The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions advanced
boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and apparently
authoritatively, and every man who questions any of them is denounced as
an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first,
that the primary object of all government at its original institution is
the protection of persons and property; second, that the Constitution of
the United States declares that the citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether organic or
otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State from settling in
another with their slave property, and especially declaring it forfeited,
are direct violations of the original intention of the Government and
Constitution of the United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of
the slaves of the Northern States was a gross outrage on the rights of
property, in as much as it was involuntarily done on the part of the
owner.

"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the 17th of
November, and on the 18th appeared the first article giving the adhesion
of the Union to the Lecompton Constitution. It was in these words:

"'KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled. The
problem is solved. The dead point of danger is passed. All serious
trouble to Kansas affairs is over and gone...."

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

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

"Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be amended
after 1864 by a two-thirds vote.

"'But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property in the
ownership of slaves.'

"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution that they
are identical in spirit with this authoritative article in the Washington
Union of the day previous to its indorsement of this Constitution.

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed
by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on the 18th of
November, and this clause in the Constitution asserting the doctrine that
a State has no right to prohibit slavery within its limits, I saw that
there was a fatal blow being struck at the sovereignty of the States of
this Union."

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

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed
by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on the 18th of
November, and this clause in the Constitution asserting the doctrine that
a State has no right to prohibit slavery within its limits, I saw that
there was a fatal blow being struck at the sovereignty of the States of
this Union."

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




THIRD JOINT DEBATE, AT JONESBORO,

SEPTEMBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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