The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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[A voice: It is the same thing with you.]

Yes, sir, it is the same thing with me. I do dare to say forgery when it
is true, and don't dare to say forgery when it is false. Now I will say
here to this audience and to Judge Douglas I have not dared to say he
committed a forgery, and I never shall until I know it; but I did dare to
say--just to suggest to the Judge--that a forgery had been committed,
which by his own showing had been traced to him and two of his friends. I
dared to suggest to him that he had expressly promised in one of his
public speeches to investigate that matter, and I dared to suggest to him
that there was an implied promise that when he investigated it he would
make known the result. I dared to suggest to the Judge that he could not
expect to be quite clear of suspicion of that fraud, for since the time
that promise was made he had been with those friends, and had not kept
his promise in regard to the investigation and the report upon it. I am
not a very daring man, but I dared that much, Judge, and I am not much
scared about it yet. When the Judge says he would n't have believed of
Abraham Lincoln that he would have made such an attempt as that he
reminds me of the fact that he entered upon this canvass with the purpose
to treat me courteously; that touched me somewhat. It sets me to
thinking. I was aware, when it was first agreed that Judge Douglas and I
were to have these seven joint discussions, that they were the successive
acts of a drama, perhaps I should say, to be enacted, not merely in the
face of audiences like this, but in the face of the nation, and to some
extent, by my relation to him, and not from anything in myself, in the
face of the world; and I am anxious that they should be conducted with
dignity and in the good temper which would be befitting the vast
audiences before which it was conducted. But when Judge Douglas got home
from Washington and made his first speech in Chicago, the evening
afterward I made some sort of a reply to it. His second speech was made
at Bloomington, in which he commented upon my speech at Chicago and said
that I had used language ingeniously contrived to conceal my intentions,
or words to that effect. Now, I understand that this is an imputation
upon my veracity and my candor. I do not know what the Judge understood
by it, but in our first discussion, at Ottawa, he led off by charging a
bargain, somewhat corrupt in its character, upon Trumbull and
myself,--that we had entered into a bargain, one of the terms of which
was that Trumbull was to Abolitionize the old Democratic party, and I
(Lincoln) was to Abolitionize the old Whig party; I pretending to be as
good an old-line Whig as ever. Judge Douglas may not understand that he
implicated my truthfulness and my honor when he said I was doing one
thing and pretending another; and I misunderstood him if he thought he
was treating me in a dignified way, as a man of honor and truth, as he
now claims he was disposed to treat me. Even after that time, at
Galesburgh, when he brings forward an extract from a speech made at
Chicago and an extract from a speech made at Charleston, to prove that I
was trying to play a double part, that I was trying to cheat the public,
and get votes upon one set of principles at one place, and upon another
set of principles at another place,--I do not understand but what he
impeaches my honor, my veracity, and my candor; and because he does this,
I do not understand that I am bound, if I see a truthful ground for it,
to keep my hands off of him. As soon as I learned that Judge Douglas was
disposed to treat me in this way, I signified in one of my speeches that
I should be driven to draw upon whatever of humble resources I might
have,--to adopt a new course with him. I was not entirely sure that I
should be able to hold my own with him, but I at least had the purpose
made to do as well as I could upon him; and now I say that I will not be
the first to cry "Hold." I think it originated with the Judge, and when
he quits, I probably will. But I shall not ask any favors at all. He asks
me, or he asks the audience, if I wish to push this matter to the point
of personal difficulty. I tell him, no. He did not make a mistake, in one
of his early speeches, when he called me an "amiable" man, though perhaps
he did when he called me an "intelligent" man. It really hurts me very
much to suppose that I have wronged anybody on earth. I again tell him,
no! I very much prefer, when this canvass shall be over, however it may
result, that we at least part without any bitter recollections of
personal difficulties.

The Judge, in his concluding speech at Galesburgh, says that I was
pushing this matter to a personal difficulty, to avoid the responsibility
for the enormity of my principles. I say to the Judge and this audience,
now, that I will again state our principles, as well as I hastily can, in
all their enormity, and if the Judge hereafter chooses to confine himself
to a war upon these principles, he will probably not find me departing
from the same course.

