The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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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.