The Abraham Lincoln-Stephen Douglas
debate was one of the defining moments in American History. It
helps set the stage for the conditions that led to the Civil War. Below
we present Mr. Lincoln's speech from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate.
Abraham Lincoln's Speech in the Lincoln-Douglas
Debate in 1858
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 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 of me that I had told all the Old Whigs of his
district that the Old Whig party was good enough for them, and some of
them voted against him because I told them so. Now, I have no means of
totally disapproving 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 - criticizing 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 slave-masters.
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 info 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 woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a
"grocery-keeper." I don't know that it would be a great sin if I had
been; but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the
world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in
a little still-house up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my
friend, the judge, is equally at fault when he charges me at the time
when I was in Congress 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 Saviour 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 it now
is, it will not continue an element of division? If so, then I have a
right to say that, in regard to this question, the Union is a house
divided against itself; and when the judge reminds me that I have often
said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years
in some States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the
fact, and I account for it by 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, that 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 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 result of
pre-concert, but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions
of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and
by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for
instance; and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they
exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises
exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different
pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too
many or too few, -- not omitting even the scaffolding, -- or if a single
piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and
prepared to yet bring such piece in -- in such a case we feel it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin, and Roger and
James, all understood one another from the beginning and all worked upon
a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow was struck.
When my friend, Judge Douglas, came to 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
niXXers 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 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 afterward I met the judge
at Clinton -- that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the
discussion -- and heard him make a speech. Then he comes in with his
plea to this charge, for the first time, and his plea when put in, as
well as I can recollect it, amounted to this: that he never had any talk
with Judge Taney or the President of the United States with regard to
the Dred Scott decision before it was made. I (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 be-for 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.
When the judge spoke at Clinton, he came very near making a charge of
falsehood against me. He used, as I found it printed in a newspaper,
which, I remember was very nearly like the real speech, the following
language:
I did not answer the charge [of conspiracy] before for the reason that I
did not suppose there was a man in America with a heart so corrupt as to
believe such a charge could be true. I have too much respect for Mr.
Lincoln to suppose he is serious in making the charge.
I confess this is rather a curious view, that out of respect for me he
should consider I was making what I deemed rather a grave charge in fun.
I confess it strikes me rather strangely. But I let it pass. As the
judge did not for a moment believe that there was a man in America whose
heart was so "corrupt" as to make such a charge, and as he places me
among the "men in America" who have hearts base enough to make such a
charge, I hope he will excuse me if I hunt out another charge very like
this; and if it should turn out that in hunting I should find that
other, and it should turn out to be Judge Douglas himself who made it, I
hope he will reconsider this question of the deep corruption of heart he
has thought fit to ascribe to me. In Judge Douglas's speech of March 22,
1858, which I hold in my hand, he says:
In this connection there is another topic to which I desire to allude. I
seldom refer to the course of newspapers, or notice the articles which
they publish in regard to myself; but the course of the Washington
"Union" has been so extraordinary, for the last two or three months,
that I think it well enough to make some allusion to it. It has read me
out of the Democratic party every other day, at least for two or three
months, and keeps reading me out, and, as if it had not succeeded, still
continues to read me out, using such terms as "traitor," "renegade,"
"deserter," and other kind and polite epithets of that nature.
Sir, I have no vindication to make of my Democracy against the
Washington "Union," or any other newspaper. I am willing to allow my
history and actions for the last twenty years to speak for themselves as
to my political principles, and my fidelity to political obligations.
The Washington "Union" has a personal grievance. When the editor was
nominated for public printer I declined to vote for him, and stated that
at some time I might give my reasons for doing so. Since I declined to
give that vote, this scurrilous abuse, these vindictive and constant
attacks, have been repeated almost daily on me. Will my friend from
Michigan read the article to which I allude?
This is a part of the speech. You must excuse me from reading the entire
article of the Washington "Union," as Mr. Stuart read it for Mr.
Douglas. The judge goes on and sums up, as I think, correctly:
Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions advanced
boldly by the Washington "Union" editorially, and apparently
authoritatively, and any man who questions any of them is denounced as
an Abolitionist, a Freesoiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first,
that the primary object of all government at its original institution is
the protection of person and property; second, that the Constitution of
the United States declares that the citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether organic or
otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State from settling in
another with their slave property, and especially declaring it
forfeited, are direct violations of the original intention of the
government and Constitution of the United States; and, fourth, that the
emancipation of the slaves of the Northern States was a gross outrage on
the rights of property, inasmuch as it was involuntarily done on the
part of the owner.
Remember that this article was published in the "Union" on the 17th of
November, and on the 18th appeared the first article giving the adhesion
of the "Union" to the Lecompton constitution. It was in these words:
"KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION. -- The vexed question is settled. The
problem is solved. The dead point of danger is passed. All serious
trouble to Kansas affairs is over and gone."
And a column nearly of the same sort. Then, when you come to look into
the Lecompton constitution, you find the same doctrine incorporated in
it which was put forth editorially in the "Union." What is it?
"ARITICLE 7, Section I. The right of property is before and higher than
any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to
such slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right
of the owner of any property whatever."
Then in the schedule is a provision that the constitution may be amended
after 1864 by a two-thirds vote.
"But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property in the
ownership of slaves."
It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton constitution that they
are identical in spirit with the authoritative article in the Washington
"Union" of the day previous to its endorsement of this constitution.
I pass over some portions of the speech, and I hope that any one who
feels interested in this matter will read the entire section of the
speech, and see whether I do the judge injustice. He proceeds:
When I saw that article in the "Union" of the 17th of November, followed
by the glorification of the Lecompton constitution on the 18th of
November, and this clause in the constitution asserting the doctrine
that a State has no right to prohibit slavery within its limits, I saw
that there was a fatal blow being struck at the sovereignty of the
States of this Union.
I stop the quotation there, again requesting that it may all be read. I
have read all of the portion I desire to comment upon. What is this
charge that the judge thinks I must have a very corrupt heart to make?
It was a purpose on the part of certain high functionaries to make it
impossible for the people of one State to prohibit the people of any
other State from entering it with their "property," so called, and
making it a slave State. In other words, it was a charge implying a
design to make the institution of slavery national. And now I ask your
attention to what Judge Douglas has himself done here. I know he made
that part of the speech as a reason why he had refused to vote for a
certain man for public printer, but when we get at it, the charge itself
is the very one I made against him, that he thinks I am so corrupt for
uttering. Now, who does he make that charge against? Does he make it
against that newspaper editor merely? No; he says it is identical in
spirit with the Lecompton constitution, and so the framers of that
constitution are brought in with the editor of the newspaper in that
"fatal blow being struck." He did not call it a "conspiracy." In his
language it is a "fatal blow being struck." And if the words carry the
meaning better when changed from a "conspiracy" into a "fatal blow being
struck," I will change my expression and call it "fatal blow being
struck." We see the charge made not merely against the editor of the
"Union," but all the framers of the Lecompton constitution; and not only
so, but the article was an authoritative article. By whose authority? Is
there any question but that he means it was by the authority of the
President and his cabinet -- the administration? Is there any sort of
question but that he means to make that charge? Then there are the
editors of the "Union," the framers of the Lecompton constitution, the
President of the United States and his cabinet, and all the supporters
of the Lecompton constitution, in Congress and out of Congress, who are
all involved in this "fatal blow being struck." I commend to Judge
Douglas's consideration the question of how corrupt a man's heart must
be to make such a charge!
Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the 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 niXXer 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 over sloughing 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 catechized 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 1oose 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 Hibernian: "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.
My friends, that ends the chapter. The judge can take his half hour. |