We have in this nation this element of domestic slavery. It is a matter
of absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. It is the opinion
of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is a
dangerous element. We keep up a controversy in regard to it. That
controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion; and if we can
learn exactly--can reduce to the lowest elements--what that difference of
opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the
different systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that
disturbing element. I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to
its lowest of terms, is no other than the difference between the men who
think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong. The Republican
party think it wrong; we think it is a moral, a social, and a political
wrong. We think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons
or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to
say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation.
Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal
with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as
we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the
run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due
regard to the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficulties of
getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional
obligations thrown about it. I suppose that in reference both to its
actual existence in the nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we
have no right at all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we
profess that we have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the
right to do it. We go further than that: we don't propose to disturb it
where, in one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us. We
think the Constitution would permit us to disturb it in the District of
Columbia. Still, we do not propose to do that, unless it should be in
terms which I don't suppose the nation is very likely soon to agree
to,--the terms of making the emancipation gradual, and compensating the
unwilling owners. Where we suppose we have the constitutional right, we
restrain ourselves in reference to the actual existence of the
institution and the difficulties thrown about it. We also oppose it as an
evil so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that
shall restrict it to its present limits. We don't suppose that in doing
this we violate anything due to the actual presence of the institution,
or anything due to the constitutional guaranties thrown around it.

We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way, upon which I ought
perhaps to address you a few words. We do not propose that when Dred
Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will
decide him to be free. We do not propose that, when any other one, or one
thousand, shall be decided by that court to be slaves, we will in any
violent way disturb the rights of property thus settled; but we
nevertheless do oppose that decision as a political rule which shall be
binding on the voter to vote for nobody who thinks it wrong, which shall
be binding on the members of Congress or the President to favor no
measure that does not actually concur with the principles of that
decision. We do not propose to be bound by it as a political rule in that
way, because we think it lays the foundation, not merely of enlarging and
spreading out what we consider an evil, but it lays the foundation for
spreading that evil into the States themselves. We propose so resisting
it as to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established
upon this subject.

I will add this: that if there be any man who does not believe that
slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in any
one of them, that man is misplaced, and ought to leave us; while on the
other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient
over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient
of the constitutional guaranties thrown around it, and would act in
disregard of these, he too is misplaced, standing with us. He will find
his place somewhere else; for we have a due regard, so far as we are
capable of understanding them, for all these things. This, gentlemen, as
well as I can give it, is a plain statement of our principles in all
their enormity. I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country
contrary to me,--a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, and
therefore it goes for the policy that does not propose dealing with it as
a wrong. That policy is the Democratic policy, and that sentiment is the
Democratic sentiment. If there be a doubt in the mind of any one of this
vast audience that this is really the central idea of the Democratic
party in relation to this subject, I ask him to bear with me while I
state a few things tending, as I think, to prove that proposition. In the
first place, the leading man--I think I may do my friend Judge Douglas
the honor of calling him such advocating the present Democratic policy
never himself says it is wrong. He has the high distinction, so far as I
know, of never having said slavery is either right or wrong. Almost
everybody else says one or the other, but the Judge never does. If there
be a man in the Democratic party who thinks it is wrong, and yet clings
to that party, I suggest to him, in the first place, that his leader
don't talk as he does, for he never says that it is wrong. In the second
place, I suggest to him that if he will examine the policy proposed to be
carried forward, he will find that he carefully excludes the idea that
there is anything wrong in it. If you will examine the arguments that are
made on it, you will find that every one carefully excludes the idea that
there is anything wrong in slavery. Perhaps that Democrat who says he is
as much opposed to slavery as I am will tell me that I am wrong about
this. I wish him to examine his own course in regard to this matter a
moment, and then see if his opinion will not be changed a little. You say
it is wrong; but don't you constantly object to anybody else saying so?
Do you not constantly argue that this is not the right place to oppose
it? You say it must not be opposed in the free States, because slavery is
not here; it must not be opposed in the slave States, because it is
there; it must not be opposed in politics, because that will make a fuss;
it must not be opposed in the pulpit, because it is not religion. Then
where is the place to oppose it? There is no suitable place to oppose it.
There is no place in the country to oppose this evil overspreading the
continent, which you say yourself is coming. Frank Blair and Gratz Brown
tried to get up a system of gradual emancipation in Missouri, had an
election in August, and got beat, and you, Mr. Democrat, threw up your
hat, and hallooed "Hurrah for Democracy!" So I say, again, that in regard
to the arguments that are made, when Judge Douglas Says he "don't care
whether slavery is voted up or voted down," whether he means that as an
individual expression of sentiment, or only as a sort of statement of his
views on national policy, it is alike true to say that he can thus argue
logically if he don't see anything wrong in it; but he cannot say so
logically if he admits that slavery is wrong. He cannot say that he would
as soon see a wrong voted up as voted down. When Judge Douglas says that
whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to have
them, he is perfectly logical, if there is nothing wrong in the
institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say
that anybody has a right to do wrong. When he says that slave property
and horse and hog property are alike to be allowed to go into the
Territories, upon the principles of equality, he is reasoning truly, if
there is no difference between them as property; but if the one is
property held rightfully, and the other is wrong, then there is no
equality between the right and wrong; so that, turn it in anyway you can,
in all the arguments sustaining the Democratic policy, and in that policy
itself, there is a careful, studied exclusion of the idea that there is
anything wrong in slavery. Let us understand this. I am not, just here,
trying to prove that we are right, and they are wrong. I have been
stating where we and they stand, and trying to show what is the real
difference between us; and I now say that whenever we can get the
question distinctly stated, can get all these men who believe that
slavery is in some of these respects wrong to stand and act with us in
treating it as a wrong,--then, and not till then, I think we will in some
way come to an end of this slavery agitation.




Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.

MY FRIENDS:--Since Judge Douglas has said to you in his conclusion that
he had not time in an hour and a half to answer all I had said in an
hour, it follows of course that I will not be able to answer in half an
hour all that he said in an hour and a half.

I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public
annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his system of policy
in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall last
forever. We are getting a little nearer the true issue of this
controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge
Douglas asks you, Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why
cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made
it, forever? In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make
this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I
insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did
not make it so but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid
of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a
matter of choice, the fathers of the government made this nation part
slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More
than that: when the fathers of the government cut off the source of
slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of
restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I
maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men
understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge
Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him
why he and his friends could not let it remain as our fathers made it?

It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the institution of
slavery, that it shall be placed upon the basis that our fathers placed
it upon. Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, once said, and truly said, that
when this government was established, no one expected the institution of
slavery to last until this day, and that the men who formed this
government were wiser and better than the men of these days; but the men
of these days had experience which the fathers had not, and that
experience had taught them the invention of the cotton-gin, and this had
made the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a necessity in this
country. Judge Douglas could not let it stand upon the basis which our
fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it upon the cotton-gin basis.
It is a question, therefore, for him and his friends to answer, why they
could not let it remain where the fathers of the government originally
placed it. I hope nobody has understood me as trying to sustain the
doctrine that we have a right to quarrel with Kentucky, or Virginia, or
any of the slave States, about the institution of slavery,--thus giving
the Judge an opportunity to be eloquent and valiant against us in
fighting for their rights. I expressly declared in my opening speech that
I had neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the
existence of, the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or
Virginia in doing as they pleased with slavery Or any other existing
institution. Then what becomes of all his eloquence in behalf of the
rights of States, which are assailed by no living man?

But I have to hurry on, for I have but a half hour. The Judge has
informed me, or informed this audience, that the Washington Union is
laboring for my election to the United States Senate. This is news to
me,--not very ungrateful news either. [Turning to Mr. W. H. Carlin, who
was on the stand]--I hope that Carlin will be elected to the State
Senate, and will vote for me. [Mr. Carlin shook his head.] Carlin don't
fall in, I perceive, and I suppose he will not do much for me; but I am
glad of all the support I can get, anywhere, if I can get it without
practicing any deception to obtain it. In respect to this large portion
of Judge Douglas's speech in which he tries to show that in the
controversy between himself and the Administration party he is in the
right, I do not feel myself at all competent or inclined to answer him. I
say to him, "Give it to them,--give it to them just all you can!" and, on
the other hand, I say to Carlin, and Jake Davis, and to this man Wogley
up here in Hancock, "Give it to Douglas, just pour it into him!"

Now, in regard to this matter of the Dred Scott decision, I wish to say a
word or two. After all, the Judge will not say whether, if a decision is
made holding that the people of the States cannot exclude slavery, he
will support it or not. He obstinately refuses to say what he will do in
that case. The judges of the Supreme Court as obstinately refused to say
what they would do on this subject. Before this I reminded him that at
Galesburgh he said the judges had expressly declared the contrary, and
you remember that in my Opening speech I told him I had the book
containing that decision here, and I would thank him to lay his finger on
the place where any such thing was said. He has occupied his hour and a
half, and he has not ventured to try to sustain his assertion. He never
will. But he is desirous of knowing how we are going to reverse that Dred
Scott decision. Judge Douglas ought to know how. Did not he and his
political friends find a way to reverse the decision of that same court
in favor of the constitutionality of the National Bank? Didn't they find
a way to do it so effectually that they have reversed it as completely as
any decision ever was reversed, so far as its practical operation is
concerned?

