The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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I wish to ask one other question. It being understood that the
Constitution of the United States guarantees property in slaves in the
Territories, if there is any infringement of the right of that property,
would not the United States courts, organized for the government of the
Territory, apply such remedy as might be necessary in that case? It is a
maxim held by the courts that there is no wrong without its remedy; and
the courts have a remedy for whatever is acknowledged and treated as a
wrong.

Again: I will ask you, my friends, if you were elected members of the
Legislature, what would be the first thing you would have to do before
entering upon your duties? Swear to support the Constitution of the
United States. Suppose you believe, as Judge Douglas does, that the
Constitution of the United States guarantees to your neighbor the right
to hold slaves in that Territory; that they are his property: how can you
clear your oaths unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to
enable him to enjoy that property? What do you understand by supporting
the Constitution of a State, or of the United States? Is it not to give
such constitutional helps to the rights established by that Constitution
as may be practically needed? Can you, if you swear to support the
Constitution, and believe that the Constitution establishes a right,
clear your oath, without giving it support? Do you support the
Constitution if, knowing or believing there is a right established under
it which needs specific legislation, you withhold that legislation? Do
you not violate and disregard your oath? I can conceive of nothing
plainer in the world. There can be nothing in the words "support the
Constitution," if you may run counter to it by refusing support to any
right established under the Constitution. And what I say here will hold
with still more force against the Judge's doctrine of "unfriendly
legislation." How could you, having sworn to support the Constitution,
and believing it guaranteed the right to hold slaves in the Territories,
assist in legislation intended to defeat that right? That would be
violating your own view of the Constitution. Not only so, but if you were
to do so, how long would it take the courts to hold your votes
unconstitutional and void? Not a moment.

Lastly, I would ask: Is not Congress itself under obligation to give
legislative support to any right that is established under the United
States Constitution? I repeat the question: Is not Congress itself bound
to give legislative support to any right that is established in the
United States Constitution? A member of Congress swears to support the
Constitution of the United States: and if he sees a right established by
that Constitution which needs specific legislative protection, can he
clear his oath without giving that protection? Let me ask you why many of
us who are opposed to slavery upon principle give our acquiescence to a
Fugitive Slave law? Why do we hold ourselves under obligations to pass
such a law, and abide by it when it is passed? Because the Constitution
makes provision that the owners of slaves shall have the right to reclaim
them. It gives the right to reclaim slaves; and that right is, as Judge
Douglas says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that will
enforce it.

The mere declaration, "No person held to service or labor in one State
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of
any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor,
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor may be due," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce
it. Now, on what ground would a member of Congress, who is opposed to
slavery in the abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my
duty to do? Because there is a constitutional right which needs
legislation to enforce it. And although it is distasteful to me, I have
sworn to support the Constitution; and having so sworn, I cannot conceive
that I do support it if I withhold from that right any necessary
legislation to make it practical. And if that is true in regard to a
Fugitive Slave law, is the right to have fugitive slaves reclaimed any
better fixed in the Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the
Territories? For this decision is a just exposition of the Constitution,
as Judge Douglas thinks. Is the one right any better than the other? Is
there any man who, while a member of Congress, would give support to the
one any more than the other? If I wished to refuse to give legislative
support to slave property in the Territories, if a member of Congress, I
could not do it, holding the view that the Constitution establishes that
right. If I did it at all, it would be because I deny that this decision
properly construes the Constitution. But if I acknowledge, with Judge
Douglas, that this decision properly construes the Constitution, I cannot
conceive that I would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in
Congress to give such protection to that property as in its nature it
needed.

At the end of what I have said here I propose to give the Judge my fifth
interrogatory, which he may take and answer at his leisure. My fifth
interrogatory is this:

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need and
demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
or against such legislation?

[Judge DOUGLAS: Will you repeat that? I want to answer that question.]

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need and
demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
or against such legislation?

