mr. Abraham Lincoln that if he 
 will examine these records, he will then know what I 
 state is true. Mr. Lincoln has this day indorsed Mr. 
 Trumbull's veracity after he had my word for it that that 
 veracity was proved to be violated and forfeited by the 
 public records. It will not do for Mr. Lincoln, in 
 parading his calumnies against me, to put Mr. Trum- 
 bull between him and the odium and responsibility 
 which justly attach to such calumnies. I tell him that I 
 am as ready to prosecute the indorser as the maker of a 
 forged note. I regret the necessity of occupying my 
 time with these petty personal matters. It is unbecom-
 
 lo DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 ing the dignity of a canvass for an office of the character 
 for which we are candidates. When I commenced the 
 canvass at Chicago, I spoke of Mr. Lincoln in terms of 
 kindness, as an old friend; I said that he was a good 
 citizen, of unblemished character, against whom I had 
 nothing to say. I repeated these complimentary re- 
 marks about him in my successive speeches, until he 
 became the indorser for these and other slanders 
 against me. If there is anything personally disagreeable, 
 uncourteous, or disreputable in these personalities, the 
 sole responsibility rests on Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Trumbull, 
 and their backers. 
 
 I will show you another charge made by Mr. Lincoln 
 against me, as an offset to his determination of willing- 
 ness to take back anything that is incorrect, and to 
 correct any false statement he may have made. He has 
 several times charged that the Supreme Court, President 
 Pierce, President Buchanan, and myself, at the time I 
 introduced the Nebraska bill, in January, 1854, ^t 
 Washington, entered into a conspiracy to establish 
 slavery all over this country. I branded this charge as a 
 falsehood, and he then repeated it, asked me to analyze 
 its truth, and answer it. I told him, "Mr. Lincoln, I 
 know what you are after ; you want to occupy my time 
 in personal matters, to prevent me from showing up the 
 revolutionary principles which the Abolition party — 
 whose candidate you are — have proclaimed to the 
 world." But he asked me to analyze his proof, and I 
 did so. I called his attention to the fact that at the 
 time the Nebraska bill was introduced, there was no 
 such case as the Dred Scott case pending in the Su- 
 preme Court, nor was it brought there for years after- 
 ward, and hence that it was impossible there could have 
 been any such conspiracy between the judges of the 
 Supreme Court and the other parties involved. I 
 proved by the record that the charge was false, and 
 what did he answer? Did he take it back like an honest 
 man and say he had been mistaken? No; he repeated 
 the charge, and said, that although there was no such 
 case pending that year, there was an understanding be- 
 tween the Democratic owners of Dred Scott and the 
 judges of the Supreme Court and other parties in- 
 volved, that the case should be brought up. I then de- 
 manded to know who those Democratic owners of Dred 
 Scott were. He could not or would not tell; he did not
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON ii 
 
 know. In truth, there were no Democratic owners of 
 Dred Scott on the face of the land. Dred Scott was 
 owned at that time by the Rev. Dr. Chaffee, an Aboli- 
 tion member of Congress from Springfield, Mass., 
 and his wife; and Mr, Lincoln ought to have 
 known that Dred Scott was so owned, for the reason 
 that as soon as the decision was announced by the 
 court. Dr. Chaffee and his wife executed a deed emanci- 
 pating him, and put that deed on record. 
 
 It was a matter of public record, therefore, that at the 
 time the case was taken to the Supreme Court, Dred 
 Scott was owned by an Abolition member of Congress, 
 a friend of Lincoln's, and a leading man of his party, 
 while the defense was conducted by Abolition lawyers ; 
 and thus the Abolitionists managed both sides of the 
 case. I have exposed these facts to Mr. Lincoln, and 
 yet he will not withdraw his charge of conspiracy. I 
 now submit to you whether 3^ou can place any confidence 
 in a man who continues to make a charge when its 
 utter falsity is proven by the public records. I will 
 state another fact to show how utterly reckless and un- 
 scrupulous this charge against the Supreme Court, 
 President Pierce, President Buchanan, and myself is. 
 Lincoln says that President Buchanan was in the con- 
 spiracy at Washington in the winter of 1854, when the 
 Nebraska bill was introduced. The history of this 
 country shows that James Buchanan was at that time 
 representing this country at the Court of St. James, 
 Great Britain, with distinguished ability and usefulness, 
 that he had not been in the United States for nearly a 
 year previous, and that he did not return until about 
 three years after. Yet Mr. Lincoln keeps repeating this 
 charge of conspiracy against Mr. Buchanan when the 
 public records prove it to be untrue. Having proved it 
 to be false as far as the Supreme Court and President 
 Buchanan are concerned, I drop it, leaving the public to 
 say whether I, by myself, without their concurrence, 
 could have gone into a conspiracy with them. My 
 friends, you see that the object clearly is to conduct the 
 canvass on personal matters, and hunt me down with 
 charges that are proven to be false by the public records 
 of the country. I am willing to throw open my whole 
 public and private life to the inspection of any man, or 
 all men who desire to investigate it. Having resided 
 among you twenty-five years, during nearly the whole
 
 12 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 of which time a public man, exposed to more assaults, 
 perhaps more abuse, than any man living of my age, or 
 who ever did live, and having survived it all and still 
 commanded your confidence, I am willing to trust to 
 ypur knowledge of me and my public conduct without 
 making any more defense against these assaults. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, I came here for the purpose of discuss- 
 ing the leading political topics which now agitate the 
 country. I have no charges to make against Mr. Lin- 
 coln, none against Mr. Trumbull, and none against any 
 man who is a candidate, except in repelling their as- 
 saults upon me. If Mr. Lincoln is a man of bad char- 
 acter, I leave you to find it out ; if his votes in the past 
 are not satisfactory, I leave others to ascertain the fact ; 
 if his course on the Mexican war was not in accordance 
 with your notions of patriotism and fidelity to our own 
 country as against a public enemy, I leave you to ascer- 
 tain the fact. I have no assaults to make upon him, ex- 
 cept to trace his course on the questions that now divide 
 the country and engross so much of the people's atten- 
 tion. 
 
 You know that prior to 1854 this country was divided 
 into two great political parties, one the Whig, the other 
 the Democratic. I, as a Democrat for twenty years 
 prior to that time, had been in public discussions in this 
 State as an advocate of Democratic principles, and I can 
 appeal with confidence to every old-line Whig within 
 the hearing of my voice to bear testimony that during 
 all that period I fought you Whigs like a man on every 
 question that separated the two parties. I had the 
 highest respect for Henry Clay as a gallant party-leader, 
 as an eminent statesman, and as one of the bright orna- 
 ments of this country ; but I conscientiously believed that 
 the Democratic party was right on the questions which 
 separated the Democrats from the Whigs. The man 
 does not live who can say that I ever personally as- 
 sailed Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, or any one of the 
 leaders of that great party, whilst I combated with all 
 my energy the measures they advocated. What did we 
 differ about in those days? Did Whigs and Democrats 
 differ about this slavery question? On the contrary, 
 did we not, in 1850, unite to a man in favor of that sys- 
 tem of compromise measures which Mr. Clay intro- 
 duced, Webster defended, Cass supported, and Fillmore 
 approved and made the law of the land by his signature.
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 13 
 
 While we agreed on these compromise measures, we dif- 
 fered about a bank, the tariff, distribution, the specie 
 circular, the subtreasury, and other questions of that 
 description. Now, let me ask you, which one of those 
 questions on which Whigs and Democrats then differed 
 now remains to divide the two great parties? Every 
 one of those questions which divided Whigs and Demo- 
 crats has passed away; the country has outgrown them; 
 they have passed into history. Hence it is immaterial 
 whether you were right or I was right on the bank, 
 the subtreasury, and other questions, because they no 
 longer continue living issues. What, then, has taken 
 the place of those questions about which we once dif- 
 fered? The slavery question has now become the lead- 
 ing and controlling issue ; that question on which you 
 and I agreed, on which the Whigs and Democrats 
 united, has now become the leading issue between the 
 National Democracy on the one side, and the Republican 
 or Abolition party on the other. 
 
 Just recollect for a moment the memorable contest of 
 1850, when this country was agitated from its center to 
 its circumference by the slavery agitation. All eyes in 
 this nation were then turned to the three great lights 
 that survived the days of the Revolution. They looked 
 to Clay, then in retirement at Ashland, and to Webster 
 and Cass in the United States Senate. Clay had retired 
 to Ashland, having, as he supposed, performed his mis- 
 sion on earth, and was preparing himself for a better 
 sphere of existence in another world. In that retire- 
 ment he heard the discordant, harsh, and grating sounds 
 of sectional strife and disunion; and he aroused and 
 came forth and resumed his seat in the Senate, that 
 great theater of his great deeds. From the moment that 
 Clay arrived among us he became the leader of all the 
 Union men, whether Whigs or Democrats. For nine 
 months we each assembled, each day, in the council- 
 chamber, Clay in the chair, with Cass upon his right 
 hand and Webster upon his left, and the Democrats and 
 Whigs gathered around, forgetting differences, and only 
 animated by one common patriotic sentiment, to devise 
 means and measures by which we could defeat the mad 
 and revolutionary scheme of the Northern Abolitionists 
 and Southern disunionists. We did devise those means. 
 Clay brought them forward, Cass advocated them, the 
 Union Democrats and Union W^higs voted for them,
 
 14 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 Fillmore signed them, and they gave peace and quiet to 
 the country. Those compromise measures of 1850 were 
 founded upon the great fundamental principle that the 
 people of each State and each Territory ought to be left 
 free to form and regulate their own domestic institutions 
 in their own way, subject only to the Federal Constitu- 
 tion. 
 
 I will ask every old-line Democrat and every old-line 
 Whig within the hearing of my voice, if I have not truly 
 stated the issues as they then presented themselves to 
 the country. You recollect that the Abolitionists raised 
 a howl of indignation, and cried for vengeance and the 
 destruction of Democrats and Whigs both who sup- 
 ported those compromise measures of 1850. When I 
 returned home to Chicago, I found the citizens inflamed 
 and infuriated against the authors of those great meas- 
 ures. Being the only man in that city who was held 
 responsible for affirmative votes on all those measures, I 
 came forward and addressed the assembled inhabitants, 
 defended each and every one of Clay's compromise 
 measures as they passed the Senate and the House and 
 were approved by President Fillmore. Previous to that 
 time, the city council had passed resolutions nullifying 
 the act of Congress, and instructing the police to with- 
 hold all assistance from its execution ; but the people of 
 Chicago listened to my defense, and like candid, frank, 
 conscientious men, when they became convinced that 
 they had done an injustice to Clay, Webster, Cass, and 
 all of us who supported those measures, they repealed 
 their nullifying resolutions and declared that the laws 
 should be executed and the supremacy of the Constitu- 
 tion maintained. Let it always be recorded in history, 
 to the immortal honor of the people of Chicago, that 
 they returned to their duty when they found that they 
 were wrong, and did justice to those whom they had 
 blamed and abused unjustly. When the legislature of 
 this State assembled that year, they proceeded to pass 
 resolutions approving the compromise measures of 1850. 
 When the Whig party assembled in 1852 at Baltimore in 
 national convention for the last time, to nominate Scott 
 for the presidency, they adopted as a part of their plat- 
 form the compromise measures of 1850 as the cardinal 
 plank upon which every Whig would stand and by 
 which he would regulate his future conduct. When the 
 Democratic party assembled at the same place, one
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 15 
 
 month after, to nominate General Pierce, we adopted the 
 same platform so far as those compromise measures 
 were concerned, agreeing that we would stand by those 
 glorious measures as a cardinal article in the Democratic 
 faith. Thus you see that in 1852 all the Old Whigs and 
 all the old Democrats stood on a common plank so far 
 as this slavery question was concerned, differing on 
 other questions. 
 
 Now, let me ask, how is it that since that time so 
 many of you Whigs have wandered from the true path 
 marked out by Clay and carried out broad and wide by 
 the great Webster? How is it that so many old-line 
 Democrats have abandoned the old faith of their party, 
 and joined with Abolitionism and Free-soilism to over- 
 turn the platform of the old Democrats, and the plat- 
 form of the Old Whigs? You cannot deny that since 
 1854 there has been a great revolution on this one ques- 
 tion. How has it been brought about? I answer that 
 no sooner was the sod grown green over the grave of 
 the immortal Clay, no sooner was the rose planted on 
 the tomb of the godlike Webster, than many of the 
 leaders of the Whig party, such as Seward, of New 
 York, and his followers, led off and attempted to Aboli- 
 tionize the Whig party, and transfer all your Old Whigs, 
 bound hand and foot, into the Abolition camp. Seizing 
 hold of the temporary excitement produced in this coun- 
 try by the introduction of the Nebraska bill, the disap- 
 pointed politicians in the Democratic party united with 
 the disappointed politicians in the Whig party, and en- 
 deavored to form a new party composed of all the Aboli- 
 tionists, of Abolitionized Democrats and Abolitionized 
 Whigs, banded together in an Abolition platform. 
 
 And who led that crusade against national principles 
 in this State? I answer, Abraham Lincoln on behalf of 
 the Whigs, and Lyman Trumbull on behalf of the Dern- 
 ocrats, formed a scheme by which they would Aboli- 
 tionize the two great parties in this State on condition 
 that Lincoln should be sent to the United Stales Senate 
 in place of General Shields, and that Trumbull should 
 go to Congress from the Belleville district, until I would 
 be accommodating enough either to die or resign for his 
 benefit, and then he was to go to the Senate in my 
 place. You all remember that during the year 1854 
 these two worthy gentlemen, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. 
 Trumbull, one an old-line Whig and the other an old-
 
 i6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 line Democrat, were hunting in partnership to elect a 
 legislature against the Democratic party. I canvassed 
 the State that year from the time I returned home until 
 the election came off, and spoke in every county that I 
 could reach during that period. In the northern part of 
 the State I found Lincoln's ally, in the person of Fred 
 Douglass, the negro, preaching Abolition doctrines, 
 while Lincoln was discussing the same principles down 
 here, and Trumbull, a little further down, was advocat- 
 ing the election of members to the legislature who would 
 act in concert with Lincoln's and Fred Douglass's 
 friends. I witnessed an effort made at Chicago by Lin- 
 coln's then associates, and now supporters, to put Fred 
 Douglass, the negro, on the stand at a Democratic meet- 
 ing, to reply to the illustrious General Cass when he was 
 addressing the people there. They had the same negro 
 hunting me down, and they now have a negro traversing 
 the northern counties of the State, and speaking in be- 
 half of Lincoln. Lincoln knows that when we were at 
 Freeport in joint discussion, there was a distinguished 
 colored friend of his there then who was on the stump 
 for him, and who made a speech there the night before 
 we spoke, and another the night after, a short distance 
 from Freeport. in favor of Lincoln ; and in order to 
 show how much interest the colored brethren felt in the 
 success of their brother Abe, I have with me here, and 
 would read it if it would not occupy too much of my 
 time, a speech made by Fred Douglass in Poughkeepsie, 
 N. Y., a short time since, to a large convention, in which 
 he conjures all the friends of negro equality and negro 
 citizenship to rally as one man around Abraham Lin- 
 coln, the perfect embodiment of their principles, and by 
 all means to defeat Stephen A. Douglas. Thus you 
 find that this Republican party in the northern part of 
 the State had colored gentlemen for their advocates in 
 1854, in company with Lincoln and Trumbull, as they 
 have nov/. When in October, 1854, I went down to 
 Springfield to attend the State fair, I found the leaders 
 of this party all assembled together under the title of an 
 anti-Nebraska meeting. It was Black Republican up 
 north, and anti-Nebraska at Springfield. I found Love- 
 joy, a high priest of Abolitionism, and Lincoln, one of 
 the leaders who were towing the old-line Whigs into 
 the Abolition camp, and Trumbull, Sidney Breese, and 
 Governor Reynolds, all making speeches against the
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 17 
 
 Democratic party and myself, at the same place and in 
 the same cause. 
 
 The same men who are now fighting the Dernocratic 
 party and the regular Democratic nominees in this State 
 were fighting us then. They did not then acknowledge 
 that they had become Abolitionists, and many of them 
 deny it now. Breese, Dougherty, and Reynolds were 
 then fighting the Democracy under the title of anti- 
 Nebraska men, and now they are fighting the Democ- 
 racy under the pretense that they are simon-pure Demo- 
 crats, saying that they are authorized to have every office- 
 holder in Illinois beheaded who prefers the election of 
 Douglas to that of Lincoln, or the success of the Demo- 
 cratic ticket in preference to the Abolition ticket for 
 members of Congress, State officers, members of the 
 legislature, or any office in the State. They canvassed 
 the State against us in 1854, as they are doing now, own- 
 ing different names and different principles in different 
 localities, but having a common object in view, viz.: the 
 defeat of all men holding national principles in opposi- 
 tion to this sectional Abolition party. They carried the 
 legislature in 1854, and when it assembled in Springfield 
 they proceeded to elect a United States senator, all vot- 
 ing for Lincoln with one or two exceptions, which ex- 
 ceptions prevented them from quite electing him. And 
 why should they not elect him? Had not Trumbull 
 agreed that Lincoln should have Shields's place? Had 
 not the Abolitionists agreed to it? Was it not the 
 solemn compact, the condition on which Lincoln agreed 
 to Abolitionize the Old Whigs, that he should be sena- 
 tor? Still, Trumbull, having control of a few Aboli- 
 tibnized Democrats, would not allow them all to vote 
 for Lincoln on any one ballot, and thus kept him for 
 some time within one or two votes of an election, until 
 he worried out Lincoln's friends, and compelled them to 
 drop him and elect Trumbull in violation of the bargain. 
 I desire to read you a piece of testimony in confirma- 
 tion of the notoriously public facts which I have stated 
 to you. Colonel James H. Matheny, of Springfield, is, 
 and for twenty years has been, the confidential personal 
 and political friend and manager of Mr. Lincoln. 
 Matheny is this very day the candidate of the Republi- 
 can or Abolition party for Congress against the gallant 
 Major Thomas L. Harris, in the Springfield district, and 
 is making speeches for Lincoln and against me. I will
 
 i8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 read you the testimony of Matheny about this bargain 
 between Lincoln and Trumbull when they undertook to 
 Abolitionize Whigs and Democrats only four years ago. 
 Matheny, being mad at Trumbull for having played a 
 Vankee trick on Lincoln, exposed the bargain in a public 
 speech two years ago, and I will read the published re- 
 port of that speech, the correctness of which Mr. Lincoln 
 will not deny : 
 
 The Whigs. Abolitionists, Know-nothings, and renegade 
 Democrats made a solemn compact for the purpose of 
 carrying this State against the Democracy on this plan : 
 First, that they would all combine and elect Mr. Trumbull 
 to Congress and thereby carry his district for the legis- 
 lature, in order to throw all the strength that could be 
 obtained into that body against the Democrats. Second, 
 that when the legislature should meet, the officers of that 
 body, such as speaker, clerks, doorkeepers, etc., would be 
 given to the Abolitionists ; and, third, that the Whigs were 
 to have the United States senator. That, accordingly, 
 in good faith Trumbull was elected to Congress, and his 
 district carried for the legislature, and when it convened 
 the Abolitionists got all the officers of that body, and 
 thus far the "bond" was fairly executed. The Whigs, on 
 their part, demanded the election of Abraham Lincoln to 
 the United States Senate, that the bond might be fulfilled, 
 the other parties to the contract having already secured 
 to themselves all that was called for. But, in the most 
 perfidious manner, they refused to elect Mr. Lincoln ; and 
 the mean, low-lived, sneaking Trumbull succeeded, by 
 pledging all that was required by any party, in thrusting 
 Lincoln aside and foisting himself, an excrescence from 
 the rotten bowels of the Democracy, into the United 
 States Senate ; and thus it has ever been, that an honest 
 man makes a bad bargain when he conspires or contracts 
 with rogues, 
 
 Lincoln's confidential friend, Matheny, thought that 
 Lincoln made a bad bargain when he conspired with 
 such rogues as Trumbull and the Abolitionists. I would 
 like to know whether Lincoln had as high an opinion of 
 Trumbull's veracity when the latter agreed to support 
 him for the Senate, and then cheated him, as he has 
 now, when Trumbull comes forward and makes charges 
 against me. You could not then prove Trumbull an 
 honest man either by Lincoln, by Matheny, or by any of 
 Lincoln's friends. They charged everywhere that Trum- 
 bull had cheated them out of the bargain, and Lincoln
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 19 
 
 found, sure enough, that it was a bad bargain to contract 
 and conspire with rogues. 
 
 And now I will explain to you what has been a mys- 
 tery all over the State and Union, the reason why 
 Lincoln was nominated for the United States Senate by 
 the black Republican convention. You know it has 
 never been usual for any party, or any convention, to 
 nominate a candidate for United States senator. Prob- 
 ably this was the first time that such a thing was ever 
 done. The Black Republican convention had not been 
 called for that purpose, but to nominate a State ticket, 
 and every man was surprised and many disgusted when 
 Lincoln was nominated. Archie Williams thought he 
 was entitled to it. Browning knew that he deserved it, 
 Wentworth was certain that he would get it. Peck had 
 hopes, Judd felt sure that he was the man, and Palmer 
 had claims and had made arrangements to secure it; 
 but, to their utter amazement, Lincoln was nominated by 
 the convention, and not only that, but he received the 
 i^omination unanimously, by a resolution declaring that 
 Abraham Lincoln was "the first, last, and only 
 choice" of the Republican party. How did this occur? 
 Why, because they could not get Lincoln's friends to 
 make another bargain with "rogues," unless the whole 
 party would come up as one man and pledge their honor 
 that they would stand by Lincoln first, last, and all the 
 time, and that he should not be cheated by Lovejoy this 
 time, as he was by Trumbull before. Thus, by passing 
 this resolution, the Abolitionists are all for him, Lovejoy 
 and Farnsworth are canvassing for him, Giddings is 
 ready to come here in his behalf, and the negro speakers 
 are already on the stump for him, and he is sure not to 
 be cheated this time. He would not go into the arrange- 
 ment until he got their bond for it, and Trumbull is 
 compelled now to take the stump, get up false charges 
 against me, and travel all over the State to try and elect 
 Lincoln, in order to keep Lincoln's friends quiet about 
 the bargain in which Trumbull cheated them four years 
 ago. You see now why it is that Lincoln and Trumbull 
 are so mighty fond of each other. They have entered 
 into a conspiracy to break me down by these assaults on 
 my public character, in order to draw my attention from 
 a fair exposure of the mode in which they attempted to 
 Abolitionize the Old Whig and the old Democratic par- 
 ties and lead them captive into the Abolition camp. Do
 
 20 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 you not all remember that Lincoln went around here 
 four years ago making speeches to you, and telling that 
 you should all go for the Abolition ticket, and swearing 
 that he was as good a Whig as he ever was ; and that 
 Trumbull went all over the State making pledges to the 
 old Democrats, and trying to coax them into the Aboli- 
 tion camp, swearing by his Maker, with the uplifted 
 hand, that he was still a Democrat, always intended to 
 be, and that never would he desert the Democratic 
 party? He got your votes to elect an Abolition legisla- 
 ture, which passed Abolition resolutions, attempted to 
 pass Abolition laws, and sustained Abolitionists for 
 office. State and national. Now, the same game is at- 
 tempted to be played over again. Then Lincoln and 
 Trumbull made captives of the Old Whigs and old Dem- 
 ocrats and carried them into the Abolition camp, where 
 Father Giddings, the high priest of Abolitionism, re- 
 ceived and christened them in the dark cause just as 
 fast as they were brought in. Giddings found the con- 
 verts so numerous that he had to have assistance, and 
 he sent for John P. Hale, N. P. Banks, Chase, and other 
 Abolitionists, and they came on, and with Lovejoy and 
 Fred Douglass, the negro, helped to baptise these new 
 converts as Lincoln, Trumbull, Breese, Reynolds, and 
 Dougherty could capture them and bring them within 
 the Abolition clutch. Gentlemen, they are nov/ around 
 making the same kind of speeches. Trumbull was down 
 in Monroe County the other day assailing me, and mak- 
 ing a speech in favor of Lincoln, and I will show you 
 under what notice his meeting was called. You see 
 these people are Black Republicans or Abolitionists up 
 north, while at Springfield to-day they dare not call their 
 convention "Republican," but are obliged to say "a con- 
 vention of all men opposed to the Democratic party," 
 and in Monroe County and lower Egypt Trumbull ad- 
 vertises their meetings as follows : 
 
 A meeting of the Free Democracy will take place at 
 Waterloo, on Monday, September 12th inst., whereat Hon. 
 Lyman Trumbull, Hon. Jehu Baker, and others, will ad- 
 dress the people upon the different political topics of the 
 day. Members of all parties are cordially invited to be 
 present, and hear and determine for themselves. 
 
 The Free Democracy. 
 September 9, 1858.
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 21 
 
 Did you ever before hear of this new party called the 
 "Free Democracy" ? 
 
 What object have these Black Republicans in chang- 
 ing their name in every county? They have one name 
 in the north, another in the center, and another in the 
 south. When I used to practise law before my distin- 
 guished judicial friend whom I recognize in the crowd 
 before me, if a man was charged with horee-stealing, 
 and the proof showed that he went by one name in 
 Stephenson County, another in Sangamon, a third in 
 Monroe, and a fourth in Randolph, we thought that the 
 fact of his changing his nrme so often to avoid detec- 
 tion was pretty strong evidence of his guilt. I would 
 like to know why it is that this great Free-soil Abolition 
 party is not willing to avow the same name in all parts 
 of the State? If this party believes that its course is 
 just, why does it not avow the same principles in the 
 north and in the south, in the east and in the west, 
 wherever the American flag waves over American soil? 
 [A voice: "The party does not call itself Black Repuh' 
 lican in the north."] Sir, if you will get a copy of the 
 paper published at Waukegan, fifty miles from Chicago, 
 which advocates the election of Mr. Lincoln, and has his 
 name flying at its masthead, 3'ou will find that it declares 
 that "this paper is devoted to the cause" of Black Re- 
 publicanism. I had a copy of it, and intended to bring 
 it down here into Egypt to let you see what name the 
 party rallied under up in the northern part of the State, 
 and to convince you that their principles are as different 
 in the two sections of the State as is their name. I am 
 sorry I have mislaid it and have not got it here. Their 
 principles in the north are jet-black, in the center they 
 are in color a decent mulatto, and in lower Egypt they 
 are almost white. Why, I admired many of the white 
 sentiments contained in Lincoln's speech at Jonesboro, 
 and could not help but contrast them with the speeches 
 of the same distinguished orator made in the northern 
 part of the State. Down here he denies that the Black 
 Republican party is opposed to the admission of any 
 more slave States, under any circumstances, and says 
 that they are willing to allow the people of each State, 
 when it wants to come into the Union, to do just as it 
 pleases on the question of slavery. In the north you 
 find Lovejoy, their candidate for Congress in the 
 Bloomington district ; Farnsworth, their candidate in the
 
 22 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 Chicago district ; and Washburne, their candidate in the 
 Galena district, all declaring that never will they con- 
 sent under any circumstances to admit another slave 
 State, even if the people want it. Thus, while they 
 avow one set of principles up there, they avow another 
 and entirely different set down here. And here let me 
 recall to Mr. Lincoln the scriptural quotation which he 
 has applied to the Federal Government, that a house 
 divided against itself cannot stand, and ask him how 
 does he expect this Abolition party to stand when in one 
 half of the State it advocates a set of principles which it 
 has repudiated in the other half? 
 
 I am told that I have but eight minutes more. I 
 would like to talk to you an hour and a half longer, but 
 I will make the best use I can of the remaining eight 
 minutes. Mr. Lincoln said in his first remarks that he 
 was not in favor of the social and political equality of 
 the negro with the white man. Everywhere up north 
 he has declared that he was not in favor of the social 
 and political equality of the negro, but he would not say 
 whether or not he was opposed to negroes voting and 
 negro citizenship. I want to know whether he is for or 
 against negro citizenship? He declared his utter op- 
 position to the Dred Scott decision, and advanced as a 
 reason that the court had decided that it was not possi- 
 ble for a negro to be a citizen under the Constitution of 
 the United States. If he is opposed to the Dred Scott 
 decision for that reason, he must be in favor of confer- 
 ring the right and privilege of citizenship upon the 
 negro. I have been trying to get an answer from him 
 on that point but I have never yet obtained one, and I 
 will show you why. In every speech he made in the 
 north he quoted the Declaration of Independence to 
 prove that all men were created equal, and insisted that 
 the phrase "all men" included the negro as well as the 
 white man, and that the equality rested upon divine law. 
 Here is what he said on that point : 
 
 I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of 
 Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon 
 principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop ? 
 If one man says it does not mean a negro, why may not 
 another say it does not mean some other man ? If that 
 Declaration is not the truth, let us get the statute-book 
 in which we find it and tear it out.
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 23 
 
 Lincoln maintains there that the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence asserts that the negro is equal to the white 
 man, and that under divine law ; and if he believes so 
 it was rational for him to advocate negro citizenship, 
 which, when allowed, puts the negro on an equality 
 under the law. I say to you in all frankness, gentlemen, 
 that in my opinion a negro is not a citizen, cannot be, 
 and ought not to be, under the Constitution of the 
 United States. I will not even qualify my opinion to 
 meet the declaration of one of the judges of the Su- 
 preme Court in the Dred Scott case, "that a negro de- 
 scended from African parents, who was imported into 
 this country as a slave, is not a citizen, and cannot be." 
 I say that this government was established on the white 
 basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of 
 white men and their posterity forever, and never should 
 be administered by any except white men. I declare 
 that a negro ought not to be a citizen, whether his par- 
 ents were imported into this country as slaves or not, 
 or whether or not he was born here. It does not de- 
 pend upon the place a negro's parents were born, or 
 whether they were slaves or not, but upon the fact that 
 he is a negro, belonging to a race incapable of self-gov- 
 ernment, and for that reason ought not to be on an 
 equality with white men. 
 
 My friends, I am sorry that I have not time to pur- 
 sue this argument further, as I might have done but 
 for the fact that Mr. Lincoln compelled me to occupy 
 a portion of my time in repelling those gross slanders 
 and falsehoods that Trumbull has invented against me 
 and put in circulation. In conclusion, let me ask you 
 why should this government be divided by a geo- 
 graphical line — arraying all men North in one great 
 hostile party against all men South? Mr, Lincoln tells 
 you, in his speech at Springfield, that a house divided 
 against itself cannot stand; that this government, 
 divided into free and slave States, cannot endure 
 permanently; that they must either be all free or all 
 slave, all one thing or all the other. Why cannot this 
 government endure divided into free States and slave 
 States, as our fathers made it? 
 
 When this government was established by Washing- 
 ton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Hamilton, Franklin, and 
 the other sages and patriots of that day, it was com- 
 posed of free States and slave States, bound together
 
 24 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 by one common Constitution. We have existed and 
 prospered from that day to this thus divided, and have 
 increased with a rapidity never before equaled in 
 weakh, the extension of territory, and all the elements 
 of power and greatness, until we have become the 
 first nation on the face of the globe. Why can we not 
 thus continue to prosper? We can if we will live up 
 to and execute the government upon those principles 
 upon which our fathers established it. During the 
 whole period of our existence Divine Providence has 
 smiled upon us, and showered upon our nation richer 
 and more abundant blessings than have ever been con- 
 ferred upon any other. 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion 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 say- 
 ing what was my ground of complaint in regard 
 to that, or whether I had any ground of com- 
 plaint, Judge Douglas has from that thing man-
 
 i858] AT CHARLESTON 25 
 
 ufactured nearly everything that he ever says 
 about my disposition to produce an equality be- 
 tween 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 
 wdiat 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 wil- 
 fully 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 hav- 
 ing said I entertained the belief that this govern- 
 ment 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 per- 
 haps would require more time than I have now to
 
 '26 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept i8 
 
 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 
 wTangling over this question for at least forty 
 years. This was the cause of the agitation re- 
 sulting in the Missouri compromise; this pro- 
 duced the troubles at the annexation of Texas, 
 in the acquisition of the territory acquired in the 
 Mexican war. Again this was the trouble which 
 w^as quieted by the compromise of 1850. when 
 it was settled "forever," as both the great politi- 
 cal 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 intro- 
 duced 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 didn'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 Kan-
 
 1858] AT CHAP.lESTOy 27 
 
 sas have voted down the Lecompton constitution. 
 How is it over? That was only one of the at- 
 tempts at putting an end to the slaver}- 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 t'.it constitution put an 
 end to all the trouble? Is that more likely to 
 settle it than ever\- one of these pre^-ious attempts 
 to settle the slaver}- agitation? Xow, at this day 
 in the histor\- of the world we can no more fore- 
 tell where the end of this slavery agitation will 
 be than we can see the end of the world itself. 
 The Xebraska-Kansas bill was introduced four 
 vears and a half asro. and if the a2:itation 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 agita- 
 tion. 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 amonorst 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 slaver}- agita- 
 tion. 
 
 The other way is for us to surrender and let 
 Judge Douglas and his friends have their way
 
 28 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. i8 
 
 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 prop- 
 erty, 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 opin- 
 ion, 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 Trum- 
 bull met him upon that of which we were just 
 talking, by producing the record. He didn't 
 bring the record, because there was no record for 
 him to bring. When he asks if I am ready to
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 
 
 29 
 
 indorse Trnmbuirs 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 in- 
 dorse 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 Ly- 
 man Trumbull. 
 
 Mr. James Brown [Douglas postmaster] : 
 What does Ford's history say about him? 
 
 Mr. Lincoln : Some gentleman asks me what 
 Ford's history says about him. My own recol- 
 lection 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 Trum- 
 bull and myself to attack him personally. I want 
 to attend to that suggestion for a moment. I 
 don't want to be unjustly accused of dealing il- 
 liberally 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
 
 30 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. :8 
 
 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 crozvd 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 mem- 
 ber of Congress at the only time I was in Con- 
 gress, and he knows that whenever there was an 
 attempt to procure a vote of mine which would 
 indorse the origin and justice of the war, I re- 
 fused 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 Doug- 
 las and myself. In reference to this Mexican 
 war, my recollection is that when Ashmun's reso- 
 lution [amendment] was offered by Mr. Ash- 
 mun of Massachusetts, in which he declared that 
 the Mexican war was unnecessarily and unconsti- 
 tutionally commenced by the President, — my 
 recollection is that Mr. Lincoln voted for that 
 resolution. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln : That is the truth. Now you all 
 remember that was a resolution censuring the
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 31 
 
 President for the manner in which the war was 
 begun. You know they have charged that I 
 voted against the suppHes, 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 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 
 set-off 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 at- 
 tacked me in regard to a matter ten years old. 
 Isn't he a pretty mian 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 Trum- 
 bull's at all. I gave the apology for doing so 
 in my opening speech. Perhaps it didn't fix your 
 attention. I said that when Judge Douglas was 
 speaking at places where I spoke on the succeed- 
 ing 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 what- 
 ever he had stated to be true. This I repeated 
 two or three times ; and then I dropped it, with- 
 out saying anything more on the subject for
 
 32 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS rSept. 18 
 
 weeks — perhaps a month. I passed it by without 
 noticing it at all till I found at Jacksonville that 
 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 lan- 
 guage : "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 assail- 
 ant 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 suc- 
 ceeded 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 forger- 
 ies ? Does he say this transcript from Trumbull's 
 speech is a forgery? Y'He didnt 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
 
 1858] AT CHARLESTON 
 
 3$ 
 
 people have some sense ; they see plainly that 
 Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish, a small 
 species of fish that has no mode of defending it- 
 self when pursued except by throwing out a black 
 fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy 
 cannot see it, and thus it escapes. Is not the 
 judge playing the cuttlefish? 
 
 Now I would ask very special attention to the 
 consideration of Judge Douglas's speech at Jack- 
 sonville ; 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 [Doug- 
 las] 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 afterward 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 by his introducing the bill that 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. Sup- 
 pose that were the case, does it answer Trum- 
 bull? I assert that you [pointing to an individu- 
 al] are here to-day, and you undertake to prove
 
 34 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Sept. iS 
 
 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 Har 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 ? Big-- 
 ler has said there was a combination of certain 
 senators, among- Vvdiom 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 Sen- 
 ate with that provision stricken out of the bill. 
 Although Bigler cannot say they were all work- 
 ing 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 ac- 
 count refuses to tell where he got them. Not
 
 i8s8] AT CHARLESTON 35 
 
 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 modifica- 
 tions made in the bill in committee that he did 
 not vote for. I ask you to remember while cer- 
 tain amendments were made which he disap- 
 proved of, but which a majority of the commit- 
 tee 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 vv^ord 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 a 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 it being 
 submitted to a vote of the people. If he will ex- 
 plain his action on this question, by giving a bet- 
 ter 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 plau- 
 sible reason than he has offered against the evi- 
 dence in the case — I suggest to him it will not
 
 36 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 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 de- 
 pends 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 state- 
 ment in the whole speech that depends on Trum- 
 bull'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 the 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 Galesburg. 
 
 October 7, 1858. 
 Mr. Douglas's Opening Speech. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: Four years ago I appeared be- 
 fore the people of Knox County for the purpose of 
 defending my political action upon the compromise 
 measures of 1850 and the passage of the Kansas-Ne- 
 braska bill. Those of you before me who were present 
 then will remember that I vindicated myself for sup- 
 porting those two measures by the fact that they rested 
 upon the great fundamental principle that the people 
 of each State and each Territory of this Union have 
 the right, and ought to be permitted to exercise the 
 right, of regulating their own domestic concerns in 
 their own way, subject to no other limitation or restric- 
 tion than that which the Constitution of the United 
 States imposes upon them. I then called upon the 
 people of Illinois to decide whether that principle of 
 self-government was right or wrong. If it was and is 
 right, then the compromise measures of 1850 were
 
 iSsS] AT GALES BURG 37 
 
 right, and, consequently, the Kansas and Nebraska 
 bill, based upon the same principle, must necessarily 
 have been right. 
 
 The Kansas and Nebraska bill declared, in so many 
 words, that it was the true intent and meaning of the 
 act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, 
 nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
 thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their do- 
 mestic institutions in their own way, subject only to 
 the Constitution of the United States. For the last 
 four years I have devoted all my energies, in private 
 and public, to cgmmend that principle to the American 
 people. Whatever else may be said in condemnation 
 or support of my political course, I apprehend that 
 no honest man will doubt the fidelity with which under 
 all circumstances I have stood by it. 
 
 During the last year a question arose in the Con- 
 gress of the United States whether or not that principle 
 would be violated by the admission of Kansas into the 
 Union under the Lecompton constitution. In my 
 opinion, the attempt to force Kansas in under that 
 constitution was a gross violation of the principle 
 enunciated in the compromise measures of 1850, and 
 the Kansas and Nebraska bill of 1854, and therefore I 
 led ofT in the fight against the Lecompton constitution, 
 and conducted it until the effort to carry that constitu- 
 tion through Congress was abandoned. And I can 
 appeal to all men, friends and foes. Democrats and 
 Republicans, Northern men and Southern men, that 
 during the whole of that fight I carried the banner of 
 popular sovereignty aloft, and never allowed it to trail 
 in the dust, or lowered my flag until victory perched 
 upon our arms. When the Lecompt^Dn constitution 
 was defeated, the question arose in the minds of those 
 who had advocated it what they should next resort to 
 in order to carry out their views. They devised a 
 measure known as the English bill, and granted a 
 general amnesty and political pardon to all men who 
 had fought against the Lecompton constitution, pro- 
 vided they would support that bill. I for one did not 
 choose to accept the pardon, or to avail myself of the 
 amnesty granted on that condition. The fact that the 
 supporters of Lecompton were willing to forgive all 
 differences of opinion at that time, in the event those 
 who opposed it favored the English bill, was an admis-
 
 38 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 sion that they did not think that opposition to Le- 
 compton impaired a man's standing in the Democratic 
 party. Now the question arises: What was that 
 English bill which certain men are now attempting to 
 make a test of political orthodoxy in this country. It 
 provided, in substance, that the Lecompton constitution 
 should be sent back to the people of Kansas for their 
 adoption or rejection, at an election which was held 
 in August last, and in case they refused admission un- 
 der it, that Kansas should be kept out of the Union 
 until she had 93,420 inhabitants. 
 
 I was in favor of sending the constitution back in 
 order to enable the people to say whether or not it was 
 their act and deed, and embodied their will; but the 
 other proposition, that if they refused to come into the 
 Union under it, they should be kept out until they had 
 double or treble the population they then had, I never 
 would sanction by my vote. The reason why I could 
 not sanction it is to be found in the fact that by the 
 English bill, if the people of Kansas had only agreed to 
 become a slaveholding State under the Lecompton con- 
 stitution, they could have done so with 35,000 people, 
 but if they insisted on being a free State, as they had a 
 right to do, then they were to be punished by being 
 kept out of the Union until they had nearly three times 
 that population. I then said in my place in the Senate, 
 as I now say to you, that whenever Kansas has popula- 
 tion enough for a slave State she has population 
 enough for a free State. I have never yet given a vote, 
 and I never intend to record one, making an odious 
 and unjust distinction between the different States of 
 this Union. I hold it to be a fundamental principle in 
 our republican form of government that all the States 
 of this Union, old and new, free and slave, stand on an 
 exact equality. Equality among the different States 
 is a cardinal principle on which all our institutions 
 rest. Wherever, therefore, you make a discrimina- 
 tion, saying to a slave State that it shall be admitted 
 with 35,000 inhabitants, and to a free State that it 
 shall not be admitted until it has 93,000 or 100,000 
 inhabitants, you are throwing the whole weight of the 
 Federal Government into the scale in favor of one 
 class of States against the other. Nor would I on 
 the other hand any sooner sanction the doctrine that a 
 free State could be admitted into the Union with
 
 i858] AT GALESBURG 39 
 
 35,000 people, while a slave State was kept out until it 
 had 93,000. I have always declared in the Senate my 
 willingness, and I am willing now, to adopt the rule 
 that no Territory shall ever become a State until it has 
 the requisite population for a member of Congress, ac- 
 cording to the then existing ratio. But while I have 
 always been, and am now, willing to adopt that general 
 rule, I was not willing and would not consent to make 
 an exception of Kansas, as a punishment for her ob- 
 stinacy in demanding the right to do as she pleased in 
 the formation of her constitution. It is proper that I 
 should remark here that my opposition to the Lecomp- 
 ton constitution did not rest upon the peculiar position 
 taken by Kansas on the subject of slavery. I held 
 then, and hold now, that if the people of Kansas want 
 a slave State, it is their right to make one and be 
 received into the Union under it; if, on the contrary, 
 they want a free State, it is their right to have it, and 
 no man should ever oppose their admission because 
 they ask it under the one or the other. I hold to that 
 great principle of self-government which asserts the 
 right of every people to decide for them^selves the 
 nature and character of the domestic institutions and 
 fundamental law under which they are to live. 
 
 The effort has been, and is now being, made in this 
 State by certain postmasters and other federal office- 
 holders, to make a test of faith on the support of the 
 English bill. These men are now making speeches all 
 over the State against me and in favor of Lincoln, 
 either directly or indirectly, because I would not sanc- 
 tion a discrimination between slave and free States by 
 voting for the English bill. But while that bill is made 
 a test in Illinois for the purpose of breaking up the 
 Democratic organization in this State, how is it in the 
 other States? Go to Indiana, and there you find that 
 English himself, the author of the English bill, who is 
 a candidate for reelection to Congress, has been forced 
 by public opinion to abandon his own darling project, 
 and to give a promise that he will vote for the ad- 
 mission of Kansas at once, whenever she forms a 
 constitution in pursuance of law, and ratifies it by a 
 majority vote of her people. Not only is this the case 
 with English himself, but I am informed that every 
 Democratic candidate for Congress in Indiana takes 
 the same ground. Pass to Ohio, and there you find
 
 40 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct 7 
 
 that Groesbeck, and Pendleton, and Cox, and all the 
 other anti-Lecompton men who stood shoulder to 
 shoulder with me against the Lecompton constitution, 
 but voted for the English bill, now repudiate it and 
 take the same ground that I do on that question. So 
 it is with the Joneses and others of Pennsylvania, and 
 so it it with every other Lecompton Democrat in the 
 free States. 
 
 They now abandon even the English bill, and come 
 back to the true platform which I proclaimed at the 
 time in the Senate, and upon which the Democracy of 
 Illinois now stand. And yet, notwithstanding the fact 
 that every Lecompton and anti-Lecompton Democrat 
 in the free States has abandoned the English bill, you 
 are told that it is to be made a test upon me, while the 
 power and patronage of the government are all exerted 
 to elect men to Congress in the other States who 
 occupy the same position with reference to it that I do. 
 It seems that my political offense consists in the fact 
 that I did not first vote for the English bill, and thus 
 pledge myself to keep Kansas out of the Union until 
 she has a population of 93,420, and then return home, 
 violate that pledge, repudiate the bill, and take the 
 opposite ground. If I had done this, perhaps the ad- 
 ministration would now be advocating my reelection, 
 as it is that of the others who have pursued this course. 
 I did not choose to give that pledge, for the reason 
 that I did not intend to carry out that principle. I 
 never will consent, for the sake of conciliating the 
 frowns of power, to pledge myself to do that which I 
 do not intend to perform. I now submit the question 
 to you, as my constituency, whether I was not right — 
 first, in resisting the adoption of the Lecompton con- 
 stitution; and secondly, in resisting the English bill. 
 I repeat that I opposed the Lecompton constitution 
 because it was not the act and deed of the people of 
 Kansas, and did not embody their will. I denied the 
 right of any power on earth, under our system of 
 government, to force a constitution on an unwilling 
 people. There was a time when some men could pre- 
 tend to believe that the Lecompton constitution em- 
 bodied the will of the people of Kansas, but that time 
 has passed. The question was referred to the people 
 of Kansas under the English bill last August, and then, 
 at a fair election, they rejected the Lecompton consti-
 
 iCsS] AT GALESBURG 41 
 
 tution by a vote of from eight to ten against it to one 
 in its favor. Since it has been voted down by so over- 
 whelming a majority, no man can pretend that it was 
 the act and deed of that people. I submit the question 
 to you, whether or not, if it had not been for me, that 
 constitution would have been crammed down the 
 throats of the people of Kansas against their consent. 
 While at least ninety-nine out of every hundred people 
 here present agree that I was right in defeating that 
 project, yet my enemies use the fact that I did defeat 
 it by doing right, to break me down and put another 
 man in the United States Senate in my place. The 
 very men who acknowledge that I was right in defeat- 
 ing Lecompton now form an alliance with federal 
 office-holders, professed Lecompton men, to defeat me 
 because I did right. 
 