And let me ask you, did n't Judge Douglas find a way to reverse the
decision of our Supreme Court when it decided that Carlin's father--old
Governor Carlin had not the constitutional power to remove a Secretary of
State? Did he not appeal to the "MOBS," as he calls them? Did he not make
speeches in the lobby to show how villainous that decision was, and how
it ought to be overthrown? Did he not succeed, too, in getting an act
passed by the Legislature to have it overthrown? And did n't he himself
sit down on that bench as one of the five added judges, who were to
overslaugh the four old ones, getting his name of "judge" in that way,
and no other? If there is a villainy in using disrespect or making
opposition to Supreme Court decisions, I commend it to Judge Douglas's
earnest consideration. I know of no man in the State of Illinois who
ought to know so well about how much villainy it takes to oppose a
decision of the Supreme Court as our honorable friend Stephen A. Douglas.

Judge Douglas also makes the declaration that I say the Democrats are
bound by the Dred Scott decision, while the Republicans are not. In the
sense in which he argues, I never said it; but I will tell you what I
have said and what I do not hesitate to repeat to-day. I have said that
as the Democrats believe that decision to be correct, and that the
extension of slavery is affirmed in the National Constitution, they are
bound to support it as such; and I will tell you here that General
Jackson once said each man was bound to support the Constitution "as he
understood it." Now, Judge Douglas understands the Constitution according
to the Dred Scott decision, and he is bound to support it as he
understands it. I understand it another way, and therefore I am bound to
support it in the way in which I understand it. And as Judge Douglas
believes that decision to be correct, I will remake that argument if I
have time to do so. Let me talk to some gentleman down there among you
who looks me in the face. We will say you are a member of the Territorial
Legislature, and, like Judge Douglas, you believe that the right to take
and hold slaves there is a constitutional right The first thing you do is
to swear you will support the Constitution, and all rights guaranteed
therein; that you will, whenever your neighbor needs your legislation to
support his constitutional rights, not withhold that legislation. If you
withhold that necessary legislation for the support of the Constitution
and constitutional rights, do you not commit perjury? I ask every
sensible man if that is not so? That is undoubtedly just so, say what you
please. Now, that is precisely what Judge Douglas says, that this is a
constitutional right. Does the Judge mean to say that the Territorial
Legislature in legislating may, by withholding necessary laws, or by
passing unfriendly laws, nullify that constitutional right? Does he mean
to say that? Does he mean to ignore the proposition so long and well
established in law, that what you cannot do directly, you cannot do
indirectly? Does he mean that? The truth about the matter is this: Judge
Douglas has sung paeans to his "Popular Sovereignty" doctrine until his
Supreme Court, co-operating with him, has squatted his Squatter
Sovereignty out. But he will keep up this species of humbuggery about
Squatter Sovereignty. He has at last invented this sort of do-nothing
sovereignty,--that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of
"sovereignty" that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is not that
running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin
as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon
that had starved to death? But at last, when it is brought to the test of
close reasoning, there is not even that thin decoction of it left. It is
a presumption impossible in the domain of thought. It is precisely no
other than the putting of that most unphilosophical proposition, that two
bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. The Dred Scott
decision covers the whole ground, and while it occupies it, there is no
room even for the shadow of a starved pigeon to occupy the same ground.

Judge Douglas, in reply to what I have said about having upon a previous
occasion made the speech at Ottawa as the one he took an extract from at
Charleston, says it only shows that I practiced the deception twice. Now,
my friends, are any of you obtuse enough to swallow that? Judge Douglas
had said I had made a speech at Charleston that I would not make up
north, and I turned around and answered him by showing I had made that
same speech up north,--had made it at Ottawa; made it in his hearing;
made it in the Abolition District,--in Lovejoy's District,--in the
personal presence of Lovejoy himself,--in the same atmosphere exactly in
which I had made my Chicago speech, of which he complains so much.

Now, in relation to my not having said anything about the quotation from
the Chicago speech: he thinks that is a terrible subject for me to
handle. Why, gentlemen, I can show you that the substance of the Chicago
speech I delivered two years ago in "Egypt," as he calls it. It was down
at Springfield. That speech is here in this book, and I could turn to it
and read it to you but for the lack of time. I have not now the time to
read it. ["Read it, read it."] No, gentlemen, I am obliged to use
discretion in disposing most advantageously of my brief time. The Judge
has taken great exception to my adopting the heretical statement in the
Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal," and he has
a great deal to say about negro equality. I want to say that in sometimes
alluding to the Declaration of Independence, I have only uttered the
sentiments that Henry Clay used to hold. Allow me to occupy your time a
moment with what he said. Mr. Clay was at one time called upon in
Indiana, and in a way that I suppose was very insulting, to liberate his
slaves; and he made a written reply to that application, and one portion
of it is in these words: