The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the
United States, through the action, in each State, of those persons who
were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf of themselves and all
other citizens of the State. In some of the States, as we have seen,
colored persons were among those qualified by law to act on the subject.
These colored persons were not only included in the body of 'the people
of the United States' by whom the Constitution was ordained and
established; but in at least five of the States they had the power to
act, and doubtless did act, by their suffrages, upon the question of its
adoption."

Again, Chief Justice Taney says:

"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion, in
relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and
enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of
Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed
and adopted."

And again, after quoting from the Declaration, he says:

"The general words above quoted would seem to include the whole human
family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day, would
be so understood."

In these the Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes
as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable
now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This assumption is a
mistake. In some trifling particulars the condition of that race has been
ameliorated; but as a whole, in this country, the change between then and
now is decidedly the other way, and their ultimate destiny has never
appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two of the
five States--New Jersey and North Carolina--that then gave the free negro
the right of voting, the right has since been taken away, and in a
third--New York--it has been greatly abridged; while it has not been
extended, so far as I know, to a single additional State, though the
number of the States has more than doubled. In those days, as I
understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their
slaves; but since then such legal restraints have been made upon
emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days
Legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their
respective States, but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State
constitutions to withhold that power from the Legislatures. In those
days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to the new
countries was prohibited, but now Congress decides that it will not
continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not
if it would. In those days our Declaration of Independence was held
sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the
bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed and sneered at
and construed and hawked at and torn, till, if its framers could rise
from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of
earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him, ambition
follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day fast joining the
cry. They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person,
and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have
closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it were,
bolted in with a lock of hundred keys, which can never be unlocked
without the concurrence of every key--the keys in the hands of a hundred
different men, and they scattered to hundred different and distant
places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions
of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his
escape more complete than it is.

It is grossly incorrect to say or assume that the public estimate of the
negro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of the government.

Three years and a half ago, Judge Douglas brought forward his famous
Nebraska Bill. The country was at once in a blaze. He scorned all
opposition, and carried it through Congress. Since then he has seen
himself superseded in a Presidential nomination by one indorsing the
general doctrine of his measure, but at the same time standing clear of
the odium of its untimely agitation and its gross breach of national
faith; and he has seen that successful rival constitutionally elected,
not by the strength of friends, but by the division of adversaries, being
in a popular minority of nearly four hundred thousand votes. He has seen
his chief aids in his own State, Shields and Richardson, politically
speaking, successively tried, convicted, and executed for an offence not
their own but his. And now he sees his own case standing next on the
docket for trial.

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people at the
idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and
Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope upon the chances of his
being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he
can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon
his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He
therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He
makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott
decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of
Independence includes all men, black as well as white, and forthwith he
boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue
gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to
vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes. He will have it that
they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against the counterfeit
logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a
slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for
either. I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not
my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her
own hands, without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal and the
equal of all others.

Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that
the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole
human family, but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that
instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did
not at once actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this
grave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact that they
did not at once, or ever afterward, actually place all white people on an
equality with one another. And this is the staple argument of both the
Chief Justice and the Senator for doing this obvious violence to the
plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all
men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects.
They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral
developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable
distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created
equal--equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they
meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then
actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer
it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a
boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that enforcement of it
might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be
familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly
labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly
approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its
influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of
all colors everywhere. The assertion that "all men are created equal" was
of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and
it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use. Its
authors meant it to be--as thank God, it is now proving
itself--stumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek to
turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew
the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such
should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they
should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and object of that
part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that "all men are
created equal."

Now let us hear Judge Douglas's view of the same subject, as I find it in
the printed report of his late speech. Here it is:

"No man can vindicate the character, motives, and conduct of the signers
of the Declaration of Independence, except upon the hypothesis that they
referred to the white race alone, and not to the African, when they
declared all men to have been created equal; that they were speaking of
British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born
and residing in Great Britain; that they were entitled to the same
inalienable rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. The Declaration was adopted for the purpose of
justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in
withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their
connection with the mother country."

My good friends, read that carefully over some leisure hour, and ponder
well upon it; see what a mere wreck--mangled ruin--it makes of our once
glorious Declaration.

"They were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to
British subjects born and residing in Great Britain"! Why, according to
this, not only negroes but white people outside of Great Britain and
America were not spoken of in that instrument. The English, Irish, and
Scotch, along with white Americans, were included, to be sure, but the
French, Germans, and other white people of the world are all gone to pot
along with the Judge's inferior races!

I had thought the Declaration promised something better than the
condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we should be
equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal condition. According to
that, it gave no promise that, having kicked off the king and lords of
Great Britain, we should not at once be saddled with a king and lords of
our own.

I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in
the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it merely "was adopted for
the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized
world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and
dissolving their connection with the mother country." Why, that object
having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no
practical use now--mere rubbish--old wadding left to rot on the
battlefield after the victory is won.

I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth," to-morrow week.
What for? The doings of that day had no reference to the present; and
quite half of you are not even descendants of those who were referred to
at that day. But I suppose you will celebrate, and will even go so far as
to read the Declaration. Suppose, after you read it once in the
old-fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas's version. It
will then run thus:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all British subjects who
were on this continent eighty-one years ago were created equal to all
British subjects born and then residing in Great Britain."

And now I appeal to all--to Democrats as well as others--are you really
willing that the Declaration shall thus be frittered away?--thus left no
more, at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past?--thus shorn
of its vitality and practical value, and left without the germ or even
the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?

But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing of
blood by the white and black races. Agreed for once--a thousand times
agreed. There are white men enough to marry all the white women and black
men enough to many all the black women; and so let them be married. On
this point we fully agree with the Judge, and when he shall show that his
policy is better adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours, we shall drop
ours and adopt his. Let us see. In 1850 there were in the United States
405,751 mulattoes. Very few of these are the offspring of whites and free
blacks; nearly all have sprung from black slaves and white masters. A
separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation;
but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to
keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black
people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas.
That is at least one self-evident truth. A few free colored persons may
get into the free States, in any event; but their number is too
insignificant to amount to much in the way of mixing blood. In 1850 there
were in the free States 56,649 mulattoes; but for the most part they were
not born there--they came from the slave States, ready made up. In the
same year the slave States had 348,874 mulattoes, all of home production.
The proportion of free mulattoes to free blacks--the only colored classes
in the free States is much greater in the slave than in the free States.
It is worthy of note, too, that among the free States those which make
the colored man the nearest equal to the white have proportionably the
fewest mulattoes, the least of amalgamation. In New Hampshire, the State
which goes farthest toward equality between the races, there are just 184
mulattoes, while there are in Virginia--how many do you think?--79,775,
being 23,126 more than in all the free States together.

These statistics show that slavery is the greatest source of
amalgamation, and next to it, not the elevation, but the degradation of
the free blacks. Yet Judge Douglas dreads the slightest restraints on the
spread of slavery, and the slightest human recognition of the negro, as
tending horribly to amalgamation!

The very Dred Scott case affords a strong test as to which party most
favors amalgamation, the Republicans or the dear Union-saving Democracy.
Dred Scott, his wife, and two daughters were all involved in the suit. We
desired the court to have held that they were citizens so far at least as
to entitle them to a hearing as to whether they were free or not; and
then, also, that they were in fact and in law really free. Could we have
had our way, the chances of these black girls ever mixing their blood
with that of white people would have been diminished at least to the
extent that it could not have been without their consent. But Judge
Douglas is delighted to have them decided to be slaves, and not human
enough to have a hearing, even if they were free, and thus left subject
to the forced concubinage of their masters, and liable to become the
mothers of mulattoes in spite of themselves: the very state of case that
produces nine tenths of all the mulattoes all the mixing of blood in the
nation.

Of course, I state this case as an illustration only, not meaning to say
or intimate that the master of Dred Scott and his family, or any more
than a percentage of masters generally, are inclined to exercise this
particular power which they hold over their female slaves.

I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect
preventive of amalgamation. I have no right to say all the members of the
Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say that as a party they
are in favor of it. There is nothing in their platform directly on the
subject. But I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it,
and that the chief plank in their platform--opposition to the spread of
slavery--is most favorable to that separation.

Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by
colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing anything
directly for colonization. Party operations at present only favor or
retard colonization incidentally. The enterprise is a difficult one; but
"where there is a will there is a way," and what colonization needs most
is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and
self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at
the same time favorable to, or at least not against, our interest to
transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do
it, however great the task may be. The children of Israel, to such
numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men, went out of
Egyptian bondage in a body.

How differently the respective courses of the Democratic and Republican
parties incidentally, bear on the question of forming a will--a public
sentiment--for colonization, is easy to see. The Republicans inculcate,
with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man, that his
bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not
to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to
insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible crush all
sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against
him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the
indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of
self-government."

The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle; and it will be
ever hard to find many men who will send a slave to Liberia, and pay his
passage, while they can send him to a new country--Kansas, for
instance--and sell him for fifteen hundred dollars, and the rise.




TO WILLIAM GRIMES.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, August, 1857

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 14th is received, and I am much obliged for the
legal information you give.

You can scarcely be more anxious than I that the next election in Iowa
should result in favor of the Republicans. I lost nearly all the working
part of last year, giving my time to the canvass; and I am altogether too
poor to lose two years together. I am engaged in a suit in the United
States Court at Chicago, in which the Rock Island Bridge Company is a
party. The trial is to commence on the 8th of September, and probably
will last two or three weeks. During the trial it is not improbable that
all hands may come over and take a look at the bridge, and, if it were
possible to make it hit right, I could then speak at Davenport. My courts
go right on without cessation till late in November. Write me again,
pointing out the more striking points of difference between your old and
new constitutions, and also whether Democratic and Republican party lines
were drawn in the adoption of it, and which were for and which were
against it. If, by possibility, I could get over among you it might be of
some advantage to know these things in advance.

Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.




ARGUMENT IN THE ROCK ISLAND BRIDGE CASE.

(From the Daily Press of Chicago, Sept. 24, 1857.)

Hurd et al. vs Railroad Bridge Co.

United States Circuit Court, Hon. John McLean, Presiding Judge.

13th day, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1857.

Mr. A. Lincoln addressed the jury. He said he did not purpose to assail
anybody, that he expected to grow earnest as he proceeded but not
ill-natured. "There is some conflict of testimony in the case," he said,
"but one quarter of such a number of witnesses seldom agree, and even if
all were on one side some discrepancy might be expected. We are to try
and reconcile them, and to believe that they are not intentionally
erroneous as long as we can." He had no prejudice, he said, against
steamboats or steamboat men nor any against St. Louis, for he supposed
they went about this matter as other people would do in their situation.
"St. Louis," he continued, "as a commercial place may desire that this
bridge should not stand, as it is adverse to her commerce, diverting a
portion of it from the river; and it may be that she supposes that the
additional cost of railroad transportation upon the productions of Iowa
will force them to go to St. Louis if this bridge is removed. The
meetings in St. Louis are connected with this case only as some witnesses
are in it, and thus has some prejudice added color to their testimony."
The last thing that would be pleasing to him, Mr. Lincoln said, would be
to have one of these great channels, extending almost from where it never
freezes to where it never thaws, blocked up, but there is a travel from
east to west whose demands are not less important than those of the
river. It is growing larger and larger, building up new countries with a
rapidity never before seen in the history of the world. He alluded to the
astonishing growth of Illinois, having grown within his memory to a
population of a million and a half; to Iowa and the other young rising
communities of the Northwest.

"This current of travel," said he, "has its rights as well as that of
north and south. If the river had not the advantage in priority and
legislation we could enter into free competition with it and we could
surpass it. This particular railroad line has a great importance and the
statement of its business during a little less than a year shows this
importance. It is in evidence that from September 8, 1856, to August 8,
1857, 12,586 freight cars and 74,179 passengers passed over this bridge.
Navigation was closed four days short of four months last year, and
during this time while the river was of no use this road and bridge were
valuable. There is, too, a considerable portion of time when floating or
thin ice makes the river useless while the bridge is as useful as ever.
This shows that this bridge must be treated with respect in this court
and is not to be kicked about with contempt. The other day Judge Wead
alluded to the strike of the contending interest and even a dissolution
of the Union. The proper mode for all parties in this affair is to 'live
and let live,' and then we will find a cessation of this trouble about
the bridge. What mood were the steamboat men in when this bridge was
burned? Why, there was a shouting and ringing of bells and whistling on
all the boats as it fell. It was a jubilee, a greater celebration than
follows an excited election. The first thing I will proceed to is the
record of Mr. Gurney and the complaint of Judge Wead that the record did
not extend back over all the time from the completion of the bridge. The
principal part of the navigation after the bridge was burned passed
through the span. When the bridge was repaired and the boats were a
second time confined to the draw it was provided that this record should
be kept. That is the simple history of that book.

"From April 19th, 1856, to May 6th--seventeen days--there were twenty
accidents and all the time since then there have been but twenty hits,
including seven accidents, so that the dangers of this place are tapering
off and as the boatmen get cool the accidents get less. We may soon
expect if this ratio is kept up that there will be no accidents at all.

"Judge Wead said, while admitting that the floats went straight through,
there was a difference between a float and a boat, but I do not remember
that he indulged us with an argument in support of this statement. Is it
because there is a difference in size? Will not a small body and a large
one float the same way under the same influence? True a flatboat will
float faster than an egg shell and the egg shell might be blown away by
the wind, but if under the same influence they would go the same way.
Logs, floats, boards, various things the witnesses say all show the same
current. Then is not this test reliable? At all depths too the direction
of the current is the same. A series of these floats would make a line as
long as a boat and would show any influence upon any part and all parts
of the boat.

"I will now speak of the angular position of the piers. What is the
amount of the angle? The course of the river is a curve and the pier is
straight. If a line is produced from the upper end of the long pier
straight with the pier to a distance of 350 feet, and a line is drawn
from a point in the channel opposite this point to the head of the pier,
Colonel Nason says they will form an angle of twenty degrees. But the
angle if measured at the pier is seven degrees; that is, we would have to
move the pier seven degrees to make it exactly straight with the current.
Would that make the navigation better or worse? The witnesses of the
plaintiff seem to think it was only necessary to say that the pier formed
an angle with the current and that settled the matter. Our more careful
and accurate witnesses say that, though they had been accustomed to
seeing the piers placed straight with the current, yet they could see
that here the current had been made straight by us in having made this
slight angle; that the water now runs just right, that it is straight and
cannot be improved. They think that if the pier was changed the eddy
would be divided and the navigation improved.