The first debate between Stephen A.
Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in 1858 during the Illinois Senate contest
is the quintessential debate of that era. It sheds important insight
into the key political issues in this critical period of our Nation's
history. Below, we present a transcript of Douglas's speech during
this defining debate.
Senator Douglas's Speech During the First
Lincoln-Douglas Debate
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.
In 1851 the Whig party and the Democratic party united in Illinois in
adopting resolutions indorsing and approving the principles of the
compromise measures of 1850, as the proper adjustment of that question.
In 1852, when the Whig party assembled in convention at Baltimore for
the purpose of nominating a candidate for the presidency, the first
thing it did was to declare the compromise measures of 1850, in
substance and in principle, a suitable adjustment of that question.
[Here the speaker was interrupted by loud and long-continued applause.]
My friends, silence will be more acceptable to me in the discussion of
these questions than applause. I desire to address myself to your
judgment, your understanding, and your consciences, and not to your
passions or your enthusiasm. When the Democratic convention assembled in
Baltimore in the same year, for the purpose of nominating a Democratic
candidate for the presidency, it also adopted the compromise measures of
1850 as the basis of Democratic action. Thus you see that up to 1853-54,
the Whig party and the Democratic party both stood on the same platform
with regard to the slavery question. That platform was the right of the
people of each State and each Territory to decide their local and
domestic institutions for themselves, subject only to the Federal
Constitution.
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 there
from, 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 the House of
Representatives of the Illinois legislature, upon a resolution asserting
that principle, every Whig and every Democrat in the House voted in the
affirmative, and only four men voted against it, and those four were
old-line Abolitionists.
In 1854 Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Mr. Lyman 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 Shield's 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:
1. 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 the exigencies of the nation may demand.
2. Resolved, That the times Imperatively demand the reorganization of
parties, and, repudiating all previous party attachments, names and
predilections, we unite ourselves together in defense of the liberty and
Constitution of the country, and will hereafter cooperate 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.
3. Resolved, That in furtherance of these principles we will use such
constitutional and lawful means as shall seem best adapted to their
accomplishment, and that we will support no man for office, under the
general or State government, who is not positively and fully committed
to the support of these principles, and whose personal character and
conduct isnot a guaranty that he is reliable, and who shall not have
abjured old party allegiance and ties.
Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered every one of those
propositions, and yet I venture to say that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln
to come out and say that he is now in favor of 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. I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln today stands as he
did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave
law. 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. I want to know whether he stands pledged
against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a
constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make. I want to
know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia. I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged
to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States. I
desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the
Territories of the United States, North as well as South of the Missouri
Compromise line. I 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, 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 foot-race, in pitching quoits or
tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town
together, and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a
horse-race or fistfight 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. Trumbull, too, was one of our own contemporaries. He was born and
raised in old Connecticut, was bred a Federalist, but removing to
Georgia, turned Nullifier when nullification was popular, and as soon as
he disposed of his clocks and wound up his business, migrated to
Illinois, turned politician and lawyer here, and made his appearance in
1841 as a member of the legislature. He became noted as the author of
the scheme to repudiate a large portion of the State debt of Illinois,
which, if successful, would have brought infamy and disgrace upon the
fair escutcheon of our glorious State. The odium attached to that
measure consigned him to oblivion for a time. I helped to do it. I
walked into a public meeting in the hall of the House of
Representatives, and replied to his repudiating speeches, and
resolutions were carried over his head denouncing repudiation, and
asserting the moral and legal obligation of Illinois to pay every dollar
of the debt she owed and every bond that bore her seal. Trumbull's
malignity has followed me since I thus defeated his infamous scheme.
These two men having formed this combination to Abolitionize the Old
Whig party and the old Democratic party, and put themselves into the
Senate of the United States, in pursuance of their bargain, are now
carrying out that arrangement. Matheny states that Trumbull broke faith;
that the bargain was that Lincoln should be the senator in Shields's
place, and Trumbull was to wait for mine; and the story goes that
Trumbull cheated Lincoln, having control of four or five Abolitionized
Democrats who were holding over in the Senate; he would not let them
vote for Lincoln, which obliged the rest of the Abolitionists to support
him in order to secure an Abolition senator. There are a number of
authorities for the truth of this besides Matheny, and I suppose that
even Mr. Lincoln will not deny it.
Mr. Lincoln demands that he shall have the place intended for Trumbull,
as Trumbull cheated him and got his, and Trumbull is stumping the State
traducing me for the purpose of securing the position for Lincoln, in
order to quiet him. It was in consequence of this arrangement that the
Republican convention was impaneled to instruct for Lincoln and nobody
else, and it was on this account that they passed resolutions that he
was their first, their last, and their only choice. Archy Williams was
nowhere, Browning was nobody, Wentworth was not to be considered; they
had no man in the Republican party for the place except Lincoln, for the
reason that he demanded that they should carry out the arrangement.
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
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 slave-holding 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 slave-holding
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. Lincoln has evidently learned by heart Parson
Lovejoy's catechism. He can repeat it as well as Farnsworth, and he is
worthy of a medal from Father Giddings and Fred Douglass for his
Abolitionism. He holds that the negro was born his equal and yours, and
that he was endowed with equality by the Almighty, and that no human law
can deprive him of these rights which were guaranteed to him by the
Supreme Ruler of the universe. Now, I 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? We have settled the
slavery question as far as we are concerned; we have prohibited it in
Illinois forever, and in doing so, I think we have done wisely, and
there is no man in the State who would be more strenuous in his
opposition to the introduction of slavery than I would; but when we
settled it for our selves, we exhausted all our power over that subject.
We have done our whole duty, and can do no more. We must leave each and
every other State to decide for itself the same question. In relation to
the policy to be pursued toward the free negroes, we have said that they
shall not vote; whilst Maine, on the other hand, has said that they
shall vote. Maine is a sovereign State, and has the power to regulate
the qualifications of voters within her limits. I would never consent to
confer the right of voting and of citizenship upon a negro, but still I
am not going to quarrel with Maine for differing from me in opinion. Let
Maine take care of her own negroes, and fix the qualifications of her
own voters to suit herself, without interfering with Illinois, and
Illinois will not interfere with Maine. So with the State of New York.
She allows the negro to vote provided he owns two hundred and fifty
dollars' worth of property, but not otherwise. While I would not make
any distinction whatever between a negro who held property and one who
did not, yet if the sovereign State of New York chooses to make that
distinction it is her business and not mine, and I will not quarrel with
her for it. She can do as she pleases on this question if she minds her
own business, and we will do the same thing Now, my friends, if we will
only act conscientiously and rigidly upon this great principle of
popular sovereignty, which guarantees to each State and Territory the
right to do as it pleases on all things, local and domestic, instead of
Congress interfering, we will continue at peace one with another. Why
should Illinois be at war with Missouri, or Kentucky with Ohio, or
Virginia, with New York, merely because their institutions differ? Our
fathers intended that our 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 Allegheny 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 friend 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.
I am told that my time is out. Mr. Lincoln will now address you for an
hour and a half, and I will then occupy a half hour in replying to him.
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