 My political opponent, Mr. Lincoln, has no hope on 
 earth, and has never dreamed that he had a chance of 
 success, were it not for the aid that he is receiving 
 from federal office-holders, who are using their in- 
 fluence and the patronage of the government against 
 me in revenge for my having defeated the Lecompton 
 constitution. What do you Republicans think of a 
 political organization that will try to make an unholy 
 and unnatural combination w'ith its professed foes to 
 beat a man merely because he has done right? You 
 know such is the fact with regard to your own party. 
 You know that the ax of decapitation is suspended 
 over every man in office in Illinois, and the terror of 
 proscription is threatened every Democrat by the 
 present administration, unless he supports the Re- 
 publican ticket in preference to my Democratic as- 
 sociates and myself. I could find an instance in the 
 postmaster of the city of Galesburg. and in every other 
 postmaster in this vicinity, all of whom have been 
 stricken down simply because they discharged the 
 duties of their offices honestly, and supported the 
 regular Democratic ticket in this State in the right. 
 The Republican party is availing itself of every un- 
 worthy means in the present contest to carry the 
 election, because its leaders know that if they let this 
 chance slip they will never have another, and their 
 hopes of making this a Republican State will be 
 blasted forever. 
 
 Now, let me ask you whether the country has any
 
 42 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 interest in sustaining this organization known as the 
 Republican party. That party is unhke all other 
 political organizations in this country. All other 
 parties have been national in their character — have 
 avowed their principles alike in the slave and free 
 States, in Kentucky as well as Illinois, in Louisiana as 
 well as in Massachusetts. Such was the case with the 
 Old Whig party, and such was and is the case with the 
 Democratic party. Whigs and Democrats could pro- 
 claim their principles boldly and fearlessly in the North 
 and in the South, in the East and in the West, wher- 
 ever the Constitution ruled and the American flag 
 waved over American soil. 
 
 But now you have a sectional organization, a party 
 which appeals to the Northern section of the Union 
 against the Southern, a party which appeals _ to 
 Northern passion, Northern pride, Northern ambition, 
 and Northern prejudices, against Southern people, the 
 Southern States, and Southern institutions. The 
 leaders of that party hope that they will be able to unite 
 the Northern States in one great sectional party, and 
 inasmuch as the North is the stronger section, that 
 they will thus be enabled to outvote, conquer, govern, 
 and control the South. Hence you find that they now 
 make speeches advocating principles and measures 
 which cannot be defended in any slave-holding State 
 of this Union. Is there a Republican residing in 
 Galesburg who can travel into Kentucky, and carry his 
 principles with him across the Ohio? What Re- 
 publican from Massachusetts can visit the Old Do- 
 minion without leaving his principles behind him when 
 he crosses Mason's and Dixon's line? Permit me to 
 say to you in perfect good humor, but in all sincerity, 
 that no political creed is sound which cannot be pro- 
 claimed fearlessly in every State of this Union where 
 the Federal Constitution is the supreme law of the 
 land. Not only is this Republican party unable to 
 proclaim its principles alike in the North and in the 
 South, in the free States and in the slave States, but it 
 cannot even proclaim them in the same forms and give 
 them the same strength and meaning in all parts of the 
 same State. My friend Lincoln finds it extremely dif- 
 ficult to manage a debate in the central part of the 
 State, where there is a mixture of men from the North 
 and the South. In the extreme northern part of
 
 i858] AT GALES BURG 43 
 
 Illinois he can proclaim as bold and radical Abolition- 
 ism as ever Giddings, Lovejoy, or Garrison enunciated; 
 but when he gets down a little further south he claims 
 that he is an old-line Whig, a disciple of Henry Clay, 
 and declares that he still adheres to the old-line Whig 
 creed, and has nothing whatever to do with Abolition- 
 ism, or negro equality, or negro citizenship. I once 
 before hinted this of Mr. Lincoln in a public speech, 
 and at Charleston he defied me to show that there was 
 any difference between his speeches in the north and 
 in the south, and that they were not in strict harmony. 
 I will now call your attention to two of them, and you 
 can then say whether you would be apt to believe that 
 the same man ever uttered both. In a speech in reply 
 to me at Chicago in July last, Mr. Lincoln, in speaking 
 of the equality of the negro with the white man, used 
 the following language: 
 
 I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of 
 Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon 
 principle," and making exceptions to it, where will it stop ? 
 If one man says it does not mean a negro, why may not 
 another man say it does not mean another man? If the 
 Declaration is not the truth, let us get the statute-book 
 in which we find it and tear it out. Who is so bold as to 
 do it? If it is not true, let us tear it out. 
 
 You find that Mr. Lincoln there proposed that if the 
 doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, declaring 
 all men to be born equal, did not include the negro 
 and put him on an equality with the white man, that 
 we should take the statute-book and tear it out. He 
 there took the ground that the negro race is included 
 in the Declaration of Independence as the equal of the 
 white race, and that there could be no such thing as a 
 distinction in the races, making one superior and the 
 other inferior. I read now from the same speech: 
 
 My friends ihe says'], I have detained you about as long 
 as I desire to do, and I have only to say let us discard all 
 this quibbling about this man and the other man — this race 
 and that race and the other race being inferior, and there- 
 fore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding 
 our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all 
 these things, and unite as one people throughout this 
 land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that 
 all men are created equal.
 
 44 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 ["That's right," etc.] 
 
 Yes, I have no doubt that you think it is right, but 
 the Lincoln men down in Coles, Tazewell, and Sanga- 
 mon counties do not think it is right. In the conclu- 
 sion of the same speech, talking to the Chicago Aboli- 
 tionists, he said : 'T leave you, hoping that the lamp of 
 liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no 
 longer be a doubt that all men are created free and 
 equal." {'Good, good!"] Well, you say good to that, 
 and you are going to vote for Lincoln because he holds 
 that doctrine. I will not blame you for supporting him 
 on that ground, but I will show you, in immediate 
 contrast with that doctrine, what Mr. Lincoln said 
 down in Egypt in order to get votes in that locality 
 where they do not hold to such a doctrine. In a joint 
 discussion between Mr. Lincoln and myself, at Charles- 
 ton, I think, on the i8th of last month, Mr. Lincoln, 
 referring to this subject, used the following language: 
 
 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 of the free 
 negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office,, or 
 having them to marry with white people. I will say in 
 addition, that there is a physical difference between the 
 white and black races, which, I suppose, will forever for- 
 bid the two races living together upon terms of social and 
 political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, 
 that while they do remain together, there must be the 
 position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any 
 other man am in favor of the superior position being 
 assigned to the white man. 
 
 ["Good for Lincoln!"] 
 
 Fellow-citizens, here you find men hurrahing for 
 Lincoln, and saying that he did right when in one part 
 of the State he stood up for negro equality, and in 
 another part, for political effect, discarded the doctrine, 
 and declared that there always must be a superior and 
 inferior race. Abolitionists up north are expected and 
 required to vote for Lincoln because he goes for the 
 equality of the races, holding that by the Declaration 
 of Independence the white man and the negro were 
 created equal, and endowed by the divine law with that 
 equality, and down south he tells the Old Whigs, the 
 Kentuckians, Virginians, and Tennesseeans that there
 
 1858] AT GALESBURG 45 
 
 is a physical difference in the races, making one 
 superior and the other inferior, and that he is in favor 
 of maintaining the superiority of the white race over 
 the negro. 
 
 Now, how can you reconcile those two positions of 
 Mr. L,incoln? He is to be voted for in the south as a 
 pro-slavery man, and he is to be voted for in the north 
 as an Abolitionist. Up here he thinks it is all non- 
 sense to talk about a difference between the races, and 
 says that he must "discard all quibbling about this race 
 and that race and the other race being inferior, and 
 therefore they must be placed in an inferior position." 
 Down south he makes this "quibble" about this race 
 and that race and the other race being inferior as the 
 creed of his party, and declares that the negro can 
 never be elevated to the position of the white man. You 
 find that his political meetings are called by different 
 names in different counties in the State. Here they 
 are called Republican meetings, but in old Tazewell, 
 where Lincoln made a speech last Tuesday, he did not 
 address a Republican meeting, but ''a grand rally of 
 the Lincoln men." There are very few Republicans 
 there, because Tazewell County is filled with old Vir- 
 ginians and Kentuckians, all of whom are Whigs or 
 Democrats, and if Mr. Lincoln had called an Abolition 
 or Republican meeting there, he would not get many 
 votes. Go down into Egypt, and you will find that he 
 and his party are operating under an alias there, which 
 his friend Trumbull has given them, in order that they 
 may cheat the people. When I was down in Monroe 
 County a few weeks ago addressing the people, I saw 
 hand-bills posted announcing that Mr. Trumbull was 
 going to speak in behalf of Lincoln, and what do you 
 think the name of his party was there? Why, tht 
 "Free Democracy." Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Jehu 
 Baker were announced to address the Free Democracy 
 of Monroe County, and the bill was signed "Many 
 Free Democrats." The reason that Mr, Lincoln and 
 his party adopted the name of "Free Democracy" 
 down there was because Monroe County has always 
 been an old-fashioned Democratic county, and hence 
 it was necessary to make the people believe that they 
 were Democrats, sympathized with them, and were 
 fighting for Lincoln as Democrats. Come up to 
 Springfield, where Lincoln now lives and always has
 
 46 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 lived, and you find that the convention of his party 
 which assembled to nominate candidates for the 
 legislature, vi^ho are expected to vote for him if elected, 
 dare not adopt the name of Republican, but assembled 
 under the title of "All opposed to the Democracy." 
 Thus you find that Mr. Lincoln's creed cannot travel 
 through even one half of the counties of this State, 
 but that it changes its hues, and becomes lighter and 
 lighter as it travels from the extreme north, until it is 
 nearly white when it reaches the extreme south end of 
 the State. I ask you, my friends, why cannot Re- 
 publicans avow their principles alike everywhere? I 
 would despise myself if I thought that I was procuring 
 your votes by concealing my opinions, and by avow- 
 ing one set of principles in one part of the State, and a 
 different set in another part. 
 
 If I do not truly and honorably represent your feel- 
 ings and principles, then I ought not to be your sena- 
 tor; and I will never conceal my opinions, or modify 
 or change them a hair's-breadth, in order to get votes. 
 I tell you that this Chicago doctrine of Lincoln's — de- 
 claring that the negro and the white man are made 
 equal by the Declaration of Independence and b> 
 Divine Providence — is a monstrous heresy. The 
 signers of the Declaration of Independence never 
 dreamed of the negro when they were writing that 
 document. They referred to white men, to men of 
 European birth and European descent, when they de- 
 clared the equality of all men. I see a gentleman 
 there in the crowd shaking his head. Let me remind 
 him that when Thomas Jefferson wrote that document 
 he was the owner, and so continued until his death, 
 of a large number of slaves. Did he intend to say in 
 that Declaration that his negro slaves, which he held 
 and treated as property, were created his equals by 
 divine law, and that he was violating the law of God 
 every day of his life by holding them as slaves? It 
 must be borne in mind that when that Declaration was 
 put forth, every one of the thirteen colonies were slave- 
 holding colonies, and every man who signed that in- 
 strument represented a slave-holding constituency. 
 Recollect, also, that no one of them emancipated his 
 slaves, much less put them on an equality with him- 
 self, after he signed the Declaration. On the contrary, 
 they all continued to hold their negroes as slaves dur-
 
 i8s8] AT GALESBURG 47 
 
 ing the Revolutionary War. Now, do you believe — 
 are you willing to have it said — that every man who 
 signed the Declaration of Independence declared the 
 negro his equal, and then was hypocrite enough to 
 continue to hold him as a slave, in violation of what 
 he believed to be the divine law? And yet when you 
 say that the Declaration of Independence includes the 
 negro, you charge the signers of it with hypocrisy. 
 
 I say to you frankly, that in my opinion this govern- 
 ment was made by our fathers on the white basis. It 
 was made by white men for the benefit of white men 
 and their posterity forever, and was intended to be 
 administered by white men in all time to come. But 
 while I hold that under our Constitution and political 
 system the negro is not a citizen, cannot be a citizen, 
 and ought not to be a citizen, it does not follow by any 
 means that he should be a slave. On the contrary, it 
 does follow that the negro as an inferior race ought to 
 possess every right, every privilege, every immunity 
 which he can safely exercise consistent with the safety 
 of the society in which he lives. Humanity requires, 
 and Christianity commands, that you shall extend to 
 every inferior being, and every dependent being, all the 
 privileges, immunities, and advantages which can be 
 granted to them consistent with the safety of society. 
 If you ask me the nature and extent of these privileges, 
 I answer that that is a question which the people of 
 each State must decide for themselves. Illinois has 
 decided that question for herself. We have said that 
 in this State the negro shall not be a slave, nor shall he 
 be a citizen. Kentucky holds a different doctrine. New 
 York holds one different from either, and Maine one 
 different from all. Virginia, in her policy on this 
 question, differs in many respects from the others, and 
 so on, until there are hardly two States whose policy is 
 exactly alike in regard to the relation of the white man 
 and the negro. Nor can you reconcile them and make 
 them alike. Each State must do as it pleases. Illinois 
 has as much right to adopt the policy which we have 
 on that subject as Kentucky had to adopt a different 
 policy. The great principle of this government is that 
 each State has the right to do as it pleases on all these 
 questions, and no other State or power on earth has 
 the right to interfere with us, or complain of us merely 
 because our system differs from theirs. In the com-
 
 48 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 promise measures of 1850, Mr. Clay declared that this 
 great principle ought to exist in the Territories as well 
 as in the States, and I reasserted his doctrine in the 
 Kansas and Nebraska bill in 1854. 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln cannot be made to understand, and 
 those who are determined to vote for him, no matter 
 whether he is a pro-slavery man in the south and a 
 negro-equality advocate in the north, cannot be made 
 to understand, how it is that in a Territory the people 
 can do as they please on the slavery question under the 
 Dred Scott decision. Let us see whether I cannot 
 explain it to the satisfaction of all impartial men. 
 Chief Justice Taney has said, in his opinion in the Dred 
 Scott case, that a negro slave, being property, stands 
 on an equal footing with other property, and that the 
 owner may carry them into United States territory the 
 same as he does other property. Suppose any two of 
 you neighbors shall conclude to go to Kansas, one 
 carrying $100,000 worth of negro slaves and the other 
 $100,000 worth of mixed merchandise, including quan- 
 tities of liquors. You both agree that under that 
 decision you may carry your property to Kansas, but 
 when you get it there, the merchant who is possessed 
 of the liquors, is met by the Maine liquor law, which 
 prohibits the sale or use of his property, and the owner 
 of the slaves is met by equally unfriendly legislation, 
 which makes his property worthless after he gets it 
 there. What is the right to carry your property into 
 the Territory worth to either, when unfriendly legisla- 
 tion in the Territory renders it worthless after you get 
 it there? The slaveholder, when he gets his slaves 
 there, finds that there is no local law to protect him in 
 holding them, no slave code, no police regulation main- 
 taining and supporting him in his right, and he dis- 
 covers at once that the absence of such friendly legisla- 
 tion excludes his property from the Territory just as 
 irresistibly as if there was a positive constitutional 
 prohibition excluding it. 
 
 Thus you find it is with any kind of property in a 
 Territory; it depends for its protection on the local and 
 municipal law. If the people of a Territory want 
 slavery, they make friendly legislation to introduce it, 
 but if they do not want it, they withhold all protection, 
 from it, and then it cannot exist there. Such was the 
 view taken on the subject by different Southern men 
 
 MM '
 
 3858] AT GALESBURG 49 
 
 when the Nebraska bill passed. See the speech of Mr. 
 Orr, of South Carolina, the present Speaker of the 
 House of Representatives of Congress, made at that 
 time, and there you will find this whole doctrine argued 
 out at full length. Read the speeches of other Southern 
 congressmen, senators, and representatives, made in 
 1854, and you will find that they took the same view of 
 the subject as Mr. Orr — that slavery could never be 
 forced on a people who did not want it. I hold that in 
 this country there is no power on the face of the globe 
 that can force any institution on an unwilling people. 
 The great fundamental principle of our government is 
 that the people of each State and each Territory shall 
 be left perfectly free to decide for themselves what shall 
 be the nature and character of their institutions. 
 When this government was made, it was based on that 
 principle. At the time of its formation there were 
 twelve slave-holding States, and one free State, in this 
 Union. Suppose this doctrine of Mr. Lincoln and the 
 Republicans, of uniformity of laws of all the States 
 on the subject of slavery, had prevailed; suppose Mr. 
 Lincoln himself had been a member of the convention 
 which framed the Constitution, and that he had risen 
 in that august body, and, addressing the Father of his 
 Country, had said as he did at Springfield: 
 
 A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe 
 this government cannot endure permanently half slave and 
 half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — 
 I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will 
 cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all 
 the other. 
 
 What do you think would have been the result? 
 Suppose he had made that convention believe that 
 doctrine, and they had acted upon it, what do you 
 think would have been the result? Do you believe that 
 one free State would have outvoted the twelve slave- 
 holding States, and thus abolished slavery? On the 
 contrary, would not the twelve slave-holding States 
 have outvoted the one free State, and under his doc- 
 trine have fastened slavery by an irrevocable constitu- 
 tional provision upon every inch of the American 
 republic? Thus you see that the doctrine he now 
 advocates, if proclaimed at the beginning of the gov- 
 ernment, would have established slavery everywhere
 
 5° 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS COct. 7 
 
 throughout the American continent; and are you will- 
 ing, now that we have the majority section, to exercise 
 a power which we never would have submitted to when 
 we were in the minority? If the Southern States had 
 attempted to control our institutions, and make the 
 States all slave when they had the power, I ask would 
 you have submitted to it? If you would not, are you 
 willing, now that we have become the strongest under 
 that great principle of self-government that allows 
 ?ach State to do as it pleases, to attempt to control the 
 Southern institutions? Then, my friends, I say to you 
 that there is but one path of peace in this republic, 
 and that is to administer this government as our 
 fathers made it, divided into free and slave States, 
 allowing each State to decide for itself whether it wants 
 slavery or not. If Illinois will settle the slavery ques- 
 tion for herself, and mind her own business and let her 
 neighbors alone, we will be at peace with Kentucky, 
 and every other Southern State. If every other State 
 in the Union will do the same, there will be peace 
 between the North and South, and in the whole Union. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Reply. 
 
 My Fellow-citisens: 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 top- 
 ics discussed in a large portion of the speech 
 which he has just delivered. I make these re- 
 marks 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
 
 i858] AT GALESBURG 51 
 
 ask your attention to them, and I shall follow him 
 backward upon some notes which I have taken, 
 reversing the order by beginning where he con- 
 cluded. 
 
 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 
 Avorld, from the date of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence up to within three years ago, may 
 be searched in vain for one single affirmation, 
 from one single man, that the negro was not in- 
 cluded 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 neces- 
 sities 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 coun-
 
 52 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 try 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 atten- 
 tion is the judge's comment upon the fact, as he 
 assumes it to be, that we cannot call our public 
 meetings as Republican meetings; and he in- 
 stances Tazewell County as one of the places 
 where the friends of Lincoln have called a pub- 
 lic meeting and have not dared to name it a Re- 
 publican 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 sub- 
 ject. In the contest of 1856 his party delighted 
 to call themselves together as the ''National 
 Democracy," but now, if there should be a no- 
 tice put up anywhere for a meeting of the "Na- 
 tional Democracy," Judge Douglas and his 
 friends would not come. They would not sup- 
 pose themselves invited. They would under- 
 stand that it was a call for those hateful post- 
 masters whom he talks about. 
 
 Now a few words in regard to these extracts 
 from speeches of mine which Judge Douglas has
 
 r858] AT GALESBURG 53 
 
 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 intelli- 
 gent men in the community would see them and 
 know all about my opinions ; and I have not sup- 
 posed, and do not suppose, that there is any con- 
 flict 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 distinc- 
 tion 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 con- 
 flict 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 per- 
 fect social and political equality, it was an im-
 
 54 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 possibility. This you have seen in my printed 
 speeches, and with it I have said that i'n their 
 right to "life, Hberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the 
 inferior races are our equals. And these decla- 
 rations 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 ac- 
 tual presence of the evil — slavery. I have never 
 manifested any impatience with the necessities 
 that spring from the actual presence of black peo- 
 ple amongst us, and the actual existence of slav- 
 ery amongst us where it does already exist; but 
 I have insisted that, in legislating for new coun- 
 tries 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 misun- 
 derstanding this, except by men interested to 
 misunderstand it. I take it that I have to ad- 
 dress an intelligent and reading community who 
 will peruse what I say, weigh it, and then judge 
 whether I advance improper or unsound views, 
 or whether I advance hypocritical and decep- 
 tive 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 re- 
 gard 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
 
 i8s8] AT GALES BURG 55 
 
 question whether this country has any interest 
 in the maintenance of the RepubHcan 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 right- 
 ful party — can be based upon rightful principles 
 — unless it can announce its principles every- 
 where. 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 pro- 
 claim 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 do- 
 ing 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 understand 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 
 
 * Lincoln refers to the following incident : On September 
 I, 1854, Senator Douglas addressed a mass meeting in 
 Chicago in defense of his Kansas-Nebraska Act. "When 
 the time came, flags at half-mast, and the dismal tolling 
 of church bells welcomed him. A vast and silent crowd 
 •was gathered, but not to hear him. Hisses and groans 
 broke in upon his opening sentences. Hour after hour, 
 from eight o'clock until midnight, he stood before them; 
 time and again, as the uproar lessened, his voice com- 
 bated it ; but they would not let him speak. . . . On the 
 ■way home his carriage was set upon, and he was in 
 danger of his life." — "Stephen A. Douglas," by William 
 Garrett Brown, in Riverside Biographical Series.
 
 ^6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 attention for a little while on this occasion. 
 What has always been the evidence brought for- 
 ward to prove that the Republican party is a sec- 
 tional 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 Re- 
 publican 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 prin- 
 ciples to the fact that he can find people some- 
 where 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 fo the fact that by the 
 rule of nationality he is himself fast becoming
 
 I858J AT GALESBURG 57 
 
 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 com- 
 promise of 1850 containing the principle 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, de- 
 tain you a little with them. I have always main- 
 tained so far as I was able that there was noth- 
 ing 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 any- 
 where, 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 ad.- 
 mitted with or without slavery, as they should 
 choose by their own constitutions. Nothing was
 
 58 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion during the territorial existence, and that 
 these old Alexican 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 Mexi- 
 can and Utah laws patterns for the Nebraska 
 bill? I maintain that the organization of Utah 
 and New Mexico did not establish a general prin- 
 ciple at all. It had no feature establishing a gen- 
 eral 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 agree- 
 ment 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 further west, you made Texas larger,
 
 i858] AT GALESBURG 59 
 
 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 in- 
 cluded the abolition of the slave-trade in the Dis- 
 trict 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 meas- 
 ures, 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 Ter- 
 ritories. 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 de- 
 signed as patterns for future territorial legisla- 
 tion, and that this Nebraska bill did not follow 
 them as a pattern at all. 
 
 The judge tells us in proceeding, that he is op- 
 posed to making any odious distinctions between 
 free and slave States. I am altogether unaware
 
 6o DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 that the Republicans are in favor of making any 
 odious distinctions between the free and slave 
 States. But there still is 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 Republi- 
 cans, 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 co- 
 adjutors in their course of policy carefully ex- 
 cludes the thought that there is anything wrong 
 in slavery. All their arguments, if you will con- 
 sider 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 de- 
 clares that if any community wants slavery they 
 have a right to have it. He can say that logi- 
 cally, 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 ovvmers of slaves and owners of 
 property — of horses and every other sort of prop-
 
 -i858] • AT GALESBURG ,61 
 
 erty — 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 differ- 
 ence of sentiment — the belief on the part of one 
 that the institution is wrong, and a policy spring- 
 ing 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 that wrong from growing 
 larger, and looks to there never being an end of 
 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, hav- 
 ing 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 ob- 
 ligations which have been thrown about it; but 
 who, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to 
 the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hope- 
 fully 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, re- 
 iterated his charge of a conspiracy or combina- 
 tion between the National Democrats and Re- 
 publicans. 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
 
 62 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 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 re- 
 member 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 Na- 
 tional 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, unnatural al- 
 liance 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 w^ant to call to the 
 judge's attention an attack he made upon me in 
 the first one of these debates, at Ottawa, on the 
 2ist of August. In order to fix extreme Aboli- 
 tionism upon me. Judge Douglas read a set of 
 resolutions which he declared had been passed
 
 i858] AT GALES BURG 6$ 
 
 by a Republican State convention, in October, 
 1854, at Springfield, 111., 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 
 v^hich he read had not been passed at Springfield 
 at all, nor by any State convention in which I had 
 taken part, that seven days afterward, at Free- 
 port, 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 a suf- 
 ficient 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 i6th of October, 1854, as 
 being the resolutions of an anti-Nebraska con- 
 vention which had sat in that same month of Oc-
 
 64 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 tober, 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 for- 
 gery? The idea that it was done by mistake is 
 absurd. The article in the Illinois State. Regis- 
 ter 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 reso- 
 lutions passed by the convention, and fraudu- 
 lently 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 for- 
 gery at that time was to beat Yates and elect Har- 
 ris 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 that occasion, both Harris and Douglas 
 have more than once since then been attempting 
 to put it to new uses. As the fisherman's wife, 
 who,se 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.
 
 1858] AT GALESBURG 65 
 
 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 to the Congressional Globe of that 
 date. On the 9th of August, Harris attempted it 
 again upon Norton in the House of Representa- 
 tives, as will appear by the same document — 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 in- 
 nocent. 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 reelection 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
 
 66 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 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 reelection 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 
 these assertions without seeming to suspect that 
 they 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 Reg- 
 ister? Lanphier then, as now, was the editor of 
 that paper. Lanphier knows. Lanphier cannot 
 be ignorant of how and by whom it was original- 
 ly concocted. Can he be induced to tell, or if he 
 has told, can Judge Douglas be induced to tell, 
 how it was originally 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 Trum- 
 bull and myself is not quite sufficient evidence 
 to establish them ! 
 
 While we were at Freeport, in one of these 
 joint discussions, I answered certain interroga- 
 tories which Judge Douglas had propounded to 
 me, and there 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 : 'Tf the Supreme Court of 
 the United States shall decide that States cannot
 
 i858] AT GALESBURG 67 
 
 exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor 
 of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such 
 decision as a rule of poHtical action?" 
 
 To this interrogatory Judge Douglas made no 
 answer in any just sense of the word. He con- 
 tented 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 pro- 
 pounded 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 be- 
 lieve 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 su- 
 preme 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 com- 
 pressed 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 ex- 
 pressly affirmed^ in the Constitution." What is 
 it to be "affirmed" in the Constitution? :\lade 
 firm in the Constitution — so made that it cannot 
 be separated from the Constitution without 
 breaking the Constitution— durable as the Con- 
 stitution, and part of the Constitution. Now, re-
 
 68 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 membering 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 constitu- 
 tion of any State to the contrary notwithstand- 
 ing; that the right of property in a slave is af- 
 firmed in that Constitution, is made, formed into, 
 and cannot be separated from it without breaking 
 it ; durable as the instrument, part of the instru- 
 ment, — what follows as a short and even syllo- 
 gistic 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 prem- 
 ises, 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; the falsehood, in fact, is a fault in 
 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
 
 i8s8] AT GALESBURG 69. 
 
 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 deny- 
 ing it, the conchision follows that the Constitu- 
 tion 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 in- 
 evitably 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 intel- 
 ligent 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 elec- 
 tions. I believe, further, that it is just as sure 
 to be made as to-morrow is to come, if that party 
 .^hall be sustained. I have said upon a former oc-
 
 70 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 casion, and I repeat it now, that the course of 
 argument that Judge Douglas makes use of upon 
 this subject (I charge not his motives in this) is 
 preparing the pubHc 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 obli- 
 gation of a Supreme Court decision. I have 
 asked his attention to the fact that Jefferson dif- 
 fered with him in regard to the political obliga- 
 tion 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 abso- 
 lute submission to any department of govern- 
 ment, retaining for themselves no appeal from it, 
 their liberties were gone. I have asked his at- 
 tention to the fact that the Cincinnati platform, 
 upon which he says he stands, disregards a time- 
 honored decision of the Supreme Court, in defy- 
 ing 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 instru- 
 ments 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 sit- 
 ting 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
 
 i8s8] AT GALESBURG 71 
 
 by the decision ot 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 ad- 
 herence 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 be- 
 ing right upon the merits, as he conceives (be- 
 cause he did not discuss that at all), but as being 
 absolutely obligatory upon every one simply be- 
 cause 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 ad- 
 herence to that decision. It marks it in this re- 
 spect, 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 in- 
 geniously 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 **who- 
 ever wants slavery has a right to have it" ; that 
 ''upon principles of equality it should be allowed 
 to go everywhere"; that "there is no inconsist-
 
 72 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 ency between free and slave institutions" — in 
 this he is also preparing (whether purposely or 
 not) the way for rnaking the institution of slav- 
 ery national. I repeat again, for I wish no mis- 
 understanding, that I do not charge that he 
 means it so; but I call upon your minds to in- 
 quire, if you were going to get the best instru- 
 ment you could, and then set it to work in the 
 most ingenious w^y, to prepare the public mind 
 for this movement, operating in the free States, 
 where there is now an abhorrence of the institu- 
 tion of slavery, could you find an instrument so 
 capable of doing it as Judge Douglas, or one em- 
 ployed 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 emancipa- 
 tion must do more than put down the benevolent 
 efforts of the Colonization Society — they must 
 go back to the era of our liberty and independ- 
 ence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its 
 annual joyous return — they must blot out the 
 moral lights around us — they must penetrate the 
 human soul, and eradicate the Hght of reason 
 and the love of liberty" ! And I do think — I re- 
 peat, 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 inde- 
 pendence, and, so far as in him lies, muzzling 
 the cannon that thunders its annual joyous re- 
 turn; that he is blowing out the moral lights
 
 i8s8] AT GALESBURG 73 
 
 around us, when he contends that whoever wants 
 slaves has a right to hold them ; that he is pene- 
 trating, 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 in- 
 fluence, for making the institution of slavery per- 
 petual and national. 
 
 There is, my friends, only one other point to 
 which I will call your attention for the remain- 
 ing 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 acquisi- 
 tion of additional territory, and that I would 
 support a proposition for the acquisition of 
 additional territory, according as my support- 
 ing it was or was not calculated to aggra- 
 vate this slavery question amongst us. I then 
 proposed to Judge Douglas another interroga- 
 tory, which was correlative to that : ''Are you in 
 favor of acquiring additional territory in disre- 
 gard 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 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
 
 74 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 to suppose that we could continue upon our pres- 
 ent 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/' ] Maybe 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 shall 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 a pure white, and I suppose from the 
 judge's previous declaration that when we get 
 Mexico, or any considerable portion of it, he will
 
 i8s8] AT GALESBURG 75 
 
 be in favor of these mongrels settling the ques- 
 tion, which would bring him somewhat into col- 
 lision with his horror of an inferior race. 
 
 It is to be remembered, though, that this power 
 of acquiring additional territory is a power con- 
 fided to the President and 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 con- 
 sidered 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 pro- 
 hibited therein, upon the terms and in the lan- 
 guage 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 Repre- 
 sentatives anything about it, and took it without 
 that prohibition. They have the power of ac- 
 quiring territory without the immediate repre- 
 sentatives of the people being called upon to say 
 anything about it, 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 agita- 
 tion. It is therefore, as I think, a very important 
 question for the consideration of the American
 
 7!6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 people, whether the poHcy of bringing in addi- 
 tional 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 pol- 
 icy 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 filbustering, 
 then, thinks that more territory is needed. 
 Whoever wants wider slave-fields feels sure that 
 some additional territory is needed as slave ter- 
 ritory. Then it is as easy to show the necessity 
 of additional slave territory as it is to assert any- 
 thing that is incapable of absolute demonstra- 
 tion. 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 in- 
 stitutions — 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 interest- 
 ing and important question for this people to
 
 1858] AT GALESBURG 77 
 
 consider ^vhether we shall engage in the policy 
 of acquiring additional territory, discarding alto- 
 gether 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 among us — 
 whether it will add to the one only danger that 
 has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union 
 or our own Hberties. I think it is extremely 
 important that they shall decide, and rightly de- 
 cide, 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 occu- 
 pied 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. 
 
 Mr. Douglas's Rejoinder. 
 
 Gentlemen: The highest compliment you can pay me 
 during the brief half-hour that I have to conclude is by 
 observing a strict silence. I desire to be heard rather 
 than to be applauded.
 
 78 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 7 
 
 The first criticism that Mr. Lincoln makes on my 
 speech was that it was in substance what I have said 
 everywhere else in the State where I have addressed 
 the people. I wish I could say the same of his speech. 
 Why, the reason I complain of him is because he 
 makes one speech north and another south. Because 
 he has one set of sentiments for the Abolition counties, 
 and another set for the counties opposed to Abolition- 
 ism. My point of complaint against him is that I 
 cannot induce him to hold up the same standard, to 
 carry the same flag in all parts of the State. He does 
 not pretend, and no other man will, that I have one set 
 of principles for Galesburg and another for Charles-' 
 ton. He does not pretend that I hold to one doctrine 
 in Chicago and an opposite one in Jonesboro. I have 
 proved that he has a different set of principles for 
 each of these localities. All I asked of him was that 
 he should deliver the speech that he has made here to- 
 day in Coles County instead of in old Knox. It would 
 have settled the question between us in that doubtful 
 county. Here I understand him to reaffirm the doc- 
 trine of negro equality, and to assert that by the Dec- 
 laration of Independence the negro is declared equal 
 to the white man. He tells you to-day that the negro 
 was included in the Declaration of Independence when 
 it asserted that all men were created equal. ['We 
 believe it."] Very well. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln asserts to-day, as he did at Chicago, 
 that the negro was included in that clause of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence which says that all men 
 were created equal, and endowed by the Creator with 
 certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness. If the negro was made 
 his equal and mine, if that equality was established by 
 divine law, and was the negro's inalienable right, how 
 came he to say at Charleston to the Kentuckians resid- 
 ing in that section of our State, that the negro was 
 physically inferior to the white man, belonged to an 
 inferior race, and he was for keeping him always in 
 that inferior condition? I wish you to bear these things 
 in mind. At Charleston he said that the negro be- 
 longed to an inferior race, and that he was for keep- 
 ing him in that inferior condition. There he gave the 
 people to understand that there was no moral ques- 
 tion involved, because the inferiority being established,
 
 i8s8] AT GALESBURG 79 
 
 it was only, a question of degree and not a question of 
 right; here, to-day, instead of making it a question of 
 degree, he makes it a moral question, says that it is a 
 great crime to hold the negro in that inferior condi- 
 tion. {''He's right."] Is he right now, or was he right 
 in Charleston? [''Doth."] He is right then, sir, in 
 your estimation, not because he is consistent, but be- 
 cause he can trim his principles any way in any section, 
 so as to secure votes. All I desire of him is that he 
 will declare the same principles in the south that he 
 does in the north. 
 
 But did you notice how he answered my position 
 that a man should hold the same doctrines throughoui 
 the length and breadth of this republic? He said, 
 "Would Judge Douglas go to Russia and proclaim the 
 same principles he does here?" I would remind him 
 that Russia is not under the American Constitution. 
 If Russia was a part of the American republic, under 
 our Federal Constitution, and I was sworn to support 
 the Constitution, I would maintain the same doctrine 
 in Russia that I do in Illinois. The slave-holding 
 States are governed by the same Federal Constitution 
 as ourselves, and hence a man's principles, in order to 
 be in harmony with the Constitution, must be the same 
 in the South as they are in the North, the same in the 
 free States as they are in the slave States. Whenever 
 a man advocates one set of principles in one section, 
 and another set in another section, his opinions are in 
 violation of the spirit of the Constitution which he has 
 sworn to support. When Mr. Lincoln went to Con- 
 gress in 1847, and, laying his hand upon the Holy 
 Evangelists, made a solemn vow in the presence of 
 high Heaven that he would be faithful to the Constitu- 
 tion — what did he mean — the Constitution as he ex- 
 pounds it in Galesburg, or the Constitution as he ex- 
 pounds it in Charleston? 
 
 _ Mr. Lincoln has devoted considerable time to the 
 circumstance that at Ottawa I read a series of resolu- 
 tions as having been adopted at Springfield, in this 
 State, on the 4th or 5th of October, 1854, which 
 happened not to have been adopted there. He has 
 used hard names; has dared to talk about fraud, about 
 forgery, and has insinuated that there was a conspiracy 
 between Mr. Lanphier, Mr. Harris, and myself to 
 perpetrate a forgery. Now, bear in mind that he does
 
 8o 
 
 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 [Oct. 7 
 
 not deny that these resolutions were adopted in a 
 majority of all Republican counties of this State in 
 that year; he does not deny that they were declared to 
 be the platform of this Republican party in the first 
 congressional district, in the second, in the third, and 
 in many counties of the fourth, and that they thus be- 
 came the platform of his party in a majority of the 
 counties upon which he now relies for support; he does 
 not deny the truthfulness of the resolutions, but takes 
 exception to the spot on which they were adopted. He 
 takes to himself great merit because he thinks they 
 were not adopted on the right spot for me to use them 
 against him, just as he was very severe in Congress 
 upon the government of his country, when he thought 
 that he had discovered that the Mexican war was not 
 begun in the right spot, and was therefore unjust. He 
 tries very hard to make out that there is something 
 very extraordinary in the place where the thing was 
 done, and not in the thing itself. I never believed be- 
 fore that Abraham Lincoln would be guilty of what 
 he has done this day in regard to those resolutions. 
 In the first place, the moment it was intimated to me 
 that they had been adopted at Aurora and Rockford 
 instead of Springfield, I did not wait for him to call 
 my attention to the fact, but led ofif and explained in 
 my first meeting after the Ottawa debate, what the 
 mistake was and how it had been made. I supposed 
 that for an honest man, conscious of his own rectitude, 
 that explanation would be sufficient. I did not wait 
 for him, after the mistake was made, to call my atten- 
 tion to it, but frankly explained it at once as an honest 
 man would. I also gave the authority on which I had 
 stated that these resolutions were adopted by the 
 Springfield Republican convention; that I had seen 
 them quoted by Major Harris in a debate in Congress, 
 as having been adopted by the first Republican State 
 convention in Illinois, and that I had written to him 
 and asked him for the authority as to the time and 
 place of their adoption; that Major Harris being ex- 
 tremely ill, Charles H. Lanphier had written to me for 
 him that they were adopted at Springfield, on the 5th 
 of October, 1854, and had sent me a copy of the 
 Springfield paper containing them. I read them from 
 the newspaper just as Mr. Lincoln reads the proceed- 
 ings of meetings held years ago from the newspapers^
 
 i858] AT GALESBURG 8i 
 
 After giving that explanation, I did not think there 
 was an honest man in the State of IlHnois who doubted 
 that I had been led into the error, if it was such, 
 innocently, in the way I detailed; and I will now say 
 that I do not now believe that there is an honest man 
 on the face of the globe who will not regard with 
 abhorrence and disgust Mr. Lincoln's insinuations of 
 my complicity in that forgery, if it was a forgery. 
 Does Mr. Lincoln wish to push these things to the 
 point of personal difficulties here? I commenced this 
 contest by treating him courteously and kindly; 1 
 always spoke of him in words of respect, and in return 
 he has sought, and is now seeking, to divert public at- 
 tention from the enormity of his revolutionary priii^ 
 ciples by impeaching men's sincerity and integrity, afid 
 inviting personal quarrels. 
 
 I desired to conduct this contest with him like a 
 gentleman, but I spurn the insinuation of complicity 
 and fraud made upon the simple circumstance of an 
 editor of a newspaper having made a mistake as to 
 the place where a thing was done, but not as to the 
 thing itself. These resolutions were the platform of 
 this Republican party of Mr. Lincoln's of that year. 
 They were adopted in a majority of the Republican 
 counties in the State; and when I asked him at Ottawa 
 whether they formed the platform upon which he 
 stood, he did not answer, and I could not get an answer 
 out of him. He then thought, as I thought, that those 
 resolutions were adopted at the Springfield convention, 
 but excused himself by saying that he was not there 
 when they were adopted, but had gone to Tazewell 
 court in order to avoid being present at the convention. 
 He saw them published as having been adopted at 
 Springfield, and so did I, and he knew that if there was 
 a mistake in regard to them, that I had nothing under 
 heaven to do with it. Besides, you find that in all these 
 northern counties where the Republican candidates are 
 running pledged to him, that the conventions which 
 nominated them adopted that identical platform. One 
 cardinal point in that platform which he shrinks from 
 is this — that there shall be no more slave States ad- 
 mited into the Union, even if the people want them. 
 Lovejoy stands pledged against the admission of any 
 more slave States. [''Right; so do zve."] So do you, 
 you say. Farnsworth stands pledged against the ad-
 
 82 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. r 
 
 mission of any more slave States. Washburne stands 
 pledged the same way. The candidate for the legis- 
 lature who is running on Lincoln's ticket in Henderson 
 and Warren stands committed by his vote in the legis- 
 lature to the same thing, and I am informed, but do not 
 know of the fact, that your candidate here is also so 
 pledged. ["Hurrah for him! Good.'"] Now, you 
 Republicans all hurrah for him, and for the doctrine 
 of "no more slave States," and yet Lincoln tells you 
 that his conscience will not permit him to sanction 
 that doctrine, and complains because the resolutions 
 I read at Ottawa made him, as a member of the party, 
 responsible for sanctioning the doctrine of no more 
 slave States. You are one way, you confess, and he is 
 or pretends to be the other, and yet you are both 
 governed by principle in supporting one another. If it 
 be true, as I have shown it is, that the whole Republican 
 party in the northern part of the State stands com- 
 mitted to the doctrine of no more slave States, and 
 that this same doctrine is repudiated by the Republi- 
 cans in the other part of the State, I wonder whether 
 Mr. Lincoln and his party do not present the case 
 which he cited from the Scriptures, of a house divided 
 against itself which cannot stand! I desire to know 
 what are Mr. Lincoln's principles and the principles of 
 his party. I hold, and the party with which I am 
 identified holds, that the people of each State, old and 
 new, have the right to decide the slavery question for 
 themselves, and when I used the remark that I did not 
 care whether slavery was voted up or down, I used it 
 in the connection that I was for allowing Kansas to 
 do just as she pleased on the slavery question. I said 
 that I did not care whether they voted slavery up or 
 down, because they had the right to do as they pleased 
 on the question, and therefore my action would not be 
 controlled by any such consideration. Why cannot 
 Abraham Lincoln, and the party with which he acts, 
 speak out their principles so that they may be under- 
 stood? Why do they claim to be one thing in one part 
 of the State and another in the other part? Whenever 
 I allude to the Abolition doctrines, which he considers 
 a slander to be charged with being in favor of, you 
 all indorse them, and hurrah for them, not knowing 
 that your candidate is ashamed to acknowledge them. 
 I have a few words to say upon the Dred Scott
 
 i858] AT GALESBURG 83 
 
 decision, which has troubled the brain of Mr. Lincoln 
 so much. He insists that that decision would carry 
 slavery into the free States, notwithstanding that the 
 decision says directly the opposite; and goes into a 
 long argument to make you believe that I am ni favor 
 of, and would sanction, the doctrine that would allow 
 slaves to be brought here and held as slaves contrary 
 to our constitution and laws. Mr. Lincoln knew 
 better when he asserted this; he knew that one news- 
 paper, and so far as is within my knowledge but one, 
 ever asserted that doctrine, and that I was the first 
 man in either House of Congress that read that article 
 in debate, and denounced it on the floor of the Senate 
 as revolutionary. When the Washington Union, on 
 the 17th of last November, published an article to that 
 effect, I branded it at once, and denounced it, and 
 hence the Union has been pursuing me ever since. 
 Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, replied to me, and said that 
 there was not a man in any of the slave States south 
 of the Potomac River that held any such doctrine. 
 Mr. Lincoln knows that there is not a member of the 
 Supreme Court who holds that doctrine; he knows 
 that every one of them, as shown by their opinions, 
 holds the reverse. Why this attempt, then, to bring 
 the Supreme Court into disrepute among the people? 
 It looks as if there was an efifort being made to destroy 
 public confidence in the highest judicial tribunal on 
 earth. Suppose he succeeds in destroying public 
 confidence in the court, so that the people will not 
 respect its decisions, but will feel at liberty to dis- 
 regard them, and resist the laws of the land, what will 
 he have gained? He will have changed the govern- 
 ment from one of laws into that of a mob, in which the 
 strong arm of violence will be substituted for the 
 decisions of the courts of justice. He complains be- 
 cause I did not go into an argument reviewing Chief 
 Justice Taney's opinion, and the other opinions of the 
 different judges, to determine whether their reasoning 
 is right or wrong on the questions of law. What use 
 would that be? He wants to take an appeal from the 
 Supreme Court to this meeting to determine whether 
 the questions of law were decided properly. He is 
 going to appeal from the Supreme Court of the United 
 States to every town meeting, in the hope that he can 
 excite a prejudice against that court, and on the wave
 
 84 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 of that prejudice ride into the Senate of the United 
 States, when he could not get there on his own prin- 
 ciples, or his own merits. Suppose he should succeed 
 in getting into the Senate of the United States, what 
 then will he have to do with the decision of the 
 Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case? Can he 
 reverse that decision when he gets there? Can he act 
 upon it? Has the Senate any right to reverse it or re- 
 vise it? He will not pretend that it has. Then why- 
 drag the matter into this contest, unless for the pur- 
 pose of making a false issue, by which he can divert 
 public attention from the real issue. 
 
 He has cited General Jackson in justification of the 
 war he is making on the decision of the court. Mr. 
 Lincoln misunderstands the history of the country if 
 he believes there is any parallel in the two cases. It 
 is true that the Supreme Court once decided that if a 
 bank of the United States was a necessary fiscal agent 
 of the government it was constitutional, and if not, 
 that it was unconstitutional, and also, that whether or 
 not it was necessary for that purpose was a political 
 question for Congress, and not a judicial one for the 
 courts to determine. Hence the court would not 
 determine the bank unconstitutional. Jackson re- 
 spected the decision, obeyed the law, executed it, and 
 carried it into effect during its existence; but after the 
 charter of the bank expired, and a proposition was 
 made to create a new bank. General Jackson said: "It 
 is unnecessary and improper, and therefore I am 
 against it on constitutional grounds as well as those 
 of expediency." Is Congress bound to pass every act 
 that is constitutional? Why, there are a thousand 
 things that are constitutional, but yet are inexpedient 
 and unnecessary, and you surely would not vote for 
 them merely because you had the right to? And be- 
 cause General Jackson would not do a thing which he 
 had a right to do, but did not deem expedient or 
 proper, Mr. Lincoln is going to justify himself in 
 doing that which he has no right to do. I ask him 
 whether he is not bound to respect and obey the de- 
 cisions of the Supreme Court as well as I? The Con- 
 stitution has created that court to decide all constitu- 
 tional questions in the last resort, and when such 
 decisions have been made they become the law of the 
 land, and you, and he, and myself, and every other
 
 i8s8] AT QUINCY 85 
 
 good citizen are bound by them. Yet he argues that 
 I am bound by their decisions, and he is not. He 
 says that their decisions are binding on Democrats, 
 but not on Republicans. Are not Republicans bound 
 by the laws of the land as well as Democrats? And 
 when the court has fixed the construction of 
 the Constitution on the validity of a given law, 
 is not their decision binding upon Republicans as 
 well as upon Democrats? Is it possible that you Re- 
 publicans have the right to raise your mobs and 
 oppose the laws of the land and the constituted au- 
 thorities and yet hold us Democrats bound to obey 
 them? My time is within half a minute of expiring, 
 and all I have to say is that I stand by the laws of the 
 land. I stand by the Constitution as our fathers made 
 it, by the laws as they are enacted, and by the de- 
 cisions of the court upon all points within their juris- 
 diction as they are pronounced by the highest tribunal 
 on earth; and any man who resists these must resort 
 to mob-law and violence to overturn the government 
 of laws. 
 
 Sixth Joint Debate, at Quincy. 
 
 October 13, 1858. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Opening Speech. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I have had no im- 
 mediate 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 con- 
 solidated into the Republican party assembled 
 together in a State convention at Bloomington. 
 They adopted at that time what, in political lan- 
 guage, is called a platform. In June of the same 
 year, the elements of the Republican party in the 
 nation assembled together in a national conven-
 
 86 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 tion at Philadelphia. They adopted what is 
 called the national platform. In June, 1858, — 
 the present year, — the Republicans of Illinois re- 
 assembled 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 some- 
 thing 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 plat- 
 form, and I am unaware that in this can- 
 vass, from the beginning until to-day, any one 
 of our adversaries has taken hold of our plat- 
 forms, or laid his finger upon anything 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 plat- 
 forms, or to 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 re- 
 sponsible 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 resolution which 
 he endeavored to hold me responsible for had not
 
 i85?] AT QUINCY 87 
 
 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, neverthe- 
 less, was not willing to give up the point that he 
 was endeavoring to make upon me, and he there- 
 fore 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 em- 
 braced 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 con- 
 ventions, 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 re- 
 sponsible 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
 
 88 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 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 re- 
 sponsible for what some of my friends in differ- 
 ent 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 Galesburg 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 cer- 
 tain 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 openine speech 
 at Galesburg, I had an opportunity, as I had the 
 middle speech then, of saying something in an- 
 swer 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 inconsist- 
 ent, 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 re- 
 quote 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 cor- 
 rectly :
 
 i858] AT QUINCY 89 
 
 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 differ- 
 ence between the white and black races which will ever 
 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, and I, as much 
 as any other man, am in favor of having the superior 
 position assigned to the white race. 
 
 This, I believe, is the entire quotation from the 
 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 doc- 
 trine that there is such a thing as a superior and 
 inferior race; and Abolitionists are required and ex- 
 pected 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 de- 
 clared 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 judge's 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
 
 90 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 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 enter- 
 tained and openly expressed; in which extract I 
 expressly declared that my own feelings would 
 not admit of a social and political equality be- 
 tween 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 impossi- 
 bility, or substantially that. That extract from 
 my old speech, the reporters, by some sort of ac- 
 cident, 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 reading 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 com- 
 ments 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 
 Eg}'pt. After reading I added these words : 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater 
 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; and 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 pur- 
 pose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the in- 
 stitution of slavery in the States where it exists. I 
 believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no 
 inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce
 
 1858] AT QUINCY 91 
 
 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 natural rights enumerated in the 
 Declaration of Independence — the right to life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as 
 much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with 
 Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many 
 respects, certainly not in color — perhaps not in intel- 
 lectual 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 living 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 com- 
 ment : 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 AboHtion 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
 
 92 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 matter to say that I am altogether unconscious 
 of having attempted any double-dealing any- 
 where; 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 oc- 
 casion 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 de- 
 voted 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 senti- 
 ment 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 occu- 
 pied more time than I intended to do on that 
 topic, I pass over it. 
 
 At Galesburg I tried to show that by the Dred 
 Scott decision, pushed to its legitimate conse- 
 quences, 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 Galesburg, and again he 
 gave me no direct answer as to whether he would
 
 1858] AT QUINCY 93 
 
 or would not sustain such decision if made. I 
 give him this third chance to say yes or no. He 
 is not obHged 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 conclu- 
 sion, 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 re- 
 marks 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. Lin- 
 coln knows that there is no member of the Su- 
 preme 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 opin- 
 ions of the court where any one of them "says 
 the contrary." It is very hard to affirm a nega- 
 tive 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 slav- 
 ery, nor said anything that was substantially 
 that. The nearest approach that any one of them
 
 94 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 has made to it, so far as I can find, was by Judge 
 Nelson, and the approach he made to it was ex- 
 actly, in substance, the Nebraska bill — that the 
 States had the exclusive power over the question 
 of slavery, so far as they are not limiited by the 
 Constitution of the United States. I ask the 
 question, therefore, if the non-concurring 
 judges, McLean or Curtis, had asked to get an 
 express declaration that the States could abso« 
 lutely 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 Galesburg I said something in regard 
 to those Springfield resolutions that Judge Doug- 
 las had attempted to use upon me at Ottawa, and 
 commented at some length upon the fact that they 
 were, as presented, not genuine. Judge Doug- 
 las in his reply to me seemed to be somewhat ex- 
 asperated. He said he never would have be- 
 lieved 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 re- 
 member 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
 
 1858] AT QUINCY 95 
 
 should not concern himself with Trumbull any 
 more, but thereafter he should hold Lincoln re- 
 sponsible 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's the same 
 thing with you/'] Yes, sir, it's the same thing 
 with me. 
 
 I do dare to say forgery when it's true, and 
 don't dare to say forgery when it's 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
 
 96 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 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 wouldn'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 set me to thinking. I was 
 aware, when it was first agreed that Judge Doug- 
 las 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 my- 
 self, 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 audience before which it was conducted. 
 But when Judge Douglas got home from Wash- 
 ington 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 Bloom- 
 ington, in which he commented upon my speech 
 at Chicago, and said that I had used language in- 
 geniously contrived to conceal my intentions, or 
 words to that effect. Now I understand that this 
 is an imputation upon my veracity and my can- 
 dor. 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
 
 i8s8] AT QUINCY 97 
 
 Abolitionize the Old Whig party — I pretending- 
 to be as good an old-Hne 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 treat- 
 ing me i-Z 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 Galesburg, 
 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 under- 
 stand 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 audi- 
 ence, 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
 
 98 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 perhaps he did when he called me an "intelli- 
 gent" 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, v.'hen 
 this canvass shall be over, however it may result, 
 that wx at least part without any bitter recollec- 
 tions of personal difficulties. 
 
 The judge, in his concluding speech at Gales- 
 burg, 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 the 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 opin- 
 ion upon it, that it is a dangerous element. We 
 keep up a controversy in regard to it. That con- 
 troversy 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 opin- 
 ion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than 
 the difference between the men who think slav- 
 ery 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 is a wrong not confining
 
 1858] AT QUINCY 99 
 
 itself merely to the persons or the States where 
 it exists, but that it is a wrong which in its tend- 
 ency, to say the least, affects 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 con- 
 stitutional obligations thrown about it. I suj>- 
 pose that in reference both to its actual exist- 
 ence in the nation, and to our constitutional obli- 
 gations, we have no right at all to disturb it in 
 the States where it exists, and we profess that 
 v/e 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 in- 
 stance, 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 un- 
 willing owners. Where we suppose we have the 
 constitutional right, we restrain ourselves in ref- 
 erence to the actual existence of the institution 
 and the difficulties thrown about it. We also op- 
 pose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread it- 
 self. 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 ac- 
 tual presence of the institution, or anything due
 
 loo DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 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 them- 
 selves. We propose so resisting it as to have it 
 reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule es- 
 tablished 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 im- 
 patient over the necessity springing from its 
 actual presence, and is impatient of the constitu- 
 tional guaranties thrown around it, and would 
 act in disregard of these, he too is misplaced, 
 standing with us. He will find his place some-
 
 1858] AT QUINCY loi 
 
 where 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 sen- 
 timent. 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 rela- 
 tion 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 — advo- 
 cating the present Democratic policy never him- 
 self says it is wrong. He has the high dis- 
 tinction, so far as I know, of never having said 
 slavery is either right or wrong. Almost every- 
 body 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 any- 
 thing wrong in it. If you will examine the argu- 
 ments that are made on it, you will find that 
 every one carefully excludes the idea that there 
 is anything wrong in slavery. Perhaps that
 
 I02 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 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 con- 
 stantly 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 there; 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 plan 
 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 argu- 
 ments 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 in- 
 dividual 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
 
 i858] AT QUINCY .03 
 
 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 be no difference be- 
 tween them as property ; but if the one is prop- 
 erty, held rightfully, and the other is wrong, 
 then there is no equality between the right and 
 wrong ; so that, turn it in any way 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 be- 
 lieve 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, will 
 we in some way come to an end of this slavery 
 agitation. 
 
 Mr. Douglas's Reply. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: Permit me to say that unless 
 silence is observed it will be impossible for me to be 
 heard by this immense crowd, and my friends can con- 
 fer no higher favor upon me than by omitting all 
 expressions of applause or approbation. I desire to 
 be heard rather than to be applauded. I wish to 
 address myself to your reason, your judgment, your 
 sense of justice, and not to your passions.
 
 104 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 I regret that Mr. Lincoln should have deemed it 
 proper for him to again indulge in gross personalities 
 and base insinuations in regard to the Springfield 
 resolutions. It has imposed upon me the necessity of 
 using some portion of my time for the purpose of 
 calling your attention to the facts of the case, and it 
 will then be for you to say what you think of a man 
 who can predicate such a charge upon the circum- 
 stances he has in this. I had seen the platform adopted 
 by a Republican congressional convention held in 
 Aurora, the second congressional district, in Septem- 
 ber, 1854, published as purporting to be the platform 
 of the Republican party. That platform declared that 
 the Republican party was pledged never to admit 
 another slave State into thf Union, and also that it 
 was pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of 
 the United States, — not only all that we then had, but 
 all that we should thereafter acquire, — and to repeal un- 
 conditionally the fugitive-slave law, abolish slavery in 
 the District of Columbia, and prohibit the slave-trade 
 between the different States. These and other articles 
 against slavery were contained in this platform, and 
 unanimously adopted by the Republican congressional 
 convention in that district. I had also seen that the 
 Republican congressional conventions at Rockford, in 
 the first district, and at Bloomington, in the third, 
 had adopted the same platform that year, nearly word 
 for word, and had declared it to be the platform of the 
 Republican party. I had noticed that Major Thomas 
 L. Harris, a member of Congress from the Spring- 
 field district, had referred to that platform in a speech 
 in Congress, as having been adopted by the first Re- 
 publican State convention which assembled in Illinois. 
 When I had occasion to use the fact in this canvass, I 
 wrote to Major Harris to know on what day that 
 convention was held, and to ask him to send me its 
 proceedings. He being sick, Charles H. Lanphier 
 answered my letter by sending me the published pro- 
 ceedings of the convention held in Springfield on 
 the 5th of October, 1854, as they appeared in the report 
 of the State Register. I read those resolutions from 
 that newspaper the same as any of you would refer back 
 and quote any fact from the files of a newspaper which 
 had published it. Mr. Lincoln pretends that after I had 
 so quoted those resolutions he discovered that they had
 
 i858] AT QUINCY 105 
 
 never been adopted at Springfield. He does not deny 
 their adoption by the Republican party at Aurora, at 
 Bloomington, and at Rockford, and by nearly all the 
 Republican county conventions in northern Illinois 
 where his party is in a majority; but merely because 
 they were not adopted on the "spot" on which I said 
 they were, he chooses to quibble about the place rather 
 than meet and discuss the merits of the resolutions 
 themselves. I stated when I quoted them that I did so 
 from the State Register. I gave my authority. Lin- 
 coln believed at the time, as he has since admitted, 
 that they had been adopted at Springfield, as published. 
 Does he believe now that I did not tell the truth w^hen 
 I quoted those resolutions? He knows in his heart 
 that I quoted them in good faith, believing at the time 
 that they had been adopted at Springfield. I would 
 consider myself an infamous wretch if, under such cir- 
 cumstances, I could charge any man with being a 
 party to a trick or a fraud. And I will tell him, too, 
 that it will not do to charge a forgery on Charles H. 
 Lanphier or Thomas L. Harris. No man on earth, 
 who knows them, and knows Lincoln, would take his 
 oath against their word. There are not two men in 
 the State of Illinois who have higher characters for 
 truth, for integrity, for moral character, and for eleva- 
 tion of tone, as gentlemen, than Mr. Lanphier and Mr. 
 Harris. Any man who attempts to make such charges 
 as Mr. Lincoln has indulged in against them, only 
 proclaims himself a slanderer. 
 
 I will now show you that I stated with entire fair- 
 ness, as soon as it was made known to me, that there 
 was a mistake about the spot where the resolutions 
 had been adopted, although their truthfulness, as a 
 declaration of the principles of the Republican party, 
 had not and could not be questioned. I did not wait 
 for Lincoln to point out the mistake; but the moment 
 I discovered it, I made a speech, and published it to the 
 world, correcting the error. I corrected it myself, as 
 a gentleman and an honest man, and as I always feel 
 proud to do when I have made a mistake. I wish 
 Mr. Lincoln could show that he has acted with equal 
 fairness and truthfulness when I have convinced him' 
 that he has been mistaken. I will give you an illus- 
 tration to show you how he acts in a similar case: In 
 a speech at Springfield he charged Chief Justice Taney
 
 io6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 and his associates, President Pierce, President Buch- 
 anan, and myself, with having entered into a con- 
 spiracy at the time the Nebraska bill was introduced, 
 by which the Dred Scott decision was to be made by 
 the Supreme Court, in order to carry slavery every- 
 where under the Constitution. I called his attention 
 to the fact that at the time alluded to — to wit, the in- 
 troduction of the Nebraska bill — it was not possible 
 that such a conspiracy could have been entered into, 
 for the reason that the Dred Scott case had never 
 been taken before the Supreme Court, and was not 
 taken before it for a year after; and I asked him to 
 take back that charge. Did he do it? I showed him 
 that it was impossible that the charge could be true; 
 I proved it by the record, and I then called upon him 
 to retract his false charge. What was his answer? 
 Instead of coming out like an honest man and doing 
 so, he reiterated the charge, and said that if the case 
 had not gone up to the Supreme Court from the courts 
 of Missouri at the time he charged that the judges of 
 the Supreme Court entered into the conspiracy, yet 
 that there was an understanding with the Democratic 
 owners of Dred Scott that they would take it up. I 
 have since asked him who the Democratic owners of 
 Dred Scott were, but he could not tell. And why? 
 Because there were no such Democratic owners in 
 existence. Dred Scott at the time was owned by the 
 Rev. Dr. Chaffee, an Abolition member of Congress, 
 of Springfield, Massachusetts, in right of his wife. He 
 was owned by one of Lincoln's friends, and not by 
 Democrats at all; his case was conducted in court by 
 Abolition lawyers, so that both the prosecution and 
 the defense were in the hands of the Abolition political 
 friends of Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 Notwithstanding I thus proved by the record that 
 his charge against the Supreme Court was false, in- 
 stead of taking it back, he resorted to another false 
 charge to sustain the infamy of it. He also charged 
 President Buchanan with having been a party to the 
 conspiracy. I directed his attention to the fact that 
 the charge could not possibly be true, for the reason 
 that at the time specified Mr. Buchanan was not in 
 America, but was three thousand miles ofi", represent- 
 ing the United States at the Court of St. James, and 
 had been there for a year previous, and did not return
 
 i858] AT QUINCY 107 
 
 till three years afterward. Yet I never could get Mr. 
 Lincoln to take back his false charge, although I have 
 called upon him over and over again. He refuses to 
 do it, and either remains silent or resorts to other 
 tricks to try and palm his slander off on the country. 
 Therein you will find the difference between Mr. Lin- 
 coln and myslf. When I make a mistake, as an honest 
 man I correct it without being asked to do so; but 
 when he makes a false charge, he sticks to it and never 
 corrects it. One word more in regard to these resolu- 
 tions: I quoted them at Ottawa merely to ask Mr. 
 Lincoln whether he stood on that platform. That was 
 the purpose for which I quoted them. I did not think 
 that I had a right to put idle questions to him, and I 
 first laid a foundation for my questions by showing 
 that the principles which I wished him either to affirm 
 or deny had been adopted by some portion of his 
 friends, at least, as their creed. Hence I read the 
 resolutions, and put the questions to him, and he then 
 refused to answer them. Subsequently — one week 
 afterward — he did answer a part of them, but the 
 others he has not answered up to this day. 
 
 Now let me call your attention for a moment to the 
 answers which Mr. Lincoln made at Freeport to the 
 questions which I propounded to him at Ottawa, based 
 upon the platform adopted by a majority of the Aboli- 
 tion counties of the State, which now, as then, sup- 
 ported him. In answer to my question whether he 
 indorsed the Black Republican principle of "no more 
 slave States," he answered that he was not pledged 
 against the admission of any more slave States, but 
 that he would be very sorry if he should ever be placed 
 in a position where he would have to vote on the ques- 
 tion; that he would rejoice to know that no more slave 
 States would be admitted into the Union; "but," he 
 added, "if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories 
 during the territorial existence of any one given Ter- 
 ritory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance 
 and a clear field when they come to adopt the constitu- 
 tion, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a 
 slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence 
 of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if 
 we own the country, but to admit them into the 
 Union." The point I wish him to answer is this: 
 Suppose Congress should not prohibit slavery in the
 
 io8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 Territory, and it applied for admission with a consti- 
 tution recognizing slavery, then how would he vote? 
 His answer at Freeport does not apply to any Ter- 
 ritory in America. I ask you [turning to Lincoln], will 
 you vote to admit Kansas into the Union, with just 
 such a constitution as her people want, with slavery or 
 without, as they shall determine? He will not answer. 
 I have put that question to him time and time again, 
 and have not been able to get an answer out of him. 
 I ask you again, Lincoln, will you vote to admit New 
 Mexico, when she has the requisite population, with 
 such a constitution as her people adopt, either recog- 
 nizing slavery or not, as they shall determine? He 
 will not answer. I put the same question to him in 
 reference to Oregon and the new States to be carved 
 out of Texas in pursuance of the contract between 
 Texas and the United States, and he will not answer. 
 He will not answer these questions in reference to any 
 Territory now in existence, but says that if Congress 
 should prohibit slavery in a Territory, and when its 
 people asked for admission as a State they should 
 adopt slavery as one of their institutions, that he sup- 
 poses he would have to let it come in. I submit to 
 you whether that answer of his to my question does 
 not justify me in saying that he has a fertile genius in 
 devising language to conceal his thoughts. I ask you 
 whether there is an intelligent man in America who 
 does not believe that the answer was made for the 
 purpose of concealing what he intended to do. He 
 wished to make the old-line Whigs believe that he 
 would stand by the compromise measures of 1850, 
 which declared that the States might come into the 
 Union with slavery, or without, as they pleased, while 
 Lovejoy and his Abolition allies up north explained to 
 the Abolitionists that in taking this ground he 
 preached good Abolition doctrine, because his proviso 
 would not apply to any Territory in America, and 
 therefore there was no chance of his being governed 
 by it. It would have been quite easy for him to have 
 said that he would let the people of a State do just as 
 they pleased, if he desired to convey such an idea. 
 Why did he not do it? He would not answer my 
 question directly because, up north, the Abolition 
 creed declares that there shall be no more slave States, 
 while down south, in Adams County, in Coles, and
 
 i8s8] AT QUINCY 109 
 
 in Sangamon, he and his friends are afraid to advance 
 that doctrine. Therefore he gives an evasive and 
 equivocal answer, to be construed one way in the 
 south and another way in the north, which, when 
 analyzed, it is apparent is not an answer at all with 
 reference to any Territory now in existence. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln complains that, in my speech the other 
 day at Galesburg, I read an extract from a speech 
 delivered by him at Chicago, and then another from 
 his speech at Charleston, and compared them, thus 
 showing the people that he had one set of principles 
 in one part of the State and another in the other part. 
 And how does he answer that charge? Why, he 
 quotes from his Charleston speech as I quoted from it, 
 and then quotes another extract from a speech which 
 he made at another place, which he says is the same 
 as the extract from his speech at Charleston; but he 
 does not quote the extract from his Chicago speech, 
 upon which I convicted him of double-dealing. I 
 quoted from his Chicago speech to prove that he held 
 one set of principles up north among the Abolitionists, 
 and from his Charleston speech to prove that he held 
 another set down at Charleston and in southern 
 Illinois. In his answer to this charge, he ignores 
 entirely his Chicago speech, and merely argues that he 
 said the same thing which he said at Charleston at 
 another place. If he did, it follows that he has twice, 
 instead of once, held one creed in one part of the 
 State, and a dififerent creed in another part. Up at 
 Chicago, in the opening of the campaign, he reviewed 
 my reception speech, and undertook to answer my 
 argument attacking his favorite doctrine of negro 
 equality. I had shown that it was a falsification of the 
 Declaration of Independence to pretend that that in- 
 strument applied to and included negroes in the clause 
 declaring that all men are created equal. What was 
 Lincoln reply? I will read from his Chicago speech, 
 and the one which he did not quote, and dare not 
 quote, in this part of the State. He said: 
 
 I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of 
 Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon 
 principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? 
 If one man says it does not mean a negro, why may not 
 another man say it does not mean another man? If that
 
 no DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 declaration is not the truth, let us get this statute-book 
 in which we find it and tear it out. 
 
 There you find that Mr. Lincoln told the Abolition- 
 ists of Chicago that if the Declaration of Independence 
 did not declare that the negro was created by the 
 Almighty the equal of the white man, that you ought 
 to take that instrument and tear out the clause which 
 says that all men are created equal. But let me call 
 your attention to another part of the same speech. 
 You know that in his Charleston speech, an extract 
 from which he has read, he declared that the negro 
 belongs to an inferior race, is physically inferior to 
 the white man, and should always be kept in an in- 
 ferior position. I will now read to you what he said 
 at Chicago on that point. In concluding his speech at 
 that place, he remarked: 
 
 My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desire 
 to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this 
 quibbling about this man and the other man — this race 
 and that race and the other race being inferior, and 
 therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, dis- 
 carding our standard that we have left us. Let us dis- 
 card all these things, and unite as one people throughout 
 this land until we shall once more stand up declaring 
 that all men are created equal. 
 
 Thus you see that when addressing the Chicago 
 Abolitionists he declared that all distinctions of race 
 must be discarded and blotted out, because the negro 
 stood on an equal footing with the white man; that if 
 one man said the Declaration of Independence did not 
 mean a negro when it declared all men created equal, 
 that another man would say that it did not mean 
 another man; and hence we ought to discard all dif- 
 ference between the negro race and all other races, and 
 declare them all created equal. Did old Giddings, 
 when he came down among you four years ago, preach 
 more radical Abolitionism than this? Did Lovejoy, or 
 Lloyd Garrison, or Wendell Phillips, or Fred Doug- 
 lass, ever take higher Abolition grounds than that? 
 Lincoln told you that I had charged him with getting 
 up these personal attacks to conceal the enormity of his 
 principles, and then commenced talking about some- 
 thing else, omitting to quote this part of his Chicago 
 speech which contained the enormity of his principles
 
 1858] AT QUINCY 111 
 
 to which I alluded. He knew that I alluded to his 
 negro-equality doctrines when I spoke of the enormity 
 of his principles, yet he did not find it convenient to 
 answer on that point. Having shown you what he 
 said in his Chicago speech in reference to negroes 
 being created equal to white men, and about discard- 
 ing all distinctions betwen the two races, I will again 
 read to you what he said at Charleston: 
 
 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 of the free 
 negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold_ office, or 
 having them to marry with white people. I will say, in 
 addition, that there is a physical difference between the 
 white and black races which, I suppose, will forever 
 forbid the two races living together upon 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, and I, as much as any 
 other man, am in favor of the superior position being 
 assigned to the white man. 
 
 '&» 
 
 [A voice: "That's the doctrine."] 
 
 Mr. Douglas: Yes, sir, that is good doctrine; but 
 Mr. Lincoln is afraid to advocate it in the latitude of 
 Chicago, where he hopes to get his votes. It is good 
 doctrine in the anti-Abolition counties for him, and 
 his Chicago speech is good doctrine in the Abolition 
 counties. I assert, on the authority of these two 
 speeches of Mr. Lincoln, that he holds one set of 
 principles in the Abolition counties, and a different 
 and contradictory set in the other counties. I do not 
 question that he said at Ottawa what he quoted, but 
 that only convicts him further, by proving that he has 
 twice contradicted himself instead of once. Let me 
 ask him why he cannot avow his principles the same 
 in the north as in the south — the same in every county, 
 if he has a conviction that they are just? But I for- 
 got — he would not be a Republican if his principles 
 would apply alike to every part of the country. The 
 party to which he belongs is bounded and limited by 
 geographical lines. With their principles they cannot 
 even cross the Mississippi River on your ferry-boats. 
 They cannot cross over the Ohio into Kentucky. Lin- 
 coln himself cannot visit the land of his fathers, the
 
 1x2 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 scenes of his childhood, the graves of his ancestors, 
 and carry his Abolition principles, as he declared them 
 at Chicago, with him. 
 
 This Republican organization appeals to the North 
 agamst the South; it appeals to Northern passion, 
 Northern prejudice, and Northern ambition, against 
 Southern people, Southern States, and Southern in- 
 stitutions, and its only hope of success is by that ap- 
 peal. Mr. Lincoln goes on to justify himself in mak- 
 ing a war upon slavery upon the ground that Frank 
 Blair and Gratz Brown did not succeed in their war- 
 fare upon the institutions in Missouri. Frank Blair 
 was elected to Congress, in 1856, from the State of 
 Missouri, as a Buchanan Democrat, and he turned 
 Fremonter after the people elected him, thus belong- 
 ing to one party before his election, and another after- 
 ward. What right, then, had he to expect, after hav- 
 ing thus cheated his constituency, that they would 
 support him at another election? Mr. Lincoln thinks 
 that it is his duty to preach a crusade in the free States 
 against slavery, because it is a crime, as he believes, 
 and ought to be extinguished, and because the people 
 of the slave States will never abolish it. How is he 
 going to abolish it? Down in the southern part of the 
 State he takes the ground openly that he will not 
 interfere with slavery where it exists, and says that he 
 is not now and never was in favor of interfering with 
 slavery where it exists in the States. Well, if he is 
 not in favor of that, how does he expect to bring 
 slavery into a course of ultimate extinction? How 
 can he extinguish it in Kentucky, in Virginia, in all 
 the slave States, by his policy, if he will not pursue a 
 policy which will interfere with it in the States where 
 it exists? In his speech at Springfield before the 
 Abolition or Republican convention, he declared his 
 hostility to any more slave States in this language: 
 
 Under the operation of that policy the 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 can- 
 not stand." I believe this government cannot endure 
 permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the 
 Union to be dissolved, — I do not expect the house to 
 fall, — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
 become all one thing, or all the other. Either the oppo-
 
 i8s8] AT QUINCY 113 
 
 tients 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. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln there told his Abolition friends that this 
 government could not endure permanently divided into 
 free and slave States as our fathers made it, and that 
 it must become all free or all slave; otherwise, that 
 the government could not exist. How then does Lin- 
 coln purpose to save the Union, unless by compelling 
 ail the States to become free, so that the house shall 
 not be divided against itself? He intends making them 
 all free; he will preserve the Union in that way; and 
 yet he is not going to interfere with slavery anywhere 
 it now exists. How is he going to bring it about? 
 Why, he will agitate; he will induce the North to 
 agitate until the South shall be worried out, and 
 forced to abolish slavery. Let us examine the policy 
 by which that is to be done. He first tells you that he 
 would prohibit slavery everywhere in the Territories. 
 He would thus confine slavery within its present limits. 
 When he thus gets it confined, and surrounded, so 
 that it cannot spread, the natural laws of increase will 
 go on until the negroes will be so plenty that they can- 
 not live on the soil. He will hem them in until star- 
 vation seizes them, and by starving them to death he 
 will put slavery in the course of ultimate extinction. 
 If he is not going to interfere with slavery in the 
 States, but intends to interfere and prohibit it in the 
 Territories, and thus smother slavery out, it naturally 
 follows that he can extinguish it only by extinguishing 
 the negro race; for his policy would drive them to 
 starvation. This is the humane and Christian remedy 
 that he proposes for the great crime of slavery. 
 
 He tells you that I will not argue the question 
 whether slavery is right or wrong, I tell you why I 
 will not do it, I hold that, under the Constitution of 
 the United States, each State of this Union has a right 
 to do as it pleases on the subject of slavery. In 
 Illinois we have exercised that sovereign right by 
 prohibiting slavery within our own limits. I approve 
 of that line of policy. We have performed our whole 
 duty in Illinois. We have gone as far as we have a
 
 114 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 right to go under the Constitution of our common 
 country. It is none of our business whether slavery 
 exists in Missouri or not. Missouri is a sovereign 
 State of this Union, and has the same right to decide 
 the slavery question for herself that Illinois has to 
 decide it for herself. Hence I do not choose to occupy 
 the time allotted to me in discussing a question that 
 we have no right to act upon. I thought that you 
 desired to hear us upon those questions coming within 
 our constitutional power of acts. Lincoln will not dis- 
 cuss these. What one question has he discussed that 
 comes within the power or calls for the action or 
 interference of a United States senator? He is going 
 to discuss the rightfulness of slavery when Congress 
 cannot act upon it either way. He wishes to discuss 
 the merits of the Dred Scott decision when, under 
 the Constitution, a senator has no right to interfere 
 with the decision of judicial tribunals. He wants your 
 'exclusive attention to two questions that he has no 
 power to act upon; to two questions that he could not 
 vote upon if he was in Congress; to two questions 
 that are not practical, in order to conceal from your 
 attention other questions which he might be required 
 to vote upon should he ever become a member of 
 Congress. He tells you that he does not like the 
 Dred Scott decision. Suppose he does not, how is he 
 going to help himself? He says that he will reverse it. 
 How will he reverse it? I know of but one mode of 
 reversing judicial decisions, and that is by appealing 
 from the inferior to the superior court. But I have 
 never yet learned how or where an appeal could be 
 taken from the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 The Dred Scott decision was pronounced by the 
 highest tribunal on earth. From that decision there is 
 no appeal this side of heaven. Yet Mr. Lincoln says 
 he is going to reverse that decision. By what tribunal 
 will he reverse it? Will he appeal to a mob? Does he 
 intend to appeal to violence, to lynch-law? Will he 
 stir up strife and rebellion in the land, and overthrow 
 the court by violence? He does not deign to tell you 
 how he will reverse the Dred Scott decision, but keeps 
 appealing each day from the Supreme Court of the 
 United States to political meetings in the country. 
 He wants me to argue with you the merits of each 
 point of that decision before this political meetmg. I
 
 1858 J AT QUINCY 115 
 
 say to you, with all due respect, that I choose to abide 
 "by the decisions of the Supreme Court as they are 
 pronounced. It is not for me to inquire, after a 
 decision is made, whether I like it in all the points or 
 not. When I used to practise law with Lincoln, I 
 never knew him to be beat in a case that he did not 
 get mad at the judge and talk about appealing; and 
 when I got beat I generally thought the court was 
 wrong, but I never dreamed of going out of the court- 
 house and making a stump speech to the people against 
 the judge, merely because I had found out that I did 
 not know the law as well as he did. If the decision 
 did not suit me, I appealed until I got to the Supreme 
 Court, and then if that court, the highest tribunal in 
 the world, decided against me, I was satisfied, because 
 it is the duty of every law-abiding man to obey the 
 Constitution, the laws, and the constituted authorities. 
 He who attempts to. stir up odium and rebellion in 
 the country against the constituted authorities, is 
 stimulating the passions of men to resort to violence 
 and to mobs instead of to the law. Hence I tell you 
 that I take the decisions of the Supreme Court as the 
 law of the land, and I intend to obey them as such. 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln says that I will not answer his 
 ■question as to what I would do in the event of the 
 court making so ridiculous a decision as he imagines 
 they would by deciding that the free State of Illinois 
 could not prohibit slavery within her own limits. I 
 told him at Freeport why I would not answer such a 
 question. I told him that there was not a man pos- 
 sessing any brains in America, lawyer or not, who 
 ever dreamed that such a thing could be done. I told 
 him then, as I do now, that by all the principles set 
 forth in the Dred Scott decision, it is impossible. I 
 told him then, as I do now, that it is an insult to men's 
 understanding, and a gross calumny on the court, to 
 presume in advance that it was going to degrade itself 
 so low as to make a decision known to be in direct 
 violation of the Constitution. {A voice: ''The same 
 thing was said about the Dred Scott decision before it 
 J>assed."] Perhaps you think that the court did the 
 same thing in reference to the Dred Scott decision. 
 I have heard a man talk that way before. The princi- 
 ples contained in the Dred Scott decision had been 
 affirmed previously in various other decisions. What
 
 n6 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 court or judge ever held that a negro was a citizen? 
 The State courts had decided that question over and. 
 over again, and the Dred Scott decision on that point 
 only atifirmed what every court in the land knew to be 
 the law. 
 
 But I will not be drawn off into an argument upon 
 the merits of the Dred Scott decision. It is enough 
 for me to know that the Constitution of the United 
 States created the Supreme Court for the purpose of 
 deciding all disputed questions touching the true con- 
 struction of that instrument, and when such decisions 
 are pronounced, they are the law of the land, binding 
 on every good citizen. Mr. Lincoln has a very con- 
 venient mode of arguing upon the subject. He holds 
 that because he is a Republican he is not bound by 
 the decisions of the court, but that I, being a Demo- 
 crat, am so bound. It may be that Republicans do not 
 hold themselves bound by the laws of the land and the 
 Constitution of the country as expounded by the 
 courts; it may be an article in the Republican creed 
 that men who do not like a decision have a right to 
 rebel against it ; but when Mr. Lincoln preaches that 
 doctrine, I think he will find some honest Republican 
 — some law-abiding man in that party — who will re- 
 pudiate such a monstrous doctrine. The decision in 
 the Dred Scott case is binding on every American 
 citizen alike; and yet Mr. Lincoln argues that the 
 Republicans are not bound by it because they are 
 opposed to it, whilst Democrats are bound by it be- 
 cause we will not resist it. A Democrat cannot resist 
 the constituted authorities of this country; a Democrat 
 is a law-abiding man; a Democrat stands by the 
 Constitution and the laws, and relies upon liberty as 
 protected by law, and not upon mob or political 
 violence. 
 
 I have never yet been able to make Mr. Lincoln un- 
 derstand, nor can I make any man who is determined 
 to support him, right or wrong, understand, how it is 
 that under the Dred Scott decision the people of a 
 Territory, as well as a State, can have slavery or not, 
 just as they please. I believe that I can explain that 
 proposition to all constitution-loving, law-abiding^ 
 men in a way that they cannot fail to understand. 
 Chief Justice Taney, in his opinon in the Dred Scott 
 case, said that slaves being property, the owner of
 
 1858] AT QUINCY 117 
 
 them has a right to take them into a Territory the 
 same as he would any other property; in other words, 
 that slave property, so far as the right to enter into a 
 Territory is concerned, stands on the same footing 
 with other property. Suppose we grant that proposi- 
 tion. Then any man has a right to go to Kansas and 
 take his property with him, but when he gets there 
 he must rely upon the local law to protect his property, 
 whatever it may be. In order to illustrate this, imagine 
 that three of you conclude to go to Kansas. One 
 takes $10,000 worth of slaves, another $10,000 worth of 
 liquors, and the third $10,000 worth of dry-goods. 
 When the man who owns the dry-goods arrives out 
 there and commences selling them, he finds that he is 
 stopped and prohibited from selling until he gets a 
 license, which will destroy all the profits he can make 
 on his goods to pay for. When the man with the 
 liquors gets there and tries to sell, he finds a Maine 
 liquor-law in force which prevents him. Now of what 
 use is his right to go there with his property unless he 
 is protected in the enjoyment of that right after he 
 gets there? The man who goes there with his slaves 
 finds that there is no law to protect him when he 
 arrives there. He has no remedy if his slaves run 
 away to another country: there is no slave code or 
 police regulations, and the absence of them excludes 
 his slaves from the Territory just as effectually and 
 as positively as a constitutional prohibition could ex- 
 clude them. 
 
 Such was the understanding when the Kansas and 
 Nebraska bill was pending in Congress. Read the 
 speech of Speaker Orr, of South Carolina, in the House 
 of Representatives, in 1856, on the Kansas question, 
 and you will find that he takes the ground that while 
 the owner of a slave has a right to go into a Territory 
 and carry his slaves with him, that he cannot hold 
 them one day or hour unless there is a slave code to 
 protect him. He tells you that slavery would not 
 exist a day in South Carolina, or any other State, 
 unless there was a friendly people and friendly legis- 
 lation. Read the speeches of that giant in intellect, 
 Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, and you will find 
 them to the same effect. Read the speeches of Sam 
 Smith, of Tennessee, and of all Southern men, and you 
 will find that they all understood this doctrine then as
 
 ii8 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 we understand it now. Mr. Lincoln cannot be made 
 to understand it, however. Down at Jonesboro, he 
 went on to argue that if it be the law that a man has 
 a right to take his slaves into territory of the United 
 States under the Constitution, that then a member of 
 Congress was perjured if he did not vote for a slave 
 code. I ask him whether the decision of the Supreme 
 Court is not binding upon him as well as on me? If 
 so, and he holds that he would be perjured if he did 
 not vote for a slave code under it, I ask him whether, 
 if elected to Congress, he will so vote? I have a right 
 to his answer, and I will tell you why. He put that 
 question to me down in Egypt, and did it with an air 
 of triumph. This was about the form of it: 'Tn the 
 event a slave-holding citizen of one of the Territories 
 should need and demand a slave code to protect his 
 slaves, would you vote for it?" I answered him that 
 a fundamental article in the Democratic creed, as put 
 forth in the Nebraska bill and the Cincinnati platform, 
 was non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the 
 States and Territories, and hence that I would not 
 vote in Congress for any code of laws either for or 
 against slavery in any Territory. I will leave the 
 people perfectly free to decide that question for them- 
 selves. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln and the Washington Union both think 
 that a monstrous bad doctrine. Neither Mr. Lincoln 
 nor the Washington Union likes my Freeport speech 
 on that subject. The Union, in a late number, has been 
 reading me out of the Democratic party because I 
 hold that the people of a Territory, like those of a 
 State, have the right to have slavery or not, as they 
 please. It has devoted three and a half columns to 
 prove certain propositions, one of which I will read. 
 It says: 
 
 We propose to show that Judge Douglas's action in 1850 
 and 1854 was taken with especial reference to the an- 
 nouncement of doctrine and programme which was made 
 at Freeport. The declaration at Freeport was that "in 
 his opinion the people can, by lawful means, exclude 
 slavery from a Territory before it comes in as a State" ; 
 and he declared that his competitor had "heard him argue 
 the Nebraska bill on that principle all over Illinois in 
 1854. 1855, and 1856, and had no excuse to pretend to 
 have any doubt upon that subject."
 
 i8s8] AT QUINCY 119 
 
 The Washington Union there charges me with the 
 monstrous crime of now proclaiming on the stump 
 the same doctrine that I carried out in 1850, by sup- 
 porting Clay's compromise measures. The Union 
 also charges that I am now proclaiming the same 
 doctrine that I did in 1854 in support of the Kansas and 
 Nebraska bill. It is shocked that I should now stand 
 where I stood in 1850, when I was supported by Clay, 
 Webster, Cass, and the great men of that day, and 
 where I stood in 1854, and in 1856, when Mr. Buch- 
 anan was elected President. It goes on to prove, 
 and succeeds in proving, from my speeches in Con- 
 gress on Clay's compromise measures, that I held the 
 same doctrines at that time that I do now, and then 
 proves that by the Kansas and Nebraska bill I ad- 
 vanced the same doctrine that I now advance. It 
 remarks: 
 
 So much for the course taken by Judge Douglas on the 
 compromises of 1850. The record shows, beyond the Dossi- 
 bility of cavil or dispute, that he expressly intended in 
 those bills to give the territorial legislatures power to 
 exclude slavery. How stands his record in the memorable 
 session of 1854, with reference to the Kansas-Nebraska 
 iDill itself? We shall not overhaul the votes that were 
 given on that notable measure. Our space will not afford 
 it. We have his own words, however, delivered in his 
 speech closing the great debate on that bill on the night 
 of March 3, 1854, to show that he meant to do in 1854 
 precisely what he had meant to do in 1858. The Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill being upon its passage, he said : 
 
 It then quotes my remarks upon the passage of the 
 bill as follows: 
 
 The principle which we propose to carry into effect by 
 this bill is this : That Congress shall neither legislate 
 slavery into any Territory or State, nor out of the same; 
 but the people shall be left free to regulate their do- 
 mestic concerns in their own way, subject only to the Con- 
 stitution of the United States. In order to carry this 
 principle into practical operation, it becomes necessary 
 to remove whatever legal obstacles might be found in 
 the way of its free exercise. It is only for the purpose 
 of carrying out this great fundamental principle of self- 
 government that the bill renders the eighth section of the 
 Missouri act inoperative and void. 
 
 Now, let me ask, will those senators who have arraigned 
 me, or any one of them, have the assurance to rise in his 
 place and declare that this great principle was never
 
 I20 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 thought of or advocated as applicable to territorial bills 
 in 1850; that from that session until the present, nobody 
 ever thought of incorporating this principle in all new 
 territorial organizations, etc., etc. ? I will begin with 
 the compromises of 1850. Any senator who will take the 
 trouble to examine our journals will find that on the 
 25th of March of that year I reported from the Com- 
 mittee on Territories two bills, including the following 
 measures : the admission of California, a territorial gov- 
 ernment for Utah, a territorial government for New 
 Mexico, and the adjustment of the Texas boundary. These 
 bills proposed to leave the people of Utah and New 
 Mexico free to decide the slavery question for themselves, 
 in the precise language of the Nebraska bill now under 
 discussion. A few weeks afterward the committee of 
 thirteen took those bills and put a wafer between them 
 and reported them back to the Senate as one bill, with 
 some slight amendments. One of these amendments was 
 that the territorial legislatures should not legislate upon 
 the subject of African slavery. 1 objected to this pro- 
 vision, upon the ground that it subverted the great princi- 
 ple of self-government, upon which the bill had been orig- 
 inally framed by the territorial committee. On the first 
 trial the Senate refused to strike it out, but subsequently 
 did so, upon full debate, in order to establish that princi- 
 ple as the rule of action in territorial organizations. 
 
 The Union comments thus on my speech on that 
 occasion: 
 
 Thus it is seen that, in framing the Nebraska-Kansas bill. 
 Judge Douglas framed it in the terms and upon the model 
 of those of Utah and New Mexico, and that in the 
 debate he took pains expressly to revive the recollection of 
 the voting which had taken place upon amendni«nts affect- 
 ing the powers of the territorial legislatures over the sub- 
 ject of slavery in the bills of 1850, in order to give the 
 same meaning, force, and effect to the Nebraska-Kansas 
 bill on this subject as had been given to those of Utah 
 and New Mexico. 
 