I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge Douglas has made, he has
spoken as if he did not know or think that the Supreme Court had decided
that a Territorial Legislature cannot exclude slavery. Precisely what the
Judge would say upon the subject--whether he would say definitely that he
does not understand they have so decided, or whether he would say he does
understand that the court have so decided,--I do not know; but I know
that in his speech at Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not
decided yet; and in his answer to me at Freeport, he spoke of it, so far,
again, as I can comprehend it, as a thing that had not yet been decided.
Now, I hold that if the Judge does entertain that view, I think that he
is not mistaken in so far as it can be said that the court has not
decided anything save the mere question of jurisdiction. I know the legal
arguments that can be made,--that after a court has decided that it
cannot take jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all that is
before it, and that is the end of it. A plausible argument can be made in
favor of that proposition; but I know that Judge Douglas has said in one
of his speeches that the court went forward, like honest men as they
were, and decided all the points in the case. If any points are really
extra-judicially decided, because not necessarily before them, then this
one as to the power of the Territorial Legislature, to exclude slavery is
one of them, as also the one that the Missouri Compromise was null and
void. They are both extra-judicial, or neither is, according as the court
held that they had no jurisdiction in the case between the parties,
because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a suit in that
court. I want, if I have sufficient time, to show that the court did pass
its opinion; but that is the only thing actually done in the case. If
they did not decide, they showed what they were ready to decide whenever
the matter was before them. What is that opinion? After having argued
that Congress had no power to pass a law excluding slavery from a United
States Territory, they then used language to this effect: That inasmuch
as Congress itself could not exercise such a power, it followed as a
matter of course that it could not authorize a Territorial government to
exercise it; for the Territorial Legislature can do no more than Congress
could do. Thus it expressed its opinion emphatically against the power of
a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery, leaving us in just as
little doubt on that point as upon any other point they really decided.

Now, my fellow-citizens, I will detain you only a little while longer; my
time is nearly out. I find a report of a speech made by Judge Douglas at
Joliet, since we last met at Freeport,--published, I believe, in the
Missouri Republican, on the 9th of this month, in which Judge Douglas
says:

"You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked him if he concurred
in each and all of the principles set forth in it. He would not answer
these questions. At last I said frankly, I wish you to answer them,
because when I get them up here where the color of your principles are a
little darker than in Egypt, I intend to trot you down to Jonesboro. The
very notice that I was going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble
in his knees so that he had to be carried from the platform. He laid up
seven days, and in the meantime held a consultation with his political
physicians; they had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders of the
Abolition party, they consulted it all over, and at last Lincoln came to
the conclusion that he would answer, so he came up to Freeport last
Friday."

Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for philosophical
contemplation. I have been treating it in that way, and I have really
come to the conclusion that I can explain it in no other way than by
believing the Judge is crazy. If he was in his right mind I cannot
conceive how he would have risked disgusting the four or five thousand of
his own friends who stood there and knew, as to my having been carried
from the platform, that there was not a word of truth in it.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Did n't they carry you off?]

There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas
exactly. He smiles now, and says, "Did n't they carry you off?" but he
said then "he had to be carried off"; and he said it to convince the
country that he had so completely broken me down by his speech that I had
to be carried away. Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, "Did n't they
carry you off?" Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, why didn't you tell
the truth? I would like to know why you did n't tell the truth about it.
And then again "He laid up seven days." He put this in print for the
people of the country to read as a serious document. I think if he had
been in his sober senses he would not have risked that barefacedness in
the presence of thousands of his own friends who knew that I made
speeches within six of the seven days at Henry, Marshall County, Augusta,
Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough County, including all the necessary
travel to meet him again at Freeport at the end of the six days. Now I
say there is no charitable way to look at that statement, except to
conclude that he is actually crazy. There is another thing in that
statement that alarmed me very greatly as he states it, that he was going
to "trot me down to Egypt." Thereby he would have you infer that I would
not come to Egypt unless he forced me--that I could not be got here
unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here. That statement he makes,
too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the stipulation to
come down here and that he himself had been very reluctant to enter into
the stipulation. More than all this: Judge Douglas, when he made that
statement, must have been crazy and wholly out of his sober senses, or
else he would have known that when he got me down here, that
promise--that windy promise--of his powers to annihilate me, would n't
amount to anything. Now, how little do I look like being carried away
trembling? Let the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour,
I want you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay and rot here;
and if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel
and put him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, then, here is
something extraordinary in this statement. I ask you if you know any
other living man who would make such a statement? I will ask my friend
Casey, over there, if he would do such a thing? Would he send that out
and have his men take it as the truth? Did the Judge talk of trotting me
down to Egypt to scare me to death? Why, I know this people better than
he does. I was raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this
people. But the Judge was raised farther north, and perhaps he has some
horrid idea of what this people might be induced to do. But really I have
talked about this matter perhaps longer than I ought, for it is no great
thing; and yet the smallest are often the most difficult things to deal
with. The Judge has set about seriously trying to make the impression
that when we meet at different places I am literally in his
clutches--that I am a poor, helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do
nothing at all. This is one of the ways he has taken to create that
impression. I don't know any other way to meet it except this. I don't
want to quarrel with him--to call him a liar; but when I come square up
to him I don't know what else to call him if I must tell the truth out. I
want to be at peace, and reserve all my fighting powers for necessary
occasions. My time now is very nearly out, and I give up the trifle that
is left to the Judge, to let him set my knees trembling again, if he can.
set my knees trembling again, if he can.







THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Volume Four

CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES II



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS FOURTH DEBATE,
AT CHARLESTON, SEPTEMBER 18, 1858.


LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--It will be very difficult for an audience so large
as this to hear distinctly what a speaker says, and consequently it is
important that as profound silence be preserved as possible.

While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to
know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality
between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself
on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was
asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying
something in regard to it. I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have
been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political
equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been,
in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to
hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in
addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white
and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living
together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as
they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the
position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in
favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say
upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to
have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do
not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I
must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just
let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have
had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite
possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of
negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a
man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality,
social and political, between negroes and white men. I recollect of but
one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be
entirely satisfied of its correctness, and that is the case of Judge
Douglas's old friend Colonel Richard M. Johnson. I will also add to the
remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter at large upon this
subject), that I have never had the least apprehension that I or my
friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it; but
as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that
they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the
most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this
State which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes. I will add
one further word, which is this: that I do not understand that there is
any place where an alteration of the social and political relations of
the negro and the white man can be made, except in the State
Legislature,--not in the Congress of the United States; and as I do not
really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and as Judge
Douglas seems to be in constant horror that some such danger is rapidly
approaching, I propose as the best means to prevent it that the Judge be
kept at home, and placed in the State Legislature to fight the measure. I
do not propose dwelling longer at this time on this subject.

When Judge Trumbull, our other Senator in Congress, returned to Illinois
in the month of August, he made a speech at Chicago, in which he made
what may be called a charge against Judge Douglas, which I understand
proved to be very offensive to him. The Judge was at that time out upon
one of his speaking tours through the country, and when the news of it
reached him, as I am informed, he denounced Judge Trumbull in rather
harsh terms for having said what he did in regard to that matter. I was
traveling at that time, and speaking at the same places with Judge
Douglas on subsequent days, and when I heard of what Judge Trumbull had
said of Douglas, and what Douglas had said back again, I felt that I was
in a position where I could not remain entirely silent in regard to the
matter. Consequently, upon two or three occasions I alluded to it, and
alluded to it in no other wise than to say that in regard to the charge
brought by Trumbull against Douglas, I personally knew nothing, and
sought to say nothing about it; that I did personally know Judge
Trumbull; that I believed him to be a man of veracity; that I believed
him to be a man of capacity sufficient to know very well whether an
assertion he was making, as a conclusion drawn from a set of facts, was
true or false; and as a conclusion of my own from that, I stated it as my
belief if Trumbull should ever be called upon, he would prove everything
he had said. I said this upon two or three occasions. Upon a subsequent
occasion, Judge Trumbull spoke again before an audience at Alton, and
upon that occasion not only repeated his charge against Douglas, but
arrayed the evidence he relied upon to substantiate it. This speech was
published at length; and subsequently at Jacksonville Judge Douglas
alluded to the matter. In the course of his speech, and near the close of
it, he stated in regard to myself what I will now read:

"Judge Douglas proceeded to remark that he should not hereafter occupy
his time in refuting such charges made by Trumbull, but that, Lincoln
having indorsed the character of Trumbull for veracity, he should hold
him (Lincoln) responsible for the slanders."

I have done simply what I have told you, to subject me to this invitation
to notice the charge. I now wish to say that it had not originally been
my purpose to discuss that matter at all But in-as-much as it seems to be
the wish of Judge Douglas to hold me responsible for it, then for once in
my life I will play General Jackson, and to the just extent I take the
responsibility.

I wish to say at the beginning that I will hand to the reporters that
portion of Judge Trumbull's Alton speech which was devoted to this
matter, and also that portion of Judge Douglas's speech made at
Jacksonville in answer to it. I shall thereby furnish the readers of this
debate with the complete discussion between Trumbull and Douglas. I
cannot now read them, for the reason that it would take half of my first
hour to do so. I can only make some comments upon them. Trumbull's charge
is in the following words:

"Now, the charge is, that there was a plot entered into to have a
constitution formed for Kansas, and put in force, without giving the
people an opportunity to vote upon it, and that Mr. Douglas was in the
plot."

