The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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You say that if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a Christian
you will rejoice at it. All decent slaveholders talk that way, and I do
not doubt their candor. But they never vote that way. Although in a
private letter or conversation you will express your preference that
Kansas shall be free, you would vote for no man for Congress who would
say the same thing publicly. No such man could be elected from any
district in a slave State. You think Stringfellow and company ought to be
hung; and yet at the next Presidential election you will vote for the
exact type and representative of Stringfellow. The slave-breeders and
slave-traders are a small, odious, and detested class among you; and yet
in politics they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely
your masters as you are the master of your own negroes. You inquire where
I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others
say there are no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist. When I was at
Washington, I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times; and I
never heard of any one attempting to un-Whig me for that. I now do no
more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing; that
is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of
negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in
degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by
declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it
"all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get
control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes and
foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer
emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving
liberty,--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and
without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Mary will probably pass a day or two in Louisville in October. My kindest
regards to Mrs. Speed. On the leading subject of this letter I have more
of her sympathy than I have of yours; and yet let me say I am,

Your friend forever,
A. LINCOLN.




1856
REQUEST FOR A RAILWAY PASS
TO R. P. MORGAN

SPRINGFIELD, February 13, 1856.
R. P. MORGAN, ESQ.:

Says Tom to John, "Here's your old rotten wheelbarrow. I've broke it
usin' on it. I wish you would mend it, 'case I shall want to borrow it
this arternoon." Acting on this as a precedent, I say, "Here's your old
'chalked hat,--I wish you would take it and send me a new one, 'case I
shall want to use it the first of March."

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.

(A 'chalked hat' was the common term, at that time, for a railroad pass.)




SPEECH DELIVERED BEFORE THE FIRST REPUBLICAN
STATE CONVENTION OF ILLINOIS,
HELD AT BLOOMINGTON, ON MAY 29, 1856.

[From the Report by William C. Whitney.]

(Mr. Whitney's notes were made at the time, but not written out until
1896. He does not claim that the speech, as here reported, is literally
correct only that he has followed the argument, and that in many cases
the sentences are as Mr. Lincoln spoke them.)

Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: I was over at [Cries of "Platform!" "Take the
platform!"]--I say, that while I was at Danville Court, some of our
friends of Anti-Nebraska got together in Springfield and elected me as
one delegate to represent old Sangamon with them in this convention, and
I am here certainly as a sympathizer in this movement and by virtue of
that meeting and selection. But we can hardly be called delegates
strictly, inasmuch as, properly speaking, we represent nobody but
ourselves. I think it altogether fair to say that we have no
Anti-Nebraska party in Sangamon, although there is a good deal of
Anti-Nebraska feeling there; but I say for myself, and I think I may
speak also for my colleagues, that we who are here fully approve of the
platform and of all that has been done [A voice, "Yes!"], and even if we
are not regularly delegates, it will be right for me to answer your call
to speak. I suppose we truly stand for the public sentiment of Sangamon
on the great question of the repeal, although we do not yet represent
many numbers who have taken a distinct position on the question.

We are in a trying time--it ranges above mere party--and this movement to
call a halt and turn our steps backward needs all the help and good
counsels it can get; for unless popular opinion makes itself very
strongly felt, and a change is made in our present course, blood will
flow on account of Nebraska, and brother's hands will be raised against
brother!

[The last sentence was uttered in such an earnest, impressive, if not,
indeed, tragic, manner, as to make a cold chill creep over me. Others
gave a similar experience.]

I have listened with great interest to the earnest appeal made to
Illinois men by the gentleman from Lawrence [James S. Emery] who has just
addressed us so eloquently and forcibly. I was deeply moved by his
statement of the wrongs done to free-State men out there. I think it just
to say that all true men North should sympathize with them, and ought to
be willing to do any possible and needful thing to right their wrongs.
But we must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to
perform what we cannot; we must be calm and moderate, and consider the
whole difficulty, and determine what is possible and just. We must not be
led by excitement and passion to do that which our sober judgments would
not approve in our cooler moments. We have higher aims; we will have more
serious business than to dally with temporary measures.

We are here to stand firmly for a principle--to stand firmly for a right.
We know that great political and moral wrongs are done, and outrages
committed, and we denounce those wrongs and outrages, although we cannot,
at present, do much more. But we desire to reach out beyond those
personal outrages and establish a rule that will apply to all, and so
prevent any future outrages.

We have seen to-day that every shade of popular opinion is represented
here, with Freedom, or rather Free Soil, as the basis. We have come
together as in some sort representatives of popular opinion against the
extension of slavery into territory now free in fact as well as by law,
and the pledged word of the statesmen of the nation who are now no more.
We come--we are here assembled together--to protest as well as we can
against a great wrong, and to take measures, as well as we now can, to
make that wrong right; to place the nation, as far as it may be possible
now, as it was before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and the
plain way to do this is to restore the Compromise, and to demand and
determine that Kansas shall be free! [Immense applause.] While we affirm,
and reaffirm, if necessary, our devotion to the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, let our practical work here be limited to
the above. We know that there is not a perfect agreement of sentiment
here on the public questions which might be rightfully considered in this
convention, and that the indignation which we all must feel cannot be
helped; but all of us must give up something for the good of the cause.
There is one desire which is uppermost in the mind, one wish common to us
all, to which no dissent will be made; and I counsel you earnestly to
bury all resentment, to sink all personal feeling, make all things work
to a common purpose in which we are united and agreed about, and which
all present will agree is absolutely necessary--which must be done by any
rightful mode if there be such: Slavery must be kept out of Kansas!
[Applause.] The test--the pinch--is right there. If we lose Kansas to
freedom, an example will be set which will prove fatal to freedom in the
end. We, therefore, in the language of the Bible, must "lay the axe to
the root of the tree." Temporizing will not do longer; now is the time
for decision--for firm, persistent, resolute action. [Applause.]

The Nebraska Bill, or rather Nebraska law, is not one of wholesome
legislation, but was and is an act of legislative usurpation, whose
result, if not indeed intention, is to make slavery national; and unless
headed off in some effective way, we are in a fair way to see this land
of boasted freedom converted into a land of slavery in fact. [Sensation.]
Just open your two eyes, and see if this be not so. I need do no more
than state, to command universal approval, that almost the entire North,
as well as a large following in the border States, is radically opposed
to the planting of slavery in free territory. Probably in a popular vote
throughout the nation nine tenths of the voters in the free States, and
at least one-half in the border States, if they could express their
sentiments freely, would vote NO on such an issue; and it is safe to say
that two thirds of the votes of the entire nation would be opposed to it.
And yet, in spite of this overbalancing of sentiment in this free
country, we are in a fair way to see Kansas present itself for admission
as a slave State. Indeed, it is a felony, by the local law of Kansas, to
deny that slavery exists there even now. By every principle of law, a
negro in Kansas is free; yet the bogus Legislature makes it an infamous
crime to tell him that he is free!

Statutes of Kansas, 1555, chapter 151, Sec. 12: If any free person, by
speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that persons have not the
right to hold slaves in this Territory, or shall introduce into this
Territory, print, publish, write, circulate . . . any book, paper,
magazine, pamphlet, or circular containing any denial of the right of
persons to hold slaves in this Territory such person shall be deemed
guilty of felony, and punished by imprisonment at hard labor for a term
of not less than two years. Sec. 13. No person who is conscientiously
opposed to holding slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves
in this Territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecution
for any violation of any Sections of this Act.

The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and liberty;
for it is a singular fact, but none the less a fact, and well known by
the most common experience, that men will do things under the terror of
the party lash that they would not on any account or for any
consideration do otherwise; while men who will march up to the mouth of a
loaded cannon without shrinking will run from the terrible name of
"Abolitionist," even when pronounced by a worthless creature whom they,
with good reason, despise. For instance--to press this point a
little--Judge Douglas introduced his Nebraska Bill in January; and we had
an extra session of our Legislature in the succeeding February, in which
were seventy-five Democrats; and at a party caucus, fully attended, there
were just three votes, out of the whole seventy-five, for the measure.
But in a few days orders came on from Washington, commanding them to
approve the measure; the party lash was applied, and it was brought up
again in caucus, and passed by a large majority. The masses were against
it, but party necessity carried it; and it was passed through the lower
house of Congress against the will of the people, for the same reason.
Here is where the greatest danger lies that, while we profess to be a
government of law and reason, law will give way to violence on demand of
this awful and crushing power. Like the great Juggernaut--I think that is
the name--the great idol, it crushes everything that comes in its way,
and makes a [?]--or, as I read once, in a blackletter law book, "a slave
is a human being who is legally not a person but a thing." And if the
safeguards to liberty are broken down, as is now attempted, when they
have made things of all the free negroes, how long, think you, before
they will begin to make things of poor white men? [Applause.] Be not
deceived. Revolutions do not go backward. The founder of the Democratic
party declared that all men were created equal. His successor in the
leadership has written the word "white" before men, making it read "all
white men are created equal." Pray, will or may not the Know-Nothings, if
they should get in power, add the word "Protestant," making it read "all
Protestant white men...?"

Meanwhile the hapless negro is the fruitful subject of reprisals in other
quarters. John Pettit, whom Tom Benton paid his respects to, you will
recollect, calls the immortal Declaration "a self-evident lie"; while at
the birthplace of freedom--in the shadow of Bunker Hill and of the
"cradle of liberty," at the home of the Adamses and Warren and
Otis--Choate, from our side of the house, dares to fritter away the
birthday promise of liberty by proclaiming the Declaration to be "a
string of glittering generalities"; and the Southern Whigs, working hand
in hand with proslavery Democrats, are making Choate's theories
practical. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, mindful of the moral element
in slavery, solemnly declared that he trembled for his country when he
remembered that God is just; while Judge Douglas, with an insignificant
wave of the hand, "don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down."
Now, if slavery is right, or even negative, he has a right to treat it in
this trifling manner. But if it is a moral and political wrong, as all
Christendom considers it to be, how can he answer to God for this attempt
to spread and fortify it? [Applause.]

But no man, and Judge Douglas no more than any other, can maintain a
negative, or merely neutral, position on this question; and, accordingly,
he avows that the Union was made by white men and for white men and their
descendants. As matter of fact, the first branch of the proposition is
historically true; the government was made by white men, and they were
and are the superior race. This I admit. But the corner-stone of the
government, so to speak, was the declaration that "all men are created
equal," and all entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." [Applause.]

And not only so, but the framers of the Constitution were particular to
keep out of that instrument the word "slave," the reason being that
slavery would ultimately come to an end, and they did not wish to have
any reminder that in this free country human beings were ever prostituted
to slavery. [Applause.] Nor is it any argument that we are superior and
the negro inferior--that he has but one talent while we have ten. Let the
negro possess the little he has in independence; if he has but one
talent, he should be permitted to keep the little he has. [Applause:] But
slavery will endure no test of reason or logic; and yet its advocates,
like Douglas, use a sort of bastard logic, or noisy assumption it might
better be termed, like the above, in order to prepare the mind for the
gradual, but none the less certain, encroachments of the Moloch of
slavery upon the fair domain of freedom. But however much you may argue
upon it, or smother it in soft phrase, slavery can only be maintained by
force--by violence. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was by
violence. It was a violation of both law and the sacred obligations of
honor, to overthrow and trample under foot a solemn compromise, obtained
by the fearful loss to freedom of one of the fairest of our Western
domains. Congress violated the will and confidence of its constituents in
voting for the bill; and while public sentiment, as shown by the
elections of 1854, demanded the restoration of this compromise, Congress
violated its trust by refusing simply because it had the force of numbers
to hold on to it. And murderous violence is being used now, in order to
force slavery on to Kansas; for it cannot be done in any other way.
[Sensation.]

The necessary result was to establish the rule of violence--force,
instead of the rule of law and reason; to perpetuate and spread slavery,
and in time to make it general. We see it at both ends of the line. In
Washington, on the very spot where the outrage was started, the fearless
Sumner is beaten to insensibility, and is now slowly dying; while
senators who claim to be gentlemen and Christians stood by, countenancing
the act, and even applauding it afterward in their places in the Senate.
Even Douglas, our man, saw it all and was within helping distance, yet
let the murderous blows fall unopposed. Then, at the other end of the
line, at the very time Sumner was being murdered, Lawrence was being
destroyed for the crime of freedom. It was the most prominent stronghold
of liberty in Kansas, and must give way to the all-dominating power of
slavery. Only two days ago, Judge Trumbull found it necessary to propose
a bill in the Senate to prevent a general civil war and to restore peace
in Kansas.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect
some new disaster with each newspaper we read. Are we in a healthful
political state? Are not the tendencies plain? Do not the signs of the
times point plainly the way in which we are going? [Sensation.]

In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by South
and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment about it was
not controlled by geographical lines or considerations of climate, but by
moral and philanthropic views. Petitions for the abolition of slavery
were presented to the very first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts
alike. To show the harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive
slave law was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate, and
but seven dissenting votes in the House. It was, however, a wise law,
moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one. Twenty-five years
later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated; and thirty-five
years after that, the present law, drafted by Mason of Virginia, was
passed by Northern votes. I am not, just now, complaining of this law,
but I am trying to show how the current sets; for the proposed law of
1817 was far less offensive than the present one. In 1774 the Continental
Congress pledged itself, without a dissenting vote, to wholly discontinue
the slave trade, and to neither purchase nor import any slave; and less
than three months before the passage of the Declaration of Independence,
the same Congress which adopted that declaration unanimously resolved
"that no slave be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies."
[Great applause.]

On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of
Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it the
slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as "a piratical
warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and as "a cruel war
against human nature." [Applause.] All agreed on this except South
Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve harmony, and from the
necessity of the case, these expressions were omitted. Indeed, abolition
societies existed as far south as Virginia; and it is a well-known fact
that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton
were qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on that subject than
we of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be to-day. On March 1,
1784, Virginia ceded to the confederation all its lands lying northwest
of the Ohio River. Jefferson, Chase of Maryland, and Howell of Rhode
Island, as a committee on that and territory thereafter to be ceded,
reported that no slavery should exist after the year 1800. Had this
report been adopted, not only the Northwest, but Kentucky, Tennessee,
Alabama, and Mississippi also would have been free; but it required the
assent of nine States to ratify it. North Carolina was divided, and thus
its vote was lost; and Delaware, Georgia, and New Jersey refused to vote.
In point of fact, as it was, it was assented to by six States. Three
years later on a square vote to exclude slavery from the Northwest, only
one vote, and that from New York, was against it. And yet, thirty-seven
years later, five thousand citizens of Illinois, out of a voting mass of
less than twelve thousand, deliberately, after a long and heated contest,
voted to introduce slavery in Illinois; and, to-day, a large party in the
free State of Illinois are willing to vote to fasten the shackles of
slavery on the fair domain of Kansas, notwithstanding it received the
dowry of freedom long before its birth as a political community. I
repeat, therefore, the question: Is it not plain in what direction we are
tending? [Sensation.] In the colonial time, Mason, Pendleton, and
Jefferson were as hostile to slavery in Virginia as Otis, Ames, and the
Adamses were in Massachusetts; and Virginia made as earnest an effort to
get rid of it as old Massachusetts did. But circumstances were against
them and they failed; but not that the good will of its leading men was
lacking. Yet within less than fifty years Virginia changed its tune, and
made negro-breeding for the cotton and sugar States one of its leading
industries. [Laughter and applause.]

In the Constitutional Convention, George Mason of Virginia made a more
violent abolition speech than my friends Lovejoy or Codding would desire
to make here to-day--a speech which could not be safely repeated anywhere
on Southern soil in this enlightened year. But, while there were some
differences of opinion on this subject even then, discussion was allowed;
but as you see by the Kansas slave code, which, as you know, is the
Missouri slave code, merely ferried across the river, it is a felony to
even express an opinion hostile to that foul blot in the land of
Washington and the Declaration of Independence. [Sensation.]

In Kentucky--my State--in 1849, on a test vote, the mighty influence of
Henry Clay and many other good then there could not get a symptom of
expression in favor of gradual emancipation on a plain issue of marching
toward the light of civilization with Ohio and Illinois; but the State of
Boone and Hardin and Henry Clay, with a nigger under each arm, took the
black trail toward the deadly swamps of barbarism. Is there--can there
be--any doubt about this thing? And is there any doubt that we must all
lay aside our prejudices and march, shoulder to shoulder, in the great
army of Freedom? [Applause.]

Every Fourth of July our young orators all proclaim this to be "the land
of the free and the home of the brave!" Well, now, when you orators get
that off next year, and, may be, this very year, how would you like some
old grizzled farmer to get up in the grove and deny it? [Laughter.] How
would you like that? But suppose Kansas comes in as a slave State, and
all the "border ruffians" have barbecues about it, and free-State men
come trailing back to the dishonored North, like whipped dogs with their
tails between their legs, it is--ain't it?--evident that this is no more
the "land of the free"; and if we let it go so, we won't dare to say
"home of the brave" out loud. [Sensation and confusion.]

Can any man doubt that, even in spite of the people's will, slavery will
triumph through violence, unless that will be made manifest and enforced?
Even Governor Reeder claimed at the outset that the contest in Kansas was
to be fair, but he got his eyes open at last; and I believe that, as a
result of this moral and physical violence, Kansas will soon apply for
admission as a slave State. And yet we can't mistake that the people
don't want it so, and that it is a land which is free both by natural and
political law. No law, is free law! Such is the understanding of all
Christendom. In the Somerset case, decided nearly a century ago, the
great Lord Mansfield held that slavery was of such a nature that it must
take its rise in positive (as distinguished from natural) law; and that
in no country or age could it be traced back to any other source. Will
some one please tell me where is the positive law that establishes
slavery in Kansas? [A voice: "The bogus laws."] Aye, the bogus laws! And,
on the same principle, a gang of Missouri horse-thieves could come into
Illinois and declare horse-stealing to be legal [Laughter], and it would
be just as legal as slavery is in Kansas. But by express statute, in the
land of Washington and Jefferson, we may soon be brought face to face
with the discreditable fact of showing to the world by our acts that we
prefer slavery to freedom--darkness to light! [Sensation.]

It is, I believe, a principle in law that when one party to a contract
violates it so grossly as to chiefly destroy the object for which it is
made, the other party may rescind it. I will ask Browning if that ain't
good law. [Voices: "Yes!"] Well, now if that be right, I go for
rescinding the whole, entire Missouri Compromise and thus turning
Missouri into a free State; and I should like to know the
difference--should like for any one to point out the difference--between
our making a free State of Missouri and their making a slave State of
Kansas. [Great applause.] There ain't one bit of difference, except that
our way would be a great mercy to humanity. But I have never said, and
the Whig party has never said, and those who oppose the Nebraska Bill do
not as a body say, that they have any intention of interfering with
slavery in the slave States. Our platform says just the contrary. We
allow slavery to exist in the slave States, not because slavery is right
or good, but from the necessities of our Union. We grant a fugitive slave
law because it is so "nominated in the bond"; because our fathers so
stipulated--had to--and we are bound to carry out this agreement. But
they did not agree to introduce slavery in regions where it did not
previously exist. On the contrary, they said by their example and
teachings that they did not deem it expedient--did n't consider it
right--to do so; and it is wise and right to do just as they did about
it. [Voices: "Good!"] And that it what we propose--not to interfere with
slavery where it exists (we have never tried to do it), and to give them
a reasonable and efficient fugitive slave law. [A voice: "No!"] I say
YES! [Applause.] It was part of the bargain, and I 'm for living up to
it; but I go no further; I'm not bound to do more, and I won't agree any
further. [Great applause.]