The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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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.