I will state, without quoting further, for all will have an opportunity
of reading it hereafter, that Judge Trumbull brings forward what he
regards as sufficient evidence to substantiate this charge.

It will be perceived Judge Trumbull shows that Senator Bigler, upon the
floor of the Senate, had declared there had been a conference among the
senators, in which conference it was determined to have an enabling act
passed for the people of Kansas to form a constitution under, and in this
conference it was agreed among them that it was best not to have a
provision for submitting the constitution to a vote of the people after
it should be formed. He then brings forward to show, and showing, as he
deemed, that Judge Douglas reported the bill back to the Senate with that
clause stricken out. He then shows that there was a new clause inserted
into the bill, which would in its nature prevent a reference of the
constitution back for a vote of the people,--if, indeed, upon a mere
silence in the law, it could be assumed that they had the right to vote
upon it. These are the general statements that he has made.

I propose to examine the points in Judge Douglas's speech in which he
attempts to answer that speech of Judge Trumbull's. When you come to
examine Judge Douglas's speech, you will find that the first point he
makes is:

"Suppose it were true that there was such a change in the bill, and that
I struck it out,--is that a proof of a plot to force a constitution upon
them against their will?"

His striking out such a provision, if there was such a one in the bill,
he argues, does not establish the proof that it was stricken out for the
purpose of robbing the people of that right. I would say, in the first
place, that that would be a most manifest reason for it. It is true, as
Judge Douglas states, that many Territorial bills have passed without
having such a provision in them. I believe it is true, though I am not
certain, that in some instances constitutions framed under such bills
have been submitted to a vote of the people with the law silent upon the
subject; but it does not appear that they once had their enabling acts
framed with an express provision for submitting the constitution to be
framed to a vote of the people, then that they were stricken out when
Congress did not mean to alter the effect of the law. That there have
been bills which never had the provision in, I do not question; but when
was that provision taken out of one that it was in? More especially does
the evidence tend to prove the proposition that Trumbull advanced, when
we remember that the provision was stricken out of the bill almost
simultaneously with the time that Bigler says there was a conference
among certain senators, and in which it was agreed that a bill should be
passed leaving that out. Judge Douglas, in answering Trumbull, omits to
attend to the testimony of Bigler, that there was a meeting in which it
was agreed they should so frame the bill that there should be no
submission of the constitution to a vote of the people. The Judge does
not notice this part of it. If you take this as one piece of evidence,
and then ascertain that simultaneously Judge Douglas struck out a
provision that did require it to be submitted, and put the two together,
I think it will make a pretty fair show of proof that Judge Douglas did,
as Trumbull says, enter into a plot to put in force a constitution for
Kansas, without giving the people any opportunity of voting upon it.

But I must hurry on. The next proposition that Judge Douglas puts is
this:

"But upon examination it turns out that the Toombs bill never did contain
a clause requiring the constitution to be submitted."

This is a mere question of fact, and can be determined by evidence. I
only want to ask this question: Why did not Judge Douglas say that these
words were not stricken out of the Toomb's bill, or this bill from which
it is alleged the provision was stricken out,--a bill which goes by the
name of Toomb's, because he originally brought it forward? I ask why, if
the Judge wanted to make a direct issue with Trumbull, did he not take
the exact proposition Trumbull made in his speech, and say it was not
stricken out? Trumbull has given the exact words that he says were in the
Toomb's bill, and he alleges that when the bill came back, they were
stricken out. Judge Douglas does not say that the words which Trumbull
says were stricken out were not so stricken out, but he says there was no
provision in the Toomb's bill to submit the constitution to a vote of the
people. We see at once that he is merely making an issue upon the meaning
of the words. He has not undertaken to say that Trumbull tells a lie
about these words being stricken out, but he is really, when pushed up to
it, only taking an issue upon the meaning of the words. Now, then, if
there be any issue upon the meaning of the words, or if there be upon the
question of fact as to whether these words were stricken out, I have
before me what I suppose to be a genuine copy of the Toomb's bill, in
which it can be shown that the words Trumbull says were in it were, in
fact, originally there. If there be any dispute upon the fact, I have got
the documents here to show they were there. If there be any controversy
upon the sense of the words,--whether these words which were stricken out
really constituted a provision for submitting the matter to a vote of the
people,--as that is a matter of argument, I think I may as well use
Trumbull's own argument. He says that the proposition is in these words: