COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH

DELIVERED AT COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 27, 1860


MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW YORK:--The facts with which
I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there
anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be
any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the
inferences and observations following that presentation. In his speech
last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in the New York _Times_,
Senator Douglas said: “Our fathers, when they framed the government
under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even
better, than we do now.”

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so
adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting-point
for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy
headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: What was the
understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?

What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must
be, “The Constitution of the United States.” That Constitution consists
of the original, framed in 1787, and under which the present government
first went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed amendments,
the first ten of which were framed in 1789.

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the
“thirty-nine” who signed the original instrument may be fairly called
our fathers who framed that part of the present government. It is
almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true
to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole
nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and
accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated.

I take these “thirty-nine,” for the present, as being “our fathers who
framed the government under which we live.” What is the question which,
according to the text, those fathers understood “just as well, and even
better, than we do now”?

It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal authority,
or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to
control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?

Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans
the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this
issue--this question--is precisely what the text declares our
fathers understood “better than we.” Let us now inquire whether the
“thirty-nine,” or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and
if they did, how they acted upon it--how they expressed that better
understanding. In 1784, three years before the Constitution, the
United States then owning the Northwestern Territory and no other,
the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of
prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the “thirty-nine”
who afterward framed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted
on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh
Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their
understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor
anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as
to slavery in Federal territory. The other of the four, James McHenry,
voted against the prohibition, showing that for some cause he thought
it improper to vote for it.

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the convention was
in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was
the only Territory owned by the United States, the same question of
prohibiting slavery in the Territory again came before the Congress
of the Confederation; and two more of the “thirty-nine” who afterward
signed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted on the
question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted
for the prohibition--thus showing that in their understanding no line
dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, properly
forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal
territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what
is now well known as the ordinance of ’87.

The question of Federal control of slavery in the Territories seems not
to have been directly before the convention which framed the original
Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the “thirty-nine” or
any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on
that precise question.

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act
was passed to enforce the ordinance of ’87, including the prohibition
of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was
reported by one of the “thirty-nine”--Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member
of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through
all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both
branches without ayes and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous
passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine
fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon,
Nicholas Gilman, William S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris,
Thomas Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William
Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler,
Daniel Carroll, and James Madison.

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from
Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade
Congress to prohibit slavery in the Federal territory; else both
their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the
Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.

Again, George Washington, another of the “thirty-nine,” was then
President of the United States, and as such approved and signed the
bill, thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in
his understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor
anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control
as to slavery in Federal territory.

No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North
Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting
the State of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that
which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both
deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the
Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country.
Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under
these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did
not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere
with it--take control of it--even there, to a certain extent. In
1798 Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of
organization they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory
from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom
to slaves so brought. This act passed both branches of Congress without
yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the “thirty-nine” who
framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read,
and Abraham Baldwin. They all probably voted for it. Certainly they
would have placed their opposition to it upon record if, in their
understanding, any line dividing local from Federal authority, or
anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government
to control as to slavery in Federal territory.

In 1803 the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country. Our
former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States;
but this Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In
1804 Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it which
now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within
that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There were other
considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and
thoroughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the
Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it--take
control of it--in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the
case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein made in
relation to slaves was:

1st. That no slave should be imported into the Territory from foreign
parts.

2d. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported into
the United States since the first day of May, 1798.

3d. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the owner, and
for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the cases being a fine
upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave.

This act also was passed without ayes or nays. In the Congress which
passed it there were two of the “thirty-nine.” They were Abraham
Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi,
it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed
it to pass without recording their opposition to it if, in their
understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local from
Federal authority, or any provision of the Constitution.

In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. Many votes were
taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the various
phases of the general question. Two of the “thirty-nine”--Rufus King
and Charles Pinckney--were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily
voted for slavery prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr.
Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against
all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his understanding,
no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything in the
Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in Federal
territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, in his
understanding, there was some sufficient reason for opposing such
prohibition in that case.

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the “thirty-nine,”
or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to
discover.

To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being four in 1784, two
in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in
1819-20, there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John
Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each
twice, and Abraham Baldwin three times. The true number of those of the
“thirty-nine” whom I have shown to have acted upon the question which,
by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving
sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way.

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers “who
framed the government under which we live,” who have, upon their
official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very
question which the text affirms they “understood just as well, and
even better, than we do now”; and twenty-one of them--a clear majority
of the whole “thirty-nine”--so acting upon it as to make them guilty
of gross political impropriety and willful perjury if, in their
understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority,
or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to
support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the
Federal Territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak
louder than words, so actions under such responsibility speak still
louder.

Two of the twenty-three voted against congressional prohibition of
slavery in the Federal Territories, in the instances in which they
acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not
known. They may have done so because they thought a proper division of
local from Federal authority, or some provision or principle of the
Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without any such question,
have voted against the prohibition on what appeared to them to be
sufficient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the
Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an
unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one
may and ought to vote against a measure which he deems constitutional
if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be
unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition as
having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of
local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade
the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory.

The remaining sixteen of the “thirty-nine,” so far as I have
discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the direct
question of Federal control of slavery in the Federal Territories.
But there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon
that question would not have appeared different from that of their
twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all.

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely
omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person,
however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers, who framed
the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also
omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of
the “thirty-nine” even on any other phase of the general question
of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on
those other phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the morality and
policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct
question of Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories, the
sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as
the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted
anti-slavery men of those times,--as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton,
and Gouverneur Morris,--while there was not one now known to have been
otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.

The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed
the original Constitution, twenty-one--a clear majority of the
whole--certainly understood that no proper division of local from
Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories;
while all the rest had probably the same understanding. Such,
unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the
original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the
question “better than we.”

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question
manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the
original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I
have already stated, the present frame of “the government under which
we live” consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles
framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that Federal control
of slavery in Federal Territories violates the Constitution, point
us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I
understand, they all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles,
and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred
Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides
that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty, or property without
due process of law”; while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents
plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that “the powers
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” “are reserved
to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first
Congress which sat under the Constitution--the identical Congress
which passed the act, already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition
of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same
Congress, but they were the identical, same individual men who, at
the same session, and at the same time within the session, had under
consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these constitutional
amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory
the nation then owned. The constitutional amendments were introduced
before, and passed after, the act enforcing the ordinance of ’87; so
that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the ordinance,
the constitutional amendments were also pending.

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of
the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were
pre-eminently our fathers who framed that part of “the government
under which we live” which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal
Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in anyone at this day to affirm that
the two things which that Congress deliberately framed and carried to
maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other?
And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled
with the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the
two things alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really
were inconsistent better than we--better than he who affirms that they
are inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the
original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress
which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly
include those who may be fairly called “our fathers who framed the
government under which we live.” And so assuming, I defy any man to
show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in
his understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority,
or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to
control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further.
I defy anyone to show that any living man in the whole world ever did,
prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost
say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century),
declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from
Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal
Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. To
those who now so declare I give not only “our fathers who framed the
government under which we live,” but with them all other living men
within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and
they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing
with them.

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I
do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our
fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current
experience--to reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is
that, if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in
any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so
clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed,
cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves
declare they understood the question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division
of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution,
forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal
Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by
all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no
right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less
leisure to study it, into the false belief that “our fathers who framed
the government under which we live” were of the same opinion--thus
substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair
argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes “our fathers
who framed the government under which we live” used and applied
principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand
that a proper division of local from Federal authority, or some part
of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to
slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But he
should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that,
in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did
themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by
asserting that they “understood the question just as well, and even
better, than we do now.”

But enough! Let all who believe that “our fathers who framed the
government under which we live understood this question just as well,
and even better, than we do now,” speak as they spoke, and act as
they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask--all Republicans
desire--in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it
be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated
and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among
us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the
guarantees those fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and
fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far
as I know or believe, they will be content.

And now, if they would listen,--as I suppose they will not,--I would
address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just
people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and
justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you
speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles,
or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing
to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to “Black Republicans.”
In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an
unconditional condemnation of “Black Republicanism” as the first
thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be
an indispensable prerequisite--license, so to speak--among you to be
admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now can you or not be prevailed
upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even
to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then
be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the
burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it?
Why, that our party has no existence in your section--gets no votes
in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove
the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of
principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease
to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet are you
willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that
we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section
this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly
is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no
votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And
if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and
remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle
or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice,
the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have
started--to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our
principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of
ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are
sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then,
on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong
your section; and so meet us as if it were possible that something
may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you
really believe that the principle which “our fathers who framed the
government under which we live” thought so clearly right as to adopt
it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in
fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment’s
consideration.

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against
sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less
than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as
President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress
enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory,
which act embodied the policy of the government upon that subject up to
and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after
he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a
wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should
at some time have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen
upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against
us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would
he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy,
or upon you, who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington,
and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the
right application of it.

But you say you are conservative--eminently conservative--while we
are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is
conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the
new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on
the point in controversy which was adopted by “our fathers who framed
the government under which we live”; while you with one accord reject,
and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting
something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that
substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans,
but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of
the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade;
some for a congressional slave code for the Territories; some for
Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit slavery within their
limits; some for maintaining slavery in the Territories through the
judiciary; some for the “gur-reat pur-rinciple” that “if one man
would enslave another, no third man should object,” fantastically
called “popular sovereignty”; but never a man among you is in favor
of Federal prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according
to the practice of “our fathers who framed the government under which
we live.” Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or
an advocate in the century within which our government originated.
Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and
your charge of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear
and stable foundation.

Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it
formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we
deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old
policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation;
and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have
that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old
policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you
would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy
of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it;
and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown! John Brown was no
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his
Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that
matter you know it, or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do
not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for
persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does
not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged
the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We
know we hold no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held
to and made by “our fathers who framed the government under which we
live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When
it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you
were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon
us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections
came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican
man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander,
and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor.
Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual
protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with
you about your slaves. Surely this does not encourage them to revolt.
True, we do, in common with “our fathers who framed the government
under which we live,” declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the
slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the
slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they
would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations
of us in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves,
each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism;
and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to
simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before
the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton
insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times as
many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch
your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was “got up
by Black Republicanism.” In the present state of things in the United
States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave
insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot
be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can
incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials
are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied,
the indispensable connecting trains.

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their
masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot
for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty
individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite
master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave
revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring
under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history,
though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case only
about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in
his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and,
by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the
kitchen and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local
revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the
natural results of slavery; but no general insurrections of slaves,
as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much
fears, or much hopes, for such an event, will be alike disappointed.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, “It is still
in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation
peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off
insensibly; and their places be, _pari passu_, filled up by free white
laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human
nature must shudder at the prospect held up.”

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of
emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and,
as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States
only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of
restraining the extension of the institution--the power to insure that
a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is
now free from slavery.

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.
It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in
which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd
that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could
not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the
many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and
emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he
fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures
the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s
attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry
were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast
blame on old England in the one case and on New England in the other,
does not disprove the sameness of the two things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of
John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like, break up the Republican
organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human
nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against
slavery in this nation which cast at least a million and a half of
votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling--that sentiment--by
breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can
scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order
in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would
you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful
channel of the ballot-box into some other channel? What would that
other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened
or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your
constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not
fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to
deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution. But
we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and
well-understood allusion to an assumed constitutional right of
yours to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them
there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the
Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right.
We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the
Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy
the government, unless you be allowed to construe and force the
Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and
us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the
Supreme Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in
your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer’s distinction
between dictum and decision, the court has decided the question for
you in a sort of way. The court has substantially said, it is your
constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and
to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a
sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided court, by a bare majority
of the judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the
reasons for making it; that it is so made that its avowed supporters
disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly
based upon a mistaken statement of fact--the statement in the opinion
that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly
affirmed in the Constitution.”

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of
property in a slave is not “distinctly and expressly affirmed” in
it. Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion
that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but
they pledge their veracity that it is “distinctly and expressly”
affirmed there--“distinctly,” that is, not mingled with anything
else--“expressly,” that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid
of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others
to show that neither the word “slave” nor “slavery” is to be found in
the Constitution, nor the word “property” even, in any connection with
language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in
that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a “person”; and
wherever his master’s legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it
is spoken of as “service or labor which may be due”--as a debt payable
in service or labor. Also it would be open to show, by contemporaneous
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead
of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the
Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their
notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the
mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that “our fathers who framed
the government under which we live”--the men who made the
Constitution--decided this same constitutional question in our favor
long ago: decided it without division among themselves when making the
decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it
after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing
it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified
to break up this government unless such a court decision as yours
is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of
political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican
president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union;
and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon
us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters
through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then
you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me--my money--was my own; and
I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote
is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the
threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be
distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all
parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace and in harmony one
with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though
much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill-temper. Even
though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us
calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate
view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do,
and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us
determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally
surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present
complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned.
Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if,
in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections?
We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything
to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining
does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, What will satisfy them? Simply this: we must
not only let them alone, but we must somehow convince them that we
do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We
have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our
organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we
have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has
had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is
the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to
disturb them.

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and
join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly--done
in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated--we must
place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’s new sedition
law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that
slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or
in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy
pleasure. We must pull down our free-State constitutions. The whole
atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery,
before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from
us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way.
Most of them would probably say to us, “Let us alone; do nothing
to us, and say what you please about slavery.” But we do let them
alone,--have never disturbed them,--so that, after all, it is what we
say which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing,
until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not as yet in terms demanded the overthrow
of our free-State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the
wrong of slavery with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings
against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced,
the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be
left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary that they do
not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and
for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of
this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right
and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national
recognition of it as a legal right and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our conviction
that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws,
and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be
silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to
its nationality--its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly
insist upon its extension--its enlargement. All they ask we could
readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as
readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and
our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole
controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for
desiring its full recognition as being right; but thinking it wrong,
as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view,
and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political
responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone
where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from
its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will
prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to
overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids
this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let
us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we
are so industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping
for some middle ground between the right and the wrong: vain as the
search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man;
such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men
do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to
Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners,
but the righteous, to repentance; such as invocations to Washington,
imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington
did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against
us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government,
nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes
might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we
understand it.




LINCOLN’S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

MARCH 4, 1861


FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES:--In compliance with a custom
as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you
briefly, and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the
Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President before
he enters on the execution of his office.

I do not consider it necessary, at present, for me to discuss those
matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety
or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the
Southern States, that, by the accession of a Republican administration,
their property and their peace and personal security are to be
endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such
apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all
the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in
nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do
but quote from one of those speeches, when I declare that “I have no
purpose, 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. Those who nominated
and elected me did so with the full knowledge that I had made this, and
made many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And, more
than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law
to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now
read:

“_Resolved_, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the
States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its
own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively,
is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and
endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless
invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no
matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.”

I now reiterate these sentiments; and in doing so I only press upon
the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is
susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are
to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming administration.

I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the
Constitution and the law, can be given, will be cheerfully given
to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause, as
cheerfully to one section as to another.

There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from
service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the
Constitution as any other of its provisions:

“No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall
be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may
be due.”

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who
made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the
intention of the law-giver is the law.

All members of Congress swear their support to the whole
Constitution--to this provision as well as any other. To the
proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of
this clause “shall be delivered up,” their oaths are unanimous. Now, if
they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly
equal unanimity, frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good
that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be
enforced by national or by State authority; but surely that difference
is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can
be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority
it is done; and should anyone, in any case, be content that this oath
shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it
shall be kept?

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of
liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced,
so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And
might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the
enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that
“the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States?”

I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with
no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical
rules; and while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of
Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much
safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to
and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate
any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be
unconstitutional.

It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President
under our National Constitution. During that period, fifteen different
and very distinguished citizens have in succession administered the
executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many
perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope for
precedent, I now enter upon the same task, for the brief constitutional
term of four years, under great and peculiar difficulties.

A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now
formidably attempted. I hold that in the contemplation of universal
law and of the Constitution, the union of these States is perpetual.
Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all
national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper
ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.
Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National
Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to
destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument
itself.

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of a contract merely, can it, as
a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made
it? One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak; but
does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? Descending from these
general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation
the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself.

The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in
fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and
continued in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further
matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly
plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of
the Confederation, in 1778; and finally, in 1787, one of the declared
objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was to form
a more perfect Union. But if the destruction of the Union by one or
by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less
perfect than before, the Constitution having lost the vital element of
perpetuity.

It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion,
can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that
effect are legally void; and that acts of violence within any State or
States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary
or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws,
the Union is unbroken, and, to the extent of my ability, I shall take
care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the
laws of the Union shall be faithfully executed in all the States.
Doing this, which I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, I shall
perfectly perform it, so far as is practicable, unless my rightful
masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisition, or in
some authoritative manner direct the contrary.

I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared
purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain
itself.

In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall
be none unless it is forced upon the national authority.

The power confided to me _will be used to hold, occupy, and possess
the property and places belonging to the Government_, and collect the
duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects
there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the
people anywhere.

Where hostility to the United States shall be so great and so universal
as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding Federal offices,
there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people
that object. While strict legal right may exist of the Government to
enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so
irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, that I deem it best to
forego, for the time, the uses of such offices.

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts
of the Union.

So far as possible, the people everywhere shall have that sense of
perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection.

The course here indicated will be followed, unless current events and
experience shall show a modification or change to be proper; and in
every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised according
to the circumstances actually existing, and with a view and hope of
a peaceful solution of the national troubles, and the restoration of
fraternal sympathies and affections.

That there are persons, in one section or another, who seek to destroy
the Union at all events, and are glad of any pretext to do it, I will
neither affirm nor deny. But if there be such, I need address no word
to them.

To those, however, who really love the Union, may I not speak, before
entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national
fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes? Would it
not be well to ascertain why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate
a step, while any portion of the ills you fly from have no real
existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater
than all the real ones you fly from? Will you risk the commission of
so fearful a mistake? All profess to be content in the Union if all
constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any
right, plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied? I think
not. Happily the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach
to the audacity of doing this.

Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly-written
provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If, by the
mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any
clearly-written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of
view, justify revolution; it certainly would if such right were a vital
one. But such is not our case.

All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so
plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guarantees
and prohibitions in the Constitution, that controversies never
arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a
provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur
in practicable administration. No foresight can anticipate, nor any
document of reasonable length contain, express provisions for all
possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by
National or by State authorities? The Constitution does not expressly
say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution
does not expressly say. From questions of this class spring all our
constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities
and minorities.

If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the
Government must cease. There is no alternative for continuing the
Government but acquiescence on the one side or the other. If a minority
in such a case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent
which, in turn, will ruin and divide them, for a minority of their own
will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled
by such a minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new
Confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely
as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who
cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper
of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the
States to compose a new Union as to produce harmony only, and prevent
renewed secession? Plainly, the central idea of secession is the
essence of anarchy.

A majority held in restraint by constitutional check and limitation,
and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions
and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever
rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism.
Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent
arrangement, is wholly inadmissible. So that, rejecting the majority
principle, anarchy or despotism, in some form, is all that is left.

I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional
questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that
such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit,
as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to a very
high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other
departments of the Government; and while it is obviously possible that
such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect
following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance
that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases,
can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice.

At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of
the Government upon the vital question affecting the whole people is to
be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant
they are made, as in ordinary litigation between parties in personal
actions, the people will have ceased to be their own masters, unless
having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the
hands of that eminent tribunal.

Nor is there in this view any assault upon the Court or the Judges.
It is a duty from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly
brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to
turn their decisions to political purposes. One section of our country
believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other
believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended; and this is the only
substantial dispute; and the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution,
and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, are each
as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where
the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The
great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both
cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly
cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of
the sections than before. The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly
suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one
section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would
not be surrendered at all by the other.

Physically speaking, we cannot separate; we cannot remove our
respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall
between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the
presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of
our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and
intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is
it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more
satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties
easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully
enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to
war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides
and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical questions as
to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit
it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can
exercise their constitutional right of amending, or their revolutionary
right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact
that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the
National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of
amendment, I fully recognize the full authority of the people over the
whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the
instrument itself, and I should, under existing circumstances, favor,
rather than oppose, a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act
upon it.

I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable,
in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves,
instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions
originated by others not especially chosen for the purpose, and which
might not be precisely such as they would wish either to accept or
refuse. I understand that a proposed amendment to the Constitution
(which amendment, however, I have not seen) has passed Congress, to
the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the
domestic institutions of States, including that of persons held to
service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my
purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that,
holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have
no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and
they have conferred none upon him to fix the terms for the separation
of the States. The people themselves, also, can do this if they choose,
but the Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is
to administer the present government as it came to his hands, and to
transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor. Why should there not be
a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there
any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is
either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler
of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of
the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will
surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American
people. By the frame of the Government under which we live, this same
people have wisely given their public servants but little power for
mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that
little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people
retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme
wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the Government in the
short space of four years.

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole
subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.

If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step
which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated
by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.

Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution
unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing
under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if
it would, to change either.

If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side
in the dispute, there is still no single reason for precipitate action.
Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him
who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to
adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulties.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you.

You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You
have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I
shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend” it.

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds
of affections.

The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as
surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.




LINCOLN’S GETTYSBURG SPEECH

  AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG, PA.,
    NOVEMBER 15, 1863


Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in
a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that
we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and
dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to
add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we
say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us,
the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for
us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that
from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of
the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.




LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

MARCH 4, 1865


FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:--At this second appearing to take the oath of the
Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address
than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of
a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the
expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest
which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the
nation, little that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no
prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts
were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it;
all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being
delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union
without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it
without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by
negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make
war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war
rather than let it perish; and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest, was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government
claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes
his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should
dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from
the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not
judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has
been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. “Woe unto the
world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come; but
woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that
American slavery is one of these offenses, which in the providence of
God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed
time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South
this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,
shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon
pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth
piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall
be paid with another drawn with the sword; as was said three thousand
years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are
true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him
who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphans, to do
all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among
ourselves and with all nations.




PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION

JANUARY 1, 1863


Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by
the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the
following, to wit:

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any
State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be
in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward,
and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States,
including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to
repress such persons or any of them, in any efforts they may make for
their actual freedom.

“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by
proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in
which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion
against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people
thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress
of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a
majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated,
shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed
conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not
then in rebellion against the United States.”

Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, by
virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the army and
navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against
the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and
necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first
day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly
proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day first
above mentioned, order and designate, as the States and parts of States
wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion
against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard,
Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension,
Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Marie, St. Martin, and
Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama,
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia
(except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and
also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City,
York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk
and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left
precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And, by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order
and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated
States and parts of States are and henceforth shall be free; and that
the Executive Government of the United States, including the military
and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom
of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free, to abstain
from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend
to them that in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully for
reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable
condition will be received into the armed service of the United States,
to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man
vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the
considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.


  Done at the city of Washington, this first day of January, in the
    year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and
    of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

  [L. S.]

  By the President:      ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
  WILLIAM H. SEWARD, _Secretary of State_.




STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH


STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS was born at Brandon, Vermont, on the 23d of
April, 1813.

When a child he lived on a farm, working in the fields in the summer
and attending the district school during the winter months. At the age
of fifteen young Douglas realized his condition in life,--that his
widowed mother was not in circumstances to give him an education, so
he suppressed his ambition for college for the time, and apprenticed
himself to a cabinet-maker in Middlebury. Here he worked with
enthusiasm for two years. The following year he spent in Brandon, his
native town, attending the academy. At the close of that year he moved
with his mother to Canandaigua, N. Y., at once becoming a student at
the fine academy located there. He remained in Canandaigua three years,
applying himself diligently to his academic studies, also finding time
to follow a course in the study of law.

In 1833 the young man of twenty-three years removed to Winchester,
Ill., to earn for himself a livelihood. For a few months he taught
school and continued his law studies. The next year he was admitted to
the bar in Jacksonville, where he had stopped for a short time, before
reaching Winchester.

Mr. Douglas was elected State’s Attorney of the First Judicial
District in 1835. In 1836 he was elected to the Illinois legislature.
The following year he was appointed Register of Public Lands at
Springfield, to which place he removed. In 1841 he was appointed
Secretary of State; but soon resigned, to accept the office of Judge
of the Supreme Court of the State. In 1843 Mr. Douglas was elected to
Congress, where he served for two terms; he was re-elected to the House
for the third term, but at the following session of the legislature,
December, 1846, he was chosen for the United States Senate, of which he
remained a member until his death.

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




LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE

FIRST JOINT DEBATE, DELIVERED AT OTTAWA, ILL., AUGUST 21, 1858

_Douglas’s Opening Speech_


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

Prior to 1854, this country was divided into two great political
parties, known as the Whig and Democratic parties. Both were national
and patriotic, advocating principles that were universal in their
application. An old-line Whig could proclaim his principles in
Louisiana and Massachusetts alike. Whig principles had no boundary
sectional line; they were not limited by the Ohio river, nor by the
Potomac, nor by the line of the free and slave States, but applied and
were proclaimed wherever the Constitution ruled or the American flag
waved over the American soil. So it was and so it is with the great
Democratic party, which from the days of Jefferson until this period
has proven itself to be the historic party of this nation. While the
Whig and Democratic parties differed in regard to a bank, the tariff,
distribution, the specie circular, and the sub-treasury, they agreed
on the great slavery question which now agitates the Union. I say that
the Whig party and the Democratic party agreed on the slavery question,
while they differed on those matters of expediency to which I have
referred. The Whig party and the Democratic party jointly adopted the
compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of a proper and just solution
of the slavery question in all its forms. Clay was the great leader,
with Webster on his right and Cass on his left and sustained by the
patriots in the Whig and Democratic ranks, who had devised and enacted
the compromise measures of 1850.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the session of Congress of 1853-54, I introduced into the Senate
of the United States a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska on that principle which had been adopted in the compromise
measures of 1850, approved by the Whig party and the Democratic party
in Illinois in 1851, and indorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic
party in national convention in 1852. In order that there might be no
misunderstanding in relation to the principle involved in the Kansas
and Nebraska bill, I put forth the true intent and meaning of the act
in these words: “It is the true intent and meaning of this act not
to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only
to the Federal Constitution.” Thus you see that up to 1854, when the
Kansas and Nebraska bill was brought into Congress for the purpose of
carrying out the principles which both parties had up to that time
indorsed and approved, there had been no division in this country in
regard to that principle, except the opposition of the Abolitionists....

In 1854 Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Mr. Lyman Trumbull entered into an
arrangement, one with the other, and each with his respective friends,
to dissolve the old Whig party on the one hand, and to dissolve the
old Democratic party on the other, and to connect the members of both
into an Abolition party, under the name and disguise of a Republican
party. The terms of that arrangement between Lincoln and Trumbull have
been published by Lincoln’s special friend, James H. Matheny, Esq.;
and they were that Lincoln should have General Shields’ place in the
United States Senate, which was then about to become vacant, and that
Trumbull should have my seat when my term expired. Lincoln went to
work to Abolitionize the old Whig party all over the State, pretending
that he was then as good a Whig as ever; and Trumbull went to work in
his part of the State preaching Abolitionism in its milder and lighter
form, and trying to Abolitionize the Democratic party and bring old
Democrats handcuffed and bound hand and foot into the Abolition camp.
In pursuance of the arrangement, the parties met at Springfield in
October, 1854, and proclaimed their new platform. Lincoln was to bring
into the Abolition camp the old-line Whigs and transfer them over to
Giddings, Chase, Fred Douglass, and Parson Lovejoy, who were ready to
receive them and christen them in their new faith. They laid down on
that occasion a platform for their new Republican party, which was thus
to be constructed. I have the resolutions of the State convention then
held, which was the first mass State convention ever held in Illinois
by the Black Republican party; and I now hold them in my hands and will
read a part of them, and cause the others to be printed. Here are the
most important and material resolutions of this Abolition platform:--

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

  _Resolved_, “That the times imperatively demand the reorganization
  of parties, and, repudiating all previous party attachments,
  names, and predilections, we unite ourselves together in defense
  of the liberty and Constitution of the country, and will hereafter
  co-operate as the Republican party, pledged to the accomplishment
  of the following purposes: to bring the administration of the
  government back to the control of first principles; to restore
  Nebraska and Kansas to the position of free Territories; that, as
  the Constitution of the United States vests in the States and not
  in Congress the power to legislate for the extradition of fugitives
  from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive-slave law;
  to restrict slavery to those States in which it exists; to prohibit
  the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish
  slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all
  the Territories over which the general government has exclusive
  jurisdiction; and to resist the acquirement of any more Territories
  unless the practice of slavery therein forever shall have been
  prohibited.

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

Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered every one of those
propositions, and yet I venture to say that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln
to come out and say that he is now in favor of each one of them. That
these propositions, one and all, constitute the platform of the Black
Republican party of this day, I have no doubt; and when you were not
aware for what purpose I was reading them, your Black Republicans
cheered them as good Black Republican doctrines.

My object in reading these resolutions was to put the question to
Abraham Lincoln this day, whether he now stands and will stand by
each article in that creed, and carry it out. [1] I desire to know
whether Mr. Lincoln to-day stands as he did in 1854, in favor of the
unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law. [2] I desire him to
answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against
the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the
people want them. [3] I want to know whether he stands pledged against
the admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution
as the people of that State may see fit to make. [4] I want to know
whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia. [5] I desire him to answer whether he stands
pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different
States. [6] I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit
slavery in all the Territories of the United States, north as well
as south of the Missouri Compromise line. [7] I desire him to answer
whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any more territory unless
slavery is prohibited therein. I want his answer to these questions.
Your affirmative cheers in favor of this Abolition platform are not
satisfactory. I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions, in order
that, when I trot him down to lower Egypt [Southernmost Illinois] I may
put the same questions to him. My principles are the same everywhere.
I can proclaim them alike in the North, the South, the East, and the
West. My principles will apply wherever the Constitution prevails
and the American flag waves. I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln’s
principles will bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro? I put
these questions to him to-day distinctly, and ask an answer. I have a
right to an answer; for I quote from the platform of the Republican
party, made by himself and others at the time that party was formed,
and the bargain made by Lincoln to dissolve and kill the old Whig party
and transfer its members, bound hand and foot, to the Abolition party
under the direction of Giddings and Fred Douglass.

In the remarks I have made on this platform, and the position of Mr.
Lincoln upon it, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to
that gentleman. I have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There
were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted.
We were both comparatively boys, and both struggling with poverty in
a strange land. I was a school-teacher in the town of Winchester,
and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of Salem. He was
more successful in his occupation than I was in mine, and hence more
fortunate in this world’s goods. Lincoln is one of those peculiar men
who perform with admirable skill everything which they undertake. I
made as good a school-teacher as I could, and, when a cabinet-maker, I
made a good bedstead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded
better with bureaus and secretaries than with anything else; but I
believe that Lincoln was always more successful in business than I, for
his business enabled him to get into the legislature. I met him there,
however, and had sympathy with him, because of the up-hill struggle we
both had in life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as
now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a footrace,
in pitching quoits or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor than
all the boys together; and the dignity and impartiality with which
he presided at a horse-race or fist-fight excited the admiration
and won the praise of everybody that was present and participated.
I sympathized with him because he was struggling with difficulties,
and so was I. Mr. Lincoln served with me in the legislature in 1836,
when we both retired; and he subsided or became submerged, and he was
lost sight of as a public man for some years. In 1846, when Wilmot
introduced his celebrated proviso, and the Abolition tornado swept
over the country, Lincoln again turned up as a member of Congress
from the Sangamon district. I was then in the Senate of the United
States, and was glad to welcome my old friend and companion. Whilst
in Congress, he distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican
War, taking the side of the common enemy against his own country; and
when he returned home he found that the indignation of the people
followed him everywhere, and he was again submerged or obliged to
retire into private life, forgotten by his former friends. He came up
again in 1854, just in time to make this Abolition or Black Republican
platform,--in company with Giddings, Lovejoy, Chase, and Fred
Douglass,--for the Republican party to stand upon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Having formed this new party for the benefit of deserters from Whiggery
and deserters from Democracy, and having laid down the Abolition
platform which I have read, Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims
his Abolition doctrines. Let me read a part of them. In his speech at
Springfield to the convention which nominated him for the Senate he
said:

“In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been
reached and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’
I believe this government _cannot endure permanently half-slave and
half-free_. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,--I do not expect
the house to fall,--_but I do expect it will cease to be divided_. It
will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of
slavery _will arrest the further spread of it_, and place it where
the public mind shall rest in the belief _that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction_, or its advocates _will push it forward till it
shall become alike lawful in all the States_,--old as well as new,
North as well as South.” [_“Good,” “Good,” and cheers._]

I am delighted to hear you Black Republicans say, “Good.” I have no
doubt that doctrine expresses your sentiments; and I will prove to you
now, if you will listen to me, that it is revolutionary and destructive
of the existence of this government. Mr. Lincoln, in the extract from
which I have read, says that this government cannot endure permanently
in the same condition in which it was made by its framers--divided
into free and slave States. He says that it has existed for about
seventy years thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot endure
permanently on the same principles and in the same relative condition
in which our fathers made it. Why can it not exist divided into free
and slave States? Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton,
Jay, and the great men of that day made this government divided into
free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to
do as it pleased on the subject of slavery. Why can it not exist on
the same principles on which our fathers made it? They knew when they
framed the Constitution that in a country as wide and broad as this,
with such a variety of climate, production, and interest, the people
necessarily required different laws and institutions in different
localities. They knew that the laws and regulations which would suit
the granite hills of New Hampshire would be unsuited to the rice
plantations of South Carolina; and they therefore provided that each
State should retain its own legislature and its own sovereignty, with
the full and complete power to do as it pleased within its own limits,
in all that was local and not national. One of the reserved rights
of the States was the right to regulate the relations between master
and servant, on the slavery question. At the time the Constitution
was framed there were thirteen States in the Union, twelve of which
were slaveholding States and one a free State. Suppose this doctrine
of uniformity preached by Mr. Lincoln, that the States should all
be free or all be slave, had prevailed; and what would have been
the result? Of course, the twelve slaveholding States would have
overruled the one free State; and slavery would have been fastened by
a constitutional provision on every inch of the American republic,
instead of being left, as our fathers wisely left it, to each State to
decide for itself. Here I assert that uniformity in the local laws and
institutions of the different States is neither possible nor desirable.
If uniformity had been adopted when the government was established, it
must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else
the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere.

We are told by Lincoln that he is utterly opposed to the Dred Scott
decision, and will not submit to it, for the reason that he says it
deprives the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship. That
is the first and main reason which he assigns for his warfare on the
Supreme Court of the United States and its decision. I ask you, Are
you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges
of citizenship? Do you desire to strike out of our State constitution
that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State,
and allow the free negroes to flow in, and cover your prairies with
black settlements? Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a
free negro colony, in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she
can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to
become citizens and voters, on an equality with yourselves? If you
desire negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the
State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an
equality with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to
serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln
and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of
the negro. For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every
form. I believe this government was made on the white basis. I believe
it was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their
posterity forever; and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white
men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon
negroes, Indians, and other inferior races.

Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition
orators who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and
churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence that all men were
created equal, and then asks, How can you deprive a negro of that
equality which God and the Declaration of Independence award to him?
He and they maintain that negro equality is guaranteed by the laws of
God, and that it is asserted in the Declaration of Independence. If
they think so, of course they have a right to say so, and so vote. I do
not question Mr. Lincoln’s conscientious belief that the negro was made
his equal, and hence is his brother; but, for my own part, I do not
regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother
or any kin to me whatever.... I do not believe that the Almighty ever
intended the negro to be the equal of the white man. If he did, he has
been a long time demonstrating the fact. For thousands of years the
negro has been a race upon the earth; and during all that time, in all
latitudes and climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he
has been inferior to the race which he has there met. He belongs to
an inferior race, and must always occupy an inferior position. I do
not hold that, because the negro is our inferior, therefore he ought
to be a slave. By no means can such a conclusion be drawn from what
I have said. On the contrary, I hold that humanity and Christianity
both require that the negro shall have and enjoy every right, every
privilege, and every immunity consistent with the safety of the
society in which he lives. On that point, I presume, there can be no
diversity of opinion. You and I are bound to extend to our inferior
and dependent beings every right, every privilege, every facility and
immunity consistent with the public good. The question then arises,
What rights and privileges are consistent with the public good? This is
a question which each State and each Territory must decide for itself.
Illinois has decided it for herself. We have provided that the negro
shall not be a slave; and we have also provided that he shall not
be a citizen, but protect him in his civil rights, in his life, his
person, and his property, only depriving him of all political rights
whatsoever and refusing to put him on an equality with the white man.
That policy of Illinois is satisfactory to the Democratic party and to
me, and if it were to the Republicans there would then be no question
upon the subject; but the Republicans say that he ought to be made a
citizen, and when he becomes a citizen he becomes your equal, with all
your rights and privileges. They assert the Dred Scott decision to be
monstrous because it denies that the negro is or can be a citizen under
the Constitution.

Now, I hold that Illinois had a right to abolish and prohibit slavery
as she did, and I hold that Kentucky has the same right to continue
and protect slavery that Illinois had to abolish it. I hold that New
York had as much right to abolish slavery as Virginia has to continue
it, and that each and every State of this Union is a sovereign power,
with the right to do as it pleases upon this question of slavery and
upon all its domestic institutions. Slavery is not the only question
which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one
to you, and that is, What shall be done with the free negro?... In
relation to the policy to be pursued toward the free negroes, we have
said that they shall not vote; whilst Maine, on the other hand, has
said that they shall vote. Maine is a sovereign State, and has the
power to regulate the qualifications of voters within her limits. I
would never consent to confer the right of voting and of citizenship
upon a negro, but still I am not going to quarrel with Maine for
differing from me in opinion. Let Maine take care of her own negroes,
and fix the qualifications of her own voters to suit herself, without
interfering with Illinois; and Illinois will not interfere with Maine.
So with the State of New York. She allows the negro to vote provided
he owns two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of property, but not
otherwise. While I would not make any distinction whatever between a
negro who held property and one who did not, yet if the sovereign State
of New York chooses to make that distinction it is her business, and
not mine; and I will not quarrel with her for it. She can do as she
pleases on this question if she minds her own business, and we will do
the same thing. Now, my friends, if we will only act conscientiously
and rigidly upon this great principle of popular sovereignty, which
guarantees to each State and Territory the right to do as it pleases
on all things local and domestic instead of Congress interfering, we
will continue at peace one with another. Why should Illinois be at
war with Missouri, or Kentucky with Ohio, or Virginia with New York,
merely because their institutions differ? Our fathers intended that
our institutions should differ. They knew that the North and the
South, having different climates, productions, and interests, required
different institutions. This doctrine of Mr. Lincoln, of uniformity
among the institutions of the different States, is a new doctrine never
dreamed of by Washington, Madison, or the framers of this government.
Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party set themselves up as wiser than
these men who made this government, which has flourished for seventy
years under the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing the right
of each State to do as it pleased. Under that principle, we have grown
from a nation of three or four millions to a nation of about thirty
millions of people. We have crossed the Alleghany mountains and filled
up the whole Northwest, turning the prairie into a garden, and building
up churches and schools, thus spreading civilization and Christianity
where before there was nothing but savage barbarism. Under that
principle we have become, from a feeble nation, the most powerful on
the face of the earth; and, if we only adhere to that principle, we can
go forward increasing in territory, in power, in strength, and in glory
until the Republic of America shall be the north star that shall guide
the friends of freedom throughout the civilized world. And why can we
not adhere to the great principle of self-government upon which our
institutions were originally based? I believe that this new doctrine
preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it
succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body
against the South, to excite a sectional war between the Free States
and the Slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven
to the wall.




LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE

FIRST JOINT DEBATE, DELIVERED AT OTTAWA, ILL., AUGUST 21, 1858

_Lincoln’s Reply_


MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented,
it provokes him,--at least I find it so with myself; but when
misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable it is more apt
to amuse him. The first thing I see fit to notice is the fact that
Judge Douglas alleges, after running through the history of the old
Democratic and the old Whig parties, that Judge Trumbull and myself
made an arrangement in 1854 by which I was to have the place of General
Shields in the United States Senate, and Judge Trumbull was to have
the place of Judge Douglas. Now all I have to say upon that subject is
that I think no man--not even Judge Douglas--can prove it, _because it
is not true_. I have no doubt he is “conscientious” in saying it. As
to those resolutions that he took such a length of time to read, as
being the platform of the Republican party in 1854, I say I never had
anything to do with them; and I think Trumbull never had. Judge Douglas
cannot show that either of us ever did have anything to do with them.
I believe this is true about those resolutions: There was a call for a
convention to form a Republican party at Springfield; and I think that
my friend, Mr. Lovejoy, who is here upon this stand, had a hand in it.
I think this is true; and I think, if he will remember accurately, he
will be able to recollect that he tried to get me into it and I would
not go in. I believe it is also true that I went away from Springfield,
when the convention was in session, to attend court in Tazewell County.
It is true they did place my name, though without authority, upon
the committee, and afterward wrote me to attend the meeting of the
committee; but I refused to do so, and I never had anything to do with
that organization. This is the plain truth about all that matter of the
resolutions.

Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells of Trumbull bargaining
to sell out the old Democratic party, and Lincoln agreeing to sell out
the old Whig party, I have the means of _knowing_ about that; Judge
Douglas cannot have; and I know there is no substance to it whatever.
Yet I have no doubt he is “conscientious” about it. I know that after
Mr. Lovejoy got into the legislature that winter he complained to me
that I had told all the old Whigs of his district that the old Whig
party was good enough for them, and some of them voted against him
because I told them so. Now, I have no means of totally disproving such
charges as this which the Judge makes. A man cannot prove a negative;
but he has a right to claim that, when a man makes an affirmative
charge, he must offer some proof to show the truth of what he says. I
certainly cannot introduce testimony to show the negative about things;
but I have a right to claim that, if a man says he _knows_ a thing,
then he must show _how he knows it_. I always have a right to claim
this, and it is not satisfactory to me that he may be “conscientious”
on the subject.

Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things, but in regard
to that general Abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes when he says
that I was engaged at that time in selling out and Abolitionizing the
old Whig party, I hope you will permit me to read a part of a printed
speech that I made then at Peoria, which will show altogether a
different view of the position I took in that contest of 1854. [_Voice:
“Put on your specs.”_] Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer
a young man:

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

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

  “This _declared_ indifference, but as I must think covert real
  _zeal_ for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it
  because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it
  because it deprives our republican example of its just influence
  in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with
  plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of
  freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces
  so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with
  the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,--criticising the
  Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right
  principle of action but _self-interest_.

  “Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against
  the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their
  situation. If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not
  introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly
  give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless
  there are individuals on both sides who would not hold slaves under
  any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery
  anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some Southern men
  do free their slaves, go North, and become tip-top Abolitionists;
  while some Northern ones go South, and become most cruel
  slavemasters.

  “When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the
  origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said
  that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get
  rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate
  the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I
  should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given
  me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution.
  My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them
  to Liberia,--to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection
  would convince me that, whatever of high hope (as I think there
  is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is
  impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all
  perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping
  and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many
  times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as
  underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition?
  I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point
  is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free
  them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own
  feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know
  that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this
  feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole
  question, if indeed it is any part of it. A universal feeling,
  whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We
  cannot make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual
  emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this I
  will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

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

  “But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for
  permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it
  would for reviving the African slave-trade by law. The law which
  forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has
  so long forbidden the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be
  distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former
  could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter.”

I have reason to know that Judge Douglas _knows_ that I said this. I
think he has the answer here to one of the questions he put to me.
I do not mean to allow him to catechize me unless he pays back for
it in kind. I will not answer questions one after another, unless he
reciprocates; but as he has made this inquiry, and I have answered it
before, he has got it without my getting anything in return. He has got
my answer on the fugitive-slave law.

Now, gentlemen, I don’t want to read at any great length; but this
is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the
institution of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it;
and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and
political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic
arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to
be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that
I have no purpose, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with
the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe
I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between
the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between
the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their
living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and, inasmuch
as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I as well
as Judge Douglas am in favor of the race to which I belong having the
superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I
hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world
why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in
the Declaration of Independence,--the right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as
the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many
respects,--certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual
endowment. But _in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of
anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of
Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man_.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies.
The Judge is wofully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a
“grocery-keeper.” I don’t think that it would be a great sin if I had
been; but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the
world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter
in a little still-house up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my
friend, the Judge, is equally at fault when he charges me at the time
when I was in Congress of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting
in the Mexican War. The Judge did not make his charge very distinctly;
but I tell you what he can prove, by referring to the record. You
remember I was an Old Whig; and whenever the Democratic party tried
to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the
President, I would not do it. But whenever they asked for any money or
land-warrants or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that
time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did. You can think as
you please as to whether that was consistent. Such is the truth; and
the Judge has the right to make all he can out of it. But when he, by
a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the
soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War, or did anything else to
hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether
mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.

As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I will
dwell a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics upon which
the Judge has spoken. He has read from my speech in Springfield in
which I say that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Does
the Judge say it _can_ stand? I don’t know whether he does or not. The
Judge does not seem to be attending to me just now, but I would like
to know if it is his opinion that a house divided against itself _can
stand_. If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between
him and me, but between the Judge and an authority of a somewhat higher
character.

Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the purpose of
saying something seriously. I know that the Judge may readily enough
agree with me that the maxim which was put forth by the Savior is
true, but he may allege that I misapply it; and the Judge has a right
to urge that in my application I do misapply it, and then I have a
right to show that I do _not_ misapply it. When he undertakes to say
that, because I think this nation so far as the question of slavery is
concerned will all become one thing or all the other, I am in favor of
bringing about a dead uniformity in the various States in all their
institutions, he argues erroneously. The great variety of the local
institutions in the States, springing from differences in the soil,
differences in the face of the country, and in the climate, are bonds
of union. They do not make “a house divided against itself,” but they
make a house united. If they produce in one section of the country what
is called for by the wants of another section, and this other section
can supply the wants of the first, they are not matters of discord,
but bonds of union,--true bonds of union. But can this question of
slavery be considered as among _these_ varieties in the institutions
of the country? I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of
our government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to
be a bond of union, and on the contrary been an apple of discord and
an element of division in the house. I ask you to consider whether,
so long as the moral constitution of men’s minds shall continue to be
the same, after this generation and assemblage shall sink into the
grave and another race shall arise with the same moral and intellectual
development we have,--whether, if that institution is standing in the
same irritating position in which is now is, it will not continue an
element of division?

If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this question, the
Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds
me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has
existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in
some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at
the position in which our fathers originally placed it,--restricting
it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to
cut off its source by the abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting
the seal of legislation _against its spread_. The public mind _did_
rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.
But lately, I think,--and in this I charge nothing on the Judge’s
motives,--lately, I think that he, and those acting with him, have
placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the _perpetuity
and nationalization of slavery_. And while it is placed upon this new
basis, I say and I have said that I believe we shall not have peace
upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the
other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall
become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as
well as South. Now I believe, if we could arrest the spread and place
it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it _would be_
in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as
for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction. The crisis would be past, and the institution might be let
alone for a hundred years--if it should live so long--in the States
where it exists, yet it would be going out of existence in the way best
for both the black and the white races.

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

Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty. What is Popular
Sovereignty? Is it the right of the people to have slavery or not have
it, as they see fit, in the Territories? I will state--and I have an
able man to watch me--my understanding is that Popular Sovereignty,
as now applied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a
Territory to _have_ slavery if they want to, but does not allow them
_not_ to have it if they do not want it. I do not mean that, if this
vast concourse of people were in a Territory of the United States, any
one of them would be obliged to have a slave if he did not want one;
but I do say that, as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one
man wants slaves all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from
holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge complains and
from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he
ascribes to me at all. I had no thought in the world that I was doing
anything to bring about a war between the Free and Slave States. I had
no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a
political and social equality of the black and white races. It never
occurred to me that I was doing anything or favoring anything to
reduce to a dead uniformity all the local institutions of the various
States. But I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing
something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better that
I did not mean it. It is just as fatal to the country, if I have any
influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not. But can it be
true that placing this institution upon the original basis--the basis
upon which our fathers placed it--can have any tendency to set the
Northern and the Southern States at war with one another, or that it
can have any tendency to make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane
because they raise it in Louisiana, or that it can compel the people
of Illinois to cut pine logs on the Grand Prairie, where they will not
grow, because they cut pine logs in Maine, where they do grow? The
Judge says this is a new principle started in regard to this question.
Does the Judge claim that he is working on the plan of the founders of
the government? I think he says in some of his speeches--indeed, I have
one here now--that he saw evidence of a policy to allow slavery to be
south of a certain line, while north of it it should be excluded; and
he saw an indisposition on the part of the country to stand upon that
policy, and therefore he set about studying the subject upon _original
principles_, and upon _original principles_ he got up the Nebraska
bill! I am fighting it upon these “original principles,”--fighting it
in the Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, and Madisonian fashion.

Now, my friends, I wish you to attend for a little while 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 showing, 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 concluded with this bit of comment:

  “We cannot absolutely know that these exact adaptations are the
  results 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
  [Senator Douglas], Franklin [President Pierce], Roger [Chief
  Justice Taney], and James [President Buchanan], 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 Chicago on the 9th of July, this
speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an 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,” notwithstanding I had said this, he goes on and deduces,
or draws out, from my speech this tendency 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 together. 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 accustomed to flattery, and it came the sweeter to me.
I was rather like the Hoosier with the gingerbread, when he said he
reckoned he loved it better 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 unfairly with me. So I went to work to show him that he
misunderstood the whole scope of my speech, and that I really never
intended 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, until 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, 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 extinguished, the Union should
be dissolved, he could not have shown it. I understand what he would
do. He would say, “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 own business 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 language 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 afterwards 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 (Lincoln) ought to know that the man who makes a charge
without knowing it to be true falsifies as much as he who 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 regard for the “kind, amiable,
intelligent gentleman,” but because of his own personal self-respect!
I have understood 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 made: 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, that he neither
had any knowledge, information, 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 answer
denying all knowledge, information, or belief, 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
conspiracy to exist. To that I reply, I believe it. If the Judge says
that I do not believe it, then he says 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
erroneous 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: “It being the true intent and meaning of
this Act not to 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 believe), “we 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
authorizing the people to exclude slavery.” I believe I have the
amendment here before me which was offered, and under which the people
of the Territory, through their proper representatives, 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 mistake about it, that
Judge Douglas and those acting 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 reason was. It looks to us, since we
have seen the Dred Scott decision pronounced, holding that “under the
Constitution” the people cannot exclude 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-humoredly point out to these people what that
_other_ reason was for voting the amendment down than swelling 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 intent and meaning of this bill not to
legislate slavery 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
_Territory_, if another Dred Scott decision shall come, holding that
they cannot exclude it from a _State_, we shall discover that when
the word was originally 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 different reason for
putting it there, Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without calling
anybody a liar, _can tell what the reason was_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the 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 running 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 taking 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 decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that
no _State_ under the Constitution can exclude 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 national, let us consider
what Judge Douglas is doing 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 sentiment is everything. With
public 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 possible 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 because 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 decision 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 himself 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 decision. It is nothing that I
point out to him that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not
believe in the binding force of decisions. It is nothing to him that
Jefferson did not so believe. I 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, though, 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 Congress
can charter a bank. And I remind him of another piece of history on
the question of respect 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 displeased 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 Illinois_, 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 appointed 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 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 obstinate 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 bespattered 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 to the
Dred Scott decision. These things show there is a purpose strong as
death and eternity for which he adheres to this decision, and for which
he will adhere to all other decisions of the same court. [_A voice:
“Give us something besides Dred Scott.”_] Yes; no doubt you want to
hear something 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 statesman, 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 ultimate 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 influence,
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 going 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 invites any people,
willing to have slavery, to establish 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 eradicating 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
questions,--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.