 The Union proves the following propositions: First, 
 that I sustained Clay's compromise measures on the 
 ground that they established the principle of self- 
 government in the Territories. Secondly, that I 
 brought in the Kansas and Nebraska bill, founded 
 upon the sarrie principles as Clay's compromise 
 measures of 1850; and thirdly, that my Freeport speech 
 is in exact accordance with those principles. And 
 what do you think is the imputation that the Union
 
 i8s8] AT QUINCY I2l 
 
 casts upon me for all this? It says that my Freeport 
 speech is not Democratic, and that I was not a Demo- 
 crat in 1854 or in 1850! Now, is not that funny? 
 Think that the author of the Kansas and Nebraska 
 bill was not a Democrat when he introduced it! The 
 Union says I was not a sound Democrat in 1850, nor in 
 1854, nor in 1856, nor am I in 1858, because I have 
 always taken and now occupy the ground that the 
 people of a Territory, like those of a State, have the 
 right to decide for themselves whether slavery shall 
 or shall not exist in a Territory. I wish to cite, for 
 the benefit of the Washington Union and the followers 
 of that sheet, one authority on that point, and I hope 
 the authority will be deemed satisfactory to that class 
 of politicians. I will read from Mr. Buchanan's letter 
 accepting the nomination of the Democratic conven- 
 tion for the presidency. You know that Mr. Buch- 
 anan, after he was nominated, declared to the Key- 
 stone Club, in a public speech, that he was no longer 
 James Buchanan, but the embodiment of the Dem- 
 ocratic platform. In his letter to the committee which 
 informed him of his nomination, accepting it, he de- 
 fined the meaning of the Kansas and Nebraska bill and 
 the Cincinnati platform in these words: 
 
 The recent legislation of Congress respecting domestic 
 slavery, derived as it has been from the original and 
 pvire fountain of legitimate political power, the will of 
 the majority, promises ere long to allay the dangerous 
 excitement. This legislation is founded upon principles 
 as ancient as free government itself, and in accordance 
 with them has simply declared that the people of a Ter- 
 ritory, like those of a State, shall decide for themselves 
 whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits. 
 
 Thus you see that James Buchanan accepted the 
 nomination at Cincinnati on the condition that the 
 people of a Territory, like those of a State, should be 
 left to decide for themselves whether slavery should or 
 should not exist within their limits. I sustained James 
 Buchanan for the presidency on that platform as 
 adopted at Cincinnati and expounded by himself. He 
 was elected president on that platform, and now we are 
 told by the Washington Union that no man is a true 
 Democrat who stands on the platform on which Mr. 
 Buchanan was nominated, and which he has explained 
 and expounded himself. We are told that a man is
 
 122 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 not a Democrat who stands by Clay, Webster, and 
 Cass, and the compromise measures of 1850, and the 
 Kansas and Nebraska bill of 1854. Whether a man be 
 a Democrat or not on that platform, I intend to stand 
 there as long as I have life. I intend to cling firmly 
 to that great principle which declares the right of 
 each State and each Territory to settle the question 
 of slavery, and every other domestic question, for 
 themselves. I hold that if they want a slave State, 
 they have a right, under the Constitution of the United 
 States, to make it so, and if they want a free State, 
 it is their right to have it. But the Union, in advocat- 
 ing the claims of Lincoln over me to the Senate, lays 
 down two unpardonable heresies which it says I ad- 
 vocate. The first is the right of the people of a Ter- 
 ritory, the same as a State, to decide for themselves the 
 question whether slavery shall exist within their 
 limits, in the language of Mr. Buchanan; and the 
 second is that a constitution shall be submitted to the 
 people of a Territory for its adoption or rejection 
 before their admission as a State under it. It so 
 happens that Mr. Buchanan is pledged to both these 
 heresies, for supporting which the Washington Union 
 has read me out of the Democratic church. In his 
 annual message he said he trusted that the example of 
 the Minnesota case would be followed in all future 
 cases requiring a submission of the constitution; and 
 in his letter of acceptance he said that the people of a 
 Territory, the same as a State, had the right to decide 
 for themselves whether slavery should exist within 
 their limits. Thus you find that this little corrupt 
 gang who control the Union, and wish to elect Lincoln 
 in preference to me, — because, as they say, of these two 
 heresies which I support, — denounce President Buch- 
 anan when they denounce me, if he stands now by 
 the principles upon which he was elected. Will they 
 pretend that he does not now stand by the principles 
 on which he was elected? Do they hold that he has 
 abandoned the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the Cincinnati 
 platformi, and his own letter accepting his nomination, 
 all of which declare the right of the people of a Terri- 
 tory, the same as a State, to decide the slavery ques- 
 tion for themselves? I will not believe that he has 
 betrayed or intends to betray the platform which 
 elected him; but if he does, I will not follow him. I
 
 iSsSJ AT QUINCY 123 
 
 will stand by that great principle, no matter who may- 
 desert it. I intend to stand by it for the purpose of 
 preserving peace between the North and the South, 
 the free and the slave States. 
 
 If each State will only agree to mind its own busi- 
 ness, and let its neighbors alone, there will be peace 
 forever between us. We in Illinois tried slavery when 
 a Territory, and found it was not good for us in this 
 climate, and with our surroundings, and hence we 
 abolished it. We then adopted a free-State constitu- 
 tion, as we had a right to do. In this State we have 
 declared that a negro shall not be a citizen, and we 
 have also declared that he shall not be a slave. We 
 had a right to adopt that policy. Missouri has just as 
 good a right to adopt the other policy. I am now 
 speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of 
 moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals 
 of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that 
 matter for themselves. I hold that the people of the 
 slave-holding States are civilized men as well as our- 
 selves, that they bear consciences as well as we, and 
 that they are accountable to God and their posterity, 
 and not to us. It is for them to decide, therefore, the 
 moral and religious right of the slavery question for 
 themselves within their own limits. I assert that they 
 had as much right under the Constitution to adopt the 
 system of policy which they have as we had to adopt 
 ours. So it is with every other State in this Union. 
 Let each State stand firmly by that great constitu- 
 tional right, let each State mind its own business and 
 let its neighbors alone, and there will be no trouble on 
 this question. If we will stand by that principle, then 
 Mr. Lincoln will find that this republic can exist for- 
 ever divided into free and slave States, as our fathers 
 made it, and the people of each State have decided. 
 Stand by that great principle, and we can go on as we 
 have done, increasing in wealth, in population, in 
 power, and in all the elements of greatness, until we 
 shall be the admiration and terror of the world. We 
 can go on and enlarge as our population increases and 
 requires more room, until we make this continent one 
 ocean-bound republic. Under that principle the 
 United States can perform that great mission, that 
 destiny, which Providence has marked out for us. 
 Under that principle we can receive with entire safety
 
 124 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 that stream of intelligence which is constantly flowing 
 from the Old World to the New, filling up our prairies, 
 clearing our wildernesses, and building cities, towns, 
 railroads, and other internal improvements, and thus 
 make this the asylum of the oppressed of the whole 
 earth. We have this great mission to perform, and it 
 can only be performed by adhering faithfully to that 
 principle of self-government on which our institutions 
 were all established. I repeat that the principle is the 
 right of each State, each Territory, to decide this 
 slavery question for itself, to have slavery or not, as it 
 chooses, and it does not become Mr. Lincoln, or any- 
 body else, to tell the people of Kentucky that they have 
 no consciences, that they are living in a state of 
 iniquity, and that they are cherishing an institution to 
 their bosoms in violation of the law of God. Better 
 for him to adopt the doctrine of "Judge not, lest ye 
 shall be judged." Let him perform his own duty at 
 home, and he will have a better fate in the future. I 
 think there are objects of charity enough in the free 
 States to excite the sympathies and open the pockets 
 of all the benevolence we have amongst us, without 
 going abroad in search of negroes, of whose condition 
 we know nothing. We have enough objects of charity 
 at home, and it is our duty to take care of our own 
 poor, and our own suffering, before we go abroad to 
 intermeddle with other people's business. 
 
 My friends, I am told that my time is within two 
 minutes of expiring. I have omitted many topics that 
 I would like to have discussed before you at length. 
 There were many points touched by Mr. Lincoln that 
 I have not been able to take up for the want of time. 
 I have hurried over each subject that I have discussed 
 as rapidly as possible, so as to omit but few; but one 
 hour and a half is not time sufficient for a man to dis- 
 cuss at length one half of the great questions which are 
 now dividing the public mind. 
 
 In conclusion, I desire to return to you my grateful 
 acknowledgments for the kindness and the courtesy 
 with which you have listened to me. It is something 
 remarkable that in an audience as vast as this, com- 
 posed of men of opposite politics and views, with their 
 passions highly excited, there should be so much 
 courtesy, kindness, and respect exhibited not only 
 toward one another, but toward the speakers, and I feel
 
 i858] AT QUIXCY 125 
 
 that it is due to you that I should thus express my 
 gratitude for the kindness with which you have treated 
 me. 
 
 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 pro- 
 found 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 contem- 
 plates 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 sen- 
 tence. 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 thev 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 Doug- 
 las 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 his- 
 torically a falsehood, ^lore 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
 
 126 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 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 es- 
 tablished, no one expected the institution of slav- 
 ery 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 inven- 
 tion of the cotton-gin, and this had made the per- 
 petuation of the institution of slavery a necessity 
 in this country. Judge Douglas could not let it 
 stand upon the basis where 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 re- 
 main where the fathers of the government origi- 
 nally 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 make 
 himself eloquent and valiant against us in fight- 
 ing 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 Ken-
 
 i858] AT QUINCY 127 
 
 tucky 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 no 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 ungrate- 
 ful news either. [Turning to Mr. IV. H. CarUn, 
 ivho zuas 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 prac- 
 tising 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 com- 
 petent 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 Wagley up here in Han- 
 cock, 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 can- 
 not 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
 
 128 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 at Galesburg 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 sus- 
 tain his assertion. He never will. But he is 
 desirous of knowing how we are going to reverse 
 the 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 na- 
 tional bank? Didn't they find a way to do it so 
 effectually that they have reversed it as com- 
 pletely as any decision ever was reversed, so far 
 as its practical operation is concerned? And, 
 let me ask you, didn't Judge Douglas find a way 
 to reverse the decision of our Supreme Court, 
 when it decided that Carlin's father — old Gov- 
 ernor Carlin — had not the constitutional power 
 to remove a secretary of state? Did he not ap- 
 peal to the ''mobs," as he calls them? Did he 
 not make speeches in the lobby to show how vil- 
 lainous that decision was, and how it ought to 
 be overthrown ? Did he not succeed, too, in get- 
 ting an act passed by the legislature to have it 
 overthrown ? And didn'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 in no other? 
 If there is a villainy in using disrespect or mak- 
 ing opposition to Supreme Court decisions, I 
 commend it to Judge Douglas's earnest consider- 
 ation. I know of no man in the State of Illinois 
 who ought to know so well about how much vil-
 
 i858] AT QUINCY 129 
 
 lainy 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 sup- 
 port it as such ; and I will tell you here that Gen- 
 eral Jackson once said each man was bound to 
 support the Constitution, *'as he understood it." 
 Now, Judge Douglas understands the Constitu- 
 tion 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 under- 
 stand it. And as Judge Douglas believes that 
 decision to be correct, I will remake that argu- 
 ment 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 sup- 
 port the Constitution and all rights guaranteed 
 therein ; that you will, whenever your neighbor 
 needs your legislation to support his constitu- 
 tional 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
 
 I30 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 sensible man if that is not so? That is undoubt- 
 edly 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 pass- 
 ing 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 di- 
 rectly, you cannot do indirectly? Does he mean 
 that ? The truth about the matter is this : Judge 
 Douglas has sung paeans to his ''popular sover- 
 eignty" 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 sov- 
 ereignty — 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
 
 i8s8] AT QUINCY 131 
 
 about having" upon a previous occasion made the 
 same speech at Ottawa as the one he took an ex- 
 tract from at Charleston, says it only shows that 
 I practised the deception twice. Now, my 
 friends, are any of you obtuse enough to swallow 
 that? Judge Douglas had said that I 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 in the Abolition district — in Love joy's 
 district — in the personal presence of Love joy 
 himself — in the same atmosphere exactly in 
 which I had made my Chicago speech, of which 
 he complains of so much. 
 
 Now, in relation to my not having said any- 
 thing 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 de- 
 livered 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 dis- 
 posing most advantageously of my brief time. 
 The judge has taken great exception to my 
 adopting the heretical statement in the Declara- 
 tion 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
 
 • 132 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 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 ap- 
 plication, 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 Ken- 
 tucky? It is a general declaration in the act announc- 
 ing 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 organi- 
 zation of new societies in new countries, where 
 the soil is clean and clear, insist 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 hav- 
 ing had one for either. I maintain that you may 
 take Judge Douglas's quotations from my Chi- 
 cago speech, and from my Charleston speech, 
 and the Galesburg 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 disposed to have 
 peace, but I find he is disposed to have a per- 
 sonal warfare with me. He says that my oath 
 would not be taken against the bare word of
 
 1858] AT QUINCY 133 
 
 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 
 the 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 
 Galesburg that the publication of these resolu- 
 tions 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 pro- 
 ceedings before him, and, taking one part of the 
 resolutions, he threw out another part, and sub- 
 stituted 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 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 Lan- 
 phier. There is little room for escape for Lan- 
 phier. 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 au- 
 thority in what he states in his newspaper. He
 
 134 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 13 
 
 desires Harris to be taken as a man of vast credi- 
 bility, and when this thing Hes among them, they 
 will not press it to show where the guilt really 
 belongs. Now, as he has said that he would in- 
 vestigate 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 Nor- 
 ton on the floor of Congress. I tell Judge Doug- 
 las the public records of the country show that 
 he himself attempted it upon Trumbull a month 
 before Harris tried them on Norton — that Har- 
 ris had the opportunity of learning it from him, 
 rather than he from Harris. I now ask his at- 
 tention 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 magnani- 
 mously, 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 for- 
 ward and made a virtue of necessity by acknowl- 
 edging 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 open-
 
 i858] AT QUINCY 135 
 
 ing 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 differ- 
 ence between holding a man responsible for an 
 act which he has not done, and holding him re- 
 sponsible 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 mag- 
 nanimity 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 had withdrawn the one 
 he made. May it please his worship, I will with- 
 draw 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 rea- 
 sonable man shall be brought to believe that the 
 charge is not true. I have asked Judge Doug- 
 las's attention to certain matters of fact tending 
 to prove the charge of a conspiracy to national- 
 ize 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 afErma- 
 tively at Mr. Lincoln.] I don't care if your hire- 
 ling 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
 
 136 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. is 
 
 know whether Dred Scott's owners were Demo- 
 crats or Abolitionists, Free-soilers or Border 
 Ruflftans. 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. 
 
 The Seventh and Last Joint Debate, at Alton. 
 
 October 15, 1858. 
 
 Senator Douglas's Opening Speech. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: It is now nearly four months 
 since the canvass between Mr. Lincoln and myself 
 commenced. On the i6th of June the Republican con- 
 vention assembled at Springfield, and nominated Mr, 
 Lincoln as their candidate for the United States Senate, 
 and he, on that occasion, delivered a speech in which 
 he laid down what he understood to be the Republican 
 creed, and the platform on which he proposed to 
 stand during the contest. The principal points in 
 that speech of Mr. Lincoln's were: First, that this 
 government could not endure permanently divided into 
 free and slave States, as our fathers made it; that they 
 must all become free or all become slave; all become 
 one thing or all become the other, otherwise this 
 U^nion could not continue to exist. I give you his 
 opinions almost in the identical language he used. 
 His second proposition was a crusade against the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, because of the 
 Dred Scott decision; urging as an especial reason for 
 his opposition to that decision that it deprived the
 
 1858] AT ALTON 137 
 
 negroes of the rights and benefits of that clause in the 
 Constitution of the United States which guarantees to 
 the citizens of each State all the rights, privileges, and 
 immunities of the citizens of the several States. On 
 the loth of July I returned home, and delivered a 
 speech to the people of Chicago, in which I announced 
 it to be my purpose to appeal to the people of Illinois 
 to sustain the course I had pursued in Congress. In 
 that speech I joined issue with Mr. Lincoln on the 
 points which he had presented. Thus there was an 
 issue clear and distinct made up between us on these 
 two propositions laid down in the speech of Mr. Lin- 
 coln at Springfield, and controverted by me in my 
 reply to him at Chicago. On the next day, the nth 
 of July, Mr. Lincoln replied to me at Chicago, ex- 
 plaining at some length, and reaffirming the 'positions 
 which he had taken in his Springfield speech. In that 
 Chicago speech he even went further than he had be- 
 fore, and uttered sentiments in regard to the negro 
 being on an equality with the white man. He adopted 
 in support of this position the argument which Love- 
 joy, and Codding, and other Abolition lecturers had 
 made familiar in the northern and central portions of 
 the State, to wit: that the Declaration of Independence 
 having declared all men free and equal by Divine law, 
 negro equality was also an inalienable right, of which 
 they could not be deprived. He insisted, in that 
 speech, that the Declaration of Independence included 
 the negro in the clause asserting that all men were 
 created equal, and went so far as to say that if one 
 man was allowed to take the position that it did not in- 
 clude the negro, others might take the position that 
 it did not include other men. He said that all these 
 distinctions between this man and that man, this race 
 and the other race, must be discarded, and we must 
 all stand by the Declaration of Independence, declar- 
 ing that all men were created equal. 
 
 The issue thus being made up between Mr. Lincoln 
 and myself on three points, we went before the people 
 of the State. During the following seven weeks, 
 between the Chicago speeches and our first meeting 
 at Ottawa, he and I addressed large assemblages of 
 the people in many of the central counties. In my 
 speeches I confined myself closely to those three 
 positions which he had taken, controverting his prop-
 
 138 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 osition that this Union could not exist as our fathers 
 made it, divided into free and slave States, controvert- 
 ing ki^ proposition of a crusade against the Supreme 
 Court because of the Dred Scott decision, and con- 
 troverting his proposition that the Declaration of 
 Independence included and meant the negroes as well 
 as the white men, when it declared all men to be created 
 equal. I supposed at that time that these propositions 
 constituted a distinct issue between us, and that the 
 opposite positions we had taken upon them we would 
 be willing to be held to in every part of the State. I 
 never intended to waver one hair's breadth from that 
 issue either in the north or the south, or wherever I 
 should address the people of Illinois. I hold that 
 when the time arrives that I cannot proclaim my 
 political 'creed in the same terms not only in the 
 northern but the southern part of Illinois, not only in 
 the Northern but the Southern States, and wherever 
 the American flag waves over American soil, that then 
 there must be something wrong in that creed — so long 
 as we live under a common Constitution, so long as we 
 'ive in a confederacy of sovereign and equal States, 
 joined together as one for certain purposes, that any 
 political creed is radically wrong which cannot be 
 proclaimed in every State and every section of that 
 Union, alike. I took up Mr. Lincoln's three proposi- 
 tions in my several speeches, analyzed them, and 
 pointed out what I believed to be the radical errors 
 contained in them. First, in regard to his doctrine 
 that this government was in violation of the law of 
 God, which says that a house divided against itself 
 cannot stand; I repudiated it as a slander upon the 
 immortal framers of our Constitution. I then said, I 
 have often repeated, and now again assert, that in my 
 opinion our government can endure forever, divided 
 into free and slave States as our fathers made it — 
 each State having the right to prohibit, abolish, or 
 sustain slavery, just as it pleases. This government 
 was made upon the great basis of the sovereignty of 
 the States, the right of each State to regulate its own 
 domestic institutions to suit itself, and that right was 
 conferred with the understanding and expectation that 
 inasmuch at each locality had separate interests, each 
 locality must have different and distinct local and 
 domestic institutions, corresponding to its wants and
 
 ;i858] AT ALTON 139 
 
 interests. Our fathers knew, when they made the 
 government, that the laws and institutions v/hich were 
 well adapted to the green mountains of Vermont were 
 unsuited to the rice plantations of South Carolina. 
 They knew then, as well as we know now, that the 
 laws and institutions which would be well adapted to 
 the beautiful prairies of Illinois would not be suited to 
 the mining regions of California. They knew that in a 
 republic as broad as this, having such a variety of 
 soil, climate, and interest, there must necessarily be a 
 corresponding variety of local laws — the policy and 
 institutions of each State adapted to its condition and 
 wants. For this reason this Union was established on 
 the right of each State to do as it pleased on the 
 question of slavery, and every other question, and the 
 various States were not allowed to complain of, much 
 less interfere with, the policy of their neighbors. 
 
 Suppose the doctrine advocated by Mr. Lincoln and 
 the Abolitionists of this day had prevailed when the 
 Constitution was made, what would have been the 
 result? Imagine for a moment that Mr. Lincoln had 
 been a member of the convention that framed the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, and that when its mem- 
 bers were about to sign that wonderful document, he 
 had arisen in that convention, as he did at Springfield 
 this summer, and addressing himself to the President, 
 had said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand; 
 this government, divided into free and slave States, 
 cannot endure; they must all be free or all be slave, 
 they must all be one thing or all the other; otherwise, 
 it is a violation of the lav/ of God, and cannot continue 
 to exist" — suppose Mr. Lincoln had convinced that 
 body of sages that that doctrine was sound, what 
 would have been the result? Remember that the 
 Union was then composed of thirteen States, twelve 
 of which were slave-holding and one free. Do you 
 think that the one free State would have out-voted the 
 twelve slave-holding States, and thus have secured the 
 abolition of slavery? On the other hand, would not 
 the twelve slave-holding States have out-voted the one 
 free State, and thus have fastened slavery, by a 
 constitutional provision, on every foot of the American 
 republic forever? You see that if this Abolition doc- 
 trine of Mr. Lincoln had prevailed when the govern- 
 ment was made, it would have established slavery as
 
 I40 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 a permanent institution, in all the States, whether they 
 wanted it or not; and the question for us to determine 
 in Illinois now, as one of the free States, is whether or 
 not we are willing, having become the majority sec- 
 tion, to enforce a doctrine on the minority which we 
 would have resisted with our hearts' blood had it been 
 attempted on us when we were in a minority. How 
 has the South lost her power as the majority section in 
 this Union, and how have the free States gained it, 
 except under the operation of that principle which de- 
 clares the right of the people of each State and each 
 Territory to form and regulate their domestic institu- 
 tions in their own way? It was under that principle 
 that slavery was abolished in New Hampshire, Rhode 
 Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and 
 Pennsylvania; it was under that principle that one 
 half of the slave-holding States became free; it was 
 under that principle that the number of free States in- 
 creased until, from being one out of twelve States, we 
 have grown to be the majority of States of the whole 
 Union, with the power to control the House of Repre- 
 sentatives and Senate, and the power, consequently, to 
 elect a President by Northern votes without the aid of 
 a Southern State. Having obtained this power under 
 the operation of that great principle, are you now 
 prepared to abandon the principle, and declare that 
 merely because we have the power you will wage a war 
 against the Southern States and their institutions until 
 you force them to abolish slavery everywhere? 
 
 After having pressed these arguments home on Mr. 
 Lincoln for seven weeks, publishing a number of my 
 speeches, we met at Ottawa in joint discussion, and he 
 then began to crawfish a little, and let himself down. 
 I there propounded certain questions to him. Amongst 
 others, I asked him whether he would vote for the 
 admission of any more slave States in the event the 
 people wanted them. He would not answer. I then 
 told him that if he did not answer the question there 
 I would renew it at Freeport, and would then trot him 
 down into Egypt and again put it to him. Well, at 
 Freeport, knowing that the next joint discussion took 
 place in Egypt, and being in dread of it, he did answer 
 my question in regard to no more slave States in a 
 mode which he hoped would be satisfactory to me, 
 and accomplish the object he had in view. I will show
 
 1858] AT ALTON 141 
 
 you what his answer was. After saying that he was 
 not pledged to the Republican doctrine of "no more 
 slave States," he declared: 
 
 I state to you freely, frankly, that I should be exceed- 
 ingly sorry to ever be put in the position of having to 
 pass upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to 
 know that there never would be another slave State ad- 
 mitted into this Union. 
 
 Here permit me to remark that I do not think the 
 people will ever force him into a position against his 
 will. He went on to say: 
 
 But I must add, in regard to this, that if slavery shall 
 be kept out of the Territory during the territorial exist- 
 ence of any one given Territory, and then the people 
 should — having a fair chance and a clear field when they 
 come to adopt a constitution — if they should do the ex- 
 traordinary thing of adopting a slave constitution, unin- 
 fluenced by the actual presence of the institution among 
 them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but we 
 must admit it into this Union. 
 
 That answer Mr. Lincoln supposed would satisfy 
 the old-line Whigs, composed of Kentuckians and 
 Virginians, down in the southern part of the State. 
 Now, what does it amount to? I desired to know 
 whether he would vote to allow Kansas to come into 
 the Union with slavery or not, as her people desired. 
 He would not answer, but in a roundabout way said 
 that if slavery should be kept out of a Territory dur- 
 ing the whole of its territorial existence, and then the 
 people, when they adopted a State constitution, asked 
 admission as a slave State, he supposed he would have 
 to let the State come in. The case I put to him was 
 an entirely different one. I desired to know whether 
 he would vote to admit a State if Congress had not 
 prohibited slavery in it during its territorial existence, 
 as Congress never pretended to do under Clay's com- 
 promise measures of 1850. He would not answer, and 
 I have not yet been able to get an answer from hirn. 
 I have asked him whether he would vote to admit 
 Nebraska if her people asked to come in as a State 
 with a constitution recognizing slavery, and he refused 
 to answer. I have put the question to him with 
 reference to New Mexico, and he has not uttered a
 
 ,l4r2 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 word in answer. I have enumerated the Territories, 
 one after another, putting the same question to him 
 with reference to each, and he has not said, and 
 will not say, whether, if elected to Congress, he will 
 vote to admit any Territory now in existence with such 
 a constitution as her people may adopt. He invents a 
 case which does not exist, and cannot exist, under this 
 government, and answers it; but he will not answer the 
 question I put to him in connection with any of the 
 Territories now in existence. The contract we entered 
 into with Texas when she entered the Union obliges us 
 to allow four States to be formed out of the old State, 
 and admitted with or without slavery, as the respective 
 inhabitants of each may determine. I have asked Mr. 
 Lincoln three times in our joint discussions whether he 
 would vote to redeem that pledge, and he has never yet 
 answered. He is as silent as the grave on the subject. 
 He would rather answer as to a state of the case which 
 will never arise than commit himself by telling what 
 he would do in a case which would come up for his 
 action soon after his election to Congress. Why can 
 he not say whether he is willing to allow the people of 
 each State to have slavery or not, as they please, and 
 to come into the Union when they have the requisite 
 population as a slave or a free State, as they decide? I 
 have no trouble in answering the question. I have 
 said everywhere, and now repeat it to you, that if the 
 people of Kansas want a slave State they have a right, 
 under the Constitution of the United States, to form 
 such a State, and I will let them come into the Union 
 with slavery or without it, as they determine. If the 
 people of any other Territory desire slavery, let them 
 have it. If they do not want it, let them prohibit it. 
 It is their business, not mine. It is none of our business 
 in Illinois whether Kansas is a free State or a slave 
 State. It is none of your business in Missouri whether 
 Kansas shall adopt slavery or reject it. It is the 
 business of her people and none of yours. The people 
 of Kansas have as much right to decide that question 
 for themselves as you have in Missouri to decide it for 
 yourselves, or we in Illinois to decide it for ourselves. 
 And here I may repeat what I have said in every 
 speech I have made in Illinois, that I fought the Le- 
 compton constitution to its death, not because of the 
 slavery clause in it, but because it was not the act
 
 i8s8] AT ALTON , 143 
 
 and deed of the people of Kansas. ^ said then in 
 Congress, and I say now, that if the people of Kansas 
 want a slave State, they have a right to have it. If 
 they wanted the Lecompton constitution, they had a 
 right to have it. I was opposed to that constitution 
 because I did not believe that it was the act and deed 
 of the people, but, on the contrary, the act of a small, 
 pitiful minority, acting in the name of the majority. 
 When at last it was determined to send that constitu- 
 tion back to the people, and accordingly, in August last, 
 the question of admission under it was submitted to a 
 popular vote, the citizens rejected it by nearly ten to 
 one, thus showing conclusively that I was right v/hen 
 I said that the Lecompton constitution was not the 
 act and deed of the people of Kansas, and did not 
 embody their will. 
 
 I hold that there is no power on earth, under our 
 system of government, which has the right to force a 
 constitution upon an unwilling people. Suppose that 
 there had been a majority of ten to one in favor of 
 slavery in Kansas, and suppose there had been an 
 Abolition President, and an Abolition administration, 
 and by some means the Abolitionists succeeded in 
 forcing an Abolition constitution on those slave-hold- 
 ing people, would the people of the South have sub- 
 mitted to that act for one instant? Well, if you of the 
 South would not have submitted to it a day, how can 
 you, as fair, honorable, and honest men, insist on 
 putting a slave constitution on a people who desire a 
 free State. Your safety and ours depend upon both 
 of us acting in good faith, and living up to that great 
 principle which asserts the right of every people to 
 form and regulate their domestic institutions to suit 
 themselves, subject only to the Constitution of the 
 United States. 
 
 Most of the men who denounced my course on the 
 Lecompton question objected to it not because I was 
 not right, but because they thought it expedient at 
 that time, for the sake of keeping the party together, 
 to do wrong. I never knew the Democratic party to 
 violate any one of its principles out of policy or 
 expediency, that it did not pay the debt with sorrow. 
 There is no safety or success for our party unless we 
 always do right, and trust the consequences to God 
 and the people. I chose not to depart from principle
 
 144 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 for the sake of expediency in the Lecompton question, 
 and I never intend to do it on that or any other 
 question. 
 
 But I am told that I would have been all right if I 
 had only voted for the English bill after Lecompton 
 was killed. You know a general pardon was granted 
 to all political offenders on the Lecompton question, 
 provided they would only vote for the English bill. I 
 did not accept the benefits of that pardon, for the 
 reason that I had been right in the course I had pur- 
 sued, and hence did not require any forgiveness. Let 
 us see how the result has been worked out English 
 brought in his bill referring the Lecompton constitu- 
 tion back to the people, with the provision that if it 
 was rejected Kansas should be kept out of the Union 
 until she had the full ratio of population required for 
 a member of Congress, thus in effect declaring that if 
 the people of Kansas would only consent to come into 
 the Union under the Lecompton constitution, and have 
 a slave State when they did not want it, they should 
 be admitted with a population of 35,000; but that if 
 they were so obstinate as to insist upon having just 
 such a constitution as they thought best, and to desire 
 admission as a free State, then they should be kept out 
 until they had 93,420 inhabitants. I then said, and I 
 now repeat to you, that whenever Kansas has people 
 enough for a slave State she has people enough for a 
 free State. I was, and am, willing to adopt the rule 
 that no State shall ever come into the Union until 
 she has the full ratio of population for a member of 
 Congress, provided that rule is made uniform. I 
 made that proposition in the Senate last winter, but a 
 majority of the senators would not agree to it; and I 
 then said to them, "If you will not adopt the general 
 rule, I will not consent to make an exception of 
 Kansas." 
 
 I hold that it is a violation of the fundamental 
 principles of this government to throw the weight of 
 federal power into the scale, either in favor of the 
 free or the slave States. Equality among all the States 
 of this Union is a fundamental principle in our political 
 system. We have no more right to throw the weight 
 of the Federal Government into the scale in favor of 
 the slave-holding than of the free States, and, least of 
 all, should our friends in the South consent for a
 
 i8s8] AT ALTON 145 
 
 moment that Congress should withhold its powers 
 either way when they know that there is a majority 
 against them in both houses of Congress. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, how have the supporters of the 
 English bill stood up to their pledges not to admit 
 Kansas until she obtained a population of 93,420 in 
 the event she rejected the Lecompton constitution? 
 How? The newspapers inform us that English him- 
 self, whilst conducting his canvass for reelection, and 
 in order to secure it, pledged himself to his constituents 
 that if returned he would disregard his own bill and 
 vote to admit Kansas into the Union with such popula- 
 tion as she might have when she made application. 
 We are informed that every Democratic candidate for 
 Congress in all the States where elections have recently 
 been held was pledged against the English bill, with 
 perhaps one or two exceptions. Now, if I had only 
 done as these anti-Lecompton men who voted for the 
 English bill in Congress, pledging themselves to refuse 
 to admit Kansas if she refused to become a slave 
 State until she had a population of 92,420, and then 
 returned to their people, forfeited their pledge, and 
 made a new pledge to admit Kansas any time she 
 applied, without regard to population. I would have 
 had no trouble. You saw the whole power and patron- 
 age of the Federal Government wielded in Indiana, 
 Ohio, and Pennsylvania to elect anti-Lecompton men 
 to Congress, who voted against Lecompton, then voted 
 for the English bill, and then denounced the English 
 bill, and pledged themselves to their people to dis- 
 regard it. My sin consists in not having given a 
 pledge, and then in not having afterward forfeited it. 
 For that reason, in this State, every postmaster, every 
 route agent, every collector of the ports, and every 
 federal office-holder, forfeits his head the moment he 
 expresses a preference for the Democratic candidates 
 against Lincoln and his Abolition associates. A Demo- 
 cratic administration, which we helped to bring into 
 power, deems it consistent with its fidelity to principle, 
 and its regard to duty, to wield its power in this 
 State in behalf of the Republican Abolition candidates 
 in every county and every congressional district 
 against the Democratic party. All I have to say in 
 reference to the matter is that if that administration 
 have not regard enough for principle, if they are not
 
 J46 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 •sufficiently attached to the creed of the Democratic 
 party to bury forever their personal hostilities in order 
 to succeed in carrying out our glorious principles, I 
 have. I have fio personal difficulty with Mr. Buchanan 
 or his cabinet. He chose to make certain recom- 
 mendations to Congress, as he had a right to do, on 
 the Lecompton question. I could not vote in favor 
 of them. I had as much right to judge for myself how 
 I should vote as he had how he should recommend. 
 He undertook to say to me, ''If you do not vote as I 
 tell you, I will take off the heads of your friends." I 
 replied to him, "You did not elect me; I represent 
 Illinois, and I am accountable to Illinois, as my con- 
 stituency, and to God, but not to the President or to 
 any other power on earth." 
 
 And now this warfare is made on me because I 
 would not surrender my convictions of duty, because I 
 would not abandon my constituency, and receive the 
 orders of the executive authorities how I should vote 
 in the Senate of the United States. I hold that an 
 attempt to control the Senate on the part of the execu- 
 tive is subversive of the principles of our Constitution. 
 The executive department is independent of the Seriate, 
 and the Senate is independent of the President. In 
 matters of legislation the President has a veto on the 
 action of the Senate, and in appointments and treaties 
 the Senate has a veto on the President. He has no 
 niore right to tell me how I shall vote on his appoint- 
 ments than I have to tell him whether he shall veto 
 or approve a bill that the Senate has passed. When- 
 ever you recognize the right of the executive to say to 
 a senator, "Do this, or I will take off the heads of your 
 friends," you convert this government from a republic 
 into a despotism. Whenever you recognize the right 
 of a President to say to a member of Congress, "Vote 
 as I tell you, or I will bring a power to bear against 
 you at home which will crush you," you destroy the 
 independence of the representative, and convert him 
 into a tool of executive power. I resisted this invasion 
 of the constitutional rights of a senator, and I intend 
 to resist it as long as I have a voice to speak, or a 
 vote to give. Yet Mr. Buchanan cannot provoke me 
 to abandon one iota of Democratic principles out of 
 revenge or hostility to his course. I stand by the plat- 
 form of the Democratic party, and by its organization.
 
 i858] AT ALTON 147 
 
 and support its nominees. If there are any who 
 choose to bolt, the fact only shows that they are not as 
 good Democrats as I am. 
 
 My friends, there never was a time when it was as 
 important for the Democratic party, for all national 
 men, to rally and stand together as it to-day. We find 
 all sectional men giving up past differences and uniting 
 on the one question of slavery, and when we find sec- 
 tional men thus uniting, we should unite to resist them 
 and their treasonable designs. Such was the case in 
 1850, when Clay left the quiet and peace of his home, 
 and again entered upon public life to quell agitation 
 and restore peace to a distracted Union. Then we 
 Democrats, with Cass at our head, welcomed Henry 
 Clay, whom the whole nation regarded as having 
 been preserved by God for the times. He became our 
 leader in that great fight, and we rallied around him 
 the same as the Whigs rallied around Old Hickory in 
 1832 to put down nullification. Thus you see that 
 while Whigs and Democrats fought fearlessly in old 
 times about banks, the tariff, distribution, the specie 
 circular, and the subtreasury, all united as a band of 
 brothers when the peace, harmony, or integrity of the 
 Union was imperiled. It was so in 1850, when Aboli- 
 tionism had even so far divided this country. North 
 and South, as to endanger the peace of the Union, 
 Whigs and Democrats united in establishing the com- 
 promise measures of that year, and restoring tran- 
 quillity and good feeling. These measures passed on 
 the joint action of the two parties. They rested on 
 the great principle that the people of each State and 
 each Territory should be left perfectly free to form 
 and regulate their domestic institutions to suit them- 
 selves. You Whigs and we Democrats justified them 
 in that principle. In 1854, when it became necessary 
 to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, 
 T brought forward the bill on the same principle. In 
 the Kansas-Nebraska bill you find it declared to be the 
 true intent and meaning of the act not to legislate 
 slavery into any State or Territory, nor to exclude it 
 therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free 
 to form and regulate their domestic institutions in 
 their own way. 
 
 I stand on that same platform in 1858 that I did in 
 1850, 1854, and 1856. The Washington Union, pretend-
 
 148 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 ing to be the organ of the administration, in the num- 
 ber of the 5th of this month, devotes three columns 
 and a half to establish these propositions: first, that 
 Douglas in his Freeport speech held the same doctrine 
 that he did in his Nebraska bill in 1854; second, that 
 in 1854 Douglas justified the Nebraska bill upon the 
 ground that it was based upon the same principle as 
 Clay's compromise measures of 1850. The Union thus 
 proved that Douglas was the same in 1858 that he was 
 in 1856, 1854, and 1850, and consequently argued that 
 he was never a Democrat. Is it not funny that I was 
 never a Democrat? There is no pretense that I have 
 changed a hair's breadth. The Union proves by my 
 speeches that I explained the compromise measures of 
 1850 just as I do now, and that I explained the Kansas 
 and Nebraska bill in 1854 j"st as I did in my Freeport 
 speech, and yet says that I am not a Democrat, and 
 cannot be trusted, because I have not changed during 
 the whole of that time. It has occurred to me that in 
 1854 the author of the Kansas and Nebraska bill was 
 considered a pretty good Democrat. It has occurred 
 to me that in 1856, when I was exerting every nerve 
 and every energy for James Buchanan, standing on 
 the same platform then that I do now, that I was a 
 pretty good Democrat. They now tell me that I am 
 not a Democrat, because I assert that the people of a 
 Territory, as well as those of a State, have the right 
 to decide for themselves whether slavery can or can- 
 not exist in such Territory. Let me read what James 
 Buchanan said on that point when he accepted the 
 Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1856. 
 In his letter of acceptance, he used the following 
 language: 
 
 The recent legislation of Congress respecting domestic 
 slavery, derived as it has been from the original and pure 
 fountain of legitimate political power, the will of the 
 majority, promises ere long to allay the dangerous ex- 
 citement. This legislation is founded upon principles as 
 ancient as free government itself, and in accordance with 
 them has simply declared that the people of a Territory, 
 like those of a State, shall decide for themselves whether 
 slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits. 
 
 Dr. Hope will there find my answer to the question 
 he propounded to me before I commenced speaking.
 
 i8s8] AT ALTON 149 
 
 Of course no man will consider it an answer, who is 
 outside of the Democratic organization, bolts Demo- 
 cratic nominations, and indirectly aids to put Aboli- 
 tionists into power over Democrats. But whether Dr. 
 Hope considers it an answer or not, every fair-minded 
 man will see that James Buchanan has answered the 
 question, and has asserted that the people of a Ter- 
 ritory, like those of a State, shall decide for themselves 
 whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their 
 limits. I answer specifically, if you want a further 
 answer, and say that while under the decision of the 
 Supreme Court, as recorded in the opinion of Chief 
 Justice Taney, slaves are property like all other prop- 
 erty, and can be carried into any Territory of the 
 United States the same as any other description of 
 property, yet when you get them there they are subject 
 to the local law of the Territory just like all other 
 property. You will find in a recent speech delivered 
 by that able and eloquent statesman, Hon. Jefferson 
 Davis, at Bangor, Maine, that he took the same view 
 of this subject that I did in my Freeport spech. He 
 there said: 
 
 If the inhabitants of any Territory should refuse to enact 
 such laws and police regulations as would give security 
 to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or 
 less valueless in proportion to the difficulties of holding 
 it withotit such protection. In the case of property in 
 the labor of man, or what is usually called slave property, 
 the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not 
 ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would 
 remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that 
 the owner would be practically debarred, by the circum- 
 stances of the case, from taking slave property into a 
 Territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed 
 to its introduction. So much for the oft-repeated fallacy of 
 forcing slavery upon any community. 
 
 You will also find that the distinguished Speaker of 
 the present House of Representatives, Hon. James L. 
 Orr, construed the Kansas and Nebraska bill in this 
 same way in 1856, and also that great intellect of the 
 South, Alexander H. Stephens, put the same construc- 
 tion upon it in Congress that I did in my Freeport 
 speech. The whole South is rallying to the support of 
 the doctrine that if the people of a Territory want 
 slavery they have a right to have it, and if they do not
 
 I50 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 want it that no power on earth can force it upon them. 
 I hold that there is no principle on earth more sacred 
 to all the friends of freedom than that which says that 
 no institution, no law, no constitution, should be 
 forced on an unwilling people contrary to their wishes; 
 and I assert that the Kansas and Nebraska bill con- 
 tains that principle. It is the great principle contained 
 in that bill. It is the principle on which James Buch- 
 anan was made President. Without that principle he 
 never would have been made President of the United 
 States. I will never violate or abandon that doctrine, 
 if I have to stand alone. I have resisted the blandish- 
 ments and threats of power on the one side, and 
 seduction on the other, and have stood immovably 
 for that principle, fighting for it when assailed by 
 Northern mobs, or threatened by Southern hostility. I 
 have defended it against the North and the South, 
 and I will defend it against whoever assails it, and I 
 will follow it wherever its logical conclusions lead me. 
 I say to you that there is but one hope, one safety for 
 this country, and that is to stand immovably by that 
 principle which declares the right of each State and 
 each Territory to decide these questions for themselves. 
 This government was founded on that principle, and 
 must be administered in the same sense in which it 
 was founded. 
 
 But the Abolition party really think that under the 
 Declaration of Independence the negro is equal to the 
 white man, and that negro equality is an inalienable 
 right conferred by the Almighty, and hence that all 
 human laws in violation of it are null and void. With 
 such men it is no use for me to argue. I hold that the 
 signers of the Declaration of Independence had no 
 reference to negroes at all when they declared all men 
 to be created equal. They did not mean negroes, nor 
 the savage Indians, nor the Feejee Islanders, nor any 
 other barbarous race. They were speaking of white 
 men. They alluded to men of European birth and 
 European descent — to white men, and to none others, 
 when they declared that doctrine. I hold that this 
 government was established on the white basis. It 
 was established by white men, for the benefit of white 
 men and their posterity forever, and should be admin- 
 istered by white men, and none others. But it does 
 not follow, by any means, that merely because the 
 
 I
 
 j8s8] at ALTON" 151 
 
 negro is not a citizen, and merely because he is not 
 our equal, that therefore he should be a slave. On the 
 contrary, it does follow that we ought to extend to the 
 negro race, and to all other dependent races, all the 
 rights, all the privileges, and all the immunities which 
 they can exercise consistently with the safety of society. 
 Humanity requires that we should give them all those 
 privileges; Christianity commands that we should ex- 
 tend those privileges to them. The question then 
 arises, What are those privileges, and what is the 
 nature and extent of them? .My answer is that that is 
 a question which each State must answer for itself. 
 We in Illinois have decided it for ourselves. We 
 tried slavery, kept it up for twelve years, and finding 
 that it was not profitable, we abolished it for that 
 reason, and became a free State. We adopted in its 
 stead the policy that a negro in this State shall not 
 be a slave and shall not be a citizen. We have a right 
 to adopt that policy. For my part, I think it is a wise 
 and sound policy for us. You in Missouri must judge 
 for yourselves whether it is a wise policy for you. If 
 you choose to follow our example, very good; if you 
 reject it, still well; it is your business, not ours. So 
 with Kentucky. Let Kentucky adopt a policy to suit 
 herself. If Vv-e do not like it, we will keep away from 
 it; and if she does not like ours, let her stay at home, 
 mind her own business, and let us alone. If the people 
 of all the States will act on that great principle, and 
 each State mind its own business, attend to its own 
 affairs, take care of its own negroes, and not meddle 
 with its neighbors, then there will be peace between 
 the North and the South, the East and the West, 
 throughout the whole Union. Why can we not thus 
 have peace? Why should we thus allow a sectional 
 party to agitate this country, to array the North 
 against the South, and convert us into enemies instead 
 of friends, merely that a few ambitious men may ride 
 into power on a sectional hobby? How long is it since 
 these ambitious Northern men wished for a sectional 
 organization? Did any one of them dream of a sec- 
 tional party as long as the North was the weaker 
 section and the South the stronger? Then all were 
 opposed to sectional parties. But the moment the 
 North obtained the majority in the House and Senate 
 by the admission of California, and could elect a
 
 152 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 President without the aid of Southern votes, that mo- 
 ment ambitious Northern men formed a scheme to 
 excite the North against the South, and make the 
 people be governed in their votes by geographical 
 hnes, thinking that the North, being the stronger 
 section, would outvote the South, and consequently 
 they, the leaders, would ride into office on a sectional 
 hobby. I am told that my hour is out. It was very 
 short. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Reply. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been some- 
 what, in my own mind, complimented by a large 
 portion of Judge Douglas's speech — I mean that 
 portion which he devotes to the controversy be- 
 tween himself and the present administration. 
 This is the seventh time Judge Douglas and my- 
 self 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 compli- 
 ment 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 that 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
 
 :i858] AT ALTON 153 
 
 I leave this branch of the discussion — although 
 \ do not consider it much of my business, any- 
 way. 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 in- 
 volve him in an inconsistency ; and he gets some- 
 thing of a cheer for having done so. I would 
 only remind the judge that while he is very val- 
 iantly fighting for the Nebraska bill and the re- 
 peal of the Missouri Compromise, it has been 
 but a little while since he was the valiant advo- 
 cate 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 busi- 
 ness 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, 111., I had in a very especial man- 
 ner 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 de- 
 cision 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
 
 154 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS . [Oct. 15 
 
 friends to show where I said that a negro should 
 be a citizen, and complained especially of the 
 Dred Scott decision because he 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 mis- 
 represent 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 mat- 
 ter; 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 de- 
 cided 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 claim- 
 ing 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 al.l. 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
 
 i8s8] AT ALTON 155 
 
 by act of Congress, did not make him free, be- 
 cause that act of Congress, as they held, was un- 
 constitutional. 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 connec- 
 tion 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 intro- 
 duce a perfect social and political equality be- 
 tween the white and the black races. His as- 
 sertion that I made an "especial objection" (that 
 is his exact language) to the decision on this ac- 
 count, 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 audi- 
 ence having strong sympathies southward by re- 
 lationship, 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
 
 156 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 former occasions, the extracts were taken in such 
 a way as, I suppose, brings them within the defi- 
 nition of what is called garbling — taking por- 
 tions of a speech which, when taken by them- 
 selves, 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 Declara- 
 tion 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 
 th'^it 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 re- 
 main 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 that 
 charter remain as our standard. 
 
 Now I have upon all occasions declared as 
 strongly as Judge Douglas against the disposi- 
 tion to interfere with the existing institution of 
 slavery. You hear me read it from the same
 
 1858] AT ALTON 157 
 
 speech from which he takes garbled extracts for 
 the purpose of proving upon me a disposition to 
 interfere with the institution of slavery, and es- 
 tablish a perfect social and political equality be- 
 tween negroes and white people. 
 
 Allow me, while upon this subject, briefly to 
 present one other extract from a speech of mine, 
 made 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 Inde- 
 pendence : 
 
 I think the authors of that notable instrument in- 
 tended to include all men, but they did not intend to 
 declare all men equal in all respects. They did not 
 mean to say that all men were equal in color, size, intel- 
 lect, moral development, or social capacity. They de- 
 fined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they 
 did consider all men created equal — equal in certain in- 
 alienable 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 un- 
 truth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, 
 nor 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 cir- 
 cumstances should permit. 
 
 They meant to set up a standard maxim for free 
 society which should be familiar to all and revered by 
 all — constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and 
 even, though never perfectly attained, constantly ap- 
 proximated; 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 ex- 
 pressed in regard to the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence upon a former occasion — sentiments 
 which have been put in print and read wherever
 
 158 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 anybody cared to know what so humble an indi- 
 vidual as myself chose to say in regard to it. 
 
 At Galesburg, the other day, I said, in answer 
 to Judge Douglas, that i;hree years ago there 
 never had been a man, so far as I knew or be- 
 lieved, 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 aston- 
 ishment to me if they shall be able to find that 
 one human being three years ago had ever ut- 
 tered the astounding sentiment that the term *'all 
 men" in the Declaration did not include the ne- 
 gro. 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 ascendancy 
 and perpetuation of slavery, denied the truth of 
 it. I know that Mr. Calhoun and all the poli- 
 ticians of his school denied the truth of the Dec- 
 laration. 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 Decla- 
 ration 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 at- 
 tacking 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
 
 1858] AT ALTON 159 
 
 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 en- 
 tire 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 Galesburg 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. 
 I was with the 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 evi- 
 dence he produces that some man had, prior to 
 the time I named, said the negroes were not in- 
 cluded in the term "all men" in the Declaration 
 of Independence. What is the evidence he pro- 
 duces? 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 Declara- 
 tion. 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 sur- 
 rounded to some extent to-day by the old friends
 
 i6o DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 of Mr. Clay, and they will be glad to hear any- 
 thing from that authority. While he was in In- 
 diana a man presented a petition to liberate his 
 negroes, and he (]\Ir. Clay) made a speech in 
 answer to it, which I suppose he carefully wrote 
 himself and caused to be published. I have be- 
 fore me an extract from that speech which con- 
 stitutes the evidence this pretended "Old-Line 
 Whig" at Chicago brought forward to show that 
 Mr. Clay didn'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 an- 
 nouncing to the world the independence of the thir- 
 teen 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 dec- 
 laration, 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
 
 1858] AT ALTON 161 
 
 the thirteen colonies entertain such a design or ex- 
 pectation? To impute such a secret and unavowed pur- 
 pose would be to charge a political fraud upon the 
 noblest band of patriots that ever assembled in coun- 
 cil — a fraud upon the confederacy of the Revolution — 
 a fraud upon the union of those States whose constitu- 
 tion 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? ^Ir. Clay says it is true as an abstract 
 principle that all men are created equal, but that 
 we cannot practically apply it in all cases. He 
 illustrates this by bringing forward the cases of 
 females, minors, and insane persons, with whom 
 it cannot be enforced ; but he says that 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 prin- 
 ciple. Let me read a few words more before I 
 add some comments of my own. ^Ir. 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 
 parent 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 incorporating the institution of slavery 
 among its elements. 
 
 Now, here in this same book — in this same
 
 t62 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 speech — in this same extract brought forward to 
 prove that Mr. Clay held that the negro was not 
 included in the Declaration of Independence — 
 we find no such statement on his part, but in- 
 stead the declaration that it is a great funda- 
 mental truth, which should be constantly kept in 
 view in the organization of society and in socie- 
 ties 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 "or- 
 ganized society," I ask to have the public eye 
 turned upon it ; if I ask, in relation to the organ- 
 ization 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 pub- 
 lic view and recognizing what he recognized as 
 the great principle of free government? 
 
 ^ And when this new principle — this new propo- 
 sition 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 in this Union. 
 
 But there is a point that I wish, before leaving 
 tWs part of the discussion, to ask attention to.
 
 i8s8] AT ALTON 163 
 
 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 parent 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 best be 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 incorporating the institu- 
 tion of slavery among its elements. 
 
 The principle upon which I have insisted in 
 this canvass, is in relation to laying the founda- 
 tions 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 Mis- 
 souri, or any other slave State, shall emancipate 
 her slaves. I have proposed no such thing. But 
 when Mr. Clay says that in laying the founda- 
 tions of societies in our Territories where it does 
 not exist, he would be opposed to the introduc- 
 tion 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 
 hateful to him. 
 
 Judge Douglas has again referred to a Spring- 
 field 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 :
 
 i64 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 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 Doug- 
 las. He has warred upon them as Satan wars 
 upon the Bible. His perversions upon it are end- 
 less. 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 ob- 
 ject 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 ob- 
 ject" 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 Doug- 
 las is very fond of complimenting Mr. Critten- 
 den 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 trouble- 
 some thing, and that very allaying-plaster of
 
 1858] AT ALTON 165 
 
 Judge Douglas's stirred it up again. But was it 
 not undertaken or initiated with the ''confident 
 promise" of putting an end to the slavery agita- 
 tion? Surely it was. In every speech you heard 
 Judge Douglas make, until he got into this ''im- 
 broglio," 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 agi- 
 tation. 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 introduc- 
 tion of that Nebraska policy which was to clothe 
 the people of the Territories with a superior de- 
 gree of self-government, beyond what they had 
 ever had before. The first object and the main 
 one of conferring upon the people a higher de- 
 gree of "self-government," is a question of fact 
 to be determined by you in ansv/er 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-gov- 
 ernment"? In its main policy and in its collat- 
 eral 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
 
 166 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 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 ex- 
 tinction. 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 ar- 
 rested, and that it may be placed where the pub- 
 lic 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 slav- 
 ery — 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 ultimate extinc- 
 tion? 
 
 Again, the institution of slavery is only men- 
 tioned 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 lan- 
 guage in regard to the prohibition of the African 
 slave-trade? It runs in about this way: "The
 
 1,858] AT ALTON 167. 
 
 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 1808." 
 
 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 di- 
 rect taxes shall be apportioned among the sev- 
 eral 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 per- 
 sons." 
 
 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 conse- 
 quence of any law or regulation therein be dis- 
 charged 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 allusion to slavery in the instrument, covert 
 language is used. Language is used not sug- 
 gesting that slavery existed or that the black 
 race were among us. And I understand the con- 
 temporaneous history of those times to be that 
 covert language was used with a purpose, and 
 that purpose was that in our, Constitution, which.
 
 i68 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 it was hoped, and is still hoped, will endure for- 
 ever, — 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 sug- 
 gesting that such a thing as negro slavery had 
 ever existed among us. This is part of the evi- 
 dence that the fathers of the government ex- 
 pected and intended the institution of slavery to 
 come to an end. They expected and intended 
 that it should be in the course of ultimate extinc- 
 tion. 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 fram- 
 ers 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 abso- 
 lute impossibility — of its immediate removal. 
 And when Judge Douglas asks me why we can- 
 not 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 it- 
 self a falsehood; and I turn upon him and ask
 
 1858] AT ALTON 169 
 
 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 226. 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 the slave 
 States at war, when the institution was placed in 
 that attitude by those who made the Constitu- 
 tion, 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 pohcy 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 incum- 
 bent 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 decla- 
 ration that I do not mean to produce a conflict
 
 I70 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 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 quota- 
 tion that I happened to make in that Springfield 
 speech, that ''a house divided against itself can- 
 not 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 domestic 
 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 cran- 
 berry law here, in Illinois, where we have no 
 cranberries, because they have a cranberry law 
 in Indiana, w^here 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 in- 
 dustrial pursuits and productions of a country, 
 require systems of laws conforming to this va- 
 riety 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 ad- 
 vantage to exchange. That produces commerce, 
 brings us together, and makes us better friends. 
 We like one another the more for it. And I un- 
 derstand as well as Judge Douglas, or anybody 
 else, that these mutual accommodations are the
 
 r858] AT ALTON 171 
 
 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. Con- 
 sider 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 re- 
 gard 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 insti- 
 tution 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 diffi- 
 culty 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 some- 
 where 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
 
 172 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 the average men, but I do claim that I am not 
 more selfish than Judge Douglas. 
 
 But is it true that all the difficulty and agita- 
 tion we have in regard to this institution of slav- 
 ery springs from office-seeking — from the mere 
 ambition of politicians ? Is that the truth ? How 
 many times have we had danger from this ques- 
 tion ? Go back to the day of the Missouri Com- 
 promise. Go back to the nullification question, 
 at the bottom of which lay this same slavery 
 quf stion. 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 nullifica- 
 tion question, they sprang 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 split- 
 ting it, but sure to divide it in the end ? Is it not 
 this same mighty, deep-seated power that some- 
 how 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
 
 1858] AT ALTON 173 
 
 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 stilled 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 states- 
 manship which assumes that you can quiet that 
 disturbing element in our society which has dis- 
 turbed us for more than half a century, which 
 has been the only serious danger that has threat- 
 ened our institutions — I say, where is the philos- 
 ophy or the statesmanship based on the assump- 
 tion 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 rights which the 
 States have to decide the whole thing for them- 
 selves. I agree with him very readily that the 
 different States have that right. He is but fight- 
 ing 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
 
 174 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 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 Gov- 
 ernment, to disturb slavery in the States where 
 it exists. We profess constantly that we ha^ 
 no more inclination than belief in the power of 
 the government to disturb it; yet we are driven 
 constantly to defend ourselves from the assump- 
 tion that we are warring upon the rights of the 
 States. What I insist upon is, that the new Ter- 
 ritories 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 out- 
 let 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 as- 
 sumption 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 advocat-
 
 i8s8] AT ALTON 175 
 
 ing 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 condition 
 in life. 
 
 I have stated upon former occasions, and I 
 may as well state again, what I understand to be 
 the real issue of this controversy between Judge 
 Douglas and myself. On the point of my want- 
 ing 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 in- 
 troducing 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 con-
 
 176 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 troversy — 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 in- 
 stitution 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 proposi- 
 tions 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 ob- 
 ligations thrown about it. Yet having a due re- 
 gard for these, they desire a policy in regard to 
 it that looks to its not creating any more danger. 
 They insist that it, 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 some time, as 
 being a wrong. These are the views they enter- 
 tain in regard to it, as I understand them ; and all 
 their sentiments, all their arguments and propo- 
 sitions, 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 institu- 
 tion of slavery is wrong in any one of the as- 
 pects 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 con-
 
 1858] AT ALTON 177 
 
 stitutional obligations thrown about it, that man 
 is misplaced if he is on our platform. We dis- 
 claim 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 any- 
 thing 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 all 
 over your whole body. That is no proper v/ay of 
 treating what you regard as 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-fash- 
 ioned way, the way in which the fathers them- 
 selves set us the example. 
 
 On the other hand, I have said there is a senti- 
 ment 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 with- 
 in 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
 
 178 • DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. i^- 
 
 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 is 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 quar- 
 rel 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, be- 
 cause 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 emanci- 
 pation 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 pre- 
 tend 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
 
 i8s8] AT ALTON' 179 
 
 Democracy. More than that, take all the argu- 
 ment made in favor of the system you have pro- 
 posed, and it carefully excludes the idea that 
 there is anything wrong in the institution of slav- 
 ery. The arguments to sustain that policy care- 
 fully exclude it. Even here to-day you heard 
 Judge Douglas quarrel with me because I ut- 
 tered a wish that it might some time come to an 
 end. Although Henry Clay could say he wished 
 every slave in the United States was in the coun- 
 try of his ancestors, I am denounced by those 
 pretending to respect Henry Clay, for uttering a 
 wish that it might some time, in some peaceful 
 way, come to an end. 
 
 The Democratic policy in regard to that insti- 
 tution 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 argu- 
 ments. 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 expres- 
 sion, whether it is intended to be expressive of 
 his individual sentiments on the subject, or only 
 of the national policy he desires to have estab- 
 lished. 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 be- 
 tween a right thing and a wrong thing. He con- 
 tends 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
 
 i8o DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15, 
 
 people have a right to do wrong. He says that,, 
 upon the score of equality, slaves should be al- 
 lowed to go into a new Territory like other prop- 
 erty. This is strictly logical if there is no dif- 
 ference between it and other property. If it 
 and other property are equal, his argument 
 is entirely logical. But if you insist that one 
 is \yrong 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, wheth- 
 er 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 every- 
 where 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 toil and work and earn 
 bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what 
 shape it comes, whether from the m.outh 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 enslav- 
 ing another race, it is the same tyrannical prin- 
 ciple. I was glad to express my gratitude at
 
 1858] AT ALTON x8i 
 
 Quincy, and I reexpress it here to Judge Doug- 
 las — 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 them 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 to it, and that end will be its "ultimate ex- 
 tinction." Whenever the issue can be distinctly 
 made, and all extraneous matter thrown out, so 
 that men can fairly see the real difference be- 
 tween 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 de- 
 clared that when this Constitution was framed, 
 its framers did not look to the institution exist- 
 ing 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 f 
 it became a necessity in this country that slavery 
 
 * Preston S. Brooks, who physically assaulted Charles 
 Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, in the Senate Cham- 
 ber, May 22, 1856, in return for a verbal castigation that 
 Sumner had given Senator Butler of South Carolina, 
 Brooks' kinbman, in a speech on the Kansas question. 
 
 t Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793. By this the capacity 
 of labor in picking cotton was increased fifty-fold.
 
 1.82 DEBATE. WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15. 
 
 should be perpetual. I now say that, willingly 
 or unwillingly, purposely or without purpose, 
 Judge Douglas has been the most prominent in- 
 strument in changing the position of the institu- 
 tion of slavery, — which the fathers of the gov- 
 ernment 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 argu- 
 ment Judge Douglas uses, while he sustains the 
 Dred Scott decision, that the people of the Ter- 
 ritories 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 has 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 ad- 
 mits 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 ex- 
 clude him. Now, without meeting this proposi- 
 tion 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 ter- 
 ritorial legislature. The first thing he will do will 
 be to swear, that he will support the Constitution
 
 1858] AT ALTON 183 
 
 of the United States. His neighbor by his side 
 in the Territory has slaves and needs territorial 
 legislation to enable him to enjoy that constitu- 
 tional right. Can he withhold the legislation 
 which his neighbor needs for the enjoyment of a 
 right which is fixed in his favor in the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States which he has sworn to 
 support? Can he withhold it without violating 
 his oath? And more especially, can he pass un- 
 friendly legislation to violate his oath? Why, 
 this is a monstrous sort of talk about the Consti- 
 tution 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 con- 
 gressional legislation. In the judge's language, 
 it is a "barren right" which needs legislation be- 
 fore 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. Not that we like the in- 
 stitution of slavery; we profess to have no taste 
 for running and catching negroes — at least, 1
 
 i84 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 profess no taste for that job at all. Why then 
 do I yield support to a fugitive-slave law? Be- 
 cause 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 fugi- 
 tives, 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 legisla- 
 tion "to support slavery in a Territory, who be- 
 lieves 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-slave law. 
 Try it now. It is the strongest Abolition argu- 
 ment ever made. I say, if that Dred Scott de- 
 cision 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 be- 
 tween them. The one is express, so that we can- 
 not deny it; the other is construed to be in the 
 Constitution, so that he who beHeves 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 fur- 
 nishing 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 argument may strike a pop- 
 ular 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
 
 1858] AT ALTON 185 
 
 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 slave- 
 holder of his right to hold his slave in a Terri- 
 tory, 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 Doug- 
 las, after all. 
 
 Mr. Douglas's Rejoinder. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has concluded his remarks by saying 
 that there is not such an Abolitionist as I am in all 
 America. If he could make the Abolitionists of Illinois 
 believe that, he would not have much show for the 
 Senate. Let him make the Abolitionists believe the 
 truth of that statement, and his political back is 
 broken. 
 
 His first criticism upon me is the expression of his 
 hope that the war of the administration will be prose- 
 cuted against me and the Democratic party of this 
 State with vigor. He wants that war prosecuted with 
 vigor ; I have no doubt of it. His hopes of success, 
 and the hopes of his party, depend solely upon it. 
 They have no chance of destroying the Democracy 
 of this State except by the aid of federal patronage. 
 He has all the federal ofifice-holders here as his allies, 
 running separate tickets against the Democracy to 
 divide the party, although the leaders all intend to 
 vote directly the Abolition ticket, and only leave the 
 greenhorns to vote this separate ticket who refuse to 
 go into the Abolition camp. There is something really 
 refreshing in the thought that Mr. Lincoln is in favor 
 of prosecuting one war vigorously. It is the first war 
 I ever know him to be in favor of prosecuting. It is 
 the first war that I ever knew him to believe to be just 
 or constitutional. When the Mexican war was being
 
 i8$ DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 waged, and the American army was surrounded by the 
 enemy in Mexico, he thought the war was unconstitu- 
 tional, unnecessary, and unjust. He thought it was 
 not commenced on the right spot. 
 
 When I made an incidental allusion of that kind in 
 the joint discussion over at Charleston, some weeks 
 ago, Lincoln, in replying, said that I, Douglas, had 
 charged him with voting against supplies for the 
 Mexican war, and then he reared up, full length, and 
 swore that he never voted against the supplies, — that 
 it was a slander, — and caught hold of Ficklin, who sat 
 on the stand, and said, *'Here, Ficklin, tell the people 
 that it is a lie." Well, Ficklin, who had served in 
 Congress with him, stood up and told them all he 
 recollected about it. It was that when George Ash- 
 mun, of Massachusetts, brought forward a resolution 
 declaring the war unconstitutional, unnecessary, and 
 unjust, Lincoln had voted for it. "Yes," said Lincoln, 
 "I did." Thus he confessed that he voted that the war 
 was wrong, that our country was in the wrong, and 
 consequently that the Mexicans were in the right; but 
 charged that I had slandered him by saying that he 
 voted against the supplies. I never charged him with 
 voting against the supplies in my life, because I knew 
 that he was not in Congress when they were voted. 
 The war was commenced on the 13th day of May, 
 1846, and on that day we appropriated in Congress 
 ten millions of dollars and fifty thousand men to 
 prosecute it. During the same session we voted more 
 men and more money, and at the next session we voted 
 more men and more money, so that by the time Mr. 
 Lincoln entered Congress we had enough men and 
 enough money to carry on the war, and had no oc- 
 casion to vote for any more. When he got into the 
 House, being opposed to the war, and not being able 
 to stop the supplies, because they had all gone for- 
 ward, all he could do was to follow the lead of Corwin, 
 and prove that the war was not begun on the right 
 spot, and that it was unconstitutional, unnecessary, 
 and wrong. Remember, too, that this he did after the 
 war had been begun. It is one thing to be opposed 
 to the declaration of a war, another and very different 
 thing to take sides with the enemy against your own 
 country after the war has been commenced. Our 
 army was in Mexico at the time, many battles had
 
 iSsS] . AT ALTON 187 
 
 been fought; our citizens, who were defending the 
 honor of their country's flag, were surrounded by the 
 daggers, the guns, and the poison of the enemy. 
 Then it was that Corwin made his speech in which he 
 declared that the American soldiers ought to be wel- 
 comed by the Mexicans with bloody hands and hospi- 
 table graves ; then it was that Ashmun and Lincoln 
 voted in the House of Representatives that the war 
 was unconstitutional and unjust; and Ashmuii's resolu- 
 tion, Corwin's speech, and Lincoln's vote were sent to 
 Mexico and read at the head of the Mexican army, 
 to prove to them that there was a Mexican party in 
 the Congress of the United States who were doing all 
 in their power to aid them. That a man who takes 
 sides with the common enemy against his own country 
 in time of war should rejoice in a war being made on 
 me now, is very natural. And, in my opinion, no 
 other kind of a man would rejoice in it. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has told you a great deal to-day about 
 his being an old-line Clay Whig. Bear in mind that 
 there are a great many old Clay Whigs down in this 
 region. It is more agreeable, therefore, for him to 
 talk about the old Clay Whig party than it is for him 
 to talk Abolitionism. We did not hear much about 
 the old Clay Whig party up in the Abolition districts. 
 How much of an old-line Henry Clay Whig was he? 
 Have you read General Singleton's speech at Jackson- 
 ville? You know that General Singleton was, for 
 twenty-five years, the confidential friend of Henry 
 Clay in Illinois, and he testified that in 1847, when the 
 constitutional convention of this State was in session, 
 the Whig members were invited to a Whig caucus at 
 the house of Mr. Lincoln's brother-in-law, where Mr. 
 Lincoln proposed to throw Henry Clay overboard and 
 take up General Taylor in his place, giving, as his 
 reason, that if the Whigs did not take up General 
 Taylor, the Democrats would. Singleton testifies 
 that Lincoln, in that speech, urged, as another reason 
 for throwing Henry Clay overboard, that the Whigs 
 had fought long enough for principle, and ought to 
 begin to fight for success. Singleton also testifies 
 that Lincoln's speech did have the effect of cutting 
 Clay's throat, and that he (Singleton) and others with- 
 drew from the caucus in indignation. He further 
 states that when they got to Philadelphia to attend
 
 i88 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. ig 
 
 the national convention of the Whig party, that Lin- 
 coln was there, the bitter and deadly enemy of Clay, 
 and that he tried to keep him (Singleton) out of the 
 convention because he insisted on voting for Clay, and 
 Lincoln was determined to have Taylor. Singleton 
 says that Lincoln rejoiced with very great joy when he 
 found the mangled remains of the murdered Whig 
 statesman lying cold before him. Now Mr. Lincoln 
 tells you that he is an old-line Clay Whig! General 
 Singleton testifies to the facts I have narrated, in a 
 public speech which has been printed and circulated 
 broadcast over the State for weeks, yet not a lisp have 
 we heard from Mr. Lincoln on the subject, except that 
 he is an old Clay Whig. 
 
 What part of Henry Clay's policy did Lincoln ever 
 advocate? He was in Congress in 1848-49, when the 
 Wilmot proviso warfare disturbed the peace and 
 harmony of the country, until it shook the foundation 
 of the republic from its center to its circumference. 
 It was that agitation that brought Clay forth from 
 his retirement at Ashland again to occupy his seat in 
 the Senate of the United States, to see if he could not, 
 by his great wisdom and experience, and the renown 
 of his name, do something to restore peace and quiet 
 to a disturbed country. Who got up that sectional 
 strife that Clay had to be called upon to quell? I have 
 heard Lincoln boast that he voted forty-two times for 
 the Wilmot proviso, and that he would have voted as 
 many times more if he could. Lincoln is the man, in 
 connection with Seward, Chase, Giddings, and other 
 Abolitionists, who got up that strife that I helped Clay 
 to put down. Henry Clay came back to the Senate in 
 1849, and saw that he must do something to restore 
 peace to the country. The Union Whigs and the 
 Union Democrats welcomed him the moment he ar- 
 rived, as the man for the occasion. We believed that 
 he, of all men on earth, had been preserved by divine 
 providence to guide us out of our difficulties, and we 
 Democrats rallied under Clay then, as you Whigs in 
 nullification times rallied under the banner of old Jack- 
 son, forgetting party when the country was in danger, 
 in order that we might have a country first and parties 
 afterward. 
 
 And this reminds me that Mr. Lincoln told you that 
 the slavery question was the only thing that ever dis-
 
 1858] AT ALTON 189 
 
 turbed the peace and harmony of the Union. Did not 
 nullification once raise its head and disturb the peace 
 of this Union in 1832? Was that the slavery question, 
 Mr. Lincoln? Did not disunion raise its monster head 
 during the last war with Great Britain? Was that the 
 slavery question, Mr. Lincoln? The peace of this 
 country has been disturbed three times, once during 
 the war with Great Britain, once on the tariff question, 
 and, once on the slavery question. His argument, 
 therefore, that slavery is Lhe only question that has 
 ever created dissension in the Union falls to the 
 ground. It is true that agitators are enabled now to 
 use this slavery question for the purpose of sectional 
 strife. He admits that, in regard to all things else, 
 the principle that I advocate, making each State and 
 Territory free to decide for itself, ought to prevail. 
 He instances the cranberry laws, and the oyster laws, 
 and he might have gone through the whole list with 
 the same effect. I say that all these laws are local and 
 domestic, and the local and domestic concerns should 
 be left to each State and Territory to manage for it- 
 self. If agitators would acquiesce in that principle, 
 there never would be any danger to the peace and 
 harmony of the Union, 
 
 Mr. Lincoln tries to avoid the main issue by attack- 
 ing the truth of my proposition, that our fathers made 
 this government divided into free and slave States, 
 recognizing the right of each to decide all its local 
 questions for itself. Did they not thus make it? It is 
 true that they did not establish slavery in any of the 
 States, or abolish it in any of them; but finding thir- 
 teen States, twelve of which were slave and one free, 
 they agreed to form a government uniting them to- 
 gether, as they stood, divided into free and slave 
 States, and to guarantee forever to each State the 
 right to do as it pleased on the slavery question. 
 Having thus made the government, and conferred this 
 right upon each State forever, I assert that this 
 government can exist as they made it, divided into 
 free and slave States, if any one State chooses to retain 
 slavery. He says that he looks forward to a time 
 when slavery shall be abolished everywhere. I look 
 forward to the time when each State shall be allowed 
 to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery for- 
 ever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses
 
 I90 DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS [Oct. 15 
 
 to abolish slavery, it is its own business, not mine. I 
 care more for the great principle of self-government, 
 the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the 
 negroes in Christendom. I would not endanger the 
 perpetuity of this Union; I would not blot out the great 
 inalienable rights of the white men for all the negroes 
 that ever existed. Hence, I say, let us maintain this 
 government on the principles on which our fathers 
 made it, recognizing the right of each State to keep 
 slavery as long as its people determine, or to abolish 
 it when they please. But Mr. Lincoln says that when 
 our fathers made this government they did not look 
 forward to the state of things now existing, and there- 
 fore he thinks the doctrine was wrong; and he quotes 
 Brooks, of South Carolina, to prove that our fathers 
 then thought that probably slavery would be abolished 
 by each State acting for itself before this time. Sup- 
 pose they did; suppose they did not foresee what has 
 occurred — does that change the principles of our gov- 
 ernment? They did not probably foresee the telegraph 
 that transmits intelligence by lightning; nor did they 
 foresee the railroads that now form the bonds of union 
 between the different States; or the thousand me- 
 chanical inventions that have elevated mankind. But 
 do these things change the principles of the govern- 
 ment? Our fathers, I say, made this government on 
 the principle of the right of each State to do as it 
 pleases in its own domestic affairs, subject to the Con- 
 stitution, and allowed the people of each to apply to 
 every new change of circumstances such remedy as 
 they may see fit to improve their condition. This 
 right they have for all time to come. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln went on to tell you that he does not at 
 all desire to interfere with slavery in the States where 
 it exists, nor does his party. I expected him to say 
 that down here. Let me ask him then how he expects 
 to put slavery in the course of ultimate extinction 
 everywhere, if he does not intend to interfere with it 
 in the States where it exists? He says that he will 
 prohibit it in all Territories, and the inference is, then, 
 that unless they make free States out of them he will 
 keep them out of the Union; for, mark you, he did 
 not say whether or not he would vote to admit Kansas 
 with slavery or not, as her people might apply (he 
 forgot that, as usual); he did not say whether or not he
 
 i858] AT ALTON 191 
 
 was in favor of bringing the Territories now in 
 existence into the Union on the principle of Clay's 
 compromise measures on the slavery question. I told 
 you that he would not. His idea is that he will pro- 
 hibit slavery in all the Territories, and thus force them 
 all to become free States, surrounding the slave States 
 with a cordon of free States and hemming them in, 
 keeping the slaves confined to their present limits whilst 
 they go on multiplying until the soil on which they 
 live will no longer feed them, and he will thus be able 
 to put slavery in a course of ultimate extinction by star- 
 vation. He will extinguish slavery in the Southern States 
 as the French general extinguished the Algerines when 
 he smoked them out. He is going to extinguish 
 slavery by surrounding the slave States, hemming in 
 the slaves, and starving them out of existence, as you 
 smoke a fox out of his hole. He intends to do that in 
 the name of humanity and Christianity, in order that 
 we may get rid of the terrible crime and sin entailed 
 upon our fathers of holding slaves. Mr. Lincoln 
 makes out that line of policy, and appeals to the moral 
 sense of justice and to the Christian feeling of the 
 community to sustain him. He says that any man 
 who holds to the contrary doctrine is in the position 
 of the king who claimed to govern by divine right. 
 Let us examine for a moment and see what principle 
 it was that overthrew the divine right of George HL 
 to govern us. Did not these colonies rebel because 
 the British parliament had no right to pass laws con- 
 cerning our property and domestic and private institu- 
 tions without our consent? We demanded that the 
 British government should not pass such laws unless 
 they gave us representation in the body passing them — 
 and this the British government insisting on doing, we 
 went to war, on the principle that the home govern- 
 ment should not control and govern distant colonies 
 without giving them a representation. Now Mr. Lin- 
 coln proposes to govern the Territories without giving 
 them a representation, and calls on Congress to pass 
 laws controlling their property and domestic concerns 
 without their consent and against their will. Thus he 
 asserts for his party the identical principle asserted by 
 George HI. and the Tories of the Revolution. 
 
 I ask you to look into these things, and then tell me 
 whether the Democracy or the Abolitionists are right
 
 192 
 
 SPEECHES [Mar. 1 
 
 I hold that the people of a Territory, like those of a 
 State (I use the language of Mr. Buchanan in his letter 
 of acceptance), have the right to decide for themselves 
 whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their 
 limits. The point upon which Chief Justice Taney 
 expresses his opinion is simply this, that slaves, being 
 property, stand on an equal footing with other 
 property, and consequently that the owner has the 
 same right to carry that property into a Territory that 
 he has any other, subject to the same conditions. Sup- 
 pose that one of your merchants was to take fifty or 
 one hundred thousand dollars' worth of liquors to 
 Kansas. He has a right to go there under that 
 decision, but when he gets there he finds the Maine 
 liquor-law in force, and what can he do with his 
 property after he gets it there? He cannot sell it, he 
 cannot use it, it is subject to the local law, and that 
 law is against him, and the best thing he can do with it 
 is to bring it back into Missouri or Illinois and sell it. 
 If you take negroes to Kansas, as Colonel Jefferson 
 Davis said in his Bangor speech, from which I have 
 quoted to-day, you must take them there subject to the 
 local law. If the people want the institution of slavery, 
 they will protect and encourage it; but if they do not 
 want it, they will withhold that protection, and the 
 absence of local legislation protecting slavery excludes 
 it as completely as a positive prohibition. You slave- 
 holders of Missouri might as well understand what 
 you know practically, that you cannot carry slavery 
 where the people do not want it. All you have a right 
 to ask is that the people shall do as they please; if 
 they want slavery, let them have it; if they do not want 
 it, allow them to refuse to encourage it. 
 
 My friends, if, as I have said before, we only live 
 up to this great fundamental principle, there will be 
 peace between the North and the South. Mr. Lincoln 
 admits that under the Constitution, on all domestic 
 questions except slavery, we ought not to interfere 
 with the people of each State. What right have we to 
 interfere with slavery any more than we have to in- 
 terfere with any other question? He says that this 
 slavery question is now the bone of contention. Why? 
 Simply because agitators have combined in all the 
 free States to make war upon it. Suppose the agita- 
 tors in the States should combine in one half of the
 
 iS59l AT CHICAGO 193 
 
 Union to make war upon the railroad system of the 
 other half. They would thus be driven to the same 
 sectional strife. Suppose one section makes war upon 
 any other peculiar institution of the opposite section, 
 and the same strife is produced. The only remedy and 
 safety is that we shall stand by the Constitution as our 
 fathers made it, obey the laws as they are passed, 
 while they stand the proper test, and sustain the de- 
 cisions of the Supreme Court and the constituted 
 authorities. 
 
 The "Moral Climate Line" of Douglas. 
 
 Lincoln's Speech at Chicago on the Night 
 
 OF THE AIUXICIPAL ELECTION. MaRCH I, 
 
 1859. 
 
 I understand that you have to-day rallied 
 around your principles, and they have again 
 triumphed in the city of Chicago. I am ex- 
 ceedingly happy to meet you under such cheering 
 auspices on this occasion — the first on which I 
 have appeared before an audience since the cam- 
 paign of last year. It is unsuitable to enter into 
 a lengthy discourse, as is quite apparent, at a 
 moment like this, I shall therefore detain you 
 only a very short while. 
 
 It gives me peculiar pleasure to find an oppor- 
 tunit}' under such favorable circumstances to re- 
 turn my thanks for the gallant support that the 
 Republicans of the city of Chicago and of the 
 State gave to the cause in which we were all 
 ^"&^fe^d in the late momentous struggle in Illi- 
 nois. 
 
 I remember in that canvass but one instance 
 of dissatisfaction with my course, and I allude 
 to that now not for the purpose of reviving any 
 matter of dispute or producing any unpleasant
 
 194 
 
 SPEECHES [Mar. i 
 
 feeling, but in order to help to get rid of the point 
 upon which that matter of disagreement or dis- 
 satisfaction arose. I understand that in some 
 speeches I made I said something, or was sup- 
 posed to have said something, that some very- 
 good people, as I really believe them to be, com- 
 mented upon unfavorably, and said that rather 
 than support one holding such sentiments as I 
 had expressed, the real friends of liberty could 
 afford to wait a while. I don't want to say any- 
 thing that shall excite unkind feeling, and I men- 
 tion this simply to suggest that I am afraid of the 
 effect of that sort of argument. I do not doubt 
 that it comes from good men, but I am afraid of 
 the result upon organized action where great re- 
 sults are in view, if any of us allow ourselves to 
 seek out minor or separate points, on which there 
 may be difference of views as to policy and right, 
 and let them keep us from uniting in action upon 
 a great principle in a cause on which we all 
 agree ; or are deluded into the belief that all 
 can be brought to consider alike and agree upon 
 every minor point before we unite and press 
 forward in organization, asking the cooperation 
 of all good men in that resistance to the extension 
 of slavery upon which we all agree. I am afraid 
 that such methods would result in keeping the 
 friends of liberty waiting longer than we ought 
 to. I say this for the purpose of suggesting that 
 we consider whether it would not be better and 
 wiser, so long as we all agree that this matter of 
 slavery is a moral, political, and social wrong, 
 and ought to be treated as a wrong, not to let 
 anything minor or subsidiary to that main prin- 
 ciple and purpose make us fail to cooperate. 
 One other thing, — and that again I say in no
 
 i859] AT CHICAGO 195 
 
 spirit of unkindness. There was a question 
 amongst Republicans all the time of the canvass 
 of last year, and it has not quite ceased yet, 
 whether it was not the true and better policy for 
 the Republicans to make it their chief object to 
 reelect Judge Douglas to the Senate of the 
 United States. Now, I differ with those who 
 thought that the true policy, but I have never 
 said an unkind word of any one entertaining that 
 opinion. I believe most of them were as sincerely 
 the friends of our cause as I claim to be myself ; 
 yet I thought they were mistaken, and I speak of 
 this now for the purpose of justifying the course 
 that I took and the course of those who sup- 
 ported me. In what I say now there is no un- 
 kindness even toward Judge Douglas. I have 
 beHeved that in the Republican situation in Illi- 
 nois, if we, the Republicans of this State, had 
 made Judge Douglas our candidate for the Sen- 
 ate of the United States last year, and had elected 
 him, there would to-day be no Republican party 
 in this Union. I believe that the principles 
 around which we have rallied and organized that 
 party would live; they will live under all cir- 
 cumstances, while we will die. They would re- 
 produce another party in the future. But in the 
 meantime all the labor that has been done to 
 build up the present Republican party would be 
 entirely lost, and perhaps twenty years of time, 
 before we would again have formed around that 
 principle as solid, extensive, and formidable an 
 organization as we have, standing shoulder to 
 shoulder, to-night, in harmony and strength 
 around the RepubHcan banner. 
 
 It militates not at all against this view to tell 
 us that the Republicans could make something
 
 196 SPEECHES [Mar. i 
 
 in the State of New York by electing to Congress 
 John B. Haskin, who occupied a position similar 
 to Judge Douglas ; or that they could make some- 
 thing by electing Hickman of Pennsylvania, or 
 Davis of Indiana. I think it likely that they could 
 and do make something by it ; but it is false logic 
 to assume that for that reason anything could be 
 gained by us in electing Judge Douglas in Illi- 
 nois. And for this reason : It is no disparage- 
 ment to these men, Hickman and Davis, to say 
 that individually they were comparatively small 
 men, and the Republican party could take hold of 
 them, use them, elect them, absorb them, expel 
 them, or do whatever it pleased with them, and 
 the Republican organization be in no wise 
 shaken. But it is not so with Judge Douglas. 
 Let the Republican party of Illinois dally with 
 Judge Douglas ; let them fall in behind him and 
 make him their candidate, and they do not absorb 
 him — he absorbs them. They would come out 
 at the end all Douglas men, all claimed by him 
 as having indorsed every one of his doctrines 
 upon the great subject with which the whole na- 
 tion is engaged at this hour — that the question 
 of negro slavery is simply a question of dollars 
 and cents ; that the Almighty has drawn a line 
 across the continent, on one side of which labor 
 — the cultivation of the soil — must always be 
 performed by slaves. It would be claimed that 
 we, like him, do not care whether slavery is 
 voted up or voted down. Had we made him our 
 candidate and given him a great majority, we 
 should never have heard an end of declarations 
 by him that we had indorsed all these dogmas. 
 
 You all remember that at the last session of 
 Congress there was a measure introduced in the
 
 1859] AT CHICAGO 197 
 
 Senate by Mr. Crittenden which proposed that 
 the pro-slavery Lecompton constitution should 
 be left to a vote to be taken in Kansas, and if it 
 and slavery were adopted, Kansas should be at 
 once admitted as a slave State. That same 
 measure was introduced into the House by Mr. 
 Montgomery, and therefore got the name of the 
 Crittenden-Montgomery bill ; and in the House 
 of Representatives the Republicans all voted for 
 it under the peculiar circumstances in which they 
 found themselves placed. You may remember 
 also that the New York Tribune, which was so 
 much in favor of our electing Judge Douglas to 
 the Senate of the United States, has not yet got 
 through the task of defending the Republican 
 party, after that one vote in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, from the charge of having gone over 
 to the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Now, 
 how long would the New York Tribune have 
 been in getting rid of the charge that the Re- 
 publicans had abandoned their principles, if we 
 had taken up Judge Douglas, adopted all his 
 doctrines, and elected him to the Senate, when 
 the single vote upon that one point so confused 
 and embarrassed the position of the Republicans 
 that it has kept them for one entire year arguing 
 against the effect of it ? 
 
 This much being said on that point, I wish 
 now to add a word that has a bearing on the 
 future. The Republican principle, the profound 
 central truth that slavery is wrong and ought to 
 be dealt with as a wrong, — though we are always 
 to remember the fact of its actual existence 
 amongst us and faithfully observe all the con- 
 stitutional guarantees, — the unalterable principle 
 never for a moment to be lost sight of, that it is
 
 198 SPEECHES [Mar. i 
 
 a wrong and ought to be dealt with as such, can- 
 not advance at all upon Judge Douglas's ground ; 
 that there is a portion of the country in which 
 slavery must always exist; that he does not care 
 whether it is voted up or voted down, as it is 
 simply a question of dollars and cents. When- 
 ever in any compromise, or arrangement, or com- 
 bination that may promise some temporary ad- 
 vantage we are led upon that ground, then and 
 there the great living principle upon which we 
 have organized as a party is surrendered. The 
 proposition now in our minds that this thing is 
 wrong being once driven out and surrendered, 
 then the institution of slavery necessarily be- 
 comes national. 
 
 One or two words more of what I did not 
 think of when I rose. Suppose it is true that the 
 Almighty has drawn a line across this continent, 
 on the south side of which part of the people will 
 hold the rest as slaves ; that the Almighty 
 ordered this ; that it is right, unchangeably right, 
 that men ought there to be held as slaves ; that 
 their fellow-men will always have the right to 
 hold them as slaves.* I ask you, this once ad- 
 
 * Lincoln here refers to sentiments that had been ex- 
 pressed by Senator Douglas, in a Southern tour made 
 after his election. In a speech at Memphis, in December, 
 1858, Douglas declared : "Whenever a territory has a 
 climate, soil, and production, making it the interest of 
 the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will 
 have a slave code," and where conditions are unfavorable 
 for slavery they will prohibit it. The Almighty, he said, 
 had drawn a line on this continent, on the one side of 
 which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor ; on the 
 other by white labor. That line did not run inflexibly 
 along the parallel of 36° 30', the artificial boundary once 
 established by law [m the Missouri Compromise'\, but 
 meandered through the border States and Territories, 
 where the self-interest of the inhabitants formed the 
 natural means for its determination.
 
 1859] AT CHICAGO 199 
 
 mitted, how can you believe that it is not right for 
 us, or for them- coming here, to hold slaves on 
 this other side of the line? Once we come to 
 ackiaowledge that it is right, that it is the law of 
 the Eternal Being for slavery to exist on one side 
 of that line, have we any sure ground to object 
 to slaves being held on the other side? Once 
 admit the position that a man rightfully holds 
 another man as property on one side of the line, 
 and you must, when it suits his convenience to 
 come to the other side, admit that he has the 
 same right to hold his property there. Once ad- 
 mit Judge Douglas's proposition, and we must 
 all finally give way. Although we may not bring 
 ourselves to the idea that it is to our interest to 
 have slaves in this Northern country, we shall 
 soon bring ourselves to admit that while we may 
 not want them, if any one else does, he has the 
 moral right to have them. Step by step, south 
 of the judge's moral climate Hne in the States, 
 in the Territories everywhere, and then in all the 
 States — it is thus that Judge Douglas would lead 
 us inevitably to the nationalization of slavery. 
 Whether by his doctrine of squatter sovereignty, 
 or by the ground taken by him in his recent 
 speech in Memphis and through the South, — that 
 wherever the climate makes it the interest of the 
 inhabitants to encourage slave property they will 
 pass a slave code, — whether it is covertly nation- 
 alized by congressional legislation, or by Dred 
 Scott decision, or by the sophistical and mislead- 
 ing doctrine he has last advanced, the same goal 
 is inevitably reached by the one or the other de- 
 vice. It is only traveling to the same place by 
 different roads. 
 
 It is in this direction lies all the danger that
 
 200 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 now exists to the great Republican cause. I take 
 it that so far as concerns forcibly establishing 
 slavery in the Territories by congressional legis- 
 lation, or by virtue of the Dred Scott decision, 
 that day has passed. Our only serious danger 
 is that we shall be led upon this ground of Judge 
 Douglas, on the delusive assumption that it is a 
 good way of whipping our opponents, when in 
 fact it is a way that leads straight to final sur- 
 render. The Republican party should not dally 
 with Judge Douglas when it knows where his 
 proposition and his leadership would take us, 
 nor be disposed to listen to it because it was best 
 somewhere else to support somebody occupying 
 his ground. That is no just reason why we 
 ought to go over to Judge Douglas, as we were 
 called upon to do last year. Never forget that 
 we have before us this whole matter of the right 
 or wrong of slavery in this Union, though the 
 immediate question is as to its spreading out 
 into new Territories and States. 
 
 I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this 
 subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it 
 may long exist ; and perhaps the best way for it 
 to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for 
 a length of time. But I say that the spread and 
 strengthening and perpetuation of it are an en- 
 tirely different proposition. There we should in 
 every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a 
 wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will 
 come to an end. If we do not allow ourselves 
 to be allured from the strict path of our duty by 
 such a device as shifting our ground and throw- 
 ing us into the rear of a leader who denies our 
 first principle, denies that there is an absolute 
 wrong in the institution of slavery, then the
 
 i859] AT COLUMBUS 201 
 
 future of the Republican cause is safe, and vic- 
 tor\' is assured. You Republicans of Illinois 
 have deliberately taken your ground ; you have 
 heard the whole subject discussed again and 
 again ; you have stated your faith in platforms 
 laid down in a State convention and in a national 
 convention ; you have heard and talked over and 
 considered it until you are now all of opinion 
 that you are on a ground of unquestionable right. 
 All you have to do is to keep the faith, to remain 
 steadfast to the right, to stand by your banner. 
 Nothing should lead you to leave your guns. 
 Stand together, ready, with match in hand. 
 Allow nothing to turn you to the right or to the 
 left. Remember how long you have been in set- 
 ting out on the true course ; how long you have 
 been in getting your neighbors to understand and 
 believe as you now do. Stand by your principles, 
 stand by your guns, and victory, complete and 
 permanent, is sure at the last. 
 
 Douglas's "Popular Sovereignty" the Mask o£ 
 Nationalized Slavery. 
 
 Speech at Columbus. Ohio. September 16, 
 
 1859. 
 
 FcUozi.'- citizens of the State of Ohio: I cannot 
 fail to remember that I appear for the first time 
 before an audience in this now great State — an 
 audience that is accustomed to hear such speakers 
 as Corwin. and Chase, and Wade, and many 
 other renowned men ; and remembering this. I 
 feel that it will be well for you. as for me. that 
 you should not raise your expectations to that 
 standard to which you would have been justified
 
 202 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 [Sept. 1 6 
 
 in raising them had one of these distinguished 
 men appeared before you. You would perhaps 
 be only preparing a disappointment for your- 
 selves, and, as a consequence of your disappoint- 
 ment, mortification to me. I hope, therefore, 
 that you will commence with very moderate ex- 
 pectations ; and perhaps, if you will give me your 
 attention, I shall be able to interest you to a 
 moderate degree. 
 
 Appearing here for the first time in my life, I 
 have been somewhat embarrassed for a topic by 
 way of introduction to my speech ; but I have 
 been relieved from that embarrassment by an 
 introduction which the Ohio Statesman news- 
 paper gave me this morning. In this paper I 
 have read an article in which, among other 
 statements, I find the following : 
 
 In debating with Senator Douglas during the memo- 
 rable contest last fall, Mr. Lincoln declared in favor of 
 negro suffrage, and attempted to defend that vile con- 
 ception against the Little Giant. 
 
 I mention this now, at the opening of my re- 
 marks, for the purpose of making three com- 
 ments upon it. The first I have already an- 
 nounced — it furnished me an introductory topic; 
 the second is to show that the gentleman is mis- 
 taken; thirdly, to give him an opportunity to 
 correct it. 
 
 In the first place, in regard to this matter 
 being a mistake. I have found that it is not en- 
 tirely safe, when one is misrepresented under his 
 very nose, to allow the misrepresentation to go 
 uncontradicted. I therefore propose, here at the 
 outset, not only to say that this is a misrepresen- 
 tation, but to show conclusively that it is so ; and 
 you v/ill bear with me while I read a couple of
 
 1859] AT COLUMBUS 203 
 
 extracts from that very "memorable" debate 
 with Judge Douglas last year, to which this 
 newspaper refers. In the first pitched battle 
 which Senator Douglas and myself had, at the 
 town of Ottawa, I used the language which I will 
 now read. Having been previously reading an 
 extract, I continued as follows : 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater 
 length, but this is the true complexion of all I have 
 ever said in regard to the institution of slavery and the 
 black race. This is the whole of it, and anything that 
 argues me into his idea of perfect social and political 
 equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic 
 arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a 
 horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, 
 while upon this subject, that I have no purpose either 
 directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution 
 of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I 
 have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination 
 to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political 
 and social equality between the white and the black 
 races. There is a physical difference between the two 
 which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid 
 their living together upon the footing of perfect 
 equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that 
 there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, 
 am in favor of the race to which I belong having the 
 superior position. I have never said anything to the 
 contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, 
 there is no reason in the world why the negro is not 
 entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the 
 Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much 
 entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge 
 Douglas, he is not my equal in many respects — cer- 
 tainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellec- 
 tual endowments. But in the right to eat the bread, 
 without leave of anybody else, which his own hand 
 earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, 
 and the equal of every living man. 
 
 Upon a subsequent occasion, when the reason 
 for making a statement like thi-s recurred, I said :
 
 204 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 While I was at the hotel to-day an elderly gentle- 
 man 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 sub- 
 ject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I 
 would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying some- 
 thing 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 
 the 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 the 
 black races, which, I believe, will forever forbid the 
 two races living together on terms of social and politi- 
 cal equality. And inasmuch 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
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 205 
 
 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 
 the State, which forbids the marrying of white people 
 with negroes. 
 
 There, my friends, you have briefly what I 
 have, upon former occasions, said upon the sub- 
 ject to which this newspaper, to the extent of its 
 ability, has drawn the pubHc attention. In it 
 you not only perceive, as a probabihty, that in 
 that contest I did not at any time say I was in 
 favor of negro suffrage; but the absolute proof 
 that twice — once substantially and once ex- 
 pressly — I declared against it. Having shown 
 you this, there remains but a word of comment 
 upon that newspaper article. It is this : that I 
 presume the editor of that paper is an honest 
 and truth-loving man, and that he will be greatly 
 obliged to me for furnishing him thus early an 
 opportunity to correct the misrepresentation he 
 has made, before it has run so long that mali- 
 cious people can call him a liar. 
 
 The giant himself has been here recently. I 
 have seen a brief report of his speech. If it 
 were otherwise unpleasant to me to introduce the 
 subject of the negro as a topic for discussion, I 
 might be somewhat relieved by the fact that he 
 dealt exclusively in that subject while he was 
 here. I shall, therefore, without much hesita- 
 tion or diffidence, enter upon this subject. 
 
 The American people, on the first day of Janu- 
 ary, 1854, found the African slave-trade pro- 
 hibited by a law of Congress. In a majority of 
 the States of this Union, they found African 
 slavery, or any other sort of slavery, prohibited 
 by State constitutions. They also found a law 
 existing, supposed to be valid, by which slavery
 
 206 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 [Sept. 1 6 
 
 was excluded from almost all the territory the 
 United States then owned. This was the condi- 
 tion of the country, with reference to the institu- 
 tion of slavery, on the first of January, 1854. A 
 few days after that, a bill was introduced into 
 Congress, which ran through its regular course 
 in the two branches of the national legislature, 
 and finally passed into a law in the month of 
 May, by which the act of Congress prohibiting 
 slavery from going into the Territories of the 
 United States was repealed. In connection with 
 the law itself, and, in fact, in the terms of the 
 law, the then existing prohibition was not only 
 repealed, but there was a declaration of a pur- 
 pose on the part of Congress never thereafter to 
 exercise any power that they might have, real or 
 supposed, to prohibit the extension or spread of 
 slavery. This was a very great change ; for the 
 law thus repealed was of more than thirty years' 
 standing. Following rapidly upon the heels of 
 this action of Congress, a decision of the Su- 
 preme Court is made, by which it is declared that 
 Congress, if it desires to prohibit the spread of 
 slavery into the Territories, has no constitutional 
 power to do so. Not only so, but that decision 
 lays down principles, which, if pushed to their 
 logical conclusion, — I say pushed to their logical 
 conclusion, — would decide that the constitutions 
 of free States, forbidding slavery, are them- 
 selves unconstitutional. Mark me, I do not say 
 the judges said this, and let no man say I affirm 
 the judges used these words ; but I only say it is 
 my opinion that what they did say, if pressed to 
 its logical conclusion, will inevitably result thus. 
 Looking at these things, the Republican party, 
 as I understand its principles and policy, believes
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 207 
 
 that there is great danger of the institution of 
 slavery being spread out and extended, until it is 
 ultimately made alike lawful in all the States of 
 this Union ; so believing, to prevent that in- 
 cidental and ultim.ate consummation is the 
 original and chief purpose of the Republican 
 organization. I say "chief purpose" of the 
 Republican organization ; for it is certainly true 
 that if the national house shall fall into the hands 
 of the Republicans, they will have to attend to 
 all the other matters of national house-keeping 
 as well as this. The chief and real purpose of 
 the Republican party is eminently conservative. 
 It proposes nothing save and except to restore 
 this government to its original tone in regard to 
 this element of slavery, and there to maintain it, 
 looking for no further change in reference to it 
 than that which the original framers of the 
 government themselves expected and looked for- 
 ward to. 
 
 The chief danger to this purpose of the Re- 
 publican party is not just now the revival of the 
 African slave-trade, or the passage of a con- 
 gressional slave-code, or the declaring of a 
 second Dred Scott decision, making slavery law- 
 ful in all the States. These are not pressing us 
 just now. They are not quite ready yet. The 
 authors of these measures know that we are too 
 strong for them ; but they will be upon us in due 
 time, and we will be grappling with them hand 
 to hand, if they are not now headed off. They 
 are not now the chief danger to the purpose of 
 the RepubHcan organization; but the most 
 imminent danger that now threatens that pur- 
 pose is that insidious Douglas popular sover- 
 eignty. This is the miner and sapper. While it
 
 2o8 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 [Sept. 16 
 
 does not propose to revive the African slave- 
 trade, nor to pass a slave-code, nor to make a 
 second Dred Scott decision, it is preparing us for 
 the onslaught and charge of these ultimate 
 enemies when they shall be ready to come on, 
 and the word of command for them to advance 
 shall be given. I say this Douglas popular 
 sovereignty — for there is a broad distinction, as 
 I now understand it, between that article and a 
 genuine popular sovereignty. 
 
 I believe there is a genuine popular sover- 
 eignty. I think a definition of genuine popular 
 sovereignty, in the abstract, would be about this : 
 That each man shall do precisely as he pleases 
 with himself, and with all those things which ex- 
 clusively concern him. Applied to government, 
 this principle would be, that a general govern- 
 ment shall do all those things which pertain to it, 
 and all the local governments shall do precisely 
 as they please in respect to those matters which 
 exclusively concern them. I understand that 
 this government of the United States, under 
 which we live, is based upon this principle ; and I 
 am misunderstood if it is supposed that I have 
 any war to make upon that principle. 
 
 Now, what is Judge Douglas's popular sover- 
 eignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that 
 if one man chooses to make a slave of another 
 man, neither that other man nor anybody else 
 has a right to object. Applied in government, 
 as he seeks to apply it, it is this : If, in a new 
 Territory into which a few people are beginning 
 to enter for the purpose of making their homes, 
 they choose to either exclude slavery from their 
 limits or to establish it there, however one or 
 the other may affect the persons to be enslaved,
 
 1859] AT COLUMBUS 209 
 
 or the infinitely greater number of persons who 
 are afterward to inhabit that Territory, or the 
 other members of the famihes of communities, 
 of which they are but an incipient member, or 
 the general head of the family of States as parent 
 of all — however their action may affect one or 
 the other of these, there is no power or right to 
 interfere. That is Douglas's popular sover- 
 eignty applied. 
 
 He has a good deal of trouble with popular 
 sovereignty. His explanations explanatory of 
 explanations explained are interminable. The 
 most lengthy and, as I suppose, the most ma- 
 turely considered of his long series of explana- 
 tions is his great essay in Harper's Magazine. 
 I will not attempt to enter on any very thorough 
 investigation of his argument as there made and 
 presented. I will nevertheless occupy a good 
 portion of your time here in drawing your at- 
 tention to certain points in it. Such of you as 
 may have read this document will have perceived 
 that the judge, early in the document, quotes 
 from two persons as belonging to the Republican 
 party, without naming them, but who can readily 
 be recognized as being Governor Seward, of 
 New York, and myself. It is true that exactly 
 fifteen months ago this day, I believe, I for the 
 first time expressed a sentiment upon this subject, 
 and in such a manner that it should get into 
 print, that the public might see it beyond the 
 circle of my hearers, and my expression of it at 
 that time is the quotation that Judge Douglas 
 makes. He has not made the quotation with 
 accuracy, but justice to him requires me to say 
 that it is sufficiently accurate not to change its 
 sense.
 
 2IO SPEECHES [Sept. i5 
 
 The sense of that quotation condensed is this 
 — that this slavery element is a durable element 
 of discord among us, and that we shall probably 
 not have perfect peace in this country with it 
 until it either masters the free principle in our 
 government, or is so far mastered by the free 
 principle as for the public mind to rest in the 
 belief that it is going to its end. That sentiment 
 which I now express in this way was, at no great 
 distance of time, perhaps in different language, 
 aHd in connection with some collateral ideas, 
 expressed by Governor Seward. Judge Douglas 
 has been so much annoyed by the expression of 
 that sentiment that he has constantly, I believe, 
 in almost all his speeches since it was uttered, 
 been referring to it. I find he alluded to it in 
 his speech here, as well as in the copyright essay. 
 I do not now enter upon this for the purpose of 
 making an elaborate argument to show that we 
 were right in the expression of that sentiment. 
 I only ask your attention to this matter for the 
 purpose of making one or two points upon it. 
 
 If you will read the copyright essay, you will 
 discover that Judge Douglas himself says a con- 
 troversy between the American colonies and the 
 government of Great Britain began on the 
 slavery question in 1699, and continued from 
 that time until the Revolution ; and, while he did 
 not say so, we all know that it has continued with 
 more or less violence ever since the Revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Then we need not appeal to history, to the 
 declaration of the framers of the government, 
 but we know from Judge Douglas himself that 
 slavery began to be an element of discord among 
 the white people of this country as far back as
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 
 
 211 
 
 1699, or one hundred and sixty years ago, or 
 five generations of men — counting thirty years 
 to a generation. Now it would seem to me that 
 it might have occurred to Judge Douglas, or to 
 anybody who had turned his attention to these 
 facts, that there was something in the nature of 
 that thing, slavery, som.ewhat durable for mis- 
 chief and discord. 
 
 There is another point I desire to make in re- 
 gard to this matter before I leave it. From the 
 adoption of the Constitution down to 1820 is the 
 precise period of our history when we had com- 
 parative peace upon this question — the precise 
 period of time when we came nearer to having 
 peace about it than any other time of that entire 
 one hundred and sixty years, in which he says 
 it began, or of the eighty years of our own Con- 
 stitution. Then it would be worth our while to 
 stop and examine into the probable reason of our 
 coming nearer to having peace then than at any 
 other time. This was the precise period of time 
 in which our fathers adopted, and during which 
 they followed, a policy restricting the spread of 
 slavery, and the whole Union was acquiescing in 
 it. The whole country looked forward to the 
 ultimate extinction of the institution. It was 
 when a policy had been adopted and was pre- 
 vailing, which led all just and right-minded men 
 to suppose that slavery was gradually coming 
 to an end, and that they might be quiet about it, 
 watching it as it expired. I think Judge Douglas 
 might have perceived that too, and, whether he 
 did or not, it is worth the attention of fair-minded 
 men, here and elsewhere, to consider whether 
 that is not the truth of the case. If he had 
 looked at these two facts, that this matter has
 
 212 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 been an element of discord for one hundred and 
 sixty years among this people, and that the only 
 comparative peace we have had about it was 
 when that policy prevailed in this government, 
 which he now wars upon, he might then, per- 
 haps, have been brought to a more just apprecia- 
 tion of what I said fifteen months ago — that ''a 
 house divided against itself cannot stand. I 
 believe this government cannot endure per- 
 manently half slave and half free. I do not ex- 
 pect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect 
 the house to fall ; but I do expect it will cease to 
 be divided. It will become all one thing or all 
 the other. Either the opponents of slavery will 
 arrest the further spread of it, and place it where 
 the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in 
 the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates 
 will push it forward, until it shall become alike 
 lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North 
 as well as South." That was my sentiment at 
 that time. In connection with it I said, "We 
 are now far into the fifth year since a policy 
 was initiated with the avowed object and con- 
 fident promise of putting an end to slavery agita- 
 tion. Under the operation of that policy, that 
 agitation has not only not ceased, but has con- 
 stantly augmented." I now say to you here 
 that we are advanced still farther into the sixth 
 year since that policy of Judge Douglas — that 
 popular sovereignty of his for quieting the 
 slavery question — was made the national policy. 
 Fifteen months more have been added since I 
 uttered that sentiment, and I call upon you, and 
 all other right-minded men, to say whether those 
 fifteen months have belied or corroborated my 
 words.
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 213 
 
 While I am here upon this subject, I cannot 
 but express gratitude that the true view of this 
 element of discord among us — as I believe it is — 
 is attracting more and more attention. I do not 
 believe that Governor Seward uttered that senti- 
 ment because I had done so before, but because 
 he reflected upon this subject, and saw the truth 
 of it. Nor do I believe, because Governor 
 Seward or I uttered it, that Mr. Hickman, of 
 Pennsylvania, in different language, since that 
 time, has declared his belief in the utter antag- 
 onism which exists between the principles of 
 liberty and slavery. You see we are multiply- 
 ing. Now, while I am speaking of Hickman, let 
 me say, I know but little about him. I have 
 never seen him, and know scarcely anything 
 about the man ; but I will say this much about 
 him : Of all the anti-Lecompton Democracy that 
 have been brought to my notice, he alone has the 
 true, genuine ring of the metal. And now, 
 without indorsing anything else he has said. I 
 will ask this audience to give three cheers for 
 Hickman. [The audience responded with three 
 rousing cheers for Hickman.^ 
 
 Another point in the copyright essay to which 
 I would ask your attention is rather a feature to 
 be extracted from the whole thing, than from 
 any express declaration of it at any point. It is 
 a general feature of that document, and indeed, 
 of all of Judge Douglas's discussions of this 
 question, that the Territories of the United 
 States and the States of this Union are exactly 
 alike — that there is no difference between them 
 at all — that the Constitution applies to the Ter- 
 ritories precisely as it does to the States — and 
 that the United States Government, under the
 
 214 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept i5 
 
 Constitution, may not do in a State what it may 
 not do in a Territory, and what it must do in a 
 State, it must do in a Territory. Gentlemen, is 
 that a true view of the case ? It is necessary for 
 this squatter sovereignty; but is it true? 
 
 Let us consider. What does it depend upon? 
 It depends altogether upon the proposition that 
 the States must, without the interference of the 
 General Government, do all those things that 
 pertain exclusively to themselves — that are local 
 in their nature, that have no connection with the 
 General Government. After Judge Douglas has 
 established this proposition, which nobody dis- 
 putes or ever has disputed, he proceeds to as- 
 sume, without proving it, that slavery is one of 
 those little, unimportant, trivial matters, which 
 are of just about as much consequence as the 
 question would be to me whether my neighbor 
 should raise horned cattle or plant tobacco ; that 
 there is no moral question about it, but that it is 
 altogether a matter of dollars and cents ; that 
 when a new Territory is opened for settlement, 
 the first man who goes into it may plant there a 
 thing which, like the Canada thistle, or some 
 other of those pests of the soil, cannot be dug 
 out by the millions of men who will come there- 
 after; that it is one of those little things that is 
 so trivial in its nature that it has no effect upon 
 anybody save the few men who first plant upon 
 the soil; that it is not a thing which in any way 
 affects the family of communities composing 
 these States, nor any way endangers the General 
 Government. Judge Douglas ignores altogether 
 the very well-known fact that we have never had 
 a serious menace to our political existence, 
 except it sprang from this thing, which he
 
 1859] AT COLUi.IBUS 
 
 215 
 
 chooses to regard as only upon a par with onions 
 and potatoes. 
 
 Turn it, and contemplate it in another view. 
 He says that, according to his popular sover- 
 eignty, the General Government may give to the 
 Territories governors, judges, marshals, secre- 
 taries, and all the other chief men to govern 
 them, but they must not touch upon this other 
 question. Why? The question of who shall be 
 governor of a Territory for a year or two, and 
 pass away, without his track being left upon the 
 soil, or an act which he did for good or for evil 
 being left behind, is a question of vast national 
 magnitude. It is so much opposed in its nature 
 to locality that the nation itself must decide it ; 
 while this other matter of planting slavery upon 
 a soil — a thing which, once planted, cannot be 
 eradicated by the succeeding millions who have 
 as much right there as the first comers, or if erad- 
 icated, not without infinite difficulty and a long 
 struggle — he considers the power to prohibit it 
 as one of these little, local, trivial things that the 
 nation ought not to say a word about; that it 
 affects nobody save the few men who are 
 there. 
 
 Take these two things and consider them to- 
 gether, present the question of planting a State 
 with the institution of slavery by the side of a 
 question of who shall be governor of Kansas for 
 a year or two, and is there a man here — is there 
 a man on earth — who would not say the gov- 
 ernor question is the little one, and the slavery 
 question is the great one? I ask any honest 
 Democrat if the small, the local, and the trivial 
 and temporary question is not, Who shall be 
 governor? — while the durable, the important
 
 2i6 SPEECHES [Sept i6 
 
 and the mischievous one is, Shall this soil be 
 planted with slavery? 
 
 This is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in 
 Judge Douglas's mind from his peculiar struc- 
 ture. I suppose the institution of slavery really 
 looks small to him. He is so put up by nature 
 that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a 
 lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. 
 That is the build of the man, and consequently 
 he looks upon the matter of slavery in this unim- 
 portant light. 
 
 Judge Douglas ought to remember, when he is 
 endeavoring to force this policy upon the Amer- 
 ican people, that while he is put up in that way, 
 a good many are not. He ought to remember 
 that there was once in this country a man by the 
 name of Thomas Jefiferson, supposed to be a 
 Democrat — a man whose principles and policy 
 are not very prevalent amongst Democrats to- 
 day, it is true ; but that man did not take exactly 
 this view of the insignificance of the element of 
 slavery which our friend Judge Douglas does. 
 In contemplation of this thing, we all know he 
 was led to exclaim, *T tremble for my country 
 when I remember that God is just!" We know 
 how he looked upon it when he thus expressed 
 himself. There was danger to this country, 
 danger of the avenging justice of God, in that lit- 
 tle unimportant popular-sovereignty question of 
 Judge Douglas. He supposed there was a ques- 
 tion of God's eternal justice wrapped up in the 
 enslaving of any race of men, or any man, and 
 that those who did so braved the arm of Jehovah 
 — that when a nation thus dared the Almighty, 
 every friend of that nation had cause to dread 
 his wrath. Choose ye between Jefferson and
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 217 
 
 Douglas as to what is the true view of this ele- 
 ment among us. 
 
 There is another little difficulty about this 
 matter of treating the Territories and States 
 alike in all things, to which I ask your attention, 
 and I shall leave this branch of the case. If 
 there is no difference between them, why not 
 make the Territories States at once? What is 
 the reason that Kansas was not fit to come into 
 the Union when it was organized into a Terri- 
 tory, in Judge Douglas's view ? Can any of you 
 tell any reason why it should not have come into 
 the Union at once? They are fit, as he thinks, 
 to decide upon the slavery question — the largest 
 and most important with which they could possi- 
 bly deal ; what could they do by coming into the 
 Union that they are not fit to do, according to his 
 view, by staying out of it? Oh, they are not fit 
 to sit in Congress and decide upon the rates of 
 postage, or questions of ad valorem or specific 
 duties on foreign goods, or live-oak timber con- 
 tracts ; they are not fit to decide these vastly im- 
 portant matters, which are national in their im- 
 port, but they are fit, "from the jump," to decide 
 this little negro question. But, gentlemen, the 
 case is too plain ; I occupy too much time on this 
 head, and I pass on. 
 
 Near the close of the copyright essay, the 
 judge, I think, comes very near kicking his own 
 fat into the fire. I did not think when I com- 
 menced these remarks that I would read from 
 that article, but I now believe I will : 
 
 This exposition of the history of these measures 
 shows conclusively that the authors of the compromise 
 measures of 1850. and of the Kansas-Nebraska act of 
 1854, as well as the members of the Continental Con-
 
 2i8 SPEECHES [Sept i6 
 
 gress in 1774, and the founders of our system of 
 government subsequent to the Revolution, regarded 
 the people of the Territories and Colonies as political 
 communities which were entitled to a free and exclu- 
 sive power of legislation in their provincial legislatures, 
 where their representation could alone be preserved, 
 in all cases of taxation and internal polity. 
 
 When the judge saw that putting in the word 
 "slavery" would contradict his own history, he 
 put in what he knew would pass as synonymous 
 with it — "internal polity." Whenever we find 
 that in one of his speeches, the substitute is used 
 in this manner; and I can tell you the reason. 
 It would be too bald a contradiction to say 
 slavery, but "internal polity" is a general phrase 
 which would pass in some quarters, and which 
 he hopes will pass with the reading community, 
 for the same thing. 
 
 This right pertains to the people collectively, as a 
 law-abiding and peaceful community, and not to the 
 isolated individuals who may wander upon the public 
 domain in violation of law. It can only be exercised 
 where there are inhabitants sufficient to constitute a 
 government, and capable of performing its various 
 functions and duties, a fact to be ascertained and de- 
 termined by 
 
 Whom do you think? Judge Douglas says, "By 
 Congress." 
 
 Whether the number shall be fixed at ten, fifteen, or 
 twenty thousand inhabitants does not affect the 
 principle. 
 
 Now I have only a few comments to make. 
 Popular sovereignty, by his own words, does not 
 pertain to the few persons who wander upon the 
 public domain in violation of law. We have his 
 words for that. When it does pertain to them 
 is when they are sufficient to be formed into an
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 219 
 
 organized political community, and he fixes the 
 minimum for that at 10,000, and the maximum 
 at 20,000. Now I would like to know what is to 
 be done with the 9,000? Are they all to be 
 treated, until they are large enough to be or- 
 ganized into a political community, as wanderers 
 upon the public land in violation of law? And 
 if so treated and driven out, at what point of 
 time would there ever be ten thousand ? If they 
 were not driven out, but remained there as tres- 
 passers upon the public land in violation of the 
 law, can they establish slavery there ? No ; the 
 judge says popular sovereignty don't pertain to 
 them then. Can they exclude it then ? No ; 
 popular sovereignty don't pertain to them then. 
 I would like to know, in the case covered by the 
 essay, what condition the people of the Territory 
 are in before they reach the number of ten 
 thousand ? 
 
 But the main point I wish to ask attention to is 
 that the question as to when they shall have 
 reached a sufficient number to be formed into a 
 regular organized community is to be decided 
 *'by Congress." Judge Douglas says so. Well, 
 gentlemen, that is about all we want. No; that 
 is all the Southerners want. That is what all 
 those who are for slavery want. They do not 
 want Congress to prohibit slavery from coming 
 into the new Territories, and they do not want 
 popular sovereignty to hinder it ; and as Con- 
 gress is to say when they are ready to be or- 
 ganized, all that the South has to do is to get 
 Congress to hold off. Let Congress hold off 
 until they are ready to be admitted as a State, 
 and the South has all it wants in taking slavery 
 into and planting it in all the Territories that we
 
 2 20 SPEECHES [Sept. 16 
 
 now have, or hereafter may have. In a word, 
 the whole thing, at a dash of the pen, is at last 
 put in the power of Congress ; for if they do not 
 have this popular sovereignty until Congress 
 organizes them, I ask if it at last does not come 
 from Congress? If, at last, it amounts to any- 
 thing at all. Congress gives it to them. I submit 
 this rather for your reflection than for comment. 
 After all that is said, at last, by a dash of the pen, 
 everything that has gone before is undone, and 
 he puts the whole question under the control of 
 Congress. After fighting through more than 
 three hours, if you will undertake to read it, he 
 at last places the whole matter under the control 
 of that power which he had been contending 
 against, and arrives at a result directly contrary 
 to what he had been laboring to do. He at last 
 leaves the whole matter to the control of 
 Congress. 
 
 There are two main objects, as I understand 
 it, of this Harper's Magazine essay. One was 
 to show, if possible, that the men of our Revolu- 
 tionary times were in favor of his popular 
 sovereignty; and the other was to show that the 
 Dred Scott decision had not entirely squelched 
 out this popular sovereignty. I do not propose, 
 in regard to this argument drawn from the his- 
 tory of former times, to enter into a detailed ex- 
 amination of the historical statements he has 
 made. I have the impression that they are inac- 
 curate in a great many instances ; sometimes in 
 positive statement, but very much more inaccu- 
 rate by the suppression of statements that really 
 belong to the history. But I do not propose to 
 affirm that this is so to any very great extent, or 
 to enter into a very minute examination of his
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 221 
 
 historical statement. I avoid doing so upon 
 this principle — that if it were important for me 
 to pass out of this lot in the least period of time 
 possible, and I came to that fence and saw by a 
 calculation of my own strength and agility that 
 I could clear it at a bound, it would be folly for 
 me to stop and consider whether I could or could 
 not crawl through a crack. So I say of the 
 whole history contained in his essay, where he 
 endeavored to link the men of the Revolution to 
 popular sovereignty. It only requires an effort 
 to leap out of it — a single bound to be entirely 
 successful. If you read it over you will find that 
 he quotes here and there from documents of the 
 Revolutionary times, tending to show that the 
 people of the colonies were desirous of regulat- 
 ing their own concerns in their own way, that 
 the British Government should not interfere; 
 that at one time they struggled with the British 
 Government to be permitted to exclude the 
 African slave-trade; if not directly, to be per- 
 mitted to exclude it indirectly by taxation 
 sufficient to discourage and destroy it. From 
 these and many things of this sort. Judge 
 Douglas argues that they were in favor of the 
 people of our own Territories excluding slavery 
 if they wanted to, or planting it there if they 
 wanted to, doing just as they pleased from the 
 time they settled upon the Territory. Now, 
 however his history may apply, and whatever of 
 his argument there may be that is sound and 
 accurate or unsound and inaccurate, if we can 
 find out what these men did themselves do upon 
 this very question of slavery in the Territories, 
 does it not end the whole thing? If, after all 
 this labor and effort to show that the men of the
 
 222 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 Revolution were in favor of his popular sover- 
 eignty and his mode of dealing with slavery in 
 the Territories, we can show that these very men 
 took hold of that subject, and dealt with it, we 
 can see for ourselves how they dealt with it. It 
 is not a matter of argument or inference, but we 
 know what they thought about it. 
 
 It is precisely upon that part of the history of 
 the country that one important omission is made 
 by Judge Douglas. He selects parts of the his- 
 tory of the United States upon the subject of 
 slavery, and treats it as the whole, omitting from 
 his historical sketch the legislation of Congress 
 in regard to the admission of Missouri, by which 
 the Missouri Compromise was established, and 
 slavery excluded from a country half as large as 
 the present United States. All this is left out 
 of his history, and in no wise alluded to by him, 
 so far as I can remember, save once, when he 
 makes a remark, that upon his principle the 
 Supreme Court was authorized to pronounce a 
 decision that the act called the Missouri Com- 
 promise was unconstitutional. All that history 
 has been left out. But this part of the history 
 of the country was not made by the men of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 There was another part of our political history 
 made by the very men who were the actors in 
 the Revolution, which has taken the name of the 
 ordinance of '87. Let me bring that history to 
 your attention. In 1784, I believe, this same 
 Mr. Jefferson drew up an ordinance for the 
 government of the country upon which we now 
 stand ; or rather a frame or draft of an ordinance 
 for the government of this country, here in Ohio, 
 our neighbors in Indiana, us who live in Illinois,
 
 1859] AT COLUMBUS 223 
 
 and our neighbors in Wisconsin and Michigan. 
 In that ordinance, drawn up not only for the 
 government of that Territory, but for the Ter- 
 ritories south of the Ohio River, Mr. Jefferson 
 expressly provided for the prohibition of slavery. 
 Judge Douglas says, and perhaps he is right, 
 that that provision was lost from that ordinance. 
 I believe that is true. When the vote was taken 
 upon it, a majority of all present in the Congress 
 of the Confederation voted for it ; but there were 
 so many absentees that those voting for it did not 
 make the clear majority necessary, and it was 
 lost. But three years after that the Congress of 
 the Confederation were together again, and they 
 adopted a new ordinance for the government of 
 this Northwest Territory, not contemplating ter- 
 ritory south of the river, for the States owning 
 that territory had hitherto refrained from giving 
 it to the General Government ; hence they made 
 the ordinance to apply only to what the govern- 
 ment owned. In that, the provision excluding 
 slavery was inserted and passed unanimously, or 
 at any rate it passed and became a part of the 
 law of the land. Under that ordinance we live. 
 First, here, in Ohio, you were a Territory, then 
 an enabling act was passed, authorizing you to 
 form a constitution and State government, pro- 
 vided it was Republican, and not in conflict with 
 the ordinance of '87. When you framed your 
 constitution and presented it for admission, I 
 think you will find the legislation upon the sub- 
 ject will show that, ** whereas you had formed a 
 constitution that was Republican, and not in 
 conflict with the ordinance of '87," therefore you 
 were admitted upon equal footing with the orig- 
 inal States. The same process in a few years
 
 224 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 was gone through with Indiana, and so with 
 TlHnois, and the same substantially with Michigan 
 and Wisconsin. 
 
 Not only did that ordinance prevail, but it was 
 constantly looked to whenever a step was taken 
 by a new Territory to become a State. Con- 
 gress always turned their attention to it, and in 
 all their movements upon this subject they traced 
 their course by that ordinance of '^y. When 
 they admitted new States they advertised them 
 of this ordinance as a part of the legislation of 
 the country. They did so because they had 
 traced the ordinance of '^y throughout the his- 
 tory of this country. Begin with the men of the 
 Revolution, and go down for sixty entire years, 
 and until the last scrap of that Territory comes 
 into the Union in the form of the State of Wis- 
 consin, everything was made to conform to the 
 ordinance of '87, excluding slavery from that 
 vast extent of country. 
 
 I omitted to mention in the right place that the 
 Constitution of the United States was in process 
 of being framed when that ordinance was made 
 by the Congress of the Confederation; and one 
 of the first acts of Congress itself, under the new 
 Constitution itself, was to give force to that 
 ordinance by putting power to carry it out into 
 the hands of new officers under the Constitution, 
 in the place of the old ones, who had been legis- 
 lated out of existence by the change in the 
 government from the Confederation to the Con- 
 stitution. Not only so, but I believe Indiana 
 once or twice, if not Ohio, petitioned the General 
 Government for the privilege of suspending that 
 provision and allowing them to have slaves. A 
 report made by Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, him-
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 225 
 
 self a slaveholder, was directly against it, and 
 the action was to refuse them the privilege of 
 violating the ordinance of '87. 
 
 This period of history, which I have run over 
 briefly, is, I presume, as familiar to most of this 
 assembly as any other part of the history of our 
 country. I suppose that few of my hearers are 
 not as familiar with that part of history as I am^ 
 and I only mention it to recall your attention to 
 it at this time. And hence I ask how extraor- 
 dinary a thing it is that a man who has occu- 
 pied a position upon the floor of the Senate of 
 the United States, who is now in his third term, 
 and who looks to see the government of this 
 whole country fall into his own hands, pretend- 
 ing to give a truthful and accurate history of the 
 slavery question in this country, should so en- 
 tirely ignore the whole of that portion of our 
 history — the most important of all. Is it not a 
 most extraordinary spectacle, that a man should 
 stand up and ask for any confidence in his state- 
 ments, who sets out as he does with portions of 
 history, calling upon the people to believe that it 
 is a true and fair representation, when the lead- 
 ing part and controlling feature of the whole 
 history is carefully suppressed? 
 
 But the mere leaving out is not the most re- 
 markable feature of this most remarkable essay. 
 His proposition is to establish that the leading 
 men of the Revolution were for his great prin- 
 ciple of non-intervention by the government in 
 the question of slavery in the Territories ; while 
 history shows that they decided in the cases 
 actually brought before them in exactly the con- 
 trary way, and he knows it. Not only did they 
 so decide at that time, but they stuck to it during
 
 226 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 sixty years, through thick and thin, as long as 
 there was one of the Revolutionary heroes upon 
 the stage of political action. Through their 
 whole course, from first to last, they clung to 
 freedom. And now he asks the community to 
 believe that the men of the Revolution were in 
 favor of his great principle, when we have the 
 naked history that they themselves dealt with 
 this very subject-matter of his principle, and 
 utterly repudiated his principle, acting upon a 
 precisely contrary ground. It is as impudent and 
 absurd as if a prosecuting attorney should stand 
 up before a jury, and ask them to convict A as 
 the murderer of B, while B was walking alive 
 before them. 
 
 I say again, if Judge Douglas asserts that the 
 men of the Revolution acted upon principles by 
 which, to be consistent with themselves, they 
 ought to have adopted his popular sovereignty, 
 then, upon a consideration of his own argu- 
 ment, he had a right to make you believe that 
 they understood the principles of government, 
 but misapplied them — that he has arisen to en- 
 lighten the world as to the just application of this 
 principle. He has a right to try to persuade you 
 that he understands their principles better than 
 they did, and therefore he wall apply them now, 
 not as they did, but as they ought to have done. 
 He has a right to go before the community, and 
 try to convince them of this ; but he has no right 
 to attempt to impose upon any one the belief that 
 these men themselves approved of his great prin- 
 ciple. There are two ways of establishing a 
 proposition. One is by trying to demonstrate it 
 upon reason, and the other is, to show that great 
 men in former times have thought so and so, and
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 227 
 
 thus to pass it by the weight of pure authority. 
 Now, if Judge Douglas will demonstrate some- 
 how that this is popular sovereignty — the right 
 of one man to make a slave of another, without 
 any right in that other, or any one else, to object, 
 — demonstrate it asEudid demonstrated proposi- 
 tions, — there is no objection. But when he 
 comes forward, seeking to carry a principle by 
 bringing to it the authority of men who them- 
 selves utterly repudiated that principle, I ask 
 that he shall not be permitted to do it. 
 
 I see, in the judge's speech here, a short sen- 
 tence in these words : ''Our fathers, when they 
 formed this government under which we live, 
 understood this question just as well and even 
 better than we do now." That is true ; I stick to 
 that. I will stand by Judge Douglas in that to 
 the bitter end. And now. Judge Douglas, come 
 and stand by me, and truthfully show how they 
 acted, understanding it better than we do. All I 
 ask of you, Judge Douglas, is to stick to the 
 proposition that the men of the Revolution un- 
 derstood this subject better than we do now, and 
 with that better understanding they acted better 
 than you are trying to act now. 
 
 I wish to say something now in regard to the 
 Dred Scott decision, as dealt with by Judge 
 Douglas. In that "memorable debate" between 
 Judge Douglas and myself, last year, the judge 
 thought fit to commence a process of catechizing 
 me, and at Freeport I answered his questions, 
 and propounded some to him. Among others 
 propounded to him was one that I have here 
 now. The substance, as I remember it, is : "Can 
 the people of a United States Territory, under 
 the Dred Scott decision, in any lawful way,
 
 228 SPEECHES [Sept. xS 
 
 against the wish of any citizen of the United 
 States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to 
 the formation of a State constitution?" He an- 
 swered that they could lawfully exclude slavery 
 from the United States Territories, notwith- 
 standing the Dred Scott decision. There was 
 something about that answer that has probably 
 been a trouble to the judge ever since. 
 
 The Dred Scott decision expressly gives every 
 citizen of the United States a right to carry his 
 slaves into the United States Territories. And 
 now there was some inconsistency in saying that 
 the decision was right, and saying, too, that the 
 people of the Territory could lawfully drive 
 slavery out again. When all the trash, the 
 words, the collateral matter, was cleared away 
 from it, — all the chaff was fanned out of it, — it 
 was a bare absurdity: no less than that a thing 
 may be lawfully driven away from where it has 
 a lawful right to be. Clear it of all the verbiage, 
 and that is the naked truth of his proposition — 
 that a thing may be lawfully driven from the 
 place where it has a lawful right to stay. Well, 
 it was because the judge couldn't help seeing this 
 that he has had so much trouble with it; and 
 what I want to ask your especial attention to, 
 just now, is to remind you, if you have not 
 noticed the fact, that the judge does not any 
 longer say that the people can exclude slavery. 
 He does not say so in the copyright essay; he 
 did not say so in the speech that he made here; 
 and, so far as I know, since his reelection to the 
 Senate, he has never said, as he did at Freeport, 
 that the people of the Territories can exclude 
 slavery. He desires that you, who wish the 
 Territories to remain free, should believe that he
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 229 
 
 stands by that position, but he does not say it 
 himself. He escapes, to some extent, the absurd 
 position I have stated by changing his language 
 entirely. What he says now is something dif- 
 ferent in language, and we will consider whether 
 it is not different in sense too. It is now that 
 the Dred Scott decision, or rather the Constitu- 
 tion under that decision, does not carry slavery 
 into the Territories beyond the power of the 
 people of the Territories to control it as other 
 property. He does not say the people can drive 
 it out, but they can control it as other property. 
 The language is different; we should consider 
 whether the sense is different. Driving a horse 
 out of this lot is too plain a proposition to be 
 mistaken about it; it is putting him on the other 
 side of the fence. Or it might be a sort of ex- 
 clusion of him from the lot if you were to kill 
 him and let the worms devour him ; but neither 
 of these things is the same as **controUing him as 
 other property." That would be to feed him, to 
 pamper him, to ride him, to use and abuse him, 
 to make the most money out of him, ''as other 
 property ;" but, please you, what do the men who 
 are in favor of slavery want more than this? 
 What do they really want, other than that 
 slavery, being in the Territories, shall be con- 
 trolled as other property? 
 
 If they want anything else, I do not compre- 
 hend it. I ask your attention to this, first, for the 
 purpose of pointing out the change of ground 
 the judge has made ; and, in the second place, 
 the importance of the change — that that change 
 is not such as to give you gentlemen who want 
 his popular sovereignty the power to exclude 
 the institution or drive it out at all. I know the
 
 230 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. 16 
 
 judge sometimes squints at the argument that in 
 controlHng it as other property by unfriendly 
 legislation they may control it to death, as you 
 might in the case of a horse, perhaps, feed him 
 so lightly and ride him so much that he would 
 die. But when you come to legislative control, 
 there is something more to be attended to. I 
 have no doubt, myself, that if the Territories 
 should undertake to control slave property as 
 other property — that is, control it in such a way 
 that it would be the most valuable as property, 
 and make it bear its just proportion in the way of 
 burdens as property, — really deal with it as 
 property, — the Supreme Court of the United 
 States will say, ''God speed you, and amen." 
 But I undertake to give the opinion, at least, that 
 if the Territories attempt by any direct legisla- 
 tion to drive the man with his slave out of the 
 Territory, or to decide that his slave is free be- 
 cause of his being taken in there, or to tax him 
 to such an extent that he cannot keep him there, 
 the Supreme Court will unhesitatingly decide all 
 such legislation unconstitutional, as long as that 
 Supreme Court is constructed as the Dred Scott 
 Supreme Court is. The first two things they 
 have already decided, except that there is a little 
 quibble among lawyers between the words dicta 
 and decision. They have already decided that a 
 negro cannot be made free by territorial legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 What is that Dred Scott decision? Judge 
 Douglas labors to show that it is one thing, while 
 I think it is altogether different. It is a long 
 opinion, but it is all embodied in this short state- 
 ment : ''The Constitution of the United States 
 forbids Congress to deprive a man of his property
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 231 
 
 without due process of law ; the right of property 
 in slaves is distinctly and expressly affirmed in 
 that Constitution ; therefore if Congress shall 
 undertake to say that a man's slave is no longer 
 his slave when he crosses a certain line into a 
 Territory, that is depriving him of his property 
 without due process of law, and is unconstitu- 
 tional." There is the whole Dred Scott decision. 
 They add that if Congress cannot do so itself. 
 Congress cannot confer any power to do so, and 
 hence any effort by the territorial legislature to 
 do either of these things is absolutely decided 
 against. It is a foregone conclusion by that 
 court. 
 
 Now, as to this indirect mode by ''unfriendly 
 legislation," all lawyers here will readily under- 
 stand that such a proposition cannot be tolerated 
 for a moment, because a legislature cannot in- 
 directly do that which it cannot accomplish 
 directly. Then I say any legislation to control 
 this' property, as property, for its benefit as 
 property, would be hailed by this Dred Scott Su- 
 preme Court, and fully sustained ; but any legis- 
 lation driving slave property out, or destroying 
 it as property, directly or indirectly, will most 
 assuredly by that court be held unconstitutional. 
 
 Judge Douglas says that if the Constitution 
 carries slavery into the Territories, beyond the 
 power of the people of the Territories to control 
 it as other property, then it follows logically that 
 every one who swears to support the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States must give that support 
 to that property which it needs. And if the Con- 
 stitution carries slavery into the Territories be- 
 yond the power of the people to control it as 
 other property, then it also carries it into the
 
 232 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 States, because the Constitution is the supreme 
 law of the land. Now, gentlemen, if it were not 
 for my excessive modesty I would say that I told 
 that very thing to Judge Douglas quite a year 
 ago. This argument is here in print, and if it 
 were not for my modesty, as I said, I might call 
 your attention to it. If you read it, you will find 
 that I not only made that argument, but made it 
 better than he has made it since. 
 
 There is, however, this difTference. I say now, 
 and said then, there is no sort of question that 
 the Supreme Court has decided that it is the 
 right of the slaveholder to take his slave and 
 hold him in the Territory; and, saying this. 
 Judge Douglas himself admits the conclusion. 
 He says if that is so, this consequence will fol- 
 low ; and because this consequence would follow, 
 his argument is, the decision cannot therefore be 
 that way — ''that would spoil my popular sov- 
 ereignty, and it cannot be possible that this great 
 principle has been squelched out in this extraor- 
 dinary way. It might be, if it were not for the 
 extraordinary consequences of spoiling my hum- 
 bug." 
 
