Produced by David Widger





THE PAPERS AND WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

VOLUME THREE

CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION

By Abraham Lincoln


Edited by Arthur Brooks Lapsley




THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I

POLITICAL SPEECHES & DEBATES of LINCOLN WITH DOUGLAS In the Senatorial
Campaign of 1858 in Illinois SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858


[The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the close of
the Republican State Convention held at that time and place, and by which
Convention Mr. LINCOLN had been named as their candidate for United States
Senator. Mr. DOUGLAS was not present.]


Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:--If we could first know
where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to
do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy
was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting
an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that
agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. 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.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete
legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak compounded of the
Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only
what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also
let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or
rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of
action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the
States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National territory by
Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which
ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the
National territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people,
real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained, and
give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well
as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise
called "sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though
expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted
in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man
choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That
argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language
which follows:

"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."

Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter
sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said
opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare
that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the
friends of the measure, and down they voted the amendment.

While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case,
involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having
voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into a territory
covered by the Congressional Prohibition, and held him as a slave for a
long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for
the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought
to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred
Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made in the case.
Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was
argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it
was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator
Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of
the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory
can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter
answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such
as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement,
however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred
thousand votes,(approximately 10% of the vote) and so, perhaps, was not
overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his
last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the
people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court
met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The
Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but
the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the
people to abide by the forth-coming decision, whatever it might be. Then,
in a few days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a
speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently
denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early
occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that
decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever
been entertained!

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of
the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton
Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of
Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a
fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted
down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not
whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other
than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public
mind,--the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is
ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he
has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the
only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott
decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down
like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served through
one blast, and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry an election,
and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the
Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the
original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point--the
right of a people to make their own constitution--upon which he and the
Republicans have never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator
Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its
present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working
points of that machinery are:

Firstly, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no
descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense
of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point
is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the
benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares
that "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States."

Secondly, That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States,"
neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from
any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual
men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing
them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the
institution through all the future.

Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free
State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will
not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State
the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to
be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently
indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical
conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred
Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do
with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other
free State.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska
doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion,
at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted
down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially,
also, wither we are tending.

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run the mind
over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things
will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were
transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only
to the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders
could not then see. Plainly enough now,--it was an exactly fitted niche,
for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect
freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment,
expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough
now,--the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred
Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's
individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly
enough now,--the speaking out then would have damaged the "perfectly
free" argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the
outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a
reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of
the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a
spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may
give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision
by the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result
of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions
of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by
different 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 scaffolding,--or, if a single piece be lacking, we
see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such
piece in,--in such a case, we find it impossible not to 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 up before
the first blow was struck.

It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people of a
State as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free," "subject
only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They were legislating for
Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State
are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but
why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why
are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped
together, and their relation to the Constitution therefore treated as
being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice
Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the
concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United
States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude
slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether
or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to
exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure,
if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of
unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their
limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf
of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska Bill,--I ask, who can be
quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it
had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the
power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it
more than once, Using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of
the Nebraska Act. On one occasion, his exact language is, "Except in cases
where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States,
the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its
jurisdiction." In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by
the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the
same question, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was
left open in the Nebraska Act. Put this and that together, and we have
another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another
Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United
States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And
this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind
sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when
made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all
the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and
will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty
shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that
the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and
we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made
Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is
the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is
what we have to do. How can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their friends, and yet whisper
to us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with
which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the fact that
he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty, and that
he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we
have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the
largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog
is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this
work is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances
of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His avowed mission is
impressing the "public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas
Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to
resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an
effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he
really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has
labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into
the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right
to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can
be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his
power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of
property; and, as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade, how can
he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free,"--unless
he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home
producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without
a ground of opposition.

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day
than he was yesterday; that he may rightfully change when he finds himself
wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make
any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? Can we
safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish
not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do
aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and
we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance
from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious
obstacles. But clearly he is not now with us; he does not pretend to
be,--he does not promise ever to be.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted
friends,--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do
care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered
over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single
impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance
against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered
from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the
constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we
brave all then to falter now,--now, when that same enemy is wavering,
dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not
fail; if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate,
or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.




SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858.

IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS

DELIVERED AT CHICAGO, SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 10, 1858.

(Mr. DOUGLAS WAS NOT PRESENT.)

[Mr. LINCOLN was introduced by C. L. Wilson, Esq., and as he made his
appearance he was greeted with a perfect storm of applause. For some
moments the enthusiasm continued unabated. At last, when by a wave of his
hand partial silence was restored, Mr. LINCOLN said,]

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--On yesterday evening, upon the occasion of the
reception given to Senator Douglas, I was furnished with a seat very
convenient for hearing him, and was otherwise very courteously treated by
him and his friends, and for which I thank him and them. During the course
of his remarks my name was mentioned in such a way as, I suppose, renders
it at least not improper that I should make some sort of reply to him. I
shall not attempt to follow him in the precise order in which he addressed
the assembled multitude upon that occasion, though I shall perhaps do so
in the main.

There was one question to which he asked the attention of the crowd, which
I deem of somewhat less importance--at least of propriety--for me to dwell
upon than the others, which he brought in near the close of his speech,
and which I think it would not be entirely proper for me to omit attending
to, and yet if I were not to give some attention to it now, I should
probably forget it altogether. While I am upon this subject, allow me to
say that I do not intend to indulge in that inconvenient mode sometimes
adopted in public speaking, of reading from documents; but I shall depart
from that rule so far as to read a little scrap from his speech, which
notices this first topic of which I shall speak,--that is, provided I can
find it in the paper:

"I have made up my mind to appeal to the people against the combination
that has been made against me; the Republican leaders having formed an
alliance, an unholy and unnatural alliance, with a portion of unscrupulous
Federal office-holders. I intend to fight that allied army wherever I meet
them. I know they deny the alliance; but yet these men who are trying
to divide the Democratic party for the purpose of electing a Republican
Senator in my place are just as much the agents and tools of the
supporters of Mr. Lincoln. Hence I shall deal with this allied army
just as the Russians dealt with the Allies at Sebastopol,--that is, the
Russians did not stop to inquire, when they fired a broadside, whether it
hit an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a Turk. Nor will I stop to inquire,
nor shall I hesitate, whether my blows shall hit the Republican leaders
or their allies, who are holding the Federal offices, and yet acting in
concert with them."

Well, now, gentlemen, is not that very alarming? Just to think of it!
right at the outset of his canvass, I, a poor, kind, amiable, intelligent
gentleman,--I am to be slain in this way! Why, my friend the Judge is not
only, as it turns out, not a dead lion, nor even a living one,--he is the
rugged Russian Bear!

But if they will have it--for he says that we deny it--that there is any
such alliance, as he says there is,--and I don't propose hanging very much
upon this question of veracity,--but if he will have it that there is such
an alliance, that the Administration men and we are allied, and we stand
in the attitude of English, French, and Turk, he occupying the position
of the Russian, in that case I beg that he will indulge us while we barely
suggest to him that these allies took Sebastopol.

Gentlemen, only a few more words as to this alliance. For my part, I have
to say that whether there be such an alliance depends, so far as I know,
upon what may be a right definition of the term alliance. If for the
Republican party to see the other great party to which they are opposed
divided among themselves, and not try to stop the division, and rather be
glad of it,--if that is an alliance, I confess I am in; but if it is meant
to be said that the Republicans had formed an alliance going beyond that,
by which there is contribution of money or sacrifice of principle on the
one side or the other, so far as the Republican party is concerned,--if
there be any such thing, I protest that I neither know anything of it,
nor do I believe it. I will, however, say,--as I think this branch of the
argument is lugged in,--I would before I leave it state, for the benefit
of those concerned, that one of those same Buchanan men did once tell me
of an argument that he made for his opposition to Judge Douglas. He said
that a friend of our Senator Douglas had been talking to him, and had,
among other things, said to him:

"...why, you don't want to beat Douglas?" "Yes," said he, "I do want to
beat him, and I will tell you why. I believe his original Nebraska Bill
was right in the abstract, but it was wrong in the time that it was
brought forward. It was wrong in the application to a Territory in regard
to which the question had been settled; it was brought forward at a time
when nobody asked him; it was tendered to the South when the South had not
asked for it, but when they could not well refuse it; and for this same
reason he forced that question upon our party. It has sunk the best men
all over the nation, everywhere; and now, when our President, struggling
with the difficulties of this man's getting up, has reached the very
hardest point to turn in the case, he deserts him and I am for putting him
where he will trouble us no more."

Now, gentlemen, that is not my argument; that is not my argument at all.
I have only been stating to you the argument of a Buchanan man. You will
judge if there is any force in it.

Popular sovereignty! Everlasting popular sovereignty! Let us for a moment
inquire into this vast matter of popular sovereignty. What is popular
sovereignty? We recollect that at an early period in the history of
this struggle there was another name for the same thing,--"squatter
sovereignty." It was not exactly popular sovereignty, but squatter
sovereignty. What do those terms mean? What do those terms mean when used
now? And vast credit is taken by our friend the Judge in regard to his
support of it, when he declares the last years of his life have been,
and all the future years of his life shall be, devoted to this matter of
popular sovereignty. What is it? Why, it is the sovereignty of the people!
What was squatter sovereignty? I suppose, if it had any significance at
all, it was the right of the people to govern themselves, to be sovereign
in their own affairs while they were squatted down in a country not their
own, while they had squatted on a Territory that did not belong to them,
in the sense that a State belongs to the people who inhabit it, when
it belonged to the nation; such right to govern themselves was called
"squatter sovereignty."

Now, I wish you to mark: What has become of that squatter sovereignty?
what has become of it? Can you get anybody to tell you now that the people
of a Territory have any authority to govern themselves, in regard to this
mooted question of slavery, before they form a State constitution? No such
thing at all; although there is a general running fire, and although there
has been a hurrah made in every speech on that side, assuming that policy
had given the people of a Territory the right to govern themselves upon
this question, yet the point is dodged. To-day it has been decided--no
more than a year ago it was decided--by the Supreme Court of the United
States, and is insisted upon to-day that the people of a Territory have no
right to exclude slavery from a Territory; that if any one man chooses to
take slaves into a Territory, all the rest of the people have no right
to keep them out. This being so, and this decision being made one of the
points that the Judge approved, and one in the approval of which he says
he means to keep me down,--put me down I should not say, for I have never
been up,--he says he is in favor of it, and sticks to it, and expects to
win his battle on that decision, which says that there is no such thing
as squatter sovereignty, but that any one man may take slaves into a
Territory, and all the other men in the Territory may be opposed to it,
and yet by reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit it. When that
is so, how much is left of this vast matter of squatter sovereignty, I
should like to know?

When we get back, we get to the point of the right of the people to make a
constitution. Kansas was settled, for example, in 1854. It was a Territory
yet, without having formed a constitution, in a very regular way, for
three years. All this time negro slavery could be taken in by any few
individuals, and by that decision of the Supreme Court, which the Judge
approves, all the rest of the people cannot keep it out; but when they
come to make a constitution, they may say they will not have slavery. But
it is there; they are obliged to tolerate it some way, and all experience
shows it will be so, for they will not take the negro slaves and
absolutely deprive the owners of them. All experience shows this to be so.
All that space of time that runs from the beginning of the settlement
of the Territory until there is sufficiency of people to make a State
constitution,--all that portion of time popular sovereignty is given up.
The seal is absolutely put down upon it by the court decision, and Judge
Douglas puts his own upon the top of that; yet he is appealing to the
people to give him vast credit for his devotion to popular sovereignty.

Again, when we get to the question of the right of the people to form
a State constitution as they please, to form it with slavery or without
slavery, if that is anything new, I confess I don't know it. Has there
ever been a time when anybody said that any other than the people of a
Territory itself should form a constitution? What is now in it that Judge
Douglas should have fought several years of his life, and pledge himself
to fight all the remaining years of his life for? Can Judge Douglas find
anybody on earth that said that anybody else should form a constitution
for a people? [A voice, "Yes."] Well, I should like you to name him; I
should like to know who he was. [Same voice, "John Calhoun."]

No, sir, I never heard of even John Calhoun saying such a thing. He
insisted on the same principle as Judge Douglas; but his mode of applying
it, in fact, was wrong. It is enough for my purpose to ask this crowd
whenever a Republican said anything against it. They never said anything
against it, but they have constantly spoken for it; and whoever will
undertake to examine the platform, and the speeches of responsible men of
the party, and of irresponsible men, too, if you please, will be unable to
find one word from anybody in the Republican ranks opposed to that popular
sovereignty which Judge Douglas thinks that he has invented. I suppose
that Judge Douglas will claim, in a little while, that he is the inventor
of the idea that the people should govern themselves; that nobody ever
thought of such a thing until he brought it forward. We do not remember
that in that old Declaration of Independence it is said that:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed."

There is the origin of popular sovereignty. Who, then, shall come in at
this day and claim that he invented it?

The Lecompton Constitution connects itself with this question, for it is
in this matter of the Lecompton Constitution that our friend Judge
Douglas claims such vast credit. I agree that in opposing the Lecompton
Constitution, so far as I can perceive, he was right. I do not deny that
at all; and, gentlemen, you will readily see why I could not deny it,
even if I wanted to. But I do not wish to; for all the Republicans in the
nation opposed it, and they would have opposed it just as much without
Judge Douglas's aid as with it. They had all taken ground against it long
before he did. Why, the reason that he urges against that constitution I
urged against him a year before. I have the printed speech in my hand. The
argument that he makes, why that constitution should not be adopted, that
the people were not fairly represented nor allowed to vote, I pointed out
in a speech a year ago, which I hold in my hand now, that no fair chance
was to be given to the people. ["Read it, Read it."] I shall not waste
your time by trying to read it. ["Read it, Read it."] Gentlemen, reading
from speeches is a very tedious business, particularly for an old man that
has to put on spectacles, and more so if the man be so tall that he has to
bend over to the light.

A little more, now, as to this matter of popular sovereignty and the
Lecompton Constitution. The Lecompton Constitution, as the Judge tells us,
was defeated. The defeat of it was a good thing or it was not. He thinks
the defeat of it was a good thing, and so do I, and we agree in that. Who
defeated it?

[A voice: Judge Douglas.]

Yes, he furnished himself, and if you suppose he controlled the other
Democrats that went with him, he furnished three votes; while the
Republicans furnished twenty.

That is what he did to defeat it. In the House of Representatives he and
his friends furnished some twenty votes, and the Republicans furnished
ninety odd. Now, who was it that did the work?

[A voice: Douglas.]

Why, yes, Douglas did it! To be sure he did.

Let us, however, put that proposition another way. The Republicans could
not have done it without Judge Douglas. Could he have done it without
them? Which could have come the nearest to doing it without the other?

[A voice: Who killed the bill?]

[Another voice: Douglas.]

Ground was taken against it by the Republicans long before Douglas did it.
The proportion of opposition to that measure is about five to one.

[A voice: Why don't they come out on it?]

You don't know what you are talking about, my friend. I am quite willing
to answer any gentleman in the crowd who asks an intelligent question.

Now, who in all this country has ever found any of our friends of Judge
Douglas's way of thinking, and who have acted upon this main question,
that has ever thought of uttering a word in behalf of Judge Trumbull?

[A voice: We have.]

I defy you to show a printed resolution passed in a Democratic meeting--I
take it upon myself to defy any man to show a printed resolution of a
Democratic meeting, large or small--in favor of Judge Trumbull, or any of
the five to one Republicans who beat that bill. Everything must be for the
Democrats! They did everything, and the five to the one that really did
the thing they snub over, and they do not seem to remember that they have
an existence upon the face of the earth.

Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious. I leave this branch of the
subject to take hold of another. I take up that part of Judge Douglas's
speech in which he respectfully attended to me.

Judge Douglas made two points upon my recent speech at Springfield. He
says they are to be the issues of this campaign. The first one of these
points he bases upon the language in a speech which I delivered at
Springfield, which I believe I can quote correctly from memory. I
said there that "we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was
instituted for the avowed object, and with the confident promise, of
putting an end to slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy,
that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented."
"I believe it 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 am quoting from my speech, "--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 spread of it and place it where the public mind
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction,
or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful
in all the States, north as well as south."

What is the paragraph? In this paragraph, which I have quoted in your
hearing, and to which I ask the attention of all, Judge Douglas thinks he
discovers great political heresy. I want your attention particularly to
what he has inferred from it. He says I am in favor of making all the
States of this Union uniform in all their internal regulations; that in
all their domestic concerns I am in favor of making them entirely uniform.
He draws this inference from the language I have quoted to you. He says
that I am in favor of making war by the North upon the South for the
extinction of slavery; that I am also in favor of inviting (as he
expresses it) the South to a war upon the North for the purpose of
nationalizing slavery. Now, it is singular enough, if you will carefully
read that passage over, that I did not say that I was in favor of anything
in it. I only said what I expected would take place. I made a prediction
only,--it may have been a foolish one, perhaps. I did not even say that I
desired that slavery should be put in course of ultimate extinction. I do
say so now, however, so there need be no longer any difficulty about that.
It may be written down in the great speech.

Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine was
probably carefully prepared. I admit that it was. I am not master of
language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into
a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not
believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge
Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words.
I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can
explain it to them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph.

I am not, in the first place, unaware that this government has endured
eighty-two years half slave and half free. I know that. I am tolerably
well acquainted with the history of the country, and I know that it has
endured eighty-two years half slave and half free. I believe--and that is
what I meant to allude to there--I believe it has endured because during
all that time, until the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, the public
mind did rest all the time in the belief that slavery was in course of
ultimate extinction. That was what gave us the rest that we had through
that period of eighty-two years,--at least, so I believe. I have always
hated slavery, I think, as much as any Abolitionist,--I have been an Old
Line Whig,--I have always hated it; but I have always been quiet about
it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began. I
always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in course
of ultimate extinction. [Pointing to Mr. Browning, who stood near by.]
Browning thought so; the great mass of the nation have rested in the
belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction. They had reason
so to believe.

The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led the
people to believe so; and that such was the belief of the framers of the
Constitution itself, why did those old men, about the time of the adoption
of the Constitution, decree that slavery should not go into the new
Territory, where it had not already gone? Why declare that within twenty
years the African slave trade, by which slaves are supplied, might be cut
off by Congress? Why were all these acts? I might enumerate more of these
acts; but enough. What were they but a clear indication that the framers
of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of
that institution? And now, when I say, as I said in my speech that Judge
Douglas has quoted from, when I say that I think the opponents of slavery
will resist the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind
shall rest with the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,
I only mean to say that they will place it where the founders of this
government originally placed it.

I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it
back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination, in
the people of the free States to enter into the slave States and interfere
with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always; Judge
Douglas has heard me say it, if not quite a hundred times, at least
as good as a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of
interfering with slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by
anything I have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever
said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so
construed (as, however, I believe I never have), I now correct it.

So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in
favor of setting the sections at war with one another. I know that I never
meant any such thing, and I believe that no fair mind can infer any such
thing from anything I have ever said.

Now, in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general
consolidation of all the local institutions of the various States. I will
attend to that for a little while, and try to inquire, if I can, how on
earth it could be that any man could draw such an inference from anything
I said. I have said, very many times, in Judge Douglas's hearing, that no
man believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies
at the bottom of all my ideas of just government, from beginning to end. I
have denied that his use of that term applies properly. But for the thing
itself, I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his devotion to
the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency in advocating it. I
think that I have said it in your hearing, that I believe each individual
is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of
his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man's rights;
that each community as a State has a right to do exactly as it pleases
with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the right of
no other State; and that the General Government, upon principle, has no
right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things
that does concern the whole. I have said that at all times. I have said,
as illustrations, that I do not believe in the right of Illinois to
interfere with the cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia,
or the liquor laws of Maine. I have said these things over and over again,
and I repeat them here as my sentiments.

How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see slavery
put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction, that I am in favor of Illinois going over
and interfering with the cranberry laws of Indiana? What can authorize him
to draw any such inference?

I suppose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to draw
such an inference that would not be true with me or many others: that is,
because he looks upon all this matter of slavery as an exceedingly little
thing,--this matter of keeping one sixth of the population of the whole
nation in a state of oppression and tyranny unequaled in the world. He
looks upon it as being an exceedingly little thing,--only equal to the
question of the cranberry laws of Indiana; as something having no moral
question in it; as something on a par with the question of whether a man
shall pasture his land with cattle, or plant it with tobacco; so little
and so small a thing that he concludes, if I could desire that anything
should be done to bring about the ultimate extinction of that little
thing, I must be in favor of bringing about an amalgamation of all
the other little things in the Union. Now, it so happens--and there, I
presume, is the foundation of this mistake--that the Judge thinks thus;
and it so happens that there is a vast portion of the American people that
do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look
upon it as a vast moral evil; they can prove it as such by the writings of
those who gave us the blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and that they
so looked upon it, and not as an evil merely confining itself to the
States where it is situated; and while we agree that, by the Constitution
we assented to, in the States where it exists, we have no right to
interfere with it, because it is in the Constitution; and we are by both
duty and inclination to stick by that Constitution, in all its letter and
spirit, from beginning to end.

So much, then, as to my disposition--my wish to have all the State
legislatures blotted out, and to have one consolidated government, and a
uniformity of domestic regulations in all the States, by which I suppose
it is meant, if we raise corn here, we must make sugar-cane grow here
too, and we must make those which grow North grow in the South. All this
I suppose he understands I am in favor of doing. Now, so much for all this
nonsense; for I must call it so. The Judge can have no issue with me on
a question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations of the
States.

A little now on the other point,--the Dred Scott decision. Another of the
issues he says that is to be made with me is upon his devotion to the Dred
Scott decision, and my opposition to it.

I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the
Dred Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of
that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly
implied by the term Judge Douglas has used, "resistance to the decision"?
I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I
would be interfering with property, and that terrible difficulty that
Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, would arise. But
I am doing no such thing as that, but all that I am doing is refusing to
obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come
up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory,
in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.

That is what I should do. Judge Douglas said last night that before the
decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the
decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by
it until it was reversed. Just so! We let this property abide by the
decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it
where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it
is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and
we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. As rules of
property they have two uses. First, they decide upon the question before
the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody
resists that, not only that, but they say to everybody else that persons
standing just as Dred Scott stands are as he is. That is, they say that
when a question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided again,
unless the court decides in another way, unless the court overrules its
decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to have the court decide the
other way. That is one thing we mean to try to do.

The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is a degree
of sacredness that has never been before thrown around any other decision.
I have never heard of such a thing. Why, decisions apparently contrary
to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were contrary to that
decision, have been made by that very court before. It is the first of
its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history. It is a new wonder of the
world. It is based upon falsehood in the main as to the facts; allegations
of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in many instances, and
no decision made on any question--the first instance of a decision made
under so many unfavorable circumstances--thus placed, has ever been held
by the profession as law, and it has always needed confirmation before the
lawyers regarded it as settled law. But Judge Douglas will have it
that all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these
extraordinary circumstances, and give their vote in Congress in accordance
with it, yield to it, and obey it in every possible sense. Circumstances
alter cases. Do not gentlemen here remember the case of that same Supreme
Court some twenty-five or thirty years ago deciding that a National Bank
was constitutional? I ask, if somebody does not remember that a National
Bank was declared to be constitutional? Such is the truth, whether it be
remembered or not. The Bank charter ran out, and a recharter was granted
by Congress. That recharter was laid before General Jackson. It was urged
upon him, when he denied the constitutionality of the Bank, that the
Supreme Court had decided that it was constitutional; and General Jackson
then said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern
a coordinate branch of the government, the members of which had sworn
to support the Constitution; that each member had sworn to support that
Constitution as he understood it. I will venture here to say that I have
heard Judge Douglas say that he approved of General Jackson for that act.
What has now become of all his tirade about "resistance of the Supreme
Court"?

My fellow-citizens, getting back a little,--for I pass from these
points,--when Judge Douglas makes his threat of annihilation upon the
"alliance," he is cautious to say that that warfare of his is to fall
upon the leaders of the Republican party. Almost every word he utters,
and every distinction he makes, has its significance. He means for the
Republicans who do not count themselves as leaders, to be his friends; he
makes no fuss over them; it is the leaders that he is making war upon. He
wants it understood that the mass of the Republican party are really
his friends. It is only the leaders that are doing something that are
intolerant, and that require extermination at his hands. As this is dearly
and unquestionably the light in which he presents that matter, I want to
ask your attention, addressing myself to the Republicans here, that I may
ask you some questions as to where you, as the Republican party, would
be placed if you sustained Judge Douglas in his present position by a
re-election? I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish; I do not pretend
that I would not like to go to the United States Senate,--I make no such
hypocritical pretense; but I do say to you that in this mighty issue it is
nothing to you--nothing to the mass of the people of the nation,--whether
or not Judge Douglas or myself shall ever be heard of after this night;
it may be a trifle to either of us, but in connection with this mighty
question, upon which hang the destinies of the nation, perhaps, it is
absolutely nothing: but where will you be placed if you reindorse Judge
Douglas? Don't you know how apt he is, how exceedingly anxious he is at
all times, to seize upon anything and everything to persuade you that
something he has done you did yourselves? Why, he tried to persuade you
last night that our Illinois Legislature instructed him to introduce the
Nebraska Bill. There was nobody in that Legislature ever thought of such a
thing; and when he first introduced the bill, he never thought of it; but
still he fights furiously for the proposition, and that he did it because
there was a standing instruction to our Senators to be always introducing
Nebraska bills. He tells you he is for the Cincinnati platform, he tells
you he is for the Dred Scott decision. He tells you, not in his speech
last night, but substantially in a former speech, that he cares not if
slavery is voted up or down; he tells you the struggle on Lecompton is
past; it may come up again or not, and if it does, he stands where
he stood when, in spite of him and his opposition, you built up the
Republican party. If you indorse him, you tell him you do not care whether
slavery be voted up or down, and he will close or try to close your mouths
with his declaration, repeated by the day, the week, the month, and the
year. Is that what you mean? [Cries of "No," one voice "Yes."] Yes, I have
no doubt you who have always been for him, if you mean that. No doubt of
that, soberly I have said, and I repeat it. I think, in the position in
which Judge Douglas stood in opposing the Lecompton Constitution, he was
right; he does not know that it will return, but if it does we may know
where to find him, and if it does not, we may know where to look for him,
and that is on the Cincinnati platform. Now, I could ask the Republican
party, after all the hard names that Judge Douglas has called them by all
his repeated charges of their inclination to marry with and hug negroes;
all his declarations of Black Republicanism,--by the way, we are
improving, the black has got rubbed off,--but with all that, if he be
indorsed by Republican votes, where do you stand? Plainly, you stand ready
saddled, bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven over to the
slavery extension camp of the nation,--just ready to be driven over, tied
together in a lot, to be driven over, every man with a rope around his
neck, that halter being held by Judge Douglas. That is the question. If
Republican men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they
had better not do it; but I think that the Republican party is made up
of those who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose the extension of
slavery, and who will hope for its ultimate extinction. If they believe
it is wrong in grasping up the new lands of the continent and keeping them
from the settlement of free white laborers, who want the land to bring
up their families upon; if they are in earnest, although they may make a
mistake, they will grow restless, and the time will come when they will
come back again and reorganize, if not by the same name, at least upon the
same principles as their party now has. It is better, then, to save the
work while it is begun. You have done the labor; maintain it, keep it.
If men choose to serve you, go with them; but as you have made up your
organization upon principle, stand by it; for, as surely as God reigns
over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety,
and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these
ideas, and you will at last come back again after your wanderings, merely
to do your work over again.

We were often,--more than once, at least,--in the course of Judge
Douglas's speech last night, reminded that this government was made for
white men; that he believed it was made for white men. Well, that is
putting it into a shape in which no one wants to deny it; but the Judge
then goes into his passion for drawing inferences that are not warranted.
I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes
that because I did not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily
want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for
either, but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and
do one another much good thereby. There are white men enough to marry all
the white women, and enough black men to marry all the black women; and in
God's name let them be so married. The Judge regales us with the terrible
enormities that take place by the mixture of races; that the inferior race
bears the superior down. Why, Judge, if we do not let them get together in
the Territories, they won't mix there.

[A voice: "Three cheers for Lincoln".--The cheers were given with a hearty
good-will.]

I should say at least that that is a self-evident truth.

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometimes about
the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings
I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I
suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty or about thirty millions of
people, and we own and inhabit about one fifteenth part of the dry land
of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for
about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small
people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a
vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem
desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous
to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened
away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of
prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as
our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the
principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what
they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now
enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves
of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who
did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from
these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the
one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In
every way we are better men in the age and race and country in which we
live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have
not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We
have--besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors--among us
perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men;
they are men who have come from Europe, German, Irish, French, and
Scandinavian,--men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose
ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals
in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their
connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot
carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel
that they are part of us; but when they look through that old Declaration
of Independence, they find that those old men say that "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"; and then
they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their
relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in
them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of
the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration;
and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links
the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link
those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds
of men throughout the world.

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of "don't
care if slavery is voted up or voted down," for sustaining the Dred Scott
decision, for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean
anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the
Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the
people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his
construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now, I ask you in all
soberness if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed
and indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend
to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this
government into a government of some other form. Those arguments that are
made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as
they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their
condition will allow,--what are these arguments? They are the arguments
that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world.
You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this
class; they always bestrode the necks of the people not that they wanted
to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That
is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent
that says, You work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the fruits of
it. Turn in whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a
king, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth
of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it
is all the same old serpent; and I hold, if that course of argumentation
that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should
not care about this should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I
should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which
declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to
it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not
another say it does not mean some other man? If that Declaration is not
the truth, let us get the statute book, in which we find it, and tear it
out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true, let us tear it out!
[Cries of "No, no."] Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it,
then.

It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities
and impose them upon us; and to the extent that a necessity is imposed
upon a man, he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which
we found ourselves when we established this government. We had slavery
among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them
to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we
grasped for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does
not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let that
charter stand as our standard.

My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote Scripture. I will
try it again, however. It is said in one of the admonitions of our Lord,
"As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect." The Savior, I
suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be perfect as the
Father in heaven; but he said, "As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye
also perfect." He set that up as a standard; and he who did most towards
reaching that standard attained the highest degree of moral perfection. So
I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let
it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every
creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other
creature. Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which
the framers of the Constitution originally placed it. Let us stand
firmly by each other. If we do not do so, we are turning in the contrary
direction, that our friend Judge Douglas proposes--not intentionally--as
working in the traces tends to make this one universal slave nation. He is
one that runs in that direction, and as such I resist him.

My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I
have only to say: Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the
other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior,
and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our
standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite
as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up
declaring that all men are created equal.

My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new topic, which
would detain you too long, continue to-night. I thank you for this most
extensive audience that you have furnished me to-night. I leave you,
hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall
no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.




SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858.

DELIVERED SATURDAY EVENING

(Mr. Douglas was not present.)

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--Another election, which is deemed an important one, is
approaching, and, as I suppose, the Republican party will, without much
difficulty, elect their State ticket. But in regard to the Legislature,
we, the Republicans, labor under some disadvantages. In the first place,
we have a Legislature to elect upon an apportionment of the representation
made several years ago, when the proportion of the population was far
greater in the South (as compared with the North) than it now is; and
inasmuch as our opponents hold almost entire sway in the South, and we a
correspondingly large majority in the North, the fact that we are now to
be represented as we were years ago, when the population was different,
is to us a very great disadvantage. We had in the year 1855, according to
law, a census, or enumeration of the inhabitants, taken for the purpose of
a new apportionment of representation. We know what a fair apportionment
of representation upon that census would give us. We know that it could
not, if fairly made, fail to give the Republican party from six to ten
more members of the Legislature than they can probably get as the law now
stands. It so happened at the last session of the Legislature that our
opponents, holding the control of both branches of the Legislature,
steadily refused to give us such an apportionment as we were rightly
entitled to have upon the census already taken. The Legislature steadily
refused to give us such an apportionment as we were rightfully entitled to
have upon the census taken of the population of the State. The Legislature
would pass no bill upon that subject, except such as was at least as
unfair to us as the old one, and in which, in some instances, two men in
the Democratic regions were allowed to go as far toward sending a member
to the Legislature as three were in the Republican regions. Comparison
was made at the time as to representative and senatorial districts, which
completely demonstrated that such was the fact. Such a bill was passed and
tendered to the Republican Governor for his signature; but, principally
for the reasons I have stated, he withheld his approval, and the bill fell
without becoming a law.

Another disadvantage under which we labor is that there are one or two
Democratic Senators who will be members of the next Legislature, and will
vote for the election of Senator, who are holding over in districts in
which we could, on all reasonable calculation, elect men of our own, if
we only had the chance of an election. When we consider that there are but
twenty-five Senators in the Senate, taking two from the side where they
rightfully belong, and adding them to the other, is to us a disadvantage
not to be lightly regarded. Still, so it is; we have this to contend with.
Perhaps there is no ground of complaint on our part. In attending to the
many things involved in the last general election for President, Governor,
Auditor, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Members of
Congress, of the Legislature, County Officers, and so on, we allowed these
things to happen by want of sufficient attention, and we have no cause to
complain of our adversaries, so far as this matter is concerned. But
we have some cause to complain of the refusal to give us a fair
apportionment.

There is still another disadvantage under which we labor, and to which I
will ask your attention. It arises out of the relative positions of the
two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate.
Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of
his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking
upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of
the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face
post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments,
charge-ships and foreign missions bursting and sprouting out in wonderful
exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they
have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the
little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to
give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about
him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions
beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have
brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me
to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that
any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all, taken
together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle
upon principle, and upon principle alone. I am, in a certain sense, made
the standard-bearer in behalf of the Republicans. I was made so merely
because there had to be some one so placed,--I being in nowise preferable
to any other one of twenty-five, perhaps a hundred, we have in the
Republican ranks. Then I say I wish it to be distinctly understood and
borne in mind that we have to fight this battle without many--perhaps
without any of the external aids which are brought to bear against us.
So I hope those with whom I am surrounded have principle enough to nerve
themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can be fairly done
to bring about the right result.

After Senator Douglas left Washington, as his movements were made known by
the public prints, he tarried a considerable time in the city of New
York; and it was heralded that, like another Napoleon, he was lying by and
framing the plan of his campaign. It was telegraphed to Washington City,
and published in the Union, that he was framing his plan for the purpose
of going to Illinois to pounce upon and annihilate the treasonable and
disunion speech which Lincoln had made here on the 16th of June. Now, I
do suppose that the Judge really spent some time in New York maturing the
plan of the campaign, as his friends heralded for him. I have been
able, by noting his movements since his arrival in Illinois, to discover
evidences confirmatory of that allegation. I think I have been able to see
what are the material points of that plan. I will, for a little while, ask
your attention to some of them. What I shall point out, though not showing
the whole plan, are, nevertheless, the main points, as I suppose.

They are not very numerous. The first is popular sovereignty. The second
and third are attacks upon my speech made on the 16th of June. Out of
these three points--drawing within the range of popular sovereignty the
question of the Lecompton Constitution--he makes his principal assault.
Upon these his successive speeches are substantially one and the same.
On this matter of popular sovereignty I wish to be a little careful.
Auxiliary to these main points, to be sure, are their thunderings of
cannon, their marching and music, their fizzlegigs and fireworks; but I
will not waste time with them. They are but the little trappings of the
campaign.

Coming to the substance,--the first point, "popular sovereignty." It is to
be labeled upon the cars in which he travels; put upon the hacks he rides
in; to be flaunted upon the arches he passes under, and the banners which
wave over him. It is to be dished up in as many varieties as a French cook
can produce soups from potatoes. Now, as this is so great a staple of the
plan of the campaign, it is worth while to examine it carefully; and if
we examine only a very little, and do not allow ourselves to be misled,
we shall be able to see that the whole thing is the most arrant Quixotism
that was ever enacted before a community. What is the matter of popular
sovereignty? The first thing, in order to understand it, is to get a good
definition of what it is, and after that to see how it is applied.

I suppose almost every one knows that, in this controversy, whatever has
been said has had reference to the question of negro slavery. We have not
been in a controversy about the right of the people to govern themselves
in the ordinary matters of domestic concern in the States and Territories.
Mr. Buchanan, in one of his late messages (I think when he sent up the
Lecompton Constitution) urged that the main point to which the public
attention had been directed was not in regard to the great variety of
small domestic matters, but was directed to the question of negro slavery;
and he asserts that if the people had had a fair chance to vote on that
question there was no reasonable ground of objection in regard to minor
questions. Now, while I think that the people had not had given, or
offered, them a fair chance upon that slavery question, still, if
there had been a fair submission to a vote upon that main question, the
President's proposition would have been true to the utmost. Hence, when
hereafter I speak of popular sovereignty, I wish to be understood as
applying what I say to the question of slavery only, not to other minor
domestic matters of a Territory or a State.

Does Judge Douglas, when he says that several of the past years of his
life have been devoted to the question of "popular sovereignty," and that
all the remainder of his life shall be devoted to it, does he mean to
say that he has been devoting his life to securing to the people of the
Territories the right to exclude slavery from the Territories? If he means
so to say he means to deceive; because he and every one knows that the
decision of the Supreme Court, which he approves and makes especial ground
of attack upon me for disapproving, forbids the people of a Territory to
exclude slavery. This covers the whole ground, from the settlement of a
Territory till it reaches the degree of maturity entitling it to form a
State Constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the Judge
is not sustaining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing it.
He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of the
Territory has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their
territorial existence. This being so, the period of time from the first
settlement of a Territory till it reaches the point of forming a State
Constitution is not the thing that the Judge has fought for or is fighting
for, but, on the contrary, he has fought for, and is fighting for, the
thing that annihilates and crushes out that same popular sovereignty.

Well, so much being disposed of, what is left? Why, he is contending for
the right of the people, when they come to make a State Constitution,
to make it for themselves, and precisely as best suits themselves. I say
again, that is quixotic. I defy contradiction when I declare that the
Judge can find no one to oppose him on that proposition. I repeat,
there is nobody opposing that proposition on principle. Let me not be
misunderstood. I know that, with reference to the Lecompton Constitution,
I may be misunderstood; but when you understand me correctly, my
proposition will be true and accurate. Nobody is opposing, or has opposed,
the right of the people, when they form a constitution, to form it for
themselves. Mr. Buchanan and his friends have not done it; they, too, as
well as the Republicans and the Anti-Lecompton Democrats, have not done
it; but on the contrary, they together have insisted on the right of the
people to form a constitution for themselves. The difference between the
Buchanan men on the one hand, and the Douglas men and the Republicans on
the other, has not been on a question of principle, but on a question of
fact.

The dispute was upon the question of fact, whether the Lecompton
Constitution had been fairly formed by the people or not. Mr. Buchanan and
his friends have not contended for the contrary principle any more than
the Douglas men or the Republicans. They have insisted that whatever of
small irregularities existed in getting up the Lecompton Constitution were
such as happen in the settlement of all new Territories. The question was,
Was it a fair emanation of the people? It was a question of fact, and not
of principle. As to the principle, all were agreed. Judge Douglas voted
with the Republicans upon that matter of fact.

He and they, by their voices and votes, denied that it was a fair
emanation of the people. The Administration affirmed that it was. With
respect to the evidence bearing upon that question of fact, I readily
agree that Judge Douglas and the Republicans had the right on their side,
and that the Administration was wrong. But I state again that, as a
matter of principle, there is no dispute upon the right of a people in
a Territory, merging into a State, to form a constitution for themselves
without outside interference from any quarter. This being so, what is
Judge Douglas going to spend his life for? Is he going to spend his life
in maintaining a principle that nobody on earth opposes? Does he expect to
stand up in majestic dignity, and go through his apotheosis and become a
god in the maintaining of a principle which neither man nor mouse in
all God's creation is opposing? Now something in regard to the Lecompton
Constitution more specially; for I pass from this other question of
popular sovereignty as the most arrant humbug that has ever been attempted
on an intelligent community.

As to the Lecompton Constitution, I have already said that on the question
of fact, as to whether it was a fair emanation of the people or not, Judge
Douglas, with the Republicans and some Americans, had greatly the argument
against the Administration; and while I repeat this, I wish to know what
there is in the opposition of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton Constitution
that entitles him to be considered the only opponent to it,--as being
par excellence the very quintessence of that opposition. I agree to the
rightfulness of his opposition. He in the Senate and his class of men
there formed the number three and no more. In the House of Representatives
his class of men--the Anti-Lecompton Democrats--formed a number of about
twenty. It took one hundred and twenty to defeat the measure, against one
hundred and twelve. Of the votes of that one hundred and twenty, Judge
Douglas's friends furnished twenty, to add to which there were six
Americans and ninety-four Republicans. I do not say that I am precisely
accurate in their numbers, but I am sufficiently so for any use I am
making of it.

Why is it that twenty shall be entitled to all the credit of doing that
work, and the hundred none of it? Why, if, as Judge Douglas says, the
honor is to be divided and due credit is to be given to other parties, why
is just so much given as is consonant with the wishes, the interests, and
advancement of the twenty? My understanding is, when a common job is done,
or a common enterprise prosecuted, if I put in five dollars to your one,
I have a right to take out five dollars to your one. But he does not so
understand it. He declares the dividend of credit for defeating Lecompton
upon a basis which seems unprecedented and incomprehensible.

Let us see. Lecompton in the raw was defeated. It afterward took a sort
of cooked-up shape, and was passed in the English bill. It is said by the
Judge that the defeat was a good and proper thing. If it was a good thing,
why is he entitled to more credit than others for the performance of that
good act, unless there was something in the antecedents of the Republicans
that might induce every one to expect them to join in that good work, and
at the same time something leading them to doubt that he would? Does he
place his superior claim to credit on the ground that he performed a
good act which was never expected of him? He says I have a proneness for
quoting Scripture. If I should do so now, it occurs that perhaps he places
himself somewhat upon the ground of the parable of the lost sheep which
went astray upon the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep
found the one that was lost, and threw it upon his shoulders and came home
rejoicing, it was said that there was more rejoicing over the one sheep
that was lost and had been found than over the ninety and nine in the
fold. The application is made by the Saviour in this parable, thus:
"Verily, I say unto you, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no
repentance."

And now, if the Judge claims the benefit of this parable, let him repent.
Let him not come up here and say: "I am the only just person; and you are
the ninety-nine sinners!" Repentance before forgiveness is a provision
of the Christian system, and on that condition alone will the Republicans
grant his forgiveness.

How will he prove that we have ever occupied a different position in
regard to the Lecompton Constitution or any principle in it? He says he
did not make his opposition on the ground as to whether it was a free or
slave constitution, and he would have you understand that the Republicans
made their opposition because it ultimately became a slave constitution.
To make proof in favor of himself on this point, he reminds us that he
opposed Lecompton before the vote was taken declaring whether the State
was to be free or slave. But he forgets to say that our Republican
Senator, Trumbull, made a speech against Lecompton even before he did.

Why did he oppose it? Partly, as he declares, because the members of the
convention who framed it were not fairly elected by the people; that the
people were not allowed to vote unless they had been registered; and that
the people of whole counties, some instances, were not registered. For
these reasons he declares the Constitution was not an emanation, in any
true sense, from the people. He also has an additional objection as to the
mode of submitting the Constitution back to the people. But bearing on the
question of whether the delegates were fairly elected, a speech of his,
made something more than twelve months ago, from this stand, becomes
important. It was made a little while before the election of the delegates
who made Lecompton. In that speech he declared there was every reason
to hope and believe the election would be fair; and if any one failed to
vote, it would be his own culpable fault.

I, a few days after, made a sort of answer to that speech. In that answer
I made, substantially, the very argument with which he combated his
Lecompton adversaries in the Senate last winter. I pointed to the facts
that the people could not vote without being registered, and that the time
for registering had gone by. I commented on it as wonderful that Judge
Douglas could be ignorant of these facts which every one else in the
nation so well knew.

I now pass from popular sovereignty and Lecompton. I may have occasion to
refer to one or both.

When he was preparing his plan of campaign, Napoleon-like, in New York,
as appears by two speeches I have heard him deliver since his arrival in
Illinois, he gave special attention to a speech of mine, delivered here on
the 16th of June last. He says that he carefully read that speech. He told
us that at Chicago a week ago last night and he repeated it at Bloomington
last night. Doubtless, he repeated it again to-day, though I did not hear
him. In the first two places--Chicago and Bloomington I heard him; to-day
I did not. He said he had carefully examined that speech,--when, he did
not say; but there is no reasonable doubt it was when he was in New York
preparing his plan of campaign. I am glad he did read it carefully. He
says it was evidently prepared with great care. I freely admit it
was prepared with care. I claim not to be more free from errors than
others,--perhaps scarcely so much; but I was very careful not to put
anything in that speech as a matter of fact, or make any inferences, which
did not appear to me to be true and fully warrantable. If I had made any
mistake, I was willing to be corrected; if I had drawn any inference in
regard to Judge Douglas or any one else which was not warranted, I was
fully prepared to modify it as soon as discovered. I planted myself upon
the truth and the truth only, so far as I knew it, or could be brought to
know it.

Having made that speech with the most kindly feelings toward Judge
Douglas, as manifested therein, I was gratified when I found that he
had carefully examined it, and had detected no error of fact, nor any
inference against him, nor any misrepresentations of which he thought fit
to complain. In neither of the two speeches I have mentioned did he make
any such complaint. I will thank any one who will inform me that he, in
his speech to-day, pointed out anything I had stated respecting him as
being erroneous. I presume there is no such thing. I have reason to be
gratified that the care and caution used in that speech left it so that
he, most of all others interested in discovering error, has not been able
to point out one thing against him which he could say was wrong. He seizes
upon the doctrines he supposes to be included in that speech, and declares
that upon them will turn the issues of this campaign. He then quotes,
or attempts to quote, from my speech. I will not say that he wilfully
misquotes, but he does fail to quote accurately. His attempt at quoting is
from a passage which I believe I can quote accurately from memory. I shall
make the quotation now, with some comments upon it, as I have already
said, in order that the Judge shall be left entirely without excuse for
misrepresenting me. I do so now, as I hope, for the last time. I do this
in great caution, in order that if he repeats his misrepresentation it
shall be plain to all that he does so wilfully. If, after all, he still
persists, I shall be compelled to reconstruct the course I have marked
out for myself, and draw upon such humble resources, as I have, for a new
course, better suited to the real exigencies of the case. I set out in
this campaign with the intention of conducting it strictly as a gentleman,
in substance at least, if not in the outside polish. The latter I shall
never be; but that which constitutes the inside of a gentleman I hope I
understand, and am not less inclined to practice than others. It was
my purpose and expectation that this canvass would be conducted upon
principle, and with fairness on both sides, and it shall not be my fault
if this purpose and expectation shall be given up.

He charges, in substance, that I invite a war of sections; that I
propose all the local institutions of the different States shall become
consolidated and uniform. What is there in the language of that speech
which expresses such purpose or bears such construction? I have again and
again said that I would not enter into any of the States to disturb the
institution of slavery. Judge Douglas said, at Bloomington, that I used
language most able and ingenious for concealing what I really meant;
and that while I had protested against entering into the slave States, I
nevertheless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio and throw missiles
into Kentucky, to disturb them in their domestic institutions.

I said in that speech, and I meant no more, that the institution of
slavery ought to be placed in the very attitude where the framers of this
government placed it and left it. I do not understand that the framers
of our Constitution left the people of the free States in the attitude of
firing bombs or shells into the slave States. I was not using that passage
for the purpose for which he infers I did use it. I said:

"We are now far advanced into the fifth year since a policy was created
for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to
slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has
not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will
not cease till a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house
divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe that this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free; it will become all one
thing or all the other. Either the 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."

Now, you all see, from that quotation, I did not express my wish on
anything. In that passage I indicated no wish or purpose of my own; I
simply expressed my expectation. Cannot the Judge perceive a distinction
between a purpose and an expectation? I have often expressed an
expectation to die, but I have never expressed a wish to die. I said
at Chicago, and now repeat, that I am quite aware this government has
endured, half slave and half free, for eighty-two years. I understand
that little bit of history. I expressed the opinion I did because I
perceived--or thought I perceived--a new set of causes introduced. I did
say at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of
slavery arrested, and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest
in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. I said that
because I supposed, when the public mind shall rest in that belief,
we shall have peace on the slavery question. I have believed--and now
believe--the public mind did rest on that belief up to the introduction of
the Nebraska Bill.

Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, so far I rested in the hope
and belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. For that
reason it had been a minor question with me. I might have been mistaken;
but I had believed, and now believe, that the whole public mind, that is,
the mind of the great majority, had rested in that belief up to the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise. But upon that event I became convinced that
either I had been resting in a delusion, or the institution was being
placed on a new basis, a basis for making it perpetual, national, and
universal. Subsequent events have greatly confirmed me in that belief. I
believe that bill to be the beginning of a conspiracy for that purpose. So
believing, I have since then considered that question a paramount one.
So believing, I thought the public mind will never rest till the power
of Congress to restrict the spread of it shall again be acknowledged and
exercised on the one hand or, on the other, all resistance be entirely
crushed out. I have expressed that opinion, and I entertain it to-night.
It is denied that there is any tendency to the nationalization of slavery
in these States.

Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, in one of his speeches, when they were
presenting him canes, silver plate, gold pitchers, and the like, for
assaulting Senator Sumner, distinctly affirmed his opinion that when this
Constitution was formed it was the belief of no man that slavery would
last to the present day. He said, what I think, that the framers of our
Constitution placed the institution of slavery where the public mind
rested in the hope that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But
he went on to say that the men of the present age, by their experience,
have become wiser than the framers of the Constitution, and the invention
of the cotton gin had made the perpetuity of slavery a necessity in this
country.

As another piece of evidence tending to this same point: Quite recently in
Virginia, a man--the owner of slaves--made a will providing that after his
death certain of his slaves should have their freedom if they should so
choose, and go to Liberia, rather than remain in slavery. They chose to be
liberated. But the persons to whom they would descend as property claimed
them as slaves. A suit was instituted, which finally came to the Supreme
Court of Virginia, and was therein decided against the slaves upon the
ground that a negro cannot make a choice; that they had no legal power to
choose, could not perform the condition upon which their freedom depended.

I do not mention this with any purpose of criticizing it, but to connect
it with the arguments as affording additional evidence of the change of
sentiment upon this question of slavery in the direction of making it
perpetual and national. I argue now as I did before, that there is such
a tendency; and I am backed, not merely by the facts, but by the open
confession in the slave States.

And now as to the Judge's inference that because I wish to see slavery
placed in the course of ultimate extinction,--placed where our fathers
originally placed it,--I wish to annihilate the State Legislatures, to
force cotton to grow upon the tops of the Green Mountains, to freeze ice
in Florida, to cut lumber on the broad Illinois prairie,--that I am in
favor of all these ridiculous and impossible things.

It seems to me it is a complete answer to all this to ask if, when
Congress did have the fashion of restricting slavery from free territory;
when courts did have the fashion of deciding that taking a slave into a
free country made him free,--I say it is a sufficient answer to ask if
any of this ridiculous nonsense about consolidation and uniformity did
actually follow. Who heard of any such thing because of the Ordinance of
'87? because of the Missouri restriction? because of the numerous court
decisions of that character?

Now, as to the Dred Scott decision; for upon that he makes his last point
at me. He boldly takes ground in favor of that decision.

This is one half the onslaught, and one third of the entire plan of the
campaign. I am opposed to that decision in a certain sense, but not in
the sense which he puts it. I say that in so far as it decided in favor
of Dred Scott's master, and against Dred Scott and his family, I do not
propose to disturb or resist the decision.

I never have proposed to do any such thing. I think that in respect for
judicial authority my humble history would not suffer in comparison with
that of Judge Douglas. He would have the citizen conform his vote to that
decision; the member of Congress, his; the President, his use of the veto
power. He would make it a rule of political action for the people and
all the departments of the government. I would not. By resisting it as a
political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no disorder, excite
no mobs.

When he spoke at Chicago, on Friday evening of last week, he made this
same point upon me. On Saturday evening I replied, and reminded him of a
Supreme Court decision which he opposed for at least several years. Last
night, at Bloomington, he took some notice of that reply, but entirely
forgot to remember that part of it.

He renews his onslaught upon me, forgetting to remember that I have turned
the tables against himself on that very point. I renew the effort to draw
his attention to it. I wish to stand erect before the country, as well as
Judge Douglas, on this question of judicial authority; and therefore I
add something to the authority in favor of my own position. I wish to
show that I am sustained by authority, in addition to that heretofore
presented. I do not expect to convince the Judge. It is part of the plan
of his campaign, and he will cling to it with a desperate grip. Even turn
it upon him,--the sharp point against him, and gaff him through,--he will
still cling to it till he can invent some new dodge to take the place of
it.

In public speaking it is tedious reading from documents; but I must beg
to indulge the practice to a limited extent. I shall read from a letter
written by Mr. Jefferson in 1820, and now to be found in the seventh
volume of his correspondence, at page 177. It seems he had been presented
by a gentleman of the name of Jarvis with a book, or essay, or periodical,
called the Republican, and he was writing in acknowledgment of the
present, and noting some of its contents. After expressing the hope that
the work will produce a favorable effect upon the minds of the young, he
proceeds to say:

"That it will have this tendency may be expected, and for that reason I
feel an urgency to note what I deem an error in it, the more requiring
notice as your opinion is strengthened by that of many others. You seem,
in pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of
all constitutional questions,--a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one
which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are
as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same
passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their
maxim is, 'Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem'; and their power is
the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as
the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has
erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided,
with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign with
themselves."

Thus we see the power claimed for the Supreme Court by Judge Douglas, Mr.
Jefferson holds, would reduce us to the despotism of an oligarchy.

Now, I have said no more than this,--in fact, never quite so much as this;
at least I am sustained by Mr. Jefferson.

Let us go a little further. You remember we once had a National Bank. Some
one owed the bank a debt; he was sued, and sought to avoid payment on the
ground that the bank was unconstitutional. The case went to the Supreme
Court, and therein it was decided that the bank was constitutional. The
whole Democratic party revolted against that decision. General Jackson
himself asserted that he, as President, would not be bound to hold a
National Bank to be constitutional, even though the court had decided it
to be so. He fell in precisely with the view of Mr. Jefferson, and acted
upon it under his official oath, in vetoing a charter for a National Bank.
The declaration that Congress does not possess this constitutional power
to charter a bank has gone into the Democratic platform, at their
National Conventions, and was brought forward and reaffirmed in their last
Convention at Cincinnati. They have contended for that declaration, in the
very teeth of the Supreme Court, for more than a quarter of a century.
In fact, they have reduced the decision to an absolute nullity. That
decision, I repeat, is repudiated in the Cincinnati platform; and still,
as if to show that effrontery can go no further, Judge Douglas vaunts in
the very speeches in which he denounces me for opposing the Dred Scott
decision that he stands on the Cincinnati platform.

Now, I wish to know what the Judge can charge upon me, with respect to
decisions of the Supreme Court, which does not lie in all its length,
breadth, and proportions at his own door. The plain truth is simply this:
Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes and against
them when he does not like them. He is for the Dred Scott decision because
it tends to nationalize slavery; because it is part of the original
combination for that object. It so happens, singularly enough, that I
never stood opposed to a decision of the Supreme Court till this, on the
contrary, I have no recollection that he was ever particularly in favor of
one till this. He never was in favor of any nor opposed to any, till the
present one, which helps to nationalize slavery.

Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, free men everywhere, judge ye
between him and me upon this issue.

He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,--that it has
no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is
but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which
determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than
abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended
upon it, and so would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended upon it.
But suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the new
Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract matter, and
one of no practical importance. How has the planting of slavery in new
countries always been effected? It has now been decided that slavery
cannot be kept out of our new Territories by any legal means. In what do
our new Territories now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when
slavery was first planted within them? It was planted, as Mr. Clay once
declared, and as history proves true, by individual men, in spite of the
wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to prohibit it, and
withholding from the people of the Colonies the authority to prohibit it
for themselves. Mr. Clay says this was one of the great and just causes of
complaint against Great Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology
we can now make for having the institution amongst us. In that precise
condition our Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our
own new Territories; the government will not prohibit slavery within them,
nor allow the people to prohibit it.

I defy any man to find any difference between the policy which originally
planted slavery in these Colonies and that policy which now prevails in
our new Territories. If it does not go into them, it is only because no
individual wishes it to go. The Judge indulged himself doubtless to-day
with the question as to what I am going to do with or about the Dred Scott
decision. Well, Judge, will you please tell me what you did about the
bank decision? Will you not graciously allow us to do with the Dred Scott
decision precisely as you did with the bank decision? You succeeded in
breaking down the moral effect of that decision: did you find it necessary
to amend the Constitution, or to set up a court of negroes in order to do
it?

There is one other point. Judge Douglas has a very affectionate leaning
toward the Americans and Old Whigs. Last evening, in a sort of weeping
tone, he described to us a death-bed scene. He had been called to the side
of Mr. Clay, in his last moments, in order that the genius of "popular
sovereignty" might duly descend from the dying man and settle upon him,
the living and most worthy successor. He could do no less than promise
that he would devote the remainder of his life to "popular sovereignty";
and then the great statesman departs in peace. By this part of the "plan
of the campaign" the Judge has evidently promised himself that tears shall
be drawn down the cheeks of all Old Whigs, as large as half-grown apples.

Mr. Webster, too, was mentioned; but it did not quite come to a death-bed
scene as to him. It would be amusing, if it were not disgusting, to see
how quick these compromise-breakers administer on the political effects
of their dead adversaries, trumping up claims never before heard of, and
dividing the assets among themselves. If I should be found dead to-morrow
morning, nothing but my insignificance could prevent a speech being made
on my authority, before the end of next week. It so happens that in that
"popular sovereignty" with which Mr. Clay was identified, the Missouri
Compromise was expressly reversed; and it was a little singular if Mr.
Clay cast his mantle upon Judge Douglas on purpose to have that compromise
repealed.

Again, the Judge did not keep faith with Mr. Clay when he first brought in
his Nebraska Bill. He left the Missouri Compromise unrepealed, and in his
report accompanying the bill he told the world he did it on purpose. The
manes of Mr. Clay must have been in great agony till thirty days later,
when "popular sovereignty" stood forth in all its glory.

One more thing. Last night Judge Douglas tormented himself with horrors
about my disposition to make negroes perfectly equal with white men in
social and political relations. He did not stop to show that I have said
any such thing, or that it legitimately follows from anything I have
said, but he rushes on with his assertions. I adhere to the Declaration of
Independence. If Judge Douglas and his friends are not willing to stand by
it, let them come up and amend it. Let them make it read that all men
are created equal except negroes. Let us have it decided whether the
Declaration of Independence, in this blessed year of 1858, shall be thus
amended. In his construction of the Declaration last year, he said it only
meant that Americans in America were equal to Englishmen in England. Then,
when I pointed out to him that by that rule he excludes the Germans, the
Irish, the Portuguese, and all the other people who have come among us
since the revolution, he reconstructs his construction. In his last speech
he tells us it meant Europeans.

I press him a little further, and ask if it meant to include the Russians
in Asia; or does he mean to exclude that vast population from the
principles of our Declaration of Independence? I expect ere long he
will introduce another amendment to his definition. He is not at all
particular. He is satisfied with anything which does not endanger the
nationalizing of negro slavery. It may draw white men down, but it must
not lift negroes up.

Who shall say, "I am the superior, and you are the inferior"?

My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be misrepresented,
but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the
Declaration to mean that all men were created equal in all respects. They
are not our equal in color; but I suppose that it does mean to declare
that all men are equal in some respects; they are equal in their right to
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Certainly the negro is
not our equal in color, perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the
right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he
is the equal of every other man, white or black. In pointing out that
more has been given you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little
which has been given him. All I ask for the negro is that if you do not
like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him
enjoy.

When our government was established we had the institution of slavery
among us. We were in a certain sense compelled to tolerate its existence.
It was a sort of necessity. We had gone through our struggle and
secured our own independence. The framers of the Constitution found the
institution of slavery amongst their own institutions at the time. They
found that by an effort to eradicate it they might lose much of what they
had already gained. They were obliged to bow to the necessity. They gave
power to Congress to abolish the slave trade at the end of twenty years.
They also prohibited it in the Territories where it did not exist. They
did what they could, and yielded to the necessity for the rest. I also
yield to all which follows from that necessity. What I would most desire
would be the separation of the white and black races.

One more point on this Springfield speech which Judge Douglas says he has
read so carefully. I expressed my belief in the existence of a conspiracy
to perpetuate and nationalize slavery. I did not profess to know it, nor
do I now. I showed the part Judge Douglas had played in the string of
facts constituting to my mind the proof of that conspiracy. I showed the
parts played by others.

I charged that the people had been deceived into carrying the last
Presidential election, by the impression that the people of the
Territories might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was known in
advance by the conspirators that the court was to decide that neither
Congress nor the people could so exclude slavery. These charges are more
distinctly made than anything else in the speech.

Judge Douglas has carefully read and reread that speech. He has not, so
far as I know, contradicted those charges. In the two speeches which I
heard he certainly did not. On this own tacit admission, I renew that
charge. I charge him with having been a party to that conspiracy and to
that deception for the sole purpose of nationalizing slavery.




CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS

[The following is the correspondence between the two rival candidates for
the United States Senate]




MR. LINCOLN TO MR. DOUGLAS.

CHICAGO, ILL., July 24, 1558.

HON. S. A. DOUGLAS:

My dear Sir,--Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you
and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences the present
canvass? Mr. Judd, who will hand you this, is authorized to receive
your answer; and, if agreeable to you, to enter into the terms of such
arrangement.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




Mr. DOUGLAS TO Mr. LINCOLN.

BEMENT, PLATT Co., ILL., July 30, 1858.

Dear Sir,--Your letter dated yesterday, accepting my proposition for a
joint discussion at one prominent point in each Congressional District, as
stated in my previous letter, was received this morning.

The times and places designated are as follows:

    Ottawa, La Salle County   August  21st, 1858.
    Freeport, Stephenson County  "    27th,
    Jonesboro, Union County, September 15th,
    Charleston, Coles County   "  18th,
    Galesburgh, Knox County October 7th,
    Quincy, Adams County    " 13th,
    Alton, Madison County    " 15th,

I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately open and close the
discussion. I will speak at Ottawa one hour, you can reply, occupying an
hour and a half, and I will then follow for half an hour. At Freeport, you
shall open the discussion and speak one hour; I will follow for an hour
and a half, and you can then reply for half an hour. We will alternate in
like manner in each successive place.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

S. A. DOUGLAS.




Mr. LINCOLN TO Mr. DOUGLAS.

SPRINGFIELD, July 31, 1858. HON. S. A. DOUGLAS:

Dear Sir,--Yours of yesterday, naming places, times, and terms for joint
discussions between us, was received this morning. Although, by the terms,
as you propose, you take four openings and closes, to my three, I accede,
and thus close the arrangement. I direct this to you at Hillsborough,
and shall try to have both your letter and this appear in the Journal and
Register of Monday morning.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA,

AUGUST 21, 1858

Mr. 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 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 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."]

Mr. LINCOLN: 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 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 term, 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, then, 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 forbid 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 greater length; but this is
the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution
of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it; and anything that
argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the
negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man
can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while
upon this subject, that I have no purpose, 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 as 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
stillhouse, 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 can 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 landwarrants, 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 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 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 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 result of
preconcert; but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of
which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by
different 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 yet to 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 eliminates, 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 marrying 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 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, or
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 broader
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 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 provisions 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
newspapers. I am willing to allow my history and action 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 its 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 any 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 Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first, that
the primary object of all government at its original institution is the
protection of person and property; second, that the Constitution of the
United States 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 of 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 saved. The dead point of danger is passed. All serious trouble to
Kansas affairs is over and gone..."

And a column nearly of the same sort. Then, when you come to look into
the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine incorporated in it
which was put forth editorially in the Union. What is it?

"ARTICLE 7, Section I. The right of property is 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 indorsement of this Constitution."

I pass over some portions of the speech, and I hope that any one who feels
interested in this matter will read the entire section of the speech, and
see whether I do the Judge injustice. He proceeds:

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed by
the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on the 10th 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, whom does he make that charge
against? Does he make it against that newspaper editor merely? No; he
says it is identical in spirit with the Lecompton Constitution, and so
the framers of that 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 he means it was by the authority of the
President and his Cabinet,--the Administration?

Is there any sort of question but 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 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 moulds 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 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
from excluding 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 the 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-slaughing
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 that 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 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 him from 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 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.




SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT,

AUGUST 27, 1858

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--On Saturday last, Judge Douglas and myself first
met in public discussion. He spoke one hour, I an hour and a half, and
he replied for half an hour. The order is now reversed. I am to speak an
hour, he an hour and a half, and then I am to reply for half an hour. I
propose to devote myself during the first hour to the scope of what was
brought within the range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa. Of course
there was brought within the scope in that half-hour's speech something
of his own opening speech. In the course of that opening argument Judge
Douglas proposed to me seven distinct interrogatories. In my speech of
an hour and a half, I attended to some other parts of his speech, and
incidentally, as I thought, intimated to him that I would answer the rest
of his interrogatories on condition only that he should agree to answer as
many for me. He made no intimation at the time of the proposition, nor
did he in his reply allude at all to that suggestion of mine. I do him no
injustice in saying that he occupied at least half of his reply in dealing
with me as though I had refused to answer his interrogatories. I now
propose that I will answer any of the interrogatories, upon condition that
he will answer questions from me not exceeding the same number. I give him
an opportunity to respond.

The Judge remains silent. I now say that I will answer his
interrogatories, whether he answers mine or not; and that after I have
done so, I shall propound mine to him.

I have supposed myself, since the organization of the Republican party at
Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by the platforms of the
party, then and since. If in any interrogatories which I shall answer I go
beyond the scope of what is within these platforms, it will be perceived
that no one is responsible but myself.

Having said thus much, I will take up the Judge's interrogatories as I
find them printed in the Chicago Times, and answer them seriatim. In order
that there may be no mistake about it, I have copied the interrogatories
in writing, and also my answers to them. The first one of these
interrogatories is in these words:

Question 1.--"I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as he did
in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law?"
Answer:--I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional
repeal of the Fugitive Slave law.

Q. 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?" Answer:--I do not now, nor ever did, stand
pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union.

Q. 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?" Answer:--I do not stand 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.

Q. 4.--"I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition
of slavery in the District of Columbia?" Answer:--I do not stand to-day
pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Q. 5.--"I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the
prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?" Answer:--I
do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the
different States.

Q. 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?" Answer:--I am impliedly, if not expressly,
pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery
in all the United States 'Territories.

Q. 7.--"I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of
any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?" Answer:--I
am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any
given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as
I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery
question among ourselves.

Now, my friends, it will be perceived, upon an examination of these
questions and answers, that so far I have only answered that I was
not pledged to this, that, or the other. The Judge has not framed his
interrogatories to ask me anything more than this, and I have answered in
strict accordance with the interrogatories, and have answered truly, that
I am not pledged at all upon any of the points to which I have answered.
But I am not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatory. I
am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions, and state
what I really think upon them.

As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive Slave law, I have never
hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under
the Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States
are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law. Having said that,
I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave law,
further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free
from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its
efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to
an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to
introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of
slavery.

In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the admission
of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you very frankly that
I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of having to
pass upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know that there
would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must
add that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories during the
territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people
shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt
the constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave
constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among
them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into
the Union.

The third interrogatory is answered by the answer to the second, it being,
as I conceive, the same as the second.

The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia. In relation to that, I have my mind very distinctly made up.
I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of
Columbia. I believe that Congress possesses the constitutional power to
abolish it. Yet as a member of Congress, I should not, with my present
views, be in favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia, unless it would be upon these conditions: First, that the
abolition should be gradual; second, that it should be on a vote of the
majority of qualified voters in the District; and third, that compensation
should be made to unwilling owners. With these three conditions, I
confess I would be exceedingly glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia, and, in the language of Henry Clay, "sweep from our
capital that foul blot upon our nation."

In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must say here that, as to the
question of the abolition of the slave-trade between the different States,
I can truly answer, as I have, that I am pledged to nothing about it.
It is a subject to which I have not given that mature consideration that
would make me feel authorized to state a position so as to hold myself
entirely bound by it. In other words, that question has never been
prominently enough before me to induce me to investigate whether we really
have the constitutional power to do it. I could investigate it if I had
sufficient time to bring myself to a conclusion upon that subject; but I
have not done so, and I say so frankly to you here, and to Judge Douglas.
I must say, however, that if I should be of opinion that Congress does
possess the constitutional power to abolish the slave-trade among the
different States, I should still not be in favor of the exercise of that
power, unless upon some conservative principle as I conceive it, akin to
what I have said in relation to the abolition of slavery in the District
of Columbia.

My answer as to whether I desire that slavery should be prohibited in all
the Territories of the United States is full and explicit within itself,
and cannot be made clearer by any comments of mine. So I suppose in
regard to the question whether I am opposed to the acquisition of any more
territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein, my answer is such
that I could add nothing by way of illustration, or making myself better
understood, than the answer which I have placed in writing.

Now in all this the Judge has me, and he has me on the record. I suppose
he had flattered himself that I was really entertaining one set of
opinions for one place, and another set for another place; that I was
afraid to say at one place what I uttered at another. What I am
saying here I suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tending to
Abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois, and I believe I am
saying that which, if it would be offensive to any persons and render them
enemies to myself, would be offensive to persons in this audience.

I now proceed to propound to the Judge the interrogatories, so far as I
have framed them. I will bring forward a new installment when I get them
ready. I will bring them forward now only reaching to number four. The
first one is:

Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask
admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite
number of inhabitants according to the English bill,--some ninety-three
thousand,--will you vote to admit them?

Q. 2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way,
against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from
its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?

Q. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States
cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing
in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action?

Q. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of
how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?

As introductory to these interrogatories which Judge Douglas propounded
to me at Ottawa, he read a set of resolutions which he said Judge Trumbull
and myself had participated in adopting, in the first Republican State
Convention, held at Springfield in October, 1854. He insisted that I and
Judge Trumbull, and perhaps the entire Republican party, were responsible
for the doctrines contained in the set of resolutions which he read, and
I understand that it was from that set of resolutions that he deduced the
interrogatories which he propounded to me, using these resolutions as a
sort of authority for propounding those questions to me. Now, I say here
to-day that I do not answer his interrogatories because of their springing
at all from that set of resolutions which he read. I answered them
because Judge Douglas thought fit to ask them. I do not now, nor ever did,
recognize any responsibility upon myself in that set of resolutions. When
I replied to him on that occasion, I assured him that I never had anything
to do with them. I repeat here to today that I never in any possible form
had anything to do with that set of resolutions It turns out, I believe,
that those resolutions were never passed in any convention held in
Springfield.

It turns out that they were never passed at any convention or any public
meeting that I had any part in. I believe it turns out, in addition to all
this, that there was not, in the fall of 1854, any convention holding a
session in Springfield, calling itself a Republican State Convention; yet
it is true there was a convention, or assemblage of men calling themselves
a convention, at Springfield, that did pass some resolutions. But so
little did I really know of the proceedings of that convention, or what
set of resolutions they had passed, though having a general knowledge that
there had been such an assemblage of men there, that when Judge Douglas
read the resolutions, I really did not know but they had been the
resolutions passed then and there. I did not question that they were the
resolutions adopted. For I could not bring myself to suppose that Judge
Douglas could say what he did upon this subject without knowing that it
was true. I contented myself, on that occasion, with denying, as I truly
could, all connection with them, not denying or affirming whether they
were passed at Springfield. Now, it turns out that he had got hold of some
resolutions passed at some convention or public meeting in Kane County.
I wish to say here, that I don't conceive that in any fair and just mind
this discovery relieves me at all. I had just as much to do with the
convention in Kane County as that at Springfield. I am as much responsible
for the resolutions at Kane County as those at Springfield,--the amount
of the responsibility being exactly nothing in either case; no more than
there would be in regard to a set of resolutions passed in the moon.

I allude to this extraordinary matter in this canvass for some further
purpose than anything yet advanced. Judge Douglas did not make his
statement upon that occasion as matters that he believed to be true,
but he stated them roundly as being true, in such form as to pledge his
veracity for their truth. When the whole matter turns out as it does, and
when we consider who Judge Douglas is, that he is a distinguished Senator
of the United States; that he has served nearly twelve years as such; that
his character is not at all limited as an ordinary Senator of the United
States, but that his name has become of world-wide renown,--it is most
extraordinary that he should so far forget all the suggestions of justice
to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the
assertion of that which the slightest investigation would have shown him
to be wholly false. I can only account for his having done so upon the
supposition that that evil genius which has attended him through his life,
giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, such as to lead very
many good men to doubt there being any advantage in virtue over vice,--I
say I can only account for it on the supposition that that evil genius has
as last made up its mind to forsake him.

And I may add that another extraordinary feature of the Judge's conduct in
this canvass--made more extraordinary by this incident--is, that he is in
the habit, in almost all the speeches he makes, of charging falsehood upon
his adversaries, myself and others. I now ask whether he is able to find
in anything that Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything
that I have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in
this instance, for that sort of vulgarity.

I have been in the habit of charging as a matter of belief on my part
that, in the introduction of the Nebraska Bill into Congress, there was
a conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and national. I have arranged from
time to time the evidence which establishes and proves the truth of this
charge. I recurred to this charge at Ottawa. I shall not now have time to
dwell upon it at very great length; but inasmuch as Judge Douglas, in
his reply of half an hour, made some points upon me in relation to it, I
propose noticing a few of them.

The Judge insists that, in the first speech I made, in which I very
distinctly made that charge, he thought for a good while I was in fun!
that I was playful; that I was not sincere about it; and that he only
grew angry and somewhat excited when he found that I insisted upon it as
a matter of earnestness. He says he characterized it as a falsehood so far
as I implicated his moral character in that transaction. Well, I did
not know, till he presented that view, that I had implicated his moral
character. He is very much in the habit, when he argues me up into a
position I never thought of occupying, of very cosily saying he has no
doubt Lincoln is "conscientious" in saying so. He should remember that I
did not know but what he was ALTOGETHER "CONSCIENTIOUS" in that matter.
I can conceive it possible for men to conspire to do a good thing, and
I really find nothing in Judge Douglas's course of arguments that is
contrary to or inconsistent with his belief of a conspiracy to nationalize
and spread slavery as being a good and blessed thing; and so I hope he
will understand that I do not at all question but that in all this matter
he is entirely "conscientious."

But to draw your attention to one of the points I made in this case,
beginning at the beginning: When the Nebraska Bill was introduced, or a
short time afterward, by an amendment, I believe, it was provided that
it must be considered "the true intent and meaning of this Act not to
legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom,
but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate
their own domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the
Constitution of the United States." I have called his attention to the
fact that when he and some others began arguing that they were giving
an increased degree of liberty to the people in the Territories over and
above what they formerly had on the question of slavery, a question was
raised whether the law was enacted to give such unconditional liberty to
the people; and to test the sincerity of this mode of argument, Mr.
Chase, of Ohio, introduced an amendment, in which he made the law--if the
amendment were adopted--expressly declare that the people of the Territory
should have the power to exclude slavery if they saw fit. I have asked
attention also to the fact that Judge Douglas and those who acted with him
voted that amendment down, notwithstanding it expressed exactly the
thing they said was the true intent and meaning of the law. I have called
attention to the fact that in subsequent times a decision of the Supreme
Court has been made, in which it has been declared that a Territorial
Legislature has no constitutional right to exclude slavery. And I have
argued and said that for men who did, intend that the people of the
Territory should have the right to exclude slavery absolutely and
unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's amendment is wholly
inexplicable. It is a puzzle, a riddle. But I have said, that with men who
did look forward to such a decision, or who had it in contemplation that
such a decision of the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting
down of that amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible. It
would keep Congress from coming in collision with the decision when it was
made. Anybody can conceive that if there was an intention or expectation
that such a decision was to follow, it would not be a very desirable party
attitude to get into for the Supreme Court--all or nearly all its members
belonging to the same party--to decide one way, when the party in Congress
had decided the other way. Hence it would be very rational for men
expecting such a decision to keep the niche in that law clear for it.
After pointing this out, I tell Judge Douglas that it looks to me as
though here was the reason why Chase's amendment was voted down. I tell
him that, as he did it, and knows why he did it, if it was done for a
reason different from this, he knows what that reason was and can tell us
what it was. I tell him, also, it will be vastly more satisfactory to the
country for him to give some other plausible, intelligible reason why it
was voted down than to stand upon his dignity and call people liars. Well,
on Saturday he did make his answer; and what do you think it was? He
says if I had only taken upon myself to tell the whole truth about that
amendment of Chase's, no explanation would have been necessary on his part
or words to that effect. Now, I say here that I am quite unconscious of
having suppressed anything material to the case, and I am very frank to
admit if there is any sound reason other than that which appeared to me
material, it is quite fair for him to present it. What reason does
he propose? That when Chase came forward with his amendment expressly
authorizing the people to exclude slavery from the limits of every
Territory, General Cass proposed to Chase, if he (Chase) would add to his
amendment that the people should have the power to introduce or exclude,
they would let it go. This is substantially all of his reply. And because
Chase would not do that, they voted his amendment down. Well, it turns
out, I believe, upon examination, that General Cass took some part in the
little running debate upon that amendment, and then ran away and did not
vote on it at all. Is not that the fact? So confident, as I think, was
General Cass that there was a snake somewhere about, he chose to run away
from the whole thing. This is an inference I draw from the fact that,
though he took part in the debate, his name does not appear in the ayes
and noes. But does Judge Douglas's reply amount to a satisfactory answer?

[Cries of "Yes," "Yes," and "No," "No."]

There is some little difference of opinion here. But I ask attention to
a few more views bearing on the question of whether it amounts to a
satisfactory answer. The men who were determined that that amendment
should not get into the bill, and spoil the place where the Dred Scott
decision was to come in, sought an excuse to get rid of it somewhere.
One of these ways--one of these excuses--was to ask Chase to add to his
proposed amendment a provision that the people might introduce slavery if
they wanted to. They very well knew Chase would do no such thing, that Mr.
Chase was one of the men differing from them on the broad principle of
his insisting that freedom was better than slavery,--a man who would not
consent to enact a law, penned with his own hand, by which he was made to
recognize slavery on the one hand, and liberty on the other, as precisely
equal; and when they insisted on his doing this, they very well knew they
insisted on that which he would not for a moment think of doing, and that
they were only bluffing him. I believe (I have not, since he made his
answer, had a chance to examine the journals or Congressional Globe and
therefore speak from memory)--I believe the state of the bill at that
time, according to parliamentary rules, was such that no member could
propose an additional amendment to Chase's amendment. I rather think this
is the truth,--the Judge shakes his head. Very well. I would like to know,
then, if they wanted Chase's amendment fixed over, why somebody else could
not have offered to do it? If they wanted it amended, why did they not
offer the amendment? Why did they not put it in themselves? But to put it
on the other ground: suppose that there was such an amendment offered,
and Chase's was an amendment to an amendment; until one is disposed of by
parliamentary law, you cannot pile another on. Then all these gentlemen
had to do was to vote Chase's on, and then, in the amended form in which
the whole stood, add their own amendment to it, if they wanted to put it
in that shape. This was all they were obliged to do, and the ayes and noes
show that there were thirty-six who voted it down, against ten who voted
in favor of it. The thirty-six held entire sway and control. They could in
some form or other have put that bill in the exact shape they wanted. If
there was a rule preventing their amending it at the time, they could pass
that, and then, Chase's amendment being merged, put it in the shape they
wanted. They did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with
Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he
would not, they stand upon the flimsy pretext for voting down what they
argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left room
thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make slavery
national throughout the United States.

I pass one or two points I have, because my time will very soon expire;
but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he
did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln, an
insignificant individual like Lincoln,--upon his ipse dixit charging a
conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court,
and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery. I want to say that, in the
first place, I have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse dixit. I have
only arrayed the evidence tending to prove it, and presented it to the
understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but giving you
the means of judging whether it proves it or not. This is precisely what
I have done. I have not placed it upon my ipse dixit at all. On this
occasion, I wish to recall his attention to a piece of evidence which
I brought forward at Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made
substantially the same charge against substantially the same persons,
excluding his dear self from the category. I ask him to give some
attention to the evidence which I brought forward that he himself had
discovered a "fatal blow being struck" against the right of the people
to exclude slavery from their limits, which fatal blow he assumed as in
evidence in an article in the Washington Union, published "by authority."
I ask by whose authority? He discovers a similar or identical provision
in the Lecompton Constitution. Made by whom? The framers of that
Constitution. Advocated by whom? By all the members of the party in the
nation, who advocated the introduction of Kansas into the Union under the
Lecompton Constitution. I have asked his attention to the evidence that he
arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was being struck, and to the facts
which he brought forward in support of that charge,--being identical
with the one which he thinks so villainous in me. He pointed it, not at
a newspaper editor merely, but at the President and his Cabinet and
the members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution and those
framing that instrument. I must again be permitted to remind him that
although my ipse dixit may not be as great as his, yet it somewhat reduces
the force of his calling my attention to the enormity of my making a like
charge against him.