 Another feature of the Judges argument 
 about the Dred Scott case is an effort to show 
 that that decision deals altogether in declara- 
 tions of negatives ; that the Constitution does not 
 affirm anything as expounded by the Dred Scott 
 decision, but it only declares a want of power, a 
 total absence of power, in reference to the Ter- 
 ritories. It seems to be his purpose to make the 
 whole of that decision to result in a mere nega- 
 tive declaration of a want of power in Congress 
 to do anything in relation to this matter in the 
 Territories. I know the opinion of the judges
 
 i859] AT COLUMBUS 233 
 
 states that there is a total absence of power ; but 
 that is, unfortunately, not all it states ; for the 
 judges add that the right of property in a slave is 
 distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitu- 
 tion. It does not stop at saying that the right 
 of property in a slave is recognized in the Con- 
 stitution, is declared to exist somewhere in the 
 Constitution, but says it is affirmed in the Con- 
 stitution. Its language is equivalent to saying 
 that it is embodied and so woven into that in- 
 strument that it cannot be detached without 
 breaking the Constitution itself, — in a word, it is 
 a part of the Constitution. 
 
 Douglas is singularly unfortunate in his effort 
 to make out that decision to be altogether nega- 
 tive, when the express language at the vital part 
 is that this is distinctly affirmed in the Constitu- 
 tion. I think m^yself, and I repeat it here, that 
 this decision does not merely carry slavery into 
 the Territories, but by its logical conclusion it 
 carries it into the States in which we live. One 
 provision of that Constitution is, that it shall be 
 the supreme law of the land, — I do not quote 
 the language, — any constitution or law of any 
 State to the contrary notwithstanding. This 
 Dred Scott decision says that the right of prop- 
 erty in a slave is affirmed in that Constitution 
 which is the supreme law of the land, any State 
 constitution or law notwithstanding. Then I 
 say that to destroy a thing which is distinctly 
 affirmed and supported by the supreme law of 
 the land, even by a State constitution or law, is 
 a violation of that supreme law, and there is no 
 escape from it. In my judgment there is no 
 avoiding that result, save that the American peo- 
 ple shall see that State constitutions are better
 
 234 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. i6 
 
 construed than our Constitution is construed in 
 that decision. They must take care that it is 
 more faithfully and truly carried out than it is 
 there expounded. 
 
 I m.ust hasten to a conclusion. Near the be- 
 ginning of my remarks I said that this insidious 
 Douglas popular sovereignty is the measure that 
 now threatens the purpose of the Republican 
 party to prevent slavery from being nationalized 
 in the United States. I propose to ask your at- 
 tention for a little while to some propositions in 
 affirmance of that statement. Take it just as it 
 stands, and apply it as a principle; extend and 
 apply that principle elsewhere, and consider 
 where it will lead you. I now put this proposi- 
 tion, that Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty 
 applied will reopen the African slave-trade ; and 
 I will demonstrate it by any variety of ways in 
 which you can turn the subject or look at it. 
 
 The judge says that the people of the Ter- 
 ritories have the right, by his principle, to have 
 slaves if they want them. Then I say that the 
 people in Georgia have the right to buy slaves in 
 Africa if they want them, and I defy any man on 
 earth to show any distinction between the two 
 things — to show that the one is either more 
 wicked or more unlawful ; to show, on original 
 principles, that one is better or worse than the 
 other; or to show by the Constitution that one 
 differs a whit from the other. He will tell me, 
 doubtless, that there is no constitutional pro- 
 vision against people taking slaves into the new 
 Territories, and I tell him that there is equally 
 no constitutional provision against buying slaves 
 in Africa. He will tell you that a people in the 
 exercise of popular sovereignty ought to do as
 
 1859] AT COLUMBUS 235 
 
 they please about that thing, and have slaves if 
 they want them; and I tell you that the people 
 of Georgia are as much entitled to popular 
 sovereignty, and to buy slaves in Africa, if they 
 want them, as the people of a Territory are to 
 have slaves if they want them. I ask any man, 
 dealing honestly with himself, to point out a 
 distinction. 
 
 I have recently seen a letter of Judge Doug- 
 las's, in which, without stating that to be the 
 object, he doubtless endeavors to make a dis- 
 tinction between the two. He says he is unal- 
 terably opposed to the repeal of the laws against 
 the African slave-trade. And why? He then 
 seeks to give a reason that would not apply to his 
 popular sovereignty in the Territories. What is 
 that reason? *'The abolition of the African 
 slavfi-trade is a compromise of the Constitution." 
 I deny it. There is no truth in the proposition 
 that the abolition of the African slave-trade is a 
 compromise of the Constitution. No man can 
 put his finger on anything in the Constitution, or 
 on the line of history, which shows it. It is a 
 mere barren assertion, made simply for the pur- 
 pose of getting up a distinction between the re- 
 vival of the African slave-trade and his "great 
 principle." 
 
 At the time the Constitution of the United 
 States was adopted it was expected that the 
 slave-trade would be abolished. I should assert, 
 and insist upon that, if Judge Douglas denied it. 
 But I know that it was equally expected that 
 slavery would be excluded from the Territories, 
 and I can show by history that in regard to these 
 two things public opinion . was exactly alike, 
 while in regard to positive action, there was
 
 236 SPEECHES [Sept. 16 
 
 more done in the ordinance of '87 to resist the 
 spread of slavery than was ever done to abolish 
 the foreign slave-trade. Lest 1 be misunder- 
 stood, I say again that at the time of the forma- 
 tion of the Constitution, public expectation was 
 that the slave-trade would be abolished, but no 
 more so than that the spread of slavery in the 
 Territories should be restrained. They stand 
 alike, except that in the ordinance of '87 there 
 was a mark left by public opinion, showing that 
 it was more committed against the spread of 
 slavery in the Territories than against the foreign 
 slave-trade. 
 
 Compromise ! What word of compromise 
 was there about it? Why, the public sense was 
 then in favor of the abolition of the slave-trade; 
 but there was at the time a very great com- 
 mercial interest involved in it, and extensive 
 capital in that branch of trade. There were 
 doubtless the incipient stages of improvement in 
 the South in the way of farming, dependent on 
 the slave-trade, and they made a proposition to 
 Congress to abolish the trade after allowing it 
 twenty years, a sufficient time for the capital and 
 commerce engaged in it to be transferred to 
 other channels. They made no provision that it 
 should be abolished in twenty years ; I do not 
 doubt that they expected it would be ; but they 
 made no bargain about it. The public sentiment 
 left no doubt in the minds of any that it would be 
 done away. I repeat, there is nothing in the 
 history of those times in favor of that matter 
 being a compromise of the Constitution. It was 
 the public expectation at the time, manifested in 
 a thousand ways, that the spread of slavery 
 should also be restricted.
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 237 
 
 Then I say if this principle is estabHshed, that 
 there is no wrong in slavery, and whoever wants 
 it has a right to have it; that it is a matter of 
 dollars and cents ; a sort of question as to how 
 they shall deal with brutes ; that between us and 
 the negro here there is no sort of question, but 
 that at the South the question is between the 
 negro and the crocodile ; that it is a mere matter 
 of policy; that there is a perfect right, according 
 to interest, to do just as you please — when this is 
 done, where this doctrine prevails, the miners 
 and sappers will have formed public opinion for 
 the slave-trade. They will be ready for Jeff 
 Davis and Stephens, and other leaders of that 
 company, to sound the bugle for the revival of 
 the slave-trade, for the second Dred Scott de- 
 cision, for the flood of slavery to be poured over 
 the free States, while we shall be here tied down 
 and helpless, and run over like sheep. 
 
 It is to be a part and parcel of this same idea 
 to say to men who want to adhere to the Demo- 
 cratic party, who have always belonged to that 
 party, and are only looking about for some ex- 
 cuse to stick to it, but nevertheless hate slavery, 
 that Douglas's popular sovereignty is as good a 
 way as any to oppose slavery. They allow them- 
 selves to be persuaded easily, in accordance with 
 their previous dispositions, into this belief, that 
 it is about as good a way of opposing slavery as 
 any, and we can do that without straining our 
 old party ties or breaking up old political asso- 
 ciations. We can do so without being called 
 negro-worshipers. We can do that without 
 being subjected to the gibes and sneers that are 
 so readily thrown out in place of argument 
 where no argument can be found. So let us
 
 238 SPEECHES rSept. 16 
 
 stick to this popular sovereignty — ^this insidious 
 popular sovereignty. Now let me call your at- 
 tention to one thing that has really happened, 
 which shows this gradual and steady debauching 
 of public opinion, this course of preparation for 
 the revival of the slave-trade, for the territorial 
 slave-code, and the new Dred Scott decision that 
 is to carry slavery into the free States. Did you 
 ever, five years ago, hear of anybody in the 
 world saying that the negro had no share in the 
 Declaration of National Independence ; that it 
 did not mean negroes at all, and when ''all men'* 
 were spoken of negroes were not included ? 
 
 I am satisfied that five years ago that proposi- 
 tion was not put upon paper by any living being 
 anywhere. I have been unable at any time to 
 find a man in an audience who would declare 
 that he had ever known of anybody saying so 
 five years ago. But last year there was not a 
 ''Douglas popular sovereignty" man in Illinois 
 who did not say it. Is there one in Ohio but 
 declares his firm belief that the Declaration of 
 Independence did not mean negroes at all? I 
 do not know how this is ; I have not been here 
 much; but I presume you are very much alike 
 everywhere. Then I suppose that all now ex- 
 press the belief that the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence never did mean negroes. I call upon one 
 of them to say that he said it five years ago. 
 
 If you think that now, and did not think it 
 then, the next thing that strikes me is to remark 
 that there has been a change wrought in you, 
 and a very significant change it is, being no less 
 than changing the negro, in your estimation, 
 from the rank of a man to that of a brute. They 
 are taking him down, and placing him, when
 
 i8s9] AT COLUMBUS 239 
 
 spoken of, among reptiles and crocodiles, as 
 Judge Douglas himself expresses it.* 
 
 Is not this change wrought in your minds a 
 very important change? Public opinion in this 
 country is everything. In a nation like ours this 
 popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty 
 have already wrought a change in the public 
 mind to the extent I have stated. There is no 
 man in this crowd who can contradict it. 
 
 Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, 
 as much as anybody, I ask you to note that fact, 
 and the like of which is to follow, to be plastered 
 on, layer after layer, until very soon you are pre- 
 pared to deal with the negro everywhere as with 
 the brute. If public sentiment has not been de- 
 bauched already to this point, a new turn of the 
 screw in that direction is all that is wanting ; and 
 this is constantly being done by the teachers of 
 this insidious popular sovereignty. You need 
 but one or two turns further until your minds, 
 now ripening under these teachings, will be 
 ready for all these things, and you will receive 
 and support, or submit to, the slave-trade re- 
 vived with all its horrors, a slave code enforced 
 in our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision 
 to bring slavery up into the very heart of the 
 free North. This, I must say, is but carrying 
 out those words prophetically spoken by Mr. 
 Clay many, many years ago, — I believe more 
 than thirty years,— when he told an audience 
 
 * On his Sovtthern tour late in 1858^ Senator Douglas 
 said that on the sugar plantations of Louisiana it was 
 not "a question between the white man and the negro, 
 but between the negro and the crocodile." Between the 
 negro and the crocodile, he said, he took the side of 
 the negro ; but between the negro and the white man, 
 be would go for the white man.
 
 240 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 that if they would repress all tendencies to 
 liberty and ultimate emancipation, they must go 
 back to the era of our independence and muzzle 
 the cannon which thundered its annual joyous 
 return on the Fourth of July; they must blow 
 out the moral lights around us ; they must pene- 
 trate the human soul, and eradicate the love of 
 liberty; but until they did these things, and 
 others eloquently enumerated by him, they could 
 not repress all tendencies to ultimate emancipa- 
 tion. 
 
 I ask attention to the fact that in a preeminent 
 degree these popular sovereigns are at this 
 work : blowing out the moral lights around us ; 
 teaching that the negro is no longer a man, but a 
 brute; that the Declaration has nothing to do 
 with him ; that he ranks with the crocodile and 
 the reptile ; that man, with body and soul, is a 
 matter of dollars and cents. I suggest to this 
 portion of the Ohio Republicans, or Democrats, 
 if there be any present, the serious consideration 
 of this fact, that there is now going on among 
 you a steady process of debauching public 
 opinion on this subject. With this, my friends, 
 I bid you adieu. 
 
 "A Shot over the Line." 
 
 An Address to Kentuckians on Douglas's 
 Fallacies, Delivered at Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 September 17, 1859. 
 
 My Fellow-citizens of the State of Ohio: This 
 is the first time in my life that I have appeared 
 before an audience in so great a city as this. I 
 therefore — though I am no longer a young man
 
 idsgl AT CINCINNATI 241 
 
 — make this appearance under some degree of 
 embarrassment. But I have found that when 
 one is embarrassed, usually the shortest way to 
 get through with it is to quit talking or thinking 
 about it, and go at something else. 
 
 I understand that you have had recently with 
 you my-very distinguished friend. Judge Doug- 
 las, of Illinois, and I understand, without having 
 had an opportunity (not greatly sought, to be 
 sure) of seeing a report of the speech that he 
 made here, that he did me the honor to mention 
 my humble name. I suppose that he did so for 
 the purpose of making some objection to some 
 sentiment at some time expressed by me. I 
 should expect, it is true, that Judge Douglas had 
 reminded you, or informed you, if you had never, 
 before heard it, that I had once in my life de- 
 clared it is my opinion that this government can- 
 not ''endure permanently half slave and half 
 free; that a house divided against itself cannot 
 stand," and, as I had expressed it, I did not ex- 
 pect the house to fall ; that I did not expect the 
 Union to be dissolved, but that I did expect it 
 would cease to be divided ; that it would become 
 all one thing or all the other ; that either the op- 
 position of slavery will arrest the further spread 
 of it, and place it where the public mind would 
 rest in the belief that it was in the course of 
 ultimate extinction, or the friends of slavery will 
 push it forward until it becomes alike lawful in 
 all the States, old or new, free as well as slave. 
 I did, fifteen months ago, express that opinion, 
 and upon many occasions Judge Douglas has 
 denounced it, and has greatly, intentionally or 
 unintentionally, misrepresented my purpose in 
 the expression of that opinion.
 
 242 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 I presume, without having seen a report of 
 his speech, that he did so here. I presume that 
 he alluded also to that opinion in different 
 language, having been expressed at a subsequent 
 time by Governor Seward, of New York, and 
 that he took the two in a lump and denounced 
 them ; that he tried to point out that there was 
 something couched in this opinion which led to 
 the making of an entire uniformity of the local 
 institutions of the various States of the Union, 
 in utter disregard of the different States, which 
 in their nature would seem to require a variety 
 of institutions, and a variety of laws conforming 
 to the differences in the nature of the different 
 States. 
 
 Not only so ; I presume he insisted that this 
 was a declaration of war between the free and 
 slave States — that it was the sounding to the on- 
 set of continual war between the different States, 
 the slave and free States. 
 
 This charge, in this form, was made by Judge 
 Douglas on, I believe, the 9th of July, 1858, in 
 Chicago, in my hearing. On the next evening, I 
 made some reply to it. I informed him that 
 many of the inferences he drew from that ex- 
 pression of mine were altogether foreign to any 
 purpose entertained by me, and in so far as he 
 should ascribe these inferences to me, as my pur- 
 pose, he was entirely mistaken ; and in so far as 
 he might argue that whatever might be my pur- 
 pose, actions, conforming to my views, would 
 lead to these results, he might argue and es- 
 tablish if he could; but, so far as purposes were 
 concerned, he was totally mistaken as to me. 
 
 When I made that reply to him, I told him, on 
 the question of declaring war between the dif-
 
 1859] AT CINCINNATI 243 
 
 ferent States of the Union, that I had not said I 
 did not expect any peace upon this question until 
 slavery was exterminated ; that I had only said 
 I expected peace when that institution was put 
 where the public mind should rest in the belief 
 that it was in course of ultimate extinction ; that 
 I believed, from the organization of our govern- 
 ment until a very recent period of time, the in- 
 stitution had been placed and continued upon 
 such a basis ; that we had had comparative peace 
 upon that question through a portion of that 
 period of time, only because the public mind 
 rested in that belief in regard to it, and that when 
 we returned to that position in relation to that 
 matter, I sn.pposed we should again have peace 
 as we previously had. I assured him, as I now 
 assure you, that I neither then had, nor have, nor 
 ever had, any purpose in any way of interfering 
 with the institution of slavery where it exists. 
 I believe we have no power, under the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States, or rather under the 
 form of government under which we live, to 
 interfere with the institution of slavery, or any 
 other of the institutions of our sister States, be 
 they free or slave States. I declared then, and 
 I now re-declare, that I have as little inclination 
 to interfere with the institution of slavery where 
 it now exists, through the instrumentality of the 
 General Government, or any other instrumental- 
 ity, as I believe we have no power to do so. I 
 accidentally used this expression : I had no pur- 
 pose of entering into the slave States to disturb 
 the institution of slavery. So, upon the first oc- 
 casion that Judge Douglas got an opportunity to 
 reply to me, he passed by the whole body of what 
 I had said upon that subject, and seized upon the
 
 244 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 particular expression of mine, that I had no pur- 
 pose of entering into the slave States to disturb 
 the institution of slavery. ''Oh, no,'' said he; 
 "he [Lincoln'] won't enter into the slave States to 
 disturb the institution of slavery; he is too 
 prudent a man to do such a thing as that; he 
 only means that he will go on to the line between 
 the free and slave States, and shoot over at them. 
 This is all he means to do. He means to do 
 them all the harm he can, to disturb them all he 
 can, in such a way as to keep his own hide in 
 perfect safety." 
 
 Well, now, I did not think, at that time, that 
 that was either a very dignified or very logical 
 argument; but so it was, and I had to get along 
 with it as well as I could. 
 
 It has occurred to me here to-night that if I 
 ever do shoot over the line at the people on the 
 other side of the line, into a slave State, and 
 propose to do so keeping my skin safe, that I 
 have now about the best chance I shall ever have. 
 I should not wonder if there are some Kentuck- 
 ians about this audience; we are close to Ken- 
 tucky ; and whether that be so or not, we are on 
 elevated ground, and by speaking distinctly I 
 should not wonder if some of the Kentuckians 
 would hear me on the other side of the river. 
 For that reason I propose to address a portion 
 of what I have to say to the Kentuckians. 
 
 I say, then, in the first place, to the Ken- 
 tuckians, that I am what they call, as I under- 
 stand it, a ''Black Republican." I think slavery 
 is wrong, morally and politically. I desire that 
 it should be no further spread in these United 
 States, and I should not object if it should 
 gradually terminate in the whole Union. While
 
 1859] AT CINCINNATI 245 
 
 I say this for myself, I say to you Kentuckians 
 that I understand you differ radically with me 
 upon this proposition ; that you believe slavery is 
 a good thing ; that slavery is right ; that it ought 
 to be extended and perpetuated in this Union. 
 Now, there being this broad difference between 
 us, I do not pretend, in addressing myself to you 
 Kentuckians, to attempt proselyting you ; that 
 would be a vain effort. I do not enter upon it. 
 I only propose to try to show you that you ought 
 to nominate for the next presidency, at Charles- 
 ton, my distinguished friend. Judge Douglas. 
 In all that there is no real difference between you 
 and him ; I understand he is as sincerely for you, 
 and more wisely for you, than you are for your- 
 selves. I will try to demonstrate that proposi- 
 tion. Understand now, I say that I believe he is 
 as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you, 
 than you are for yourselves. 
 
 What do you want more than anything else 
 to make successful your views of slavery — to 
 advance the outspread of it, and to secure and 
 perpetuate the nationality of it? What do you 
 want more than anything else? What is needed 
 absolutely? What is indispensable to you? 
 Why, if I may be allowed to answer the question, 
 it is to retain a hold upon the North — it is to re- 
 tain support and strength from the free States. 
 If you can get this support and strength from 
 the free States, you can succeed. If you do not 
 get this support and this strength from the free 
 States, you are in the minority, and you are 
 beaten at once. 
 
 If that proposition be admitted, — and it is un- 
 deniable, — then the next thing I say to you is, 
 that Douglas of all the men in this nation is the
 
 246 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 only man that affords you any hold upon the 
 free States ; that no other man can give you any 
 strength in the free States. This being so, if 
 you doubt the other branch of the proposition, 
 whether he is for you, — whether he is really for 
 you, as I have expressed it, — I propose asking 
 your attention for a while to a few facts. 
 
 The issue between you and me, understand, is 
 that I think slavery is wrong, and ought not to 
 be outspread, and you think it is right, and ought 
 to be extended and perpetuated. I now proceed 
 to try to show to you that Douglas is as sincerely 
 for you, and more wisely for you, than you are 
 for yourselves. 
 
 In the first place, we know that in a govern- 
 ment like this, a government of the people, where 
 the voice of all the men of the country, sub- 
 stantially, enters into the administration of the 
 government, what lies at the bottom of all of it 
 is public opinion. I lay down the proposition 
 that Judge Douglas is not only the man that 
 promises you in advance a hold upon the North, 
 and support in the North, but that he constantly 
 molds public opinion to your ends ; that in every 
 possible way he can, he molds the public opinion 
 of the North to your ends ; and if there are a few 
 things in which he seems to be against you, — a 
 few things which he says that appear to be 
 against you, and a few that he forbears to say 
 which you would like to have him say, — you 
 ought to remember that the saying of the one, 
 or the forbearing to say the other, would lose his 
 hold upon the North, and, by consequence, would 
 lose his capacity to serve you. 
 
 Upon this subject of molding public opinion, 
 I call your attention to the fact — for a well-
 
 i859] AT CINCINNATI 247 
 
 established fact it is — that the judge never says 
 your institution of slavery is wrong: he never 
 says it is right, to be sure, but he never says it is 
 v^rong. There is not a public man in the United 
 States, I believe, with the exception of Senator 
 Douglas, who has not, at some time in his life, 
 declared his opinion whether the thing is right 
 or wrong; but Senator Douglas never declares 
 it is wrong. He leaves himself at perfect liberty 
 to do all in your favor which he would be hin- 
 dered from doing if he were to declare the thing 
 to be wrong. On the contrary, he takes all the 
 chances that he has for inveigling the sentiment 
 of the North, opposed to slavery, into your sup- 
 port, by never saying it is right. This you ought 
 to set down to his credit. You ought to give 
 him full credit for this much, little though it be 
 in comparison to the whole which he does for 
 you. 
 
 Some other things I will ask your attention to. 
 He said upon the floor of the United States 
 Senate, and he has repeated it, as I understand, 
 a great many times, that he does not care 
 whether slavery is 'Voted up or voted down." 
 This again shows you, or ought to show you, if 
 you would reason upon it, that he does not be- 
 lieve it to be wrong ; for a man may say, when he 
 sees nothing wrong in a thing, that he does not 
 care whether it be voted up or voted down ; but 
 no man can logically say that he cares not 
 whether a thing goes up or goes down which ap- 
 pears to him to be wrong. You therefore have 
 a demonstration in this, that to Judge Douglas's 
 mind your favorite institution, which you desire 
 to have spread out and made perpetual, is no 
 wrong.
 
 248 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 Another thing he tells you, in a speech made at 
 Memphis, in Tennessee, shortly after the canvass 
 in Illinois, last year. He there distinctly told the 
 people that there was a ''line drawn by the Al- 
 mighty across this continent, on the one side of 
 which the soil must always be cultivated by 
 slaves ;" that he did not pretend to know exactly 
 where that line was, but that there was such a 
 line. I want to ask your attention to that prop- 
 osition again — that there is one portion of this 
 continent where the Almighty has designed the 
 soil shall always be cultivated by slaves ; that its 
 being cultivated by slaves at that place is right; 
 that it has the direct sympathy and authority of 
 the Almighty. Whenever you can get these 
 Northern audiences to adopt the opinion that 
 slavery is right on the other side of the Ohio; 
 whenever you can get them, in pursuance of 
 Douglas's views, to adopt that sentiment, they 
 will very readily make the other argument, which 
 is perfectly logical, that that which is right on 
 that side of the Ohio cannot be wrong on this, 
 and that if you have that property on that side of 
 the Ohio, under the seal and stamp of the Al- 
 mighty, when by any means it escapes over here, 
 it is wrong to have constitutions and laws "to 
 devil" you about it. So Douglas is molding the 
 public opinion of the North, first to say that the 
 thing is right in your State over the Ohio River, 
 and hence to say that that which is right there is 
 not wrong here, and that all laws and constitu- 
 tions here, recognizing it as being wrong, are 
 themselves wrong, and ought to be repealed and 
 abrogated. He will tell you, men of Ohio, that 
 if you choose here to have laws against slavery, 
 it is in conformity to the idea that your climate
 
 i8s9] AT CINCINNATI 249 
 
 is not suited to it ; that your climate is not suited 
 to slave labor, and therefore you have constitu- 
 tions and laws against it. 
 
 Let us attend to that argument for a little 
 while, and see if it be sound. You do not raise 
 sugar-cane (except the new-fashioned sugar- 
 cane, and you won't raise that long), but they do 
 raise it in Louisiana. You don't raise it in Ohio 
 because you can't raise it profitably, because the 
 climate don't suit it. They do raise it in Loui- 
 siana because there it is profitable. Now Douglas 
 will tell you that is precisely the slavery ques- 
 tion : that they do have slaves there because they 
 are profitable, and you don't have them here be- 
 cause they are not profitable. If that is so, then 
 it leads to dealing with the one precisely as with 
 the other. Is there, then, anything in the con- 
 stitution or laws of Ohio against raising sugar- 
 cane? Have you found it necessary to put any 
 such provision in your law ? Surely not ! No 
 man desires to raise sugar-cane in Ohio ; but if 
 any man did desire to do so, you would say it 
 was a tyrannical law that forbids his doing so; 
 and whenever you shall agree with Douglas, 
 whenever your minds are brought to adopt his 
 argument, as surely you will have reached the 
 conclusion that although slavery is not profitable 
 in Ohio, if any man want it, it is wrong to him 
 not to let him have it. 
 
 In this matter Judge Douglas is preparing the 
 public mind for you of Kentucky, to make per- 
 petual that good thing in your estimation, about 
 which you and I dififer. 
 
 In this connection let me ask your attention 
 to another thing. I believe it is safe to assert 
 that^ five years ago, no living man had expressed
 
 250 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 the opinion that the negro had no share in the 
 Declaration of Independence. Let me state that 
 again : Five years ago no Hving man had ex- 
 pressed the opinion that the negro had no share 
 in the Declaration of Independence. If there is 
 in this large audience any man who ever knew of 
 that opinion being put upon paper as much as 
 five years ago, I will be obliged to him now, or 
 as a subsequent time, to show it. 
 
 If that be true, I wish you then to note the 
 next fact — that within the space of five years 
 Senator Douglas, in the argument of this ques- 
 tion, has got his entire party, so far as I know, 
 without exception, to join in saying that the 
 negro has no share in the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. If there be now in all these United 
 States one Douglas man that does not say this, 
 I have been unable upon any occasion to scare 
 him up. Now, if none of you said this five years 
 ago, and all of you say it now, that is a matter 
 that you Kentuckians ought to note. That is a 
 vast change in the Northern public sentiment 
 upon that question. 
 
 Of what tendency is that change? The tend- 
 ency of that change is to bring the public mind 
 to the conclusion that when men are spoken of, 
 the negro is not meant ; that when negroes are 
 spoken of, brutes alone are contemplated. That 
 change in public sentiment has already degraded 
 the black man, in the estimation of Douglas and 
 his followers, from the condition of a man of 
 some sort, and assigned him to the condition of a 
 brute. Now you Kentuckians ought to give 
 Douglas credit for this. That is the largest 
 possible stride that can be made in regard to the 
 perpetuation of your good thing of slavery.
 
 1859] AT CINCINNATI 251 
 
 In Kentucky, perhaps, — in many of the slave 
 States certainly, — you are trying to establish the 
 rightfulness of slavery by reference to the Bible. 
 You are trying to show that slavery existed in 
 the Bible times by divine ordinance. Now 
 Douglas is wiser than you for your own benefit, 
 upon that subject. Douglas knows that when- 
 ever you establish that slavery was right by the 
 Bible, it will occur that that slavery was the 
 slavery of the white man, — of men without ref- 
 erence to color, — and he knows very well that 
 you may entertain that idea in Kentucky as much 
 as you please, but you will never win any North- 
 ern support upon it. He makes a wiser argu- 
 ment for you ; he makes the argument that the 
 slavery of the black man, the slavery of the man 
 who has a skin of a different color from your 
 own, is right. He thereby brings to your sup- 
 port Northern voters v/ho could not for a mo- 
 ment be brought by your own argument of the 
 Bible-right of slavery. Will you not give him 
 credit for that? Will you not say that in this 
 matter he is more wisely for you than you are 
 for yourselves ? 
 
 Now, having established with his entire party 
 this doctrine, — having been entirely successful in 
 that branch of his efforts in your behalf, — he is 
 ready for another. 
 
 At this same meeting at Memphis, he declared 
 that in all contests between the negro and the 
 white man, he was for the white man, but that in 
 all questions between the negro and the crocodile 
 he was for the negro. He did not make that 
 declaration accidentally at Memphis. He made 
 it a great many times in the canvass in Illinois 
 last year (though I don't know that it was re-
 
 252 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 [Sept. 17 
 
 ported in any of his speeches there; but he fre- 
 quently made it). I beheve he repeated it at 
 Columbus, and I should not wonder if he re- 
 peated it here. It is, then, a deliberate way of 
 expressing himself upon that subject. It is a 
 matter of mature deliberation with him thus to 
 express himself upon that point of his case. It 
 therefore requires some deliberate attention. 
 
 The first inference seems to be that if you do 
 not enslave the negro you are wronging the 
 white man in some way or other ; and that who- 
 ever is opposed to the negro being enslaved is, 
 in some way or other, against the white man. Is 
 not that a falsehood? If there was a necessary 
 conflict between the white man and the negro, I 
 should be for the white man as much as Judge 
 Douglas; but I say there is no such necessary 
 conflict. I say that there is room enough for us 
 all to be free, and that it not only does not wrong 
 the white man that the negro should be free, but 
 it positively wrongs the mass of the white men 
 that the negro should be enslaved ; that the mass 
 of white men are really injured by the effects of 
 slave-labor in the vicinity of the fields of their 
 own labor. 
 
 But I do not desire to dwell upon this branch 
 of the question more than to say that this as- 
 sumption of his is false, and I do hope that that 
 fallacy will not long prevail in the minds of in- 
 telligent white men. At all events, you ought to 
 thank Judge Douglas for it. It is for your 
 benefit it is made. 
 
 The other branch of it is, that in a struggle be- 
 tween the negro and the crocodile, he is for the 
 negro. Well, I don't know that there is any 
 struggle between the negro and the crocodile.
 
 i859] AT CINCINNATI 253 
 
 either. I suppose that if a crocodile (or, as we 
 old Ohio River boatman used to call them, alliga- 
 tors) should come across a white man, he would 
 kill him if he could, and so he would a negro. 
 But what, at last, is this proposition? I believe 
 that it is a sort of proposition in proportion, 
 which may be stated thus : '*As the negro is to 
 the white man, so is the crocodile to the negro ; 
 and as the negro may rightfully treat the croco- 
 dile as a beast or reptile, so the white man may 
 rightfully treat the negro as a beast or reptile." 
 That is really the point of all that argument of 
 his. 
 
 Now, my brother Kentuckians, who believe in 
 this, you ought to thank Judge Douglas for hav- 
 ing put that in a much more taking way than any 
 of yourselves have done. 
 
 Again, Douglas's great principle, "popular 
 sovereignty," as he calls it, gives you by natural 
 consequence the revival of the slave-trade when- 
 ever you want it. If you are disposed to ques- 
 tion this, listen awhile, consider awhile, what I 
 shall advance in support of that proposition. 
 
 He says that it is the sacred right of the man 
 who goes into the Territories to have slavery if 
 he wants it. Grant that for argument's sake. 
 Is it not the sacred right of the man who don't 
 go there, equally to buy slaves in Africa, if he 
 wants them? Can you point out the difference? 
 The man who goes into the Territories of Kansas 
 and Nebraska, or any other new Territory, with 
 the sacred right of taking a slave there which 
 (belongs to him, would certainly have no more 
 (tight to take one there than I would who own no 
 jslave, but who would desire to buy one and take 
 him there. You will not say — you, the friends
 
 254 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 of Judge Douglas — but that the man who does 
 not own a slave, has an equal right to buy one 
 and take him to the Territory as the other does ? 
 
 I say that Douglas's popular sovereignty, es- 
 tablishing his sacred right in the people, if you 
 please, if carried to its logical conclusion, gives 
 equally the sacred right to the people of the 
 States or the Territories themselves to buy 
 slaves, wherever they can buy them cheapest; 
 and if any man can show a distinction, I should 
 like to hear him try it. If any man can show 
 how the people of Kansas have a better right to 
 slaves because they want them, than the people 
 of Georgia have to buy them in Africa, I want 
 him to do it. I think it cannot be done. If it is 
 ''popular sovereignty" for the people to have 
 slaves because they want them, it is popular 
 sovereignty for them to buy them in Africa, 
 because they desire to do so. 
 
 I know that Douglas has recently made a little 
 effort — not seeming to notice that he had a dif- 
 ferent theory — has made an effort to get rid of 
 that. He has written a letter, addressed to 
 somebody, I believe, who resides in Iowa, declar- 
 ing his opposition to the repeal of the laws that 
 prohibit the African slave-trade. He bases his 
 opposition to such repeal upon the ground that 
 these laws are themselves one of the com- 
 promises of the Constitution of the United 
 States. Now it would be very interesting to see j 
 Judge Douglas, or any of his friends, turn to the , 
 Constitution of the United States and point out j 
 that compromise, to show where there is any 
 compromise in the Constitution, or provision in 
 the Constitution, expressed or implied, by which 
 the administrators of that Constitution are under
 
 i8s9] AT CINCINNATI 255 
 
 any obligation to repeal the African slave-trade. 
 I know, or at least I think I know, that the 
 framers of that Constitution did expect that the 
 African slave-trade would be abolished at the 
 end of twenty years, to which time their prohibi- 
 tion against its being abolished extended. I 
 think there is abundant contemporaneous history 
 to show that the framers of the Constitution 
 expected it to be abolished. But while they so 
 expected, they gave nothing for that expectation, 
 and they put no provision in the Constitution re- 
 quiring it should be so abolished. The migra- 
 tion or importation of such persons as the States 
 shall see fit to admit shall not be prohibited, but 
 a certain tax might be levied upon such importa- 
 tion. But what was to be done after that time? 
 The Constitution is as silent about that as it is 
 silent, personally, about myself. There is abso- 
 lutely nothing in it about that subject — there is 
 only the expectation of the framers of the Con- 
 stitution that the slave-trade would be abolished 
 at the end of that time, and they expected it 
 would be abolished, owing to public sentiment, 
 before that time, and they put that provision in, 
 in order that it should not be abolished before 
 that time, for reasons which I suppose they 
 thought to be sound ones, but which I will not 
 now try to enumerate before you. 
 
 But while they expected the slave-trade would 
 be abolished at that time, they expected that the 
 spread of slavery into the new Territories should 
 also be restricted. It is as easy to prove that 
 the framers of the Constitution of the United 
 States expected that slavery should be prohibited 
 from extending into the new Territories, as it is 
 to prove that it was expected that the slave-trade
 
 256 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 should be abolished. Both these things were ex- 
 pected. One was no more expected than the 
 other, and one was no more a compromise of the 
 Constitution than the other. There was nothing 
 said in the Constitution in regard to the spread 
 of slavery into the Territories. I grant that, 
 but there was something very important said 
 about it by the same generation of men in the 
 adoption of the old ordinance of '87, through 
 the influence of which you here in Ohio, our 
 neighbors in Indiana, we in Illinois, our neigh- 
 bors in Michigan and Wisconsin, are happy, 
 prosperous, teeming millions of free men. That 
 generation of men, though not to the full extent 
 members of the convention that framed the Con- 
 stitution, were to some extent members of that 
 convention, holding seats at the same time in one 
 body and the other, so that if there was any 
 compromise on either of these subjects, the 
 strong evidence is that that compromise was in 
 favor of the restriction of slavery from the new 
 Territories. 
 
 But Douglas says that he is unalterably op- 
 posed to the repeal of those laws ; because, in his 
 viev/, it is a compromise of the Constitution. 
 You Kentuckians, no doubt, are somewhat of- 
 fended with that ! You ought not to be ! You 
 ought to be patient! You ought to know that 
 if he said less than that, he would lose the power 
 of ''lugging" the Northern States to your sup- 
 port. Really, what you would push him to do 
 would take from him his entire power to serve 
 you. And you ought to remember how long, by 
 precedent, Judge Douglas holds himself obliged 
 to stick by compromise. You ought to remember 
 that by the time you yourselves think you are
 
 18593 AT CINCINNATI 257 
 
 ready to inaugurate measures for the revival of 
 the African slave-trade, that sufficient time will 
 have arrived, by precedent, for Judge Douglas to 
 break through that compromise. He says now 
 nothing more strong than he said in 1849 when 
 he declared in favor of the Missouri Compromise 
 — that precisely four years and a quarter after 
 he declared that compromise to be a sacred 
 thing, which *'no ruthless hand would ever dare 
 to touch," he, himself, brought forward the 
 measure ruthlessly to destroy it. By a mere 
 calculation of time it will only be four years 
 more until he is ready to take back his profes- 
 sion about the sacredness of the compromise 
 abolishing the slave-trade. Precisely as soon as 
 you are ready to have his services in that direc- 
 tion, by fair calculation, you may be sure of hav- 
 ing them. 
 
 But you remember and set down to Judge 
 Douglas's debt, or discredit, that he, last year, 
 said the people of Territories can, in spite of the 
 Dred Scott decision, exclude your slaves from 
 those Territories ; that he declared by "unfriendly 
 legislation" the extension of your property into 
 the new Territories may be cut off in the teeth of 
 that decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States. 
 
 He assumed that position at Freeport, on the 
 27th of August, 1858. He said that the people 
 of the Territories can exclude slavery, in so 
 many words. You ought, however, to bear in 
 mJnd that he has never said it since. You may 
 hunt in every speech that he has since made, and 
 he has never used that expression once. He has 
 never seemed to notice that he is stating his 
 views differently from what he did then-; but by
 
 258 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 some sort of accident, he has always really stated 
 it differently. He has always since then de- 
 clared that "the Constitution does not carry 
 slavery into the Territories of the United States 
 beyond the power of the people legally to control 
 it, as other property." Now there is a difference 
 in the language used upon that former occasion 
 and in this latter day. There may or may not be 
 a difference in the meaning, but it is worth while 
 considering whether there is not also a difference 
 in meaning. 
 
 What is it to exclude? Why, it is to drive it 
 out. It is in some way to put it out of the Ter- 
 ritory. It is to force it across the line, or change 
 its character, so that as property it is out of 
 existence. But what is the controlling of it "as 
 other property" ? Is controlling it as other prop- 
 erty the same thing as destroying it, or driving 
 it away? I should think not. I should think the 
 controlling of it as other property would be just 
 about what you in Kentucky should want. I 
 understand the controlling of property means the 
 controlling of it for the benefit of the owner of 
 it. While I have no doubt the Supreme Court 
 of the United States would say "God speed" to 
 any of the territorial legislatures that should 
 thus control slave property, they would sing 
 quite a different tune if by the pretense of con- 
 trolling it they were to undertake to pass laws 
 which virtually excluded it, and that upon a very 
 well known principle to all lawyers, that what a 
 legislature cannot directly do, it cannot do by 
 indirection ; that as the legislature has not the 
 power to drive slaves out, they have no power 
 by indirection, by tax, or by imposing burdens 
 in any way on that property, to effect the same
 
 1859] AT CINCINNATI 259 
 
 end, and that any attempt to do so would be held 
 by the Dred Scott court unconstitutional. 
 
 Douglas is not willing to stand by his first 
 proposition that they can exclude it, because we 
 have seen that that proposition amounts to noth- 
 ing more nor less than the naked absurdity that 
 you may lawfully drive out that which has a law- 
 ful right to remain. He admitted at first that 
 the slave might be lawfully taken into the Terri- 
 tories under the Constitution of the United 
 States, and yet asserted that he might be lawfully 
 driven out. That being the proposition, it is the 
 absurdity I have stated. He is not willing to 
 stand in the face of that direct, naked, and 
 impudent absurdity; he has, therefore, modi- 
 fied his language into that of being "controlled 
 as other property." 
 
 The Kentuckians don't like this in Douglas ! 
 I will tell you where it will go. He now swears 
 by the court. He was once a leading man in 
 Illinois to break down a court because it had 
 made a decision he did not like.* But he now 
 not only swears by the court, the courts having 
 g-ot to working for you, but he denounces all men 
 that do not swear by the courts as unpatriotic, 
 as bad citizens. When one of these acts of un- 
 friendly legislation shall impose such heavy bur- 
 dens as to, in effect, destroy propertyin slaves in 
 a Territory, and show plainly enough that there 
 can be no mistake in the purpose of the legis- 
 lature to make them so burdensome, this same 
 Supreme Court will decide that law to be un- 
 constitutional, and he will be ready to say for 
 your benefit, 'T swear by the court ; I give it up" ; 
 and while that is going on he has been getting all 
 * See page 149, volume one of present edition.
 
 26o SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 his men to swear by the courts, and to give it up 
 with him. In this again he serves you faithfully, 
 and, as I say, more wisely than you serve your- 
 selves. 
 
 Again, I have alluded in the beginning of 
 these remarks to the fact that Judge Douglas has 
 made great complaint of my having expressed 
 the opinion that this government ^'cannot endure 
 permanently half slave and half free." He has 
 complained of Seward for using different lan- 
 guage, and declaring that there is an "irrepres- 
 sible conflict" between the principles of free and 
 slave labor. [A voice: ''He says it is not original 
 with Seward. That is original with Lincoln."] 
 I will attend to that immediately, sir. Since that 
 time, Hickman, of Pennsylvania, expressed the 
 same sentiment. He has never denounced Mr. 
 Hickman. Why? There is a little chance, not- 
 withstanding that opinion in the mouth of Hick- 
 man, that he may yet be a Douglas man. That 
 is the difference. It is not unpatriotic to hold 
 that opinion, if a man is a Douglas man. 
 
 But neither I, nor Seward, nor Hickman is 
 entitled to the enviable or unenviable distinction 
 of having first expressed that idea. That same 
 idea was expressed by the Richmond Enquirer 
 in Virginia, in 1856, quite two years before it 
 was expressed by the first of us. And while 
 Douglas was pluming himself that in his conflict 
 with my humble self, last year, he had 
 ^'squelched out" that fatal heresy, as he delighted 
 to call it, and had suggested that if he only had 
 had a chance to be in New York and meet 
 Seward he would have ''squelched" it there also, 
 it never occurred to him to breathe a word 
 against Pryor. I don't think that you can dis-
 
 i8s9] AT CINCINNATI 261 
 
 cover that Douglas ever talked of going to Vir- 
 ginia to ''squelch" out that idea there. No. 
 More than that. That same Roger A. Pryor 
 was brought to Washington City and made the 
 editor of the par excellence Douglas paper after 
 making use of that expression which, in us, is so 
 unpatriotic and heretical. From all this my 
 Kentucky friends may see that this opinion is 
 heretical in his view only when it is expressed 
 by men suspected of a desire that the country 
 shall all become free, and not when expressed by 
 those fairly known to entertain the desire that 
 the whole country shall become slave. When ex- 
 pressed by that class of men, it is no wise of- 
 fensive to him. In this again, my friends of 
 Kentucky, who have Judge Douglas with you. 
 
 There is another reason why you Southern 
 people ought to nominate Douglas at your con- 
 vention at Charleston. That reason is the won- 
 derful capacity of the man ; the power he has of 
 doing what would seem to be impossible. Let 
 me call your attention to one of these apparently 
 impossible things. 
 
 Douglas had three or four very distinguished 
 men, of the most extreme antislavery views of 
 any men in the Republican party, expressing 
 their desire for his reelection to the Senate last 
 year. That would, of itself, have seemed to be 
 a little wonderful, but that wonder is heightened 
 when we see that Wise, of Virginia, a man 
 exactly opposed to them, a man who believes in 
 the divine right of slavery, was also expressing 
 his desire that Douglas should be reelected ; that 
 another man that may be said to be kindred to 
 Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and 
 of your own State, was also agreeing with the
 
 262 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 antislavery men in the North that Douglas ought 
 to be reelected. Still, to heighten the wonder, a 
 senator from Kentucky, whom I have always 
 loved with an affection as tender and endearing 
 as I have ever loved any man, who was opposed 
 to the antislavery men for reasons which seemed 
 sufficient to him, and equally opposed to Wise 
 and Breckinridge, was writing letters into Illinois 
 to secure the reelection of Douglas. Now that 
 ail these conflicting elements should be brought, 
 while at daggers' points with one another, to 
 support him, is a feat that is worthy for you to 
 note and consider. It is quite probable that each 
 of these classes of men thought, by the reelection 
 of Douglas, their peculiar views would gain 
 something : it is probable that the antislavery men 
 thought their views would gain something; that 
 Wise and Breckinridge thought so too, as re- 
 gards their opinions ; that Mr. Crittenden thought 
 that his views would gain something, although 
 he was opposed to both these other men. It is 
 probable that each and all of them thought that 
 they were using Douglas, and it is yet an un- 
 solved problem whether he was not using them 
 all. If he was, then it is for you to consider 
 whether that power to perform wonders is one 
 for you lightly to throw away. 
 