Go on, Judge Douglas.




Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.

MY FRIENDS:--It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour,
notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an
hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has
said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I
omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an
impossibility for me to go over his whole ground. I can but take up some
of the points that he has dwelt upon, and employ my half-hour specially on
them.

The first thing I have to say to you is a word in regard to Judge
Douglas's declaration about the "vulgarity and blackguardism" in the
audience, that no such thing, as he says, was shown by any Democrat while
I was speaking. Now, I only wish, by way of reply on this subject, to say
that while I was speaking, I used no "vulgarity or blackguardism" toward
any Democrat.

Now, my friends, I come to all this long portion of the Judge's
speech,--perhaps half of it,--which he has devoted to the various
resolutions and platforms that have been adopted in the different counties
in the different Congressional districts, and in the Illinois legislature,
which he supposes are at variance with the positions I have assumed before
you to-day. It is true that many of these resolutions are at variance
with the positions I have here assumed. All I have to ask is that we talk
reasonably and rationally about it. I happen to know, the Judge's opinion
to the contrary notwithstanding, that I have never tried to conceal my
opinions, nor tried to deceive any one in reference to them. He may go
and examine all the members who voted for me for United States Senator in
1855, after the election of 1854. They were pledged to certain things here
at home, and were determined to have pledges from me; and if he will find
any of these persons who will tell him anything inconsistent with what I
say now, I will resign, or rather retire from the race, and give him no
more trouble. The plain truth is this: At the introduction of the Nebraska
policy, we believed there was a new era being introduced in the history of
the Republic, which tended to the spread and perpetuation of slavery. But
in our opposition to that measure we did not agree with one another in
everything. The people in the north end of the State were for stronger
measures of opposition than we of the central and southern portions of the
State, but we were all opposed to the Nebraska doctrine. We had that one
feeling and that one sentiment in common. You at the north end met in your
conventions and passed your resolutions. We in the middle of the State and
farther south did not hold such conventions and pass the same resolutions,
although we had in general a common view and a common sentiment. So that
these meetings which the Judge has alluded to, and the resolutions he has
read from, were local, and did not spread over the whole State. We at last
met together in 1886, from all parts of the State, and we agreed upon a
common platform. You, who held more extreme notions, either yielded
those notions, or, if not wholly yielding them, agreed to yield them
practically, for the sake of embodying the opposition to the measures
which the opposite party were pushing forward at that time. We met you
then, and if there was anything yielded, it was for practical purposes. We
agreed then upon a platform for the party throughout the entire State of
Illinois, and now we are all bound, as a party, to that platform.

And I say here to you, if any one expects of me--in case of my
election--that I will do anything not signified by our Republican platform
and my answers here to-day, I tell you very frankly that person will be
deceived. I do not ask for the vote of any one who supposes that I have
secret purposes or pledges that I dare not speak out. Cannot the Judge be
satisfied? If he fears, in the unfortunate case of my election, that my
going to Washington will enable me to advocate sentiments contrary to
those which I expressed when you voted for and elected me, I assure him
that his fears are wholly needless and groundless. Is the Judge really
afraid of any such thing? I'll tell you what he is afraid of. He is afraid
we'll all pull together. This is what alarms him more than anything else.
For my part, I do hope that all of us, entertaining a common sentiment in
opposition to what appears to us a design to nationalize and perpetuate
slavery, will waive minor differences on questions which either belong
to the dead past or the distant future, and all pull together in this
struggle. What are your sentiments? If it be true that on the ground which
I occupy--ground which I occupy as frankly and boldly as Judge Douglas
does his,--my views, though partly coinciding with yours, are not as
perfectly in accordance with your feelings as his are, I do say to you
in all candor, go for him, and not for me. I hope to deal in all things
fairly with Judge Douglas, and with the people of the State, in this
contest. And if I should never be elected to any office, I trust I may go
down with no stain of falsehood upon my reputation, notwithstanding the
hard opinions Judge Douglas chooses to entertain of me.

The Judge has again addressed himself to the Abolition tendencies of a
speech of mine made at Springfield in June last. I have so often tried
to answer what he is always saying on that melancholy theme that I almost
turn with disgust from the discussion,--from the repetition of an answer
to it. I trust that nearly all of this intelligent audience have read
that speech. If you have, I may venture to leave it to you to inspect
it closely, and see whether it contains any of those "bugaboos" which
frighten Judge Douglas.

The Judge complains that I did not fully answer his questions. If I have
the sense to comprehend and answer those questions, I have done so fairly.
If it can be pointed out to me how I can more fully and fairly answer him,
I aver I have not the sense to see how it is to be done. He says I do not
declare I would in any event vote for the admission of a slave State into
the Union. If I have been fairly reported, he will see that I did give an
explicit answer to his interrogatories; I did not merely say that I would
dislike to be put to the test, but I said clearly, if I were put to the
test, and a Territory from which slavery had been excluded should
present herself with a State constitution sanctioning slavery,--a most
extraordinary thing, and wholly unlikely to happen,--I did not see how I
could avoid voting for her admission. But he refuses to understand that I
said so, and he wants this audience to understand that I did not say
so. Yet it will be so reported in the printed speech that he cannot help
seeing it.

He says if I should vote for the admission of a slave State I would be
voting for a dissolution of the Union, because I hold that the Union
cannot permanently exist half slave and half free. I repeat that I do not
believe this government can endure permanently half slave and half free;
yet I do not admit, nor does it at all follow, that the admission of a
single slave State will permanently fix the character and establish this
as a universal slave nation. The Judge is very happy indeed at working up
these quibbles. Before leaving the subject of answering questions, I aver
as my confident belief, when you come to see our speeches in print, that
you will find every question which he has asked me more fairly and boldly
and fully answered than he has answered those which I put to him. Is not
that so? The two speeches may be placed side by side, and I will venture
to leave it to impartial judges whether his questions have not been more
directly and circumstantially answered than mine.

Judge Douglas says he made a charge upon the editor of the Washington
Union, alone, of entertaining a purpose to rob the States of their power
to exclude slavery from their limits. I undertake to say, and I make the
direct issue, that he did not make his charge against the editor of the
Union alone. I will undertake to prove by the record here that he made
that charge against more and higher dignitaries than the editor of the
Washington Union. I am quite aware that he was shirking and dodging around
the form in which he put it, but I can make it manifest that he leveled
his "fatal blow" against more persons than this Washington editor. Will he
dodge it now by alleging that I am trying to defend Mr. Buchanan against
the charge? Not at all. Am I not making the same charge myself? I am
trying to show that you, Judge Douglas, are a witness on my side. I am not
defending Buchanan, and I will tell Judge Douglas that in my opinion, when
he made that charge, he had an eye farther north than he has to-day. He
was then fighting against people who called him a Black Republican and
an Abolitionist. It is mixed all through his speech, and it is tolerably
manifest that his eye was a great deal farther north than it is to-day.
The Judge says that though he made this charge, Toombs got up and declared
there was not a man in the United States, except the editor of the Union,
who was in favor of the doctrines put forth in that article. And thereupon
I understand that the Judge withdrew the charge. Although he had taken
extracts from the newspaper, and then from the Lecompton Constitution, to
show the existence of a conspiracy to bring about a "fatal blow," by which
the States were to be deprived of the right of excluding slavery, it all
went to pot as soon as Toombs got up and told him it was not true.
It reminds me of the story that John Phoenix, the California railroad
surveyor, tells. He says they started out from the Plaza to the Mission
of Dolores. They had two ways of determining distances. One was by a chain
and pins taken over the ground. The other was by a "go-it-ometer,"--an
invention of his own,--a three-legged instrument, with which he computed
a series of triangles between the points. At night he turned to the
chain-man to ascertain what distance they had come, and found that by some
mistake he had merely dragged the chain over the ground, without keeping
any record. By the "go-it-ometer," he found he had made ten miles. Being
skeptical about this, he asked a drayman who was passing how far it was to
the Plaza. The drayman replied it was just half a mile; and the surveyor
put it down in his book,--just as Judge Douglas says, after he had made
his calculations and computations, he took Toombs's statement. I have
no doubt that after Judge Douglas had made his charge, he was as easily
satisfied about its truth as the surveyor was of the drayman's statement
of the distance to the Plaza. Yet it is a fact that the man who put forth
all that matter which Douglas deemed a "fatal blow" at State sovereignty
was elected by the Democrats as public printer.

Now, gentlemen, you may take Judge Douglas's speech of March 22, 1858,
beginning about the middle of page 21, and reading to the bottom of page
24, and you will find the evidence on which I say that he did not make his
charge against the editor of the Union alone. I cannot stop to read it,
but I will give it to the reporters. Judge Douglas said:

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and apparently
authoritatively, and every man who questions any of them is denounced as
an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first,
that the primary object of all government at its original institution is
the protection of persons and property; second, that the Constitution
of the United States declares that the citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all the privileges and 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, in as much 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?

"'ARTICLE 7, Section i. The right of property is before and higher than
any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to such
slave and its increase is the same and as invariable as the right of the
owner of any property whatever.'

"Then in the schedule is a provision that the 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 this authoritative article in the Washington
Union of the day previous to its indorsement of this Constitution.

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed by
the glorification of the 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."

Here he says, "Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
advanced boldly, and apparently authoritatively." By whose authority,
Judge Douglas? Again, he says in another place, "It will be seen by these
clauses in the Lecompton Constitution that they are identical in spirit
with this authoritative article." By whose authority,--who do you mean
to say authorized the publication of these articles? He knows that the
Washington Union is considered the organ of the Administration. I demand
of Judge Douglas by whose authority he meant to say those articles were
published, if not by the authority of the President of the United States
and his Cabinet? I defy him to show whom he referred to, if not to these
high functionaries in the Federal Government. More than this, he says the
articles in that paper and the provisions of the Lecompton Constitution
are "identical," and, being identical, he argues that the authors
are co-operating and conspiring together. He does not use the word
"conspiring," but what other construction can you put upon it? He winds
up:

"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 ask him if all this fuss was made over the editor of this newspaper. It
would be a terribly "fatal blow" indeed which a single man could strike,
when no President, no Cabinet officer, no member of Congress, was giving
strength and efficiency to the movement. Out of respect to Judge Douglas's
good sense I must believe he did n't manufacture his idea of the "fatal"
character of that blow out of such a miserable scapegrace as he represents
that editor to be. But the Judge's eye is farther south now. Then, it
was very peculiarly and decidedly north. His hope rested on the idea of
visiting the great "Black Republican" party, and making it the tail of
his new kite. He knows he was then expecting from day to day to turn
Republican, and place himself at the head of our organization. He has
found that these despised "Black Republicans" estimate him by a standard
which he has taught them none too well. Hence he is crawling back into his
old camp, and you will find him eventually installed in full fellowship
among those whom he was then battling, and with whom he now pretends to be
at such fearful variance.




THIRD JOINT DEBATE, AT JONESBORO,

SEPTEMBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--There is very much in the principles that Judge
Douglas has here enunciated that I most cordially approve, and over which
I shall have no controversy with him. In so far as he has insisted that
all the States have the right to do exactly as they please about all their
domestic relations, including that of slavery, I agree entirely with him.
He places me wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I repeat it
again and again, insisting that I have no difference with him upon this
subject. I have made a great many speeches, some of which have been
printed, and it will be utterly impossible for him to find anything that
I have ever put in print contrary to what I now say upon this subject. I
hold myself under constitutional obligations to allow the people in all
the States, without interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as
they please; and I deny that I have any inclination to interfere with
them, even if there were no such constitutional obligation. I can only say
again that I am placed improperly--altogether improperly, in spite of all
I can say--when it is insisted that I entertain any other view or purposes
in regard to that matter.

While I am upon this subject, I will make some answers briefly to certain
propositions that Judge Douglas has put. He says, "Why can't this Union
endure permanently half slave and half free?" I have said that I supposed
it could not, and I will try, before this new audience, to give briefly
some of the reasons for entertaining that opinion. Another form of his
question is, "Why can't we let it stand as our fathers placed it?" That is
the exact difficulty between us. I say that Judge Douglas and his friends
have changed it from the position in which our fathers originally placed
it. I say, in the way our father's originally left the slavery question,
the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the
public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction. I say when this government was first established it was the
policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new
Territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge
Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and placed it upon
a new basis, by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have
asked or desired anywhere is that it should be placed back again upon the
basis that the fathers of our government originally placed it upon. I have
no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but
readopted the policy of the fathers, by restricting it to the limits it
has already covered, restricting it from the new Territories.

I do not wish to dwell at great length on this branch of the subject at
this time, but allow me to repeat one thing that I have stated before.
Brooks--the man who assaulted Senator Sumner on the floor of the
Senate, and who was complimented with dinners, and silver pitchers, and
gold-headed canes, and a good many other things for that feat--in one
of his speeches declared that when this government was originally
established, nobody expected that the institution of slavery would last
until this day. That was but the opinion of one man, but it was such an
opinion as we can never get from Judge Douglas or anybody in favor of
slavery, in the North, at all. You can sometimes get it from a Southern
man. He said at the same time that the framers of our government did not
have the knowledge that experience has taught us; that experience and
the invention of the cotton-gin have taught us that the perpetuation of
slavery is a necessity. He insisted, therefore, upon its being changed
from the basis upon which the fathers of the government left it to the
basis of its perpetuation and nationalization.

I insist that this is the difference between Judge Douglas and
myself,--that Judge Douglas is helping that change along. I insist upon
this government being placed where our fathers originally placed it.

I remember Judge Douglas once said that he saw the evidences on the
statute books of Congress of a policy in the origin of government
to divide slavery and freedom by a geographical line; that he saw an
indisposition to maintain that policy, and therefore he set about studying
up a way to settle the institution on the right basis,--the basis which he
thought it ought to have been placed upon at first; and in that speech he
confesses that he seeks to place it, not upon the basis that the fathers
placed it upon, but upon one gotten up on "original principles." When he
asks me why we cannot get along with it in the attitude where our fathers
placed it, he had better clear up the evidences that he has himself
changed it from that basis, that he has himself been chiefly instrumental
in changing the policy of the fathers. Any one who will read his speech
of the 22d of last March will see that he there makes an open confession,
showing that he set about fixing the institution upon an altogether
different set of principles. I think I have fully answered him when he
asks me why we cannot let it alone upon the basis where our fathers
left it, by showing that he has himself changed the whole policy of the
government in that regard.

Now, fellow-citizens, in regard to this matter about a contract that was
made between Judge Trumbull and myself, and all that long portion of Judge
Douglas's speech on this subject,--I wish simply to say what I have said
to him before, that he cannot know whether it is true or not, and I do
know that there is not a word of truth in it. And I have told him so
before. I don't want any harsh language indulged in, but I do not know
how to deal with this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be
utterly without truth. It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a
charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to establish it,
and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was dropped. I don't know
how to meet this kind of an argument. I don't want to have a fight
with Judge Douglas, and I have no way of making an argument up into the
consistency of a corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it. All I can do
is--good-humoredly--to say that, from the beginning to the end of all that
story about a bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a
word of truth in it. I can only ask him to show some sort of evidence
of the truth of his story. He brings forward here and reads from what he
contends is a speech by James H. Matheny, charging such a bargain between
Trumbull and myself. My own opinion is that Matheny did do some such
immoral thing as to tell a story that he knew nothing about. I believe he
did. I contradicted it instantly, and it has been contradicted by Judge
Trumbull, while nobody has produced any proof, because there is none. Now,
whether the speech which the Judge brings forward here is really the
one Matheny made, I do not know, and I hope the Judge will pardon me for
doubting the genuineness of this document, since his production of those
Springfield resolutions at Ottawa. I do not wish to dwell at any great
length upon this matter. I can say nothing when a long story like this is
told, except it is not true, and demand that he who insists upon it shall
produce some proof. That is all any man can do, and I leave it in that
way, for I know of no other way of dealing with it.