 There is one other thing that I will say to you 
 in this relation. It is but my opinion ; I give it 
 to you without a fee. It is my opinion that it is 
 for you to take him or be defeated ; and that if 
 you do take him you may be beaten. You will 
 surely be beaten if you do not take him. We, the 
 Republicans and others forming the opposition 
 of the country, intend to "stand by our guns," 
 to be patient and firm, and in the long run to beat
 
 i8s9] AT CINCINNATI 263 
 
 you whether you take him or not. We know 
 that before we fairly beat you, we have to beat 
 you both together. We know that **you are all 
 of a feather," and that we have to beat you all 
 together, and we expect to do it. We don't in- 
 tend to be very impatient about it. We mean 
 to be as deliberate and calm about it as it is 
 possible to be, but as firm and resolved as it is 
 possible for men to be. When we do as we say, 
 beat you, you perhaps want to know what we 
 will do with you. 
 
 I will tell you, so far as I am authorized to 
 speak for the opposition, what we mean to do 
 with you. We mean to treat you, as near as we 
 possibly can, as Washington, Jefiferson, and 
 Madison treated you. We mean to leave you 
 alone, and in no way to interfere with your in- 
 stitution ; to abide by all and every compromise 
 of the Constitution, and, in a word, coming back 
 to the original proposition, to treat you, so far 
 as degenerated men (if we have degenerated) 
 may, according to the example of those noble 
 fathers — Washington, Jefiferson, and Madison. 
 We mean to remember that you are as good as 
 we ; that there is no difference between us other 
 than the difference of circumstances. We mean 
 to recognize and bear in mind always that you 
 have as good hearts in your bosoms as other 
 people, or as we claim to have, and treat you ac- 
 cordingly. We mean to marry your girls when 
 we have a chance — the white ones, I mean, and I 
 have the honor to inform you that I once did 
 have a chance in that way. 
 
 I have told you what we mean to do. I want 
 to know, now, when that thing takes place, what 
 do you mean to do? I often hear it intimated
 
 264 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 that you mean to divide the Union whenever a 
 RepubHcan or anything Hke it is elected Presi- 
 dent of the United States. [A voice: ''That is 
 soT] "That is so," one of them says; I wonder 
 if he is a Kentuckian? [A voice: "He is a 
 Douglas man:'] Well, then, I want to know 
 what you are going to do with your half of it? 
 Are you going to split the Ohio down through, 
 and push your half off a piece? Or are you 
 going to keep it right alongside of us outrageous 
 fellows ? Or are you going to build up a wall some 
 way between your country and ours, by which 
 that movable property of yours can't come over 
 here any m_ore, to the danger of your losing it? 
 Do you think you can better yourselves on that 
 subject by leaving us here under no obligation 
 whatever to return those specimens of your mov- 
 able property that come hither? You have 
 divided the Union because we would not do right 
 with you, as you think, upon that subject; when 
 we cease to be under obligations to do anything 
 for you, how much better off do you think you 
 will be ? Will you make war upon us and kill us 
 all ? Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant 
 and as brave men as live; that you can fight as 
 bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any 
 other people living; that you have shown your- 
 selves capable of this upon various occasions ; but 
 man for man, you are not better than we are, and 
 there are not so many of you as there are of us. 
 You will never make much of a hand at whipping 
 us. If we were fewer in numbers than you, I 
 think that you could whip us ; if we were equal it 
 would likely be a drawn battle ; but being inferior 
 in numbers, you will make nothing by attempting 
 to master us. 
 
 I
 
 i8s9] AT CINCINNATI 265 
 
 But perhaps I have addressed myself as long, 
 or longer, to the Kentuckians than I ought to 
 have done inasmuch as I have said that what- 
 ever course you take, we intend in the end to 
 beat you. I propose to address a few remarks 
 to our friends, by way of discussing with them 
 the best means of keeping that promise that I 
 have in good faith made. 
 
 It may appear a little episodical for me to 
 mention the topic of which I shall speak now. It 
 is a favorite proposition of Douglas's that the 
 interference of the General Government, through 
 the ordinance of '87, or through any other act of 
 the General Government, never has made, nor 
 ever can make, a free State; that the ordinance 
 of '87 did not make free States of Ohio, Indiana, 
 or Illinois ; that these States are free upon his 
 "great principle" of popular sovereignty, because 
 the people of those several States have chosen to 
 make them so. At Columbus, and probably here, 
 he undertook to compliment the people that they 
 themselves had made the State of Ohio free, and 
 that the ordinance of '87 was not entitled in any 
 degree to divide the honor with him. I have no 
 doubt that the people of the State of 
 Ohio did make her free according to their own 
 will and judgment; but let the facts be remem- 
 bered. 
 
 In 1802, I believe, it was you who made your 
 first constitution, with the clause prohibiting 
 slavery, and you did it, I suppose, very nearly 
 unanimously; but you should bear in mind that 
 you — speaking of you as one people — that you 
 did so unembarassed by the actual presence of 
 the institution amongst you ; that you made it a 
 free State, not with the embarrassment upon you
 
 266 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 of already having among you many slaves, 
 which, if they had been here, and you had sought 
 to make a free State, you would not know what 
 to do with. If they had been among you, em- 
 barrassing difficulties, most probably, would have 
 induced you to tolerate a slave Constitution in- 
 stead of a free one ; as, indeed, these very dif- 
 ficulties have constrained every people on this 
 continent who have adopted slavery. 
 
 Pray, what was it that made you free ? What 
 kept you free? Did you not find your country 
 free when you came to decide that Ohio should 
 be a free State? It is important to inquire by 
 what reason you found it so. Let us take an il- 
 lustration between the States of Ohio and Ken- 
 tucky. Kentucky is separated by this river 
 Ohio, not a mile wide. A portion of Kentucky, 
 by reason of the course of the Ohio, is further 
 north than this portion of Ohio in which we now 
 stand. Kentucky is entirely covered with 
 slavery — Ohio is entirely free from it. What 
 made that difference ? Was it climate ? No ! 
 A portion of Kentucky was further north than 
 this portion of Ohio. Was it soil ? No ! There 
 is nothing in the soil of the one more favorable 
 to slave-labor than the other. It was not climate 
 or soil that caused one side of the line to be en- 
 tirely covered with slavery and the other side 
 free of it. What was it? Study over it. Tell 
 us, if you can, in all the range of conjecture, if 
 there be anything you can conceive of that made 
 that difference, other than that there was no law 
 of any sort keeping it out of Kentucky, while the 
 ordinance of '87 kept it out of Ohio. If there is 
 any other reason than this, I confess that it is 
 wholly beyond my power to conceive of it. This,
 
 i8s9] AT CINCINNATI 267 
 
 then, I offer to combat the idea that that ordi- 
 nance has never made any State free. 
 
 I don't stop at this illustration. I come to the 
 State of Indiana ; and what I have said as be- 
 tween Kentucky and Ohio, I repeat as between 
 Indiana and Kentucky ; it is equally applicable. 
 One additional argument is applicable also to 
 Indiana. In her territorial condition she more 
 than once petitioned Congress to abrogate the 
 ordinance entirely, or at least so far as to sus- 
 pend its operation for a time, in order that they 
 should exercise the ''popular sovereignty" of 
 having slaves if they wanted them. The men 
 then controlling the General Government, imitat- 
 ing the men of the Revolution, refused Indiana 
 that privilege. And so we have the evidence 
 that Indiana supposed she could have slaves, if 
 it were not for that ordinance ; that she besought 
 Congress to put that barrier out of the way ; that 
 Congress refused to do so, and it all ended at last 
 in Indiana being a free State. Tell me not then 
 that the ordinance of '87 had nothing to do with 
 making Indiana a free State, when we find some 
 men chafing against and only restrained by that 
 barrier. 
 
 Come down again to our State of Illinois. 
 The great Northwest Territory, including Ohio, 
 Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was 
 acquired first, I believe, by the British govern- 
 ment, in part, at least, from the French. Before 
 the establishment of our independence, it became 
 a part of Virginia, enabling Virginia afterward 
 to transfer it to the General Government. There 
 were French settlements in what is now Illinois, 
 and at the same time there were French settle- 
 ments in what is now Missouri — in the tract of
 
 268 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 country that was not purchased till about 1803. 
 In these French settlements negro slavery had 
 existed for many years — perhaps more than a 
 hundred, if not as much as two hundred, years — 
 at Kaskaskia, in Illinois, and at St. Genevieve, or 
 Cape Girardeau, perhaps, in Missouri. The 
 number of slaves was not very great, but there 
 was about the same number in each place. They 
 were there when we acquired the Territory. 
 There was no effort made to break up the rela- 
 tion of master and slave, and even the ordinance 
 of '87 was not so enforced as to destroy that 
 slavery in Illinois ; nor did the ordinance apply to 
 Missouri at all. 
 
 What I want to ask your attention to, at this 
 point, is that Illinois and Missouri came into the 
 Union about the same time, Illinois in the latter 
 part of 1818, and Missouri, after a struggle, I 
 believe, some time in 1820. They had been fill- 
 ing up with American people about the same 
 period of time, their progress enabling them to 
 come into the Union about the same. At the end 
 of that ten years, in which they had been so pre- 
 paring (for it was about that period of time), the 
 number of slaves in Illinois had actually de- 
 creased ; while in Missouri, beginning with very 
 few, at the end of that ten years there were about 
 ten thousand. This being so, and it being re- 
 membered that Missouri and Illinois are, to a 
 certain extent, in the same parallel of latitude, — 
 that the northern half of Missouri and the south- 
 ern half of Illinois are in the same parallel of 
 latitude, — so that climate would have the same 
 effect upon one as upon the other ; and that in 
 the soil there is no material difference so far as 
 bears upon the question of slavery being settled
 
 i859] AT CINCINNATI 269 
 
 upon one or the other ; there being none of those 
 natural causes to produce a difference in filUng 
 them, and yet there being a broad difference in 
 their filHng up, we are led again to inquire what 
 was the cause of that difference. 
 
 It is most natural to say that in Missouri there 
 was no law to keep that country from filling up 
 with slaves, while in Illinois there was the ordi- 
 nance of '87. The ordinance being there, slavery 
 decreased during that ten years — the ordinance 
 not being in the other, it increased from a few to 
 ten thousand. Can anybody doubt the reason of 
 the difference? 
 
 I think all these facts most abundantly prove 
 that my friend Judge Douglas's proposition, that 
 the ordinance of '87, or the national restriction 
 of slavery, never had a tendency to make a free 
 State, is a fallacy — a proposition without the 
 shadow or substance of truth about it. 
 
 Douglas sometimes says that all the States 
 (and it is part of that same proposition I have 
 been discussing) that have become free, have be- 
 come so upon his ''great principle"; that the 
 State of Illinois itself came into the Union as a 
 slave State, and that the people, upon the ''great 
 principle" of popular sovereignty, have since 
 made it a free State. Allow me but a little while 
 to state to you what facts there are to justify 
 him in saying that Illinois came into the Union 
 as a slave State. 
 
 I have mentioned to you that there were a few 
 old French slaves there. They numbered, I 
 think, one or two hundred. Besides that, there 
 had been a territorial law for indenturing black 
 persons. Under that law, in violation of the 
 ordinance of '87, but without any enforcement of
 
 270 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. 17 
 
 the ordinance to overthrow the system, there had 
 been a small number of slaves introduced as in- 
 dentured persons. Owing to this, the clause for 
 the prohibition of slavery was slightly modified. 
 Instead of running like yours, that neither slav- 
 ery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime, 
 of which the party shall have been duly con- 
 victed, should exist in the State, they said that 
 neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should 
 thereafter be introduced, and that the children of 
 indentured servants should be born free ; and 
 nothing was said about the few old French 
 slaves. Out of this fact, that the clause for 
 prohibiting slavery was modified because of the 
 actual presence of it, Douglas asserts again and 
 again that Illinois came into the Union as a slave 
 State. How far the facts sustain the conclusion 
 that he draws, it is for intelligent and impartial 
 men to decide. I leave it with you, with these 
 remarks, worthy of being remembered, that that 
 little thing, those few indentured servants being 
 there, was of itself sufficient to modify a con- 
 stitution made by a people ardently desiring to 
 have a free constitution; showing the power of 
 the actual presence of the institution of slavery 
 to prevent any people, however anxious to make 
 a free State, from making it perfectly so. I 
 have been detaining you longer perhaps than I 
 ought to do. 
 
 I am in some doubt whether to introduce an- 
 other topic upon which I could talk awhile. 
 [Cries of ''Go on," and ''Give us if."] It is this 
 then — Douglas's popular sovereignty, as a prin- 
 ciple, is simply this : If one man chooses to make 
 a slave of another man, neither that man nor 
 anybody else has ?- right to object. Apply it to
 
 1859] AT CINCINNATI 271 
 
 government, as he seeks to apply it, and it is 
 this : If, in a new Territory, into which a few 
 people are beginning to enter for the purpose of 
 making their homes, they choose to either ex- 
 clude slavery from their limits, or to establish it 
 there, however one or the other may affect the 
 persons to be enslaved, or the infinitely greater 
 number of persons who are afterward to inhabit 
 that Territory, or the other members of the 
 family of communities, of which they are but an 
 incipient member, or the general head of the 
 family of States as parent of all — however their 
 action may affect one or the other of these, there 
 is no power or right to interfere. That is 
 Douglas's popular sovereignty applied. Now I 
 think that there is a real popular sovereignty in 
 the world. I think a definition of popular 
 sovereignty, in the abstract, would be about this 
 — that each man shall do precisely as he pleases 
 with himself, and with all those things which ex- 
 clusively concern him. Applied in government, 
 this principle would be, that a general govern- 
 ment shall do all those things which pertain to 
 it, and all the local governments shall do pre- 
 cisely as they please in respect to those matters 
 which exclusively concern them. 
 
 Douglas looks upon slavery as so insignificant 
 that the people must decide that question for 
 themselves, and yet they are not fit to decide 
 who shall be their governor, judge, or secretary, 
 or who shall be any of their officers. These are 
 vast national matters, in his estimation ; but the 
 little matter in his estimation is that of planting 
 slavery there. That is purely of local interest, 
 which nobody should be allowed to say a word 
 about.
 
 272 SPEECHES rSept. it 
 
 Labor is the great source from which nearly- 
 all, if not all, human comforts and necessities 
 are drawn. There is a difference in opinion about 
 the elements of labor in society. Some men as- 
 sume that there is a necessary connection be- 
 tween capital and labor, and that connection 
 draws within it the whole of the labor of the 
 community. They assume that nobody works 
 unless capital excites him to work. They be- 
 gin next to consider what is the best way. They 
 say there are but two ways — one is to hire men 
 and to allure them to labor by their consent ; the 
 other is to buy the men and drive them to it, and 
 that is slavery. Having assumed that, they pro- 
 ceed to discuss the question of whether the 
 laborers themselves are better off in the condi- 
 tion of slaves or of hired laborers, and they 
 usually decide that they are better off in the con- 
 dition of slaves. 
 
 In the first place, I say that the whole thing is 
 a mistake. That there is a certain relation be- 
 tween capital and labor, I admit. That it does 
 exist, and rightfully exists, I think is true. 
 That men who are industrious and sober and 
 honest in the pursuit of their own interests 
 should after a while accumulate capital, and 
 after that should be allowed to enjoy it in peace, 
 and also if they should choose, when they have 
 accumulated it, to use it to save themselves from 
 actual labor, and hire other people to labor for 
 them, is right. In doing so, they do not wrong 
 the man they employ, for they find men, who 
 have not their own land to work upon, or shops 
 to work in, and who are benefited by working 
 for others — hired laborers, receiving their cap- 
 ital for it. Thus a few men that own capital
 
 1859] AT CINCINNATI 273 
 
 hire a few others, and these estabhsh the rela- 
 tion of capital and labor rightfully — a relation 
 of which I make no complaint. But I insist that 
 that relation, after all, does not embrace more 
 than one eighth of the labor of the country. 
 
 [The speaker proceeded to argue that the 
 hired laborer, zvith his ability to become an em- 
 ployer, must have every precedence over him 
 who labors under inducements of force. He 
 continued:] 
 
 I have taken upon myself, in the name of some 
 of you, to say that we expect upon these prin- 
 ciples to ultimately beat them. In order to do 
 so, I think we want and must have a national 
 policy in regard to the institution of slavery that 
 acknowledges and deals with that institution as 
 being wrong. Whoever desires the prevention 
 of the spread of slavery and the nationalization 
 of that institution, yields all when he yields to 
 any policy that either recognizes slavery as being 
 right, or as being an indifferent thing. Nothing 
 will make you successful but setting up a policy 
 which shall treat the thing as being wrong. 
 When I say this, I do not mean to say that this 
 General Government is charged with the duty of 
 redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the 
 world ; but I do think that it is charged with pre- 
 venting and redressing all wrongs which are 
 wrongs to itself. This government is expressly 
 charged with the duty of providing for the 
 general welfare. We believe that the spreading 
 out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery 
 impairs the general welfare. We believe — nay, 
 we know — that that is the only thing that has 
 ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union it- 
 self. The only thing which has ever menaced
 
 274 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 [Sept. 17 
 
 the destruction of the government under which 
 we Hve, is this very thing. To repress this 
 thing, we think, is providing for the general wel- 
 fare. Our friends in Kentucky differ from us. 
 We need not make our argument for them ; but 
 we who think it is wrong in all its relations, or 
 in some of them at least, must decide as to our 
 own actions, and our own course, upon our own 
 judgment. 
 
 I say that we must not interfere with the insti- 
 tution of slavery in the States where it exists, 
 because the Constitution forbids it, and the 
 general welfare does not require us to do so. 
 We must not withhold an efficient fugitive-slave 
 law, because the Constitution requires us, as I 
 understand it, not to withhold such a law. But 
 we must prevent the outspreading of the institu- 
 tion, because neither the Constitution nor general 
 welfare requires us to extend it. We must pre- 
 vent the revival of the African slave-trade, and 
 the enacting by Congress of a territorial slave- 
 code. We must prevent each of these things 
 being done by either congresses or courts. The 
 people of these United States are the rightful 
 masters of both congresses and courts, not to 
 overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow 
 the men who pervert the Constitution. 
 
 To do these things we must employ instru- 
 mentalities. We must hold conventions ; we 
 must adopt platforms, if we conform to ordinary 
 custom ; we must nominate candidates ; and we 
 must carry elections. In all these things, I think 
 that we ought to keep in view our real purpose, 
 and in none do anything that stands adverse to 
 our purpose. If we shall adopt a platform that 
 fails to recognize or express our purpose, or
 
 i859] AT CINCINNATI 275 
 
 elect a man that declares himself inimical to our 
 purpose, we not only take nothing by our suc- 
 cess, but we tacitly admit that we act upon no 
 other principle than a desire to have ''the loaves 
 and fishes," by which, in the end, our apparent 
 success is really an injury to us. 
 
 I know that it is very desirable with me, as 
 with everybody else, that all the elements of the 
 Opposition shall unite in the next presidential 
 election, and in all future time. I am anxious 
 that that should be, but there are things seriously 
 to be considered in relation to that matter. If 
 the terms can be arranged, I am in favor of the 
 union. But suppose we shall take up some man, 
 and put him upon one end or the other of the 
 ticket, who declares himself against us in regard 
 to the prevention of the spread of slavery, who 
 turns up his nose and says he is tired of hearing 
 anything more about it, who is more against us 
 than against the enemy — what will be the issue? 
 Why, he will get no slave States after all — he 
 has tried that already until being beat is the rule 
 for him. If we nominate him upon that ground, 
 he will not carry a slave State, and not only so, 
 but that portion of our men who are high-strung 
 upon the principle we really fight for will not go 
 for him, and he won't get a single electoral vote 
 anywhere, except, perhaps, in the State of Mary- 
 land. There is no use in saying to us that we 
 are stubborn and obstinate because we won't do 
 some such thing as this. We cannot do it. We 
 cannot get our men to vote it. I speak by the 
 card, that we cannot give the State of Illinois in 
 such case by fifty thousand. We would be flat- 
 ter down than the ''Negro Democracy" them- 
 selves have the heart to wish to see us.
 
 276 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 After saying this much, let me say a little on 
 the other side. There are plenty of men in the 
 slave States that are altogether good enough for 
 me to be either President or Vice-President, pro- 
 vided they will profess their sympathy with our 
 purpose, and will place themselves on such 
 ground that our men, upon principle, can vote 
 for them. There are scores of them — good men 
 in their character for intelligence, and talent, 
 and integrity. If such an one will place himself 
 upon the right ground, I am for his occupying 
 one place upon the next Republican or Opposi- 
 tion ticket. I will heartily go for him. But un- 
 less he does so place himself, I think it is a mat- 
 ter of perfect nonsense to attempt to bring about 
 a union upon any other basis ; that if a union be 
 made, the elements will scatter so that there can 
 be no success for such a ticket, nor anything like 
 success. The good old maxims of the Bible are 
 applicable, and truly applicable, to human 
 affairs, and in this, as in other things, we may 
 say here that he who is not for us is against us ; 
 he who gathereth not with us scattereth. I 
 should be glad to have some of the many good, 
 and able, and noble men of the South to place 
 themselves where we can confer upon them the 
 high honor of an election upon one or the 
 other end of our ticket. It would do my soul 
 good to do that thing. It would enable us to 
 teach them that, inasmuch as we select one of 
 their own number to carry out our principles, we 
 are free from the charge that we mean more 
 than we say. 
 
 But, my friends, I have detained you much 
 longer than I expected to do. I believe I may 
 allow myself the cornpliment to say that you
 
 i8s93 AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 277 
 
 have stayed and heard me with great patience, 
 for which I return you my most sincere thanks. 
 
 The Advantages of "Thorough Cultivation," 
 and the Fallacies of the "Mud-sill" Theory 
 of Labor's Subjection to Capital. 
 
 Address before the Wisconsin State Agri- 
 cultural Society, at Milwaukee. Sep- 
 tember 30, 1859. 
 
 Members of the Agricultural Society and 
 Citizens of Wisconsin: Agricultural fairs are be- 
 coming an institution of the country. They are 
 useful in more ways than one. They bring us 
 together, and thereby make us better acquainted 
 and better friends than we otherwise would be. 
 From the first appearance of man upon the earth 
 down to very recent times, the words "stranger" 
 and "enemy" were quite or almost synonymous. 
 Long after civilized nations had defined robbery 
 and murder as high crimes, and had afiixed 
 severe punishments to them, when practiced 
 among and upon their own people respectively, 
 it was deemed no oifense, but even meritorious, 
 to rob and murder and enslave strangers, 
 whether as nations or as individuals. Even yet, 
 this has not totally disappeared. The man of 
 the highest moral cultivation, in spite of all 
 which abstract principle can do, likes him whom 
 he does know much better than him whom he 
 does not know. To correct the evils, great and 
 small, which spring from want of sympathy and 
 from positive enmity among strangers, as nations 
 or as individuals, is one of the highest functions 
 of civilization. To this end our agricultural
 
 278 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 fairs contribute in no small degree. They ren- 
 der more pleasant, and more strong, and more 
 durable the bond of social and political union 
 among us. Again, if, as Pope declares, ''happi- 
 ness is our being's end and aim," our fairs con- 
 tribute much to that end and aim, as occasions of 
 recreation, as holidays. Constituted as man is, 
 he has positive need of occasional recreation, and 
 whatever can give him this associated with virtue 
 and advantage, and free from vice and disad- 
 vantage, is a positive good. Such recreation 
 our fairs afford. They are a present pleasure, 
 to be followed by no pain as a consequence ; they 
 are a present pleasure, making the future more 
 pleasant. 
 
 But the chief use of agricultural fairs is to aid 
 in improving the great calling of agriculture in 
 all its departments and minute divisions ; to 
 make mutual exchange of agricultural dis- 
 covery, information, and knowledge ; so that, at 
 the end, all may know everything which may 
 have been known to but one or to but few, at the 
 beginning; to bring together especially all which 
 is supposed to be not generally known because 
 of recent discovery or invention. 
 
 And not only to bring together and to impart 
 all which has been accidentally discovered and 
 invented upon ordinary motive, but by exciting 
 emulation for premiums, and for the pride and 
 honor of success, — of triumph, in some sort, — to 
 stimulate that discovery and invention into ex- 
 traordinary activity. In this these fairs are kin- 
 dred to the patent clause in the Constitution of 
 the United States, and to the department and 
 practical system based upon that clause. 
 
 One feature, I believe, of every fair is 9.
 
 1859] AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 279 
 
 regular address. The Agricultural Society of 
 the young, prosperous, and soon to be great 
 State of Wisconsin has done me the high honor 
 of selecting me to make that address upon this 
 occasion — an honor for which I make my pro- 
 found and grateful acknowledgment. 
 
 I presume I am not expected to employ the 
 time assigned me in the mere flattery of the 
 farmers as a class. My opinion of them is that, 
 in proportion to numbers, they are neither better 
 nor worse than other people. In the nature of 
 things they are more numerous than any other 
 class ; and I believe there really are more at- 
 tempts at flattering them than any other, the 
 reason of which I cannot perceive, unless it be 
 that they can cast more votes than any other. 
 On reflection, I am not quite sure that there is 
 not cause of suspicion against you in selecting 
 miC, in some sort a politician and in no sort a 
 farmer, to address you. 
 
 But farmers being the most numerous class, 
 it follows that their interest is the largest 
 interest. It also follows that that interest is 
 most worthy of all to be cherished and cultivated 
 — that if there be inevitable conflict between that 
 interest and any other, that other should yield. 
 
 Again, I suppose it is not expected of me to 
 impart to you much specific information on 
 agriculture. You have no reason to believe, and 
 do not believe, that I possess it; if that were 
 v^hat you seek in this address, any one of your 
 own number or class would be more able to 
 furnish it. You, perhaps, do expect me to give 
 some general interest to the occasion, and to 
 make some general suggestions on practical mat- 
 ters. I shall attempt nothing more. And in
 
 28o 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 [Sept. 30 
 
 such suggestions by me, quite likely very little 
 will be new to you, and a large part of the rest 
 will be possibly already known to be erroneous. 
 
 My first suggestion is an inquiry as to the 
 effect of greater thoroughness in all the depart- 
 ments of agriculture than now prevails in the 
 Northwest — perhaps I might say in America. 
 To speak entirely within bounds, it is known that 
 fifty bushels of wheat, or one hundred bushels of 
 Indian corn, can be produced from an acre. 
 Less than a year ago I saw it stated that a man, 
 by extraordinary care and labor, had produced 
 of wheat what was equal to two hundred bushels 
 from an acre. But take fifty of wheat, and one 
 hundred of corn, to be the possibility, and com- 
 pare it with the actual crops of the country. 
 Many years ago I saw it stated, in a patent-office 
 report, that eighteen bushels was the average 
 crop throughout the United States ; and this 
 year an intelligent farmer of Illinois assured me 
 that he did not believe the land harvested in that 
 State this season had yielded more than an aver- 
 age of eight bushels to the acre ; much was cut, 
 and then abandoned as not worth threshing, and 
 much was abandoned as not worth cutting. As 
 to Indian corn, and indeed, most other crops, 
 the case has not been much better. For the last 
 four years I do not believe the ground planted 
 with corn in Illinois has produced an average of 
 twenty bushels to the acre. It is true that- here- 
 tofore we have had better crops with no better 
 cultivation, but I believe it is also true that the 
 soil has never been pushed up to one half of its 
 capacity. 
 
 What would be the effect upon the farming 
 interest to push the soil up to something near its
 
 i8s9] AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 281 
 
 full capacity? Unquestionably it will take more 
 labor to produce fifty bushels from an acre than 
 it will to produce ten bushels from the same 
 acre ; but will it take more labor to produce fifty 
 bushels from one acre than from five? Unques- 
 tionably thorough cultivation will require more 
 labor to the acre ; but will it require more to the 
 bushel? If it should require just as much to the 
 bushel, there are some probable, and several cer- 
 tain, advantages in favor of the thorough 
 practice. It is probable it would develop those 
 unknown causes which of late years have cut 
 down our crops below their former average. It 
 is almost certain, I think, that by deeper plow- 
 ing, analysis of the soils, experiments with 
 manures and varieties of seeds, observance of 
 seasons, and the like, these causes would be dis- 
 covered and remedied. It is certain that 
 thorough cultivation would spare half, or more 
 than half, the cost of land, simply because the 
 same produce would be got from half, or from 
 less than half, the quantity of land. This prop- 
 osition is self-evident, and can be made no 
 plainer by repetitions or illustrations. The cost 
 of land is a great item, even in new countries, 
 and it constantly grows greater and greater, in 
 comparison with other items, as the country 
 grows older. 
 
 It also would spare the making and maintain- 
 ing of inclosures for the same, whether these in- 
 closures should be hedges, ditches, or fences. 
 This again is a heavy item — heavy at first, and 
 heavy in its continual demand for repairs. I re- 
 member once being greatly astonished by an 
 apparently authentic exhibition of the proportion 
 the cost of an inclosure bears to all the other
 
 282 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 expenses of the farmer, though I cannot remem- 
 ber exactly what that proportion was. Any 
 farmer, if he will, can ascertain it in his own 
 case for himself. 
 
 Again, a great amount of locomotion is spared 
 by thorough cultivation. Take fifty bushels of 
 wheat ready for harvest, standing upon a single 
 acre, and it can be harvested in any of the 
 known ways with less than half the labor which 
 would be required if it were spread over five 
 acres. This would be true if cut by the old 
 hand-sickle ; true, to a greater extent, if by the 
 scythe and cradle ; and to a still greater extent, 
 if by the machines now in use. These machines 
 are chiefly valuable as a means of substituting 
 animal-power for the power of men in this 
 branch of farm-work. In the highest degree of 
 perfection yet reached in applying the horse- 
 power to harvesting, fully nine tenths of the 
 power is expended by the animal in carrying 
 himself and dragging the machine over the field, 
 leaving certainly not more than one tenth to be 
 applied directly to the only end of the whole 
 operation — the gathering in of the grain, and 
 clipping of the straw. When grain is very thin 
 on the ground, it is always more or less inter- 
 mingled with weeds, chess, and the like, and a 
 large part of the power is expended in cutting 
 these. It is plain that when the crop is very 
 thick upon the ground, a larger proportion of 
 the power is directly applied to gathering in and 
 cutting it ; and the smaller to that which is totally 
 useless as an end. And what I have said of 
 harvesting is true in a greater or less degree of 
 mowing, plowing, gathering in of crops gener- 
 ally, and indeed of almost all farm-work.
 
 i859i AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 283 
 
 The e^ect of thorough cultivation upon the 
 farmer's own mind, and in reaction through his 
 mind back upon his business, is perhaps quite 
 equal to any other of its efifects. Every man is 
 proud of what he does well, and no man is proud 
 of that he does not well. With the former his 
 heart is in his work, and he will do twice as 
 much of it with less fatigue; the latter he per- 
 forms a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, 
 turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly 
 tired — the little he has done comes to nothing 
 for want of finishing. 
 
 The man who produces a good full crop will 
 scarcely ever let any part of it go to waste ; he 
 will keep up the inclosure about it, and allow 
 neither man nor beast to trespass upon it ; he 
 will gather it in due season, and store it in per- 
 fect security. Thus he labors with satisfaction, 
 and saves himself the whole fruit of his labor. 
 The other, starting with no purpose for a full 
 crop, labors less, and with less satisfaction, al- 
 lows his fences to fall, and cattle to trespass, 
 gathers not in due season, or not at all. Thus 
 the labor he has performed is wasted away, little 
 by little, till in the end he derives scarcely any- 
 thing from it. 
 
 The ambition for broad acres leads to poor 
 farming, even with men of energy. I scarcely 
 ever knew a mammoth farm to sustain itself, 
 much less to return a profit upon the outlay. I 
 have more than once known a man to spend a 
 respectable fortune upon one, fail, and leave it, 
 and then some man of modest aims get a small 
 fraction of the ground, and make a good living 
 upon it. Mammoth farms are like tools or 
 weapons which are too heavy to be handled ;
 
 284 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 erelong they are thrown aside at a great 
 loss. 
 
 The successful application of steam-power to 
 farm-work is a desideratum — especially a steam- 
 plow. It is not enough that a machine operated 
 by steam will really plow. To be successful, it 
 must, all things considered, plow better than can 
 be done with animal-power. It must do all the 
 work as well, and cheaper ; or more rapidly, so 
 as to get through more perfectly in season ; or in 
 some way afford an advantage over plowing 
 with animals, else it is no success. I have never 
 seen a machine intended for a steam-plow. 
 Much praise and admiration are bestowed upon 
 some of them, and they may be, for aught I 
 know, already successful ; but I have not per- 
 ceived the demonstration of it. I have thought 
 a good deal, in an abstract way, about a steam- 
 plow. That one which shall be so contrived as 
 to apply the larger proportion of its power to the 
 cutting and turning the soil, and the smallest, to 
 the moving itself over the field, will be the best 
 one. A very small stationary-engine would 
 draw a large gang of plows through the ground 
 from a short distance to itself; but when it is 
 not stationary, but has to move along like a 
 horse, dragging the plows after it, it must have 
 additional power to carry itself; and the diffi- 
 culty grows by what is intended to overcome it; 
 for what adds power also adds size and weight 
 to the machine, thus increasing again the de- 
 mand for power. Suppose you construct the 
 machine so as to cut a succession of short fur- 
 rows, say a rod in length, transversely to the 
 course the machine is locomoting, something 
 like the shuttle in weaving. In such case the
 
 1859] AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 285 
 
 whole machine would move north only the width 
 of a furrow, while in length the furrow would be 
 a rod from east to west. In such case a very 
 large proportion of the power would be applied 
 to the actual plowing. But in this, too, there 
 would be difficulty, which would be the getting 
 of the plow into and out of the ground, at the 
 end of all these short furrows. 
 
 I believe, however, ingenious men will, if they 
 have not already, overcome the difficulty I have 
 suggested. But there is still another, about 
 which I am less sanguine. It is the supply of 
 fuel, and especially water, to make steam. 
 Such supply is clearly practicable ; but can the 
 expense of it be borne? Steamboats live upon 
 the water, and find their fuel at stated places. 
 Steam-mills and other stationary steam-ma- 
 chinery have their stationary supplies of fuel 
 and water. Railroad-locomotives have their 
 regular wood and water stations. But the 
 steam-plow is less fortunate. It does not live 
 upon the water, and if it be once at a water-sta- 
 tion, it will work away from it, and when it gets 
 away cannot return without leaving its work, at 
 a great expense of its time and strength. It will 
 occur that a wagon-and-horse team might be 
 employed to supply it with fuel and water ; but 
 this, too, is expensive ; and the question recurs, 
 "Can the expense be borne?" When this is 
 added to all other expenses, will not plowing 
 cost more than in the old way? 
 
 It is to be hoped that the steam-plow will be 
 finally successful, and if it shall be, "thorough 
 cultivation" — putting the soil to the top of its 
 capacity, producing the largest crop possible 
 from a given quantity of ground — will be most
 
 286 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 favorable for it. Doing a large amount of work 
 upon a small quantity of ground, it will be as 
 nearly as possible stationary while Vv^orking, and 
 as free as possible from locomotion, thus ex- 
 pending its strength as much as possible upon its 
 work, and as little as possible in traveling. Our 
 thanks, and something more substantial than 
 thanks, are due to every man engaged in the 
 effort to produce a successful steam-plow. Even 
 the unsuccessful will bring something to light 
 which, in the hands of others, will contribute to 
 the final success. I have not pointed out diffi- 
 culties in order to discourage, but in order that, 
 being seen, they may be the more readily over- 
 come. 
 
 The world is agreed that labor is the source 
 from which human wants are mainly supplied. 
 There is no dispute upon this point. From 
 this point, however, men immediately diverge. 
 Much disputation is maintained as to the best 
 way of applying and controlling the labor ele- 
 ment. By some it is assumed that labor is avail- 
 able only in connection with capital — that no- 
 body labors, unless somebody else owning 
 capital, somehow, by the use of it, induces him 
 to do it. Having assumed this, they proceed to 
 consider whether it is best that capital shall hire 
 laborers, and thus induce them to work by their 
 own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it, 
 without their consent. Having proceeded so 
 far, they naturally conclude that all laborers are 
 naturally either hired laborers or slaves. They 
 further assume that whoever is once a hired 
 laborer, is fatally fixed in that condition for life ; 
 and thence again, that his condition is as bad as, 
 or worse than, that of a slave. This is the
 
 i8s9J AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 287 
 
 ''mud-sill" theory. But another class of rea- 
 soners hold the opinion that there is no such 
 relation between capital and labor as assumed ; 
 that there is no such thing as a free man being 
 fatally fixed for life in the condition of a hired 
 laborer ; that both these assumptions are false, 
 and all inferences from them groundless. They 
 hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, 
 capital ; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, 
 and could never have existed if labor had not 
 first existed ; that labor can exist without capital, 
 but that capital could never have existed without 
 labor. Hence they hold that labor is the 
 superior — greatly the superior — of capital. 
 
 They do not deny that there is, and probably 
 always will be, a relation between labor and 
 capital. The error, as they hold, is in assuming 
 that the whole labor of the world exists within 
 that relation. A few men own capital ; and that 
 few avoid labor themselves, and with their 
 capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. 
 A large majority belong to neither class — 
 neither work for others, nor have others work- 
 ing for them. Even in all our slave States ex- 
 cept South Carolina, a majority of the whole 
 people of all colors are neither slaves nor mas- 
 ters. In these free States, a large majority are 
 neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their 
 families — wives, sons, and daughters — work for 
 themselves, on their farms, in their houses, and 
 in their shops, taking the whole product to them- 
 selves, and asking no favors of capital on the 
 one hand, nor of hirelings or slaves 6n the other. 
 It is not forgotten that a considerable number of 
 persons mingle their own labor with capital — 
 that is, labor with their own hands, and also buy
 
 288 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 slaves or hire free men to labor for them ; but 
 this is only a mixed, and not a distinct, class. 
 No principle stated is disturbed by the existence 
 of this mixed class. Again, as has already 
 been said, the opponents of the "mud-sill" theory 
 insist that there is not, of necessity, any such 
 thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that 
 condition for life. There is demonstration for 
 saying this. Many independent men in this as- 
 sembly doubtless a few years ago were hired 
 laborers. And their case is almost, if not quite, 
 the general rule. 
 
 The prudent, penniless beginner in the world 
 labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with 
 which to buy tools or land for himself, then 
 labors on his own account another while, and at 
 length hires another new beginner to help him. 
 This, say its advocates, is free labor — the just, 
 and generous, and prosperous system, which 
 opens the way for all, gives hope to all, and 
 energy, and progress, and improvement of con- 
 dition to all. If any continue through life in the 
 condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault 
 of the system, but because of either a dependent 
 nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, 
 or singular misfortune. I have said this much 
 about the elements of labor generally, as intro- 
 ductory to the consideration of a new phase 
 which that element is in process of assuming. 
 The old general rule was that educated people 
 did not perform manual labor. They managed 
 to eat their bread, leaving the toil of producing 
 it to the uneducated. This was not an insup- 
 portable evil to the working bees, so long as the 
 class of drones remained very small. But now, 
 especially in these free States, nearly all are
 
 i8s9] AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 289 
 
 educated — quite too nearly all to leave the labor 
 of the uneducated in any wise adequate to the 
 support of the whole. It follows from this that 
 henceforth educated people must labor. Other- 
 wise, education itself would become a positive 
 and intolerable evil. No country can sustain in 
 idleness more than a small percentage of its 
 numbers. The great majority must labor at 
 something productive. From these premises the 
 problem springs, ''How can labor and education 
 be the most satisfactorily combined?" 
 
 By the "mud-sill" theory"^ it is assumed that 
 labor and education are incompatible, and any 
 practical combination of them impossible. Ac- 
 cording to that theory, a blind horse upon a 
 tread-mill is a perfect illustration of what a 
 laborer should be — all the better for being blind, 
 that he could not kick understandingly. Ac- 
 cording to that theory, the education of laborers 
 is not only useless but pernicious and dangerous. 
 In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune 
 that laborers should have heads at all. Those 
 same heads are regarded as explosive materials, 
 only to be safely kept in damp places, as far as 
 possible from that peculiar sort of fire which 
 ignites them. A Yankee who could invent a 
 strong-handed man without a head would re- 
 ceive the everlasting gratitude of the "mud-sill" 
 advocates. 
 
 But free labor says, "No." Free labor argues 
 that as the Author of man makes every indi- 
 vidual with one head and one pair of hands, it 
 
 * Enunciated by James H. Hammond, Senator from 
 South Carolina, 1857 to 1861. In a speech in the Senate 
 he said that cultivated society necessarily rested on an 
 inferior class, that of labor, just as a house stood on mud- 
 sills : that is., sills lying directly on the ground.
 
 290 
 
 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 was probably intended that heads and hands 
 should cooperate as friends, and that that partic- 
 ular head should direct and control that pair of 
 hands. As each man has one mouth to be fed, 
 and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was 
 probably intended that that particular pair of 
 hands should feed that particular mouth — that 
 each head is the natural guardian, director, and 
 protector of the hands and mouth inseparably 
 connected with it ; and that being so, every head 
 should be cultivated and improved by whatever 
 will add to its capacity for performing its 
 charge. In one word, free labor insists on uni- 
 versal education. 
 
 I have so far stated the opposite theories of 
 "mud-sill" and "free labor," without declaring 
 any preference of my own between them. On 
 an occasion like this, I ought not to declare any. 
 I suppose, however, I shall not be mistaken in 
 assuming as a fact that the people of Wisconsin 
 prefer free labor, with its natural companion, 
 education. 
 
 This leads to the further reflection that no 
 other human occupation opens so wide a field for 
 the profitable and agreeable combination of labor 
 with cultivated thought, as agriculture. I know 
 nothing so pleasant to the mind as the discovery 
 of anything that is at once new and valuable — 
 nothing that so lightens and sweetens toil as the 
 hopeful pursuit of such discovery. And how 
 vast and how varied a field is agriculture for 
 such discovery ! The mind, already trained to 
 thought in the country school, or higher school, 
 cannot fail to find there an exhaustless source of 
 enjoyment. Every blade of grass is a study; 
 and to produce two where there was but one is
 
 1859] AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 291 
 
 both a profit and a pleasure. And not grass 
 alone, but soils, seeds, and seasons — hedges, 
 ditches, and fences — draining, droughts, and 
 irrigation — plowing, hoeing, and harrowing — 
 reaping, mowing, and threshing — saving crops, 
 pests of crops, diseases of crops, and what will 
 prevent or cure them — implements, utensils, and 
 machines, their relative merits, and how to im- 
 prove them — hogs, horses, and cattle — sheep, 
 goats, and poultry — trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, 
 and flowers — the thousand things of which these 
 are specimens — each a world of study within 
 itself. 
 
 In all this, book-learning is available. A 
 capacity and taste for reading gives access to 
 whatever has already been discovered by others. 
 It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already 
 solved problems. And not only so : it gives a 
 relish and facility for successfully pursuing the 
 unsolved ones. The rudiments of science are 
 available, and highly available. Some knowl- 
 edge of botany assists in dealing with the vege- 
 table world — with all growing crops. Chemistry 
 assists in the analysis of soils, selection and ap- 
 plication of manures, and in numerous other 
 ways. The mechanical branches of natural 
 philosophy are ready help in almost everything, 
 but especially in reference to implements and 
 machinery. 
 
 The thought recurs that education — cultivated 
 thought — can best be combined with agricultural 
 labor, or any labor, on the principle of thorough 
 work; that careless, half-performed, slovenly 
 work makes no place for such combination ; and 
 thorough work, again, renders sufficient the 
 smallest quantity of ground to each man ; and
 
 292 SPEECHES [Sept. 30 
 
 this, again, conforms to what must occur in a 
 world less inclined to wars and more devoted to 
 the arts of peace than heretofore. Population 
 must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in 
 former times, and erelong the most valuable of 
 all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable 
 subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No 
 community whose every member possesses this 
 art, can ever be the victim of oppression in any 
 of its forms. Such community will be alike 
 independent of crowned kings, money kings, and 
 land kings. 
 
 But, according to your programme, the award- 
 ing of premiums awaits the closing of this 
 address. Considering the deep interest neces- 
 sarily pertaining to that performance, it would 
 be no wonder if I am already heard with some 
 impatience. I will detain you but a moment 
 longer. Some of you will be successful, and 
 such will need but little philosophy to take them 
 home in cheerful spirits ; others will be disap- 
 pointed, and will be in a less happy mood. To 
 such let it be said, ''Lay it not too much to 
 heart." Let them adopt the maxim, ''Better 
 luck next time," and then by renewed exertion 
 make that better luck for themselves. 
 
 And by the successful and unsuccessful let it 
 be remembered that while occasions like the 
 present bring their sober and durable benefits, 
 the exultations and mortifications of them arc 
 but temporary ; that the victor will soon be van- 
 quished if he relax in his exertion ; and that the 
 vanquished this year may be victor the next, in 
 spite of all competition. 
 
 It is said an Eastern monarch once charged 
 his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever
 
 i8s9] AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS 293 
 
 in view, and which should be true and appropri- 
 ate in all times and situations. They presented 
 him the words, "And this, too, shall pass away." 
 How much it expresses ! How chastening in the 
 hour of pride ! How consoling in the depths of 
 affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away." 
 And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true. Let us 
 hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the 
 physical world beneath and around us, and the 
 intellectual and moral world within us, we shall 
 secure an individual, social, and political pros- 
 perity and happiness, whose course shall be on- 
 ward and upward, and which, while the earth 
 endures, shall not pass away.