[In an argument on the lines of: "Yes, you did.--No, I did not." It bears
on the former to prove his point, not on the negative to "prove" that he
did not--even if he easily can do so.]

The Judge has gone over a long account of the old Whig and Democratic
parties, and it connects itself with this charge against Trumbull and
myself. He says that they agreed upon a compromise in regard to the
slavery question in 1850; that in a National Democratic Convention
resolutions were passed to abide by that compromise as a finality upon the
slavery question. He also says that the Whig party in National Convention
agreed to abide by and regard as a finality the Compromise of 1850. I
understand the Judge to be altogether right about that; I understand
that part of the history of the country as stated by him to be correct
I recollect that I, as a member of that party, acquiesced in that
compromise. I recollect in the Presidential election which followed,
when we had General Scott up for the presidency, Judge Douglas was around
berating us Whigs as Abolitionists, precisely as he does to-day,--not a
bit of difference. I have often heard him. We could do nothing when the
old Whig party was alive that was not Abolitionism, but it has got an
extremely good name since it has passed away.

[It almost a natural law that, when dead--no matter how bad we were--we
are automatically beatified.]

When that Compromise was made it did not repeal the old Missouri
Compromise. It left a region of United States territory half as large
as the present territory of the United States, north of the line of 36
degrees 30 minutes, in which slavery was prohibited by Act of Congress.
This Compromise did not repeal that one. It did not affect or propose to
repeal it. But at last it became Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought (and
I find no fault with him), as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, to
bring in a bill for the organization of a territorial government,--first
of one, then of two Territories north of that line. When he did so, it
ended in his inserting a provision substantially repealing the Missouri
Compromise. That was because the Compromise of 1850 had not repealed it.
And now I ask why he could not have let that Compromise alone? We were
quiet from the agitation of the slavery question. We were making no fuss
about it. All had acquiesced in the Compromise measures of 1850. We
never had been seriously disturbed by any Abolition agitation before that
period. When he came to form governments for the Territories north of the
line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, why could he not have let that matter stand
as it was standing? Was it necessary to the organization of a Territory?
Not at all. Iowa lay north of the line, and had been organized as a
Territory and come into the Union as a State without disturbing that
Compromise. There was no sort of necessity for destroying it to organize
these Territories. But, gentlemen, it would take up all my time to meet
all the little quibbling arguments of Judge Douglas to show that the
Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Compromise of 1850. My own opinion
is, that a careful investigation of all the arguments to sustain the
position that that Compromise was virtually repealed by the Compromise of
1850 would show that they are the merest fallacies. I have the report that
Judge Douglas first brought into Congress at the time of the introduction
of the Nebraska Bill, which in its original form did not repeal the
Missouri Compromise, and he there expressly stated that he had forborne to
do so because it had not been done by the Compromise of 1850. I close this
part of the discussion on my part by asking him the question again, "Why,
when we had peace under the Missouri Compromise, could you not have let it
alone?"

In complaining of what I said in my speech at Springfield, in which he
says I accepted my nomination for the senatorship (where, by the way, he
is at fault, for if he will examine it, he will find no acceptance in it),
he again quotes that portion in which I said that "a house divided against
itself cannot stand." Let me say a word in regard to that matter.

He tries to persuade us that there must be a variety in the different
institutions of the States of the Union; that that variety necessarily
proceeds from the variety of soil, climate, of the face of the country,
and the difference in the natural features of the States. I agree to all
that. Have these very matters ever produced any difficulty amongst us? Not
at all. Have we ever had any quarrel over the fact that they have laws
in Louisiana designed to regulate the commerce that springs from the
production of sugar? Or because we have a different class relative to the
production of flour in this State? Have they produced any differences? Not
at all. They are the very cements of this Union. They don't make the house
a house divided against itself. They are the props that hold up the house
and sustain the Union.

But has it been so with this element of slavery? Have we not always had
quarrels and difficulties over it? And when will we cease to have quarrels
over it? Like causes produce like effects. It is worth while to observe
that we have generally had comparative peace upon the slavery question,
and that there has been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the
effort to spread it into new territory. Whenever it has been limited to
its present bounds, and there has been no effort to spread it, there has
been peace. All the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to
spread it over more territory. It was thus at the date of the Missouri
Compromise. It was so again with the annexation of Texas; so with the
territory acquired by the Mexican war; and it is so now. Whenever there
has been an effort to spread it, there has been agitation and resistance.
Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political
friends), as national men, whether we have reason to expect that the
agitation in regard to this subject will cease while the causes that tend
to reproduce agitation are actively at work? Will not the same cause that
produced agitation in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was formed, that
which produced the agitation upon the annexation of Texas, and at other
times, work out the same results always? Do you think that the nature of
man will be changed, that the same causes that produced agitation at one
time will not have the same effect at another?

This has been the result so far as my observation of the slavery question
and my reading in history extends. What right have we then to hope that
the trouble will cease,--that the agitation will come to an end,--until
it shall either be placed back where it originally stood, and where
the fathers originally placed it, or, on the other hand, until it shall
entirely master all opposition? This is the view I entertain, and this
is the reason why I entertained it, as Judge Douglas has read from my
Springfield speech.

Now, my friends, there is one other thing that I feel myself under some
sort of obligation to mention. Judge Douglas has here to-day--in a very
rambling way, I was about saying--spoken of the platforms for which he
seeks to hold me responsible. He says, "Why can't you come out and make
an open avowal of principles in all places alike?" and he reads from an
advertisement that he says was used to notify the people of a speech to be
made by Judge Trumbull at Waterloo. In commenting on it he desires to know
whether we cannot speak frankly and manfully, as he and his friends do.
How, I ask, do his friends speak out their own sentiments? A Convention
of his party in this State met on the 21st of April at Springfield, and
passed a set of resolutions which they proclaim to the country as their
platform. This does constitute their platform, and it is because Judge
Douglas claims it is his platform--that these are his principles and
purposes--that he has a right to declare he speaks his sentiments "frankly
and manfully." On the 9th of June Colonel John Dougherty, Governor
Reynolds, and others, calling themselves National Democrats, met
in Springfield and adopted a set of resolutions which are as easily
understood, as plain and as definite in stating to the country and to
the world what they believed in and would stand upon, as Judge Douglas's
platform Now, what is the reason that Judge Douglas is not willing that
Colonel Dougherty and Governor Reynolds should stand upon their own
written and printed platform as well as he upon his? Why must he look
farther than their platform when he claims himself to stand by his
platform?

Again, in reference to our platform: On the 16th of June the Republicans
had their Convention and published their platform, which is as clear and
distinct as Judge Douglas's. In it they spoke their principles as plainly
and as definitely to the world. What is the reason that Judge Douglas
is not willing I should stand upon that platform? Why must he go around
hunting for some one who is supporting me or has supported me at some
time in his life, and who has said something at some time contrary to that
platform? Does the Judge regard that rule as a good one? If it turn out
that the rule is a good one for me--that I am responsible for any and
every opinion that any man has expressed who is my friend,--then it is a
good rule for him. I ask, is it not as good a rule for him as it is for
me? In my opinion, it is not a good rule for either of us. Do you think
differently, Judge?

[Mr. DOUGLAS: I do not.]

Judge Douglas says he does not think differently. I am glad of it. Then
can he tell me why he is looking up resolutions of five or six years ago,
and insisting that they were my platform, notwithstanding my protest that
they are not, and never were my platform, and my pointing out the platform
of the State Convention which he delights to say nominated me for the
Senate? I cannot see what he means by parading these resolutions, if it
is not to hold me responsible for them in some way. If he says to me here
that he does not hold the rule to be good, one way or the other, I do not
comprehend how he could answer me more fully if he answered me at greater
length. I will therefore put in as my answer to the resolutions that he
has hunted up against me, what I, as a lawyer, would call a good plea to a
bad declaration. I understand that it is an axiom of law that a poor plea
may be a good plea to a bad declaration. I think that the opinions the
Judge brings from those who support me, yet differ from me, is a bad
declaration against me; but if I can bring the same things against him, I
am putting in a good plea to that kind of declaration, and now I propose
to try it.

At Freeport, Judge Douglas occupied a large part of his time in producing
resolutions and documents of various sorts, as I understood, to make me
somehow responsible for them; and I propose now doing a little of the
same sort of thing for him. In 1850 a very clever gentleman by the name
of Thompson Campbell, a personal friend of Judge Douglas and myself, a
political friend of Judge Douglas and opponent of mine, was a candidate
for Congress in the Galena District. He was interrogated as to his views
on this same slavery question. I have here before me the interrogatories,
and Campbell's answers to them--I will read them:




INTERROGATORIES:

"1st. Will you, if elected, vote for and cordially support a bill
prohibiting slavery in the Territories of the United States?

"2d. Will you vote for and support a bill abolishing slavery in the
District of Columbia?

"3d. Will you oppose the admission of any Slave States which may be formed
out of Texas or the Territories?

"4th. Will you vote for and advocate the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law
passed at the recent session of Congress?

"5th. Will you advocate and vote for the election of a Speaker of the
House of Representatives who shall be willing to organize the committees
of that House so as to give the Free States their just influence in the
business of legislation?

"6th. What are your views, not only as to the constitutional right of
Congress to prohibit the slave-trade between the States, but also as to
the expediency of exercising that right immediately?"




CAMPBELL'S REPLY.

"To the first and second interrogatories, I answer unequivocally in the
affirmative.

"To the third interrogatory I reply, that I am opposed to the admission of
any more Slave States into the Union, that may be formed out of Texas or
any other Territory.

"To the fourth and fifth interrogatories I unhesitatingly answer in the
affirmative.

"To the sixth interrogatory I reply, that so long as the Slave States
continue to treat slaves as articles of commerce, the Constitution confers
power on Congress to pass laws regulating that peculiar COMMERCE, and that
the protection of Human Rights imperatively demands the interposition of
every constitutional means to prevent this most inhuman and iniquitous
traffic.

"T. CAMPBELL."


I want to say here that Thompson Campbell was elected to Congress on that
platform, as the Democratic candidate in the Galena District, against
Martin P. Sweet.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Give me the date of the letter.]

The time Campbell ran was in 1850. I have not the exact date here. It
was some time in 1850 that these interrogatories were put and the answer
given. Campbell was elected to Congress, and served out his term. I think
a second election came up before he served out his term, and he was
not re-elected. Whether defeated or not nominated, I do not know. [Mr.
Campbell was nominated for re-election by the Democratic party, by
acclamation.] At the end of his term his very good friend Judge Douglas
got him a high office from President Pierce, and sent him off to
California. Is not that the fact? Just at the end of his term in Congress
it appears that our mutual friend Judge Douglas got our mutual friend
Campbell a good office, and sent him to California upon it. And not only
so, but on the 27th of last month, when Judge Douglas and myself spoke at
Freeport in joint discussion, there was his same friend Campbell, come
all the way from California, to help the Judge beat me; and there was poor
Martin P. Sweet standing on the platform, trying to help poor me to be
elected. That is true of one of Judge Douglas's friends.

So again, in that same race of 1850, there was a Congressional Convention
assembled at Joliet, and it nominated R. S. Molony for Congress, and
unanimously adopted the following resolution:

"Resolved, That we are uncompromisingly opposed to the extension
of slavery; and while we would not make such opposition a ground of
interference with the interests of the States where it exists, yet we
moderately but firmly insist that it is the duty of Congress to oppose
its extension into Territory now free, by all means compatible with the
obligations of the Constitution, and with good faith to our sister States;
that these principles were recognized by the Ordinance of 1787, which
received the sanction of Thomas Jefferson, who is acknowledged by all to
be the great oracle and expounder of our faith."

Subsequently the same interrogatories were propounded to Dr. Molony which
had been addressed to Campbell as above, with the exception of the 6th,
respecting the interstate slave trade, to which Dr. Molony, the Democratic
nominee for Congress, replied as follows:

"I received the written interrogatories this day, and, as you will see by
the La Salle Democrat and Ottawa Free Trader, I took at Peru on the 5th,
and at Ottawa on the 7th, the affirmative side of interrogatories 1st and
2d; and in relation to the admission of any more Slave States from Free
Territory, my position taken at these meetings, as correctly reported in
said papers, was emphatically and distinctly opposed to it. In relation
to the admission of any more Slave States from Texas, whether I shall go
against it or not will depend upon the opinion that I may hereafter form
of the true meaning and nature of the resolutions of annexation. If, by
said resolutions, the honor and good faith of the nation is pledged to
admit more Slave States from Texas when she (Texas) may apply for the
admission of such State, then I should, if in Congress, vote for their
admission. But if not so PLEDGED and bound by sacred contract, then a bill
for the admission of more Slave States from Texas would never receive my
vote.

"To your fourth interrogatory I answer most decidedly in the affirmative,
and for reasons set forth in my reported remarks at Ottawa last Monday.

"To your fifth interrogatory I also reply in the affirmative most
cordially, and that I will use my utmost exertions to secure the
nomination and election of a man who will accomplish the objects of said
interrogatories. I most cordially approve of the resolutions adopted at
the Union meeting held at Princeton on the 27th September ult.

"Yours, etc., R. S. MOLONY."


All I have to say in regard to Dr. Molony is that he was the regularly
nominated Democratic candidate for Congress in his district; was elected
at that time; at the end of his term was appointed to a land-office at
Danville. (I never heard anything of Judge Douglas's instrumentality
in this.) He held this office a considerable time, and when we were at
Freeport the other day there were handbills scattered about notifying the
public that after our debate was over R. S. Molony would make a Democratic
speech in favor of Judge Douglas. That is all I know of my own personal
knowledge. It is added here to this resolution, and truly I believe, that
among those who participated in the Joliet Convention, and who supported
its nominee, with his platform as laid down in the resolution of the
Convention and in his reply as above given, we call at random the
following names, all of which are recognized at this day as leading
Democrats:

"Cook County,--E. B. Williams, Charles McDonell, Arno Voss, Thomas Hoyne,
Isaac Cook."

I reckon we ought to except Cook.

  "F. C. Sherman.
  "Will,--Joel A. Matteson, S. W. Bowen.
  "Kane,--B. F. Hall, G. W. Renwick, A. M. Herrington, Elijah Wilcox.
  "McHenry,--W. M. Jackson, Enos W. Smith, Neil Donnelly.
  La Salle,--John Hise, William Reddick."

William Reddick! another one of Judge Douglas's friends that stood on the
stand with him at Ottawa, at the time the Judge says my knees trembled so
that I had to be carried away. The names are all here:

  "Du Page,--Nathan Allen.
  "De Kalb,--Z. B. Mayo."

Here is another set of resolutions which I think are apposite to the
matter in hand.

On the 28th of February of the same year a Democratic District Convention
was held at Naperville to nominate a candidate for Circuit Judge. Among
the delegates were Bowen and Kelly of Will; Captain Naper, H. H. Cody,
Nathan Allen, of Du Page; W. M. Jackson, J. M. Strode, P. W. Platt, and
Enos W. Smith of McHenry; J. Horssnan and others of Winnebago. Colonel
Strode presided over the Convention. The following resolutions were
unanimously adopted,--the first on motion of P. W. Platt, the second on
motion of William M. Jackson:

"Resolved, That this Convention is in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, both in
Principle and Practice, and that we know of no good reason why any person
should oppose the largest latitude in Free Soil, Free Territory and Free
speech.

"Resolved, That in the opinion of this Convention, the time has arrived
when all men should be free, whites as well as others."

[Judge DOUGLAS: What is the date of those resolutions?]

I understand it was in 1850, but I do not know it. I do not state a thing
and say I know it, when I do not. But I have the highest belief that this
is so. I know of no way to arrive at the conclusion that there is an error
in it. I mean to put a case no stronger than the truth will allow. But
what I was going to comment upon is an extract from a newspaper in De Kalb
County; and it strikes me as being rather singular, I confess, under the
circumstances. There is a Judge Mayo in that county, who is a candidate
for the Legislature, for the purpose, if he secures his election, of
helping to re-elect Judge Douglas. He is the editor of a newspaper [De
Kalb County Sentinel], and in that paper I find the extract I am going to
read. It is part of an editorial article in which he was electioneering
as fiercely as he could for Judge Douglas and against me. It was a curious
thing, I think, to be in such a paper. I will agree to that, and the Judge
may make the most of it:

"Our education has been such that we have been rather in favor of the
equality of the blacks; that is, that they should enjoy all the privileges
of the whites where they reside. We are aware that this is not a very
popular doctrine. We have had many a confab with some who are now strong
'Republicans' we taking the broad ground of equality, and they the
opposite ground.

"We were brought up in a State where blacks were voters, and we do not
know of any inconvenience resulting from it, though perhaps it would not
work as well where the blacks are more numerous. We have no doubt of
the right of the whites to guard against such an evil, if it is one. Our
opinion is that it would be best for all concerned to have the colored
population in a State by themselves [in this I agree with him]; but if
within the jurisdiction of the United States, we say by all means they
should have the right to have their Senators and Representatives in
Congress, and to vote for President. With us 'worth makes the man, and
want of it the fellow.' We have seen many a 'nigger' that we thought more
of than some white men."

That is one of Judge Douglas's friends. Now, I do not want to leave myself
in an attitude where I can be misrepresented, so I will say I do not think
the Judge is responsible for this article; but he is quite as responsible
for it as I would be if one of my friends had said it. I think that is
fair enough.

I have here also a set of resolutions passed by a Democratic State
Convention in Judge Douglas's own good State of Vermont, that I think
ought to be good for him too:

"Resolved, That liberty is a right inherent and inalienable in man, and
that herein all men are equal.

"Resolved, That we claim no authority in the Federal Government to abolish
slavery in the several States, but we do claim for it Constitutional power
perpetually to prohibit the introduction of slavery into territory now
free, and abolish it wherever, under the jurisdiction of Congress, it
exists.

"Resolved, That this power ought immediately to be exercised in
prohibiting the introduction and existence of slavery in New Mexico and
California, in abolishing slavery and the slave-trade in the District of
Columbia, on the high seas, and wherever else, under the Constitution, it
can be reached.

"Resolved, That no more Slave States should be admitted into the Federal
Union.

"Resolved, That the Government ought to return to its ancient policy,
not to extend, nationalize, or encourage, but to limit, localize, and
discourage slavery."

At Freeport I answered several interrogatories that had been propounded to
me by Judge Douglas at the Ottawa meeting. The Judge has not yet seen fit
to find any fault with the position that I took in regard to those seven
interrogatories, which were certainly broad enough, in all conscience, to
cover the entire ground. In my answers, which have been printed, and all
have had the opportunity of seeing, I take the ground that those who elect
me must expect that I will do nothing which will not be in accordance with
those answers. I have some right to assert that Judge Douglas has no fault
to find with them. But he chooses to still try to thrust me upon different
ground, without paying any attention to my answers, the obtaining of
which from me cost him so much trouble and concern. At the same time I
propounded four interrogatories to him, claiming it as a right that he
should answer as many interrogatories for me as I did for him, and I would
reserve myself for a future instalment when I got them ready. The Judge,
in answering me upon that occasion, put in what I suppose he intends
as answers to all four of my interrogatories. The first one of these
interrogatories I have before me, and it is in these words:

"Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask
admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite
number of inhabitants according to the English bill,"--some ninety-three
thousand,--"will you vote to admit them?"

As I read the Judge's answer in the newspaper, and as I remember it as
pronounced at the time, he does not give any answer which is equivalent
to yes or no,--I will or I won't. He answers at very considerable length,
rather quarreling with me for asking the question, and insisting that
Judge Trumbull had done something that I ought to say something about, and
finally getting out such statements as induce me to infer that he means
to be understood he will, in that supposed case, vote for the admission of
Kansas. I only bring this forward now for the purpose of saying that if he
chooses to put a different construction upon his answer, he may do it. But
if he does not, I shall from this time forward assume that he will vote
for the admission of Kansas in disregard of the English bill. He has the
right to remove any misunderstanding I may have. I only mention it now,
that I may hereafter assume this to be the true construction of his
answer, if he does not now choose to correct me.

The second interrogatory that I propounded to him was this:

"Question 2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful
way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery
from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?"

To this Judge Douglas answered that they can lawfully exclude slavery from
the Territory prior to the formation of a constitution. He goes on to tell
us how it can be done. As I understand him, he holds that it can be done
by the Territorial Legislature refusing to make any enactments for
the protection of slavery in the Territory, and especially by adopting
unfriendly legislation to it. For the sake of clearness, I state it again:
that they can exclude slavery from the Territory, 1st, by withholding
what he assumes to be an indispensable assistance to it in the way of
legislation; and, 2d, by unfriendly legislation. If I rightly understand
him, I wish to ask your attention for a while to his position.

In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided
that any Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories is
unconstitutional; that they have reached this proposition as a conclusion
from their former proposition, that the Constitution of the United
States expressly recognizes property in slaves, and from that other
Constitutional provision, that no person shall be deprived of property
without due process of law. Hence they reach the conclusion that as the
Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes property in slaves,
and prohibits any person from being deprived of property without due
process of law, to pass an Act of Congress by which a man who owned a
slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him if he took him on the
other side, is depriving him of that property without due process of law.
That I understand to be the decision of the Supreme Court. I understand
also that Judge Douglas adheres most firmly to that decision; and the
difficulty is, how is it possible for any power to exclude slavery
from the Territory, unless in violation of that decision? That is the
difficulty.

In the Senate of the United States, in 1850, Judge Trumbull, in a speech
substantially, if not directly, put the same interrogatory to Judge
Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory had the lawful power to
exclude slavery prior to the formation of a constitution. Judge Douglas
then answered at considerable length, and his answer will be found in the
Congressional Globe, under date of June 9th, 1856. The Judge said that
whether the people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
constitution or not was a question to be decided by the Supreme Court.
He put that proposition, as will be seen by the Congressional Globe, in a
variety of forms, all running to the same thing in substance,--that it was
a question for the Supreme Court. I maintain that when he says, after the
Supreme Court have decided the question, that the people may yet exclude
slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is not a
question for the Supreme Court. He shifts his ground. I appeal to you
whether he did not say it was a question for the Supreme Court? Has not
the Supreme Court decided that question? when he now says the people may
exclude slavery, does he not make it a question for the people? Does he
not virtually shift his ground and say that it is not a question for the
Court, but for the people? This is a very simple proposition,--a very
plain and naked one. It seems to me that there is no difficulty in
deciding it. In a variety of ways he said that it was a question for the
Supreme Court. He did not stop then to tell us that, whatever the
Supreme Court decides, the people can by withholding necessary "police
regulations" keep slavery out. He did not make any such answer I submit
to you now whether the new state of the case has not induced the Judge to
sheer away from his original ground. Would not this be the impression of
every fair-minded man?

I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new country
without police regulations is historically false. It is not true at all.
I hold that the history of this country shows that the institution of
slavery was originally planted upon this continent without these "police
regulations," which the Judge now thinks necessary for the actual
establishment of it. Not only so, but is there not another fact: how came
this Dred Scott decision to be made? It was made upon the case of a negro
being taken and actually held in slavery in Minnesota Territory, claiming
his freedom because the Act of Congress prohibited his being so held
there. Will the Judge pretend that Dred Scott was not held there without
police regulations? There is at least one matter of record as to his
having been held in slavery in the Territory, not only without police
regulations, but in the teeth of Congressional legislation supposed to
be valid at the time. This shows that there is vigor enough in slavery
to plant itself in a new country even against unfriendly legislation. It
takes not only law, but the enforcement of law to keep it out. That is the
history of this country upon the subject.

I wish to ask one other question. It being understood that the
Constitution of the United States guarantees property in slaves in the
Territories, if there is any infringement of the right of that property,
would not the United States courts, organized for the government of the
Territory, apply such remedy as might be necessary in that case? It is a
maxim held by the courts that there is no wrong without its remedy; and
the courts have a remedy for whatever is acknowledged and treated as a
wrong.

Again: I will ask you, my friends, if you were elected members of the
Legislature, what would be the first thing you would have to do before
entering upon your duties? Swear to support the Constitution of the United
States. Suppose you believe, as Judge Douglas does, that the Constitution
of the United States guarantees to your neighbor the right to hold slaves
in that Territory; that they are his property: how can you clear your
oaths unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to enable
him to enjoy that property? What do you understand by supporting the
Constitution of a State, or of the United States? Is it not to give such
constitutional helps to the rights established by that Constitution as may
be practically needed? Can you, if you swear to support the Constitution,
and believe that the Constitution establishes a right, clear your oath,
without giving it support? Do you support the Constitution if, knowing
or believing there is a right established under it which needs specific
legislation, you withhold that legislation? Do you not violate and
disregard your oath? I can conceive of nothing plainer in the world. There
can be nothing in the words "support the Constitution," if you may run
counter to it by refusing support to any right established under the
Constitution. And what I say here will hold with still more force against
the Judge's doctrine of "unfriendly legislation." How could you, having
sworn to support the Constitution, and believing it guaranteed the right
to hold slaves in the Territories, assist in legislation intended
to defeat that right? That would be violating your own view of the
Constitution. Not only so, but if you were to do so, how long would
it take the courts to hold your votes unconstitutional and void? Not a
moment.

Lastly, I would ask: Is not Congress itself under obligation to give
legislative support to any right that is established under the United
States Constitution? I repeat the question: Is not Congress itself bound
to give legislative support to any right that is established in the
United States Constitution? A member of Congress swears to support the
Constitution of the United States: and if he sees a right established
by that Constitution which needs specific legislative protection, can he
clear his oath without giving that protection? Let me ask you why many of
us who are opposed to slavery upon principle give our acquiescence to a
Fugitive Slave law? Why do we hold ourselves under obligations to pass
such a law, and abide by it when it is passed? Because the Constitution
makes provision that the owners of slaves shall have the right to reclaim
them. It gives the right to reclaim slaves; and that right is, as Judge
Douglas says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that will
enforce it.

The mere declaration, "No person held to service or labor in one State
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in 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," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce it. Now,
on what ground would a member of Congress, who is opposed to slavery in
the abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do?
Because there is a constitutional right which needs legislation to enforce
it. And although it is distasteful to me, I have sworn to support the
Constitution; and having so sworn, I cannot conceive that I do support
it if I withhold from that right any necessary legislation to make it
practical. And if that is true in regard to a Fugitive Slave law, is
the right to have fugitive slaves reclaimed any better fixed in the
Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the Territories? For this
decision is a just exposition of the Constitution, as Judge Douglas
thinks. Is the one right any better than the other? Is there any man who,
while a member of Congress, would give support to the one any more than
the other? If I wished to refuse to give legislative support to slave
property in the Territories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it,
holding the view that the Constitution establishes that right. If I did it
at all, it would be because I deny that this decision properly construes
the Constitution. But if I acknowledge, with Judge Douglas, that this
decision properly construes the Constitution, I cannot conceive that I
would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in Congress to give
such protection to that property as in its nature it needed.

At the end of what I have said here I propose to give the Judge my fifth
interrogatory, which he may take and answer at his leisure. My fifth
interrogatory is this:

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need
and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
or against such legislation?

[Judge DOUGLAS: Will you repeat that? I want to answer that question.]

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need
and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
or against such legislation?

I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge Douglas has made, he has
spoken as if he did not know or think that the Supreme Court had decided
that a Territorial Legislature cannot exclude slavery. Precisely what the
Judge would say upon the subject--whether he would say definitely that he
does not understand they have so decided, or whether he would say he does
understand that the court have so decided,--I do not know; but I know
that in his speech at Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not
decided yet; and in his answer to me at Freeport, he spoke of it, so far,
again, as I can comprehend it, as a thing that had not yet been decided.
Now, I hold that if the Judge does entertain that view, I think that he
is not mistaken in so far as it can be said that the court has not
decided anything save the mere question of jurisdiction. I know the legal
arguments that can be made,--that after a court has decided that it cannot
take jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all that is before it,
and that is the end of it. A plausible argument can be made in favor of
that proposition; but I know that Judge Douglas has said in one of his
speeches that the court went forward, like honest men as they were,
and decided all the points in the case. If any points are really
extra-judicially decided, because not necessarily before them, then this
one as to the power of the Territorial Legislature, to exclude slavery
is one of them, as also the one that the Missouri Compromise was null and
void. They are both extra-judicial, or neither is, according as the
court held that they had no jurisdiction in the case between the parties,
because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a suit in that court.
I want, if I have sufficient time, to show that the court did pass its
opinion; but that is the only thing actually done in the case. If they did
not decide, they showed what they were ready to decide whenever the matter
was before them. What is that opinion? After having argued that Congress
had no power to pass a law excluding slavery from a United States
Territory, they then used language to this effect: That inasmuch as
Congress itself could not exercise such a power, it followed as a matter
of course that it could not authorize a Territorial government to exercise
it; for the Territorial Legislature can do no more than Congress could
do. Thus it expressed its opinion emphatically against the power of a
Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery, leaving us in just as little
doubt on that point as upon any other point they really decided.

Now, my fellow-citizens, I will detain you only a little while longer; my
time is nearly out. I find a report of a speech made by Judge Douglas
at Joliet, since we last met at Freeport,--published, I believe, in the
Missouri Republican, on the 9th of this month, in which Judge Douglas
says:

"You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked him if he concurred in
each and all of the principles set forth in it. He would not answer these
questions. At last I said frankly, I wish you to answer them, because when
I get them up here where the color of your principles are a little darker
than in Egypt, I intend to trot you down to Jonesboro. The very notice
that I was going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble in his knees
so that he had to be carried from the platform. He laid up seven days, and
in the meantime held a consultation with his political physicians; they
had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders of the Abolition party,
they consulted it all over, and at last Lincoln came to the conclusion
that he would answer, so he came up to Freeport last Friday."

Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for philosophical
contemplation. I have been treating it in that way, and I have really come
to the conclusion that I can explain it in no other way than by believing
the Judge is crazy. If he was in his right mind I cannot conceive how he
would have risked disgusting the four or five thousand of his own friends
who stood there and knew, as to my having been carried from the platform,
that there was not a word of truth in it.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Did n't they carry you off?]

There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas exactly.
He smiles now, and says, "Did n't they carry you off?" but he said then
"he had to be carried off"; and he said it to convince the country that
he had so completely broken me down by his speech that I had to be carried
away. Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, "Did n't they carry you off?"
Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, why didn't you tell the truth? I would
like to know why you did n't tell the truth about it. And then again "He
laid up seven days." He put this in print for the people of the country to
read as a serious document. I think if he had been in his sober senses he
would not have risked that barefacedness in the presence of thousands of
his own friends who knew that I made speeches within six of the seven days
at Henry, Marshall County, Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough
County, including all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport
at the end of the six days. Now I say there is no charitable way to look
at that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy. There is
another thing in that statement that alarmed me very greatly as he states
it, that he was going to "trot me down to Egypt." Thereby he would have
you infer that I would not come to Egypt unless he forced me--that I
could not be got here unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here. That
statement he makes, too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the
stipulation to come down here and that he himself had been very reluctant
to enter into the stipulation. More than all this: Judge Douglas, when
he made that statement, must have been crazy and wholly out of his sober
senses, or else he would have known that when he got me down here, that
promise--that windy promise--of his powers to annihilate me, would n't
amount to anything. Now, how little do I look like being carried away
trembling? Let the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour, I
want you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay and rot here; and
if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel and
put him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, then, here is something
extraordinary in this statement. I ask you if you know any other living
man who would make such a statement? I will ask my friend Casey, over
there, if he would do such a thing? Would he send that out and have his
men take it as the truth? Did the Judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt
to scare me to death? Why, I know this people better than he does. I was
raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this people. But the
Judge was raised farther north, and perhaps he has some horrid idea of
what this people might be induced to do. But really I have talked about
this matter perhaps longer than I ought, for it is no great thing; and yet
the smallest are often the most difficult things to deal with. The Judge
has set about seriously trying to make the impression that when we meet
at different places I am literally in his clutches--that I am a poor,
helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do nothing at all. This is one
of the ways he has taken to create that impression. I don't know any other
way to meet it except this. I don't want to quarrel with him--to call him
a liar; but when I come square up to him I don't know what else to call
him if I must tell the truth out. I want to be at peace, and reserve all
my fighting powers for necessary occasions. My time now is very nearly
out, and I give up the trifle that is left to the Judge, to let him set my
knees trembling again, if he can. set my knees trembling again, if he can.