The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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"What is the foundation of this appeal to me in Indiana to liberate the
slaves under my care in Kentucky? It is a general declaration in the act
announcing to the world the independence of the thirteen American
colonies, that men are created equal. Now, as an abstract principle,
there is no doubt of the truth of that declaration, and it is desirable
in the original construction of society, and in organized societies, to
keep it in view as a great fundamental principle."

When I sometimes, in relation to the organization of new societies in new
countries, where the soil is clean and clear, insisted that we should
keep that principle in view, Judge Douglas will have it that I want a
negro wife. He never can be brought to understand that there is any
middle ground on this subject. I have lived until my fiftieth year, and
have never had a negro woman either for a slave or a wife, and I think I
can live fifty centuries, for that matter, without having had one for
either. I maintain that you may take Judge Douglas's quotations from my
Chicago speech, and from my Charleston speech, and the Galesburgh
speech,--in his speech of to-day,--and compare them over, and I am
willing to trust them with you upon his proposition that they show
rascality or double-dealing. I deny that they do.

The Judge does not seem at all disposed to have peace, but I find he is
disposed to have a personal warfare with me. He says that my oath would
not be taken against the bare word of Charles H. Lanphier or Thomas L.
Harris. Well, that is altogether a matter of opinion. It is certainly not
for me to vaunt my word against oaths of these gentlemen, but I will tell
Judge Douglas again the facts upon which I "dared" to say they proved a
forgery. I pointed out at Galesburgh that the publication of these
resolutions in the Illinois State Register could not have been the result
of accident, as the proceedings of that meeting bore unmistakable
evidence of being done by a man who knew it was a forgery; that it was a
publication partly taken from the real proceedings of the Convention, and
partly from the proceedings of a convention at another place, which
showed that he had the real proceedings before him, and taking one part
of the resolutions, he threw out another part, and substituted false and
fraudulent ones in their stead. I pointed that out to him, and also that
his friend Lanphier, who was editor of the Register at that time and now
is, must have known how it was done. Now, whether he did it, or got some
friend to do it for him, I could not tell, but he certainly knew all
about it. I pointed out to Judge Douglas that in his Freeport speech he
had promised to investigate that matter. Does he now say that he did not
make that promise? I have a right to ask why he did not keep it. I call
upon him to tell here to-day why he did not keep that promise? That fraud
has been traced up so that it lies between him, Harris, and Lanphier.
There is little room for escape for Lanphier. Lanphier is doing the Judge
good service, and Douglas desires his word to be taken for the truth. He
desires Lanphier to be taken as authority in what he states in his
newspaper. He desires Harris to be taken as a man of vast credibility;
and when this thing lies among them, they will not press it to show where
the guilt really belongs. Now, as he has said that he would investigate
it, and implied that he would tell us the result of his investigation, I
demand of him to tell why he did not investigate it, if he did not; and
if he did, why he won't tell the result. I call upon him for that.

This is the third time that Judge Douglas has assumed that he learned
about these resolutions by Harris's attempting to use them against Norton
on the floor of Congress. I tell Judge Douglas the public records of the
country show that he himself attempted it upon Trumbull a month before
Harris tried them on Norton; that Harris had the opportunity of learning
it from him, rather than he from Harris. I now ask his attention to that
part of the record on the case. My friends, I am not disposed to detain
you longer in regard to that matter.

I am told that I still have five minutes left. There is another matter I
wish to call attention to. He says, when he discovered there was a
mistake in that case, he came forward magnanimously, without my calling
his attention to it, and explained it. I will tell you how he became so
magnanimous. When the newspapers of our side had discovered and published
it, and put it beyond his power to deny it, then he came forward and made
a virtue of necessity by acknowledging it. Now he argues that all the
point there was in those resolutions, although never passed at
Springfield, is retained by their being passed at other localities. Is
that true? He said I had a hand in passing them, in his opening speech,
that I was in the convention and helped to pass them. Do the resolutions
touch me at all? It strikes me there is some difference between holding a
man responsible for an act which he has not done and holding him
responsible for an act that he has done. You will judge whether there is
any difference in the "spots." And he has taken credit for great
magnanimity in coming forward and acknowledging what is proved on him
beyond even the capacity of Judge Douglas to deny; and he has more
capacity in that way than any other living man.

Then he wants to know why I won't withdraw the charge in regard to a
conspiracy to make slavery national, as he has withdrawn the one he made.
May it please his worship, I will withdraw it when it is proven false on
me as that was proven false on him. I will add a little more than that, I
will withdraw it whenever a reasonable man shall be brought to believe
that the charge is not true. I have asked Judge Douglas's attention to
certain matters of fact tending to prove the charge of a conspiracy to
nationalize slavery, and he says he convinces me that this is all untrue
because Buchanan was not in the country at that time, and because the
Dred Scott case had not then got into the Supreme Court; and he says that
I say the Democratic owners of Dred Scott got up the case. I never did
say that I defy Judge Douglas to show that I ever said so, for I never
uttered it. [One of Mr. Douglas's reporters gesticulated affirmatively at
Mr. Lincoln.] I don't care if your hireling does say I did, I tell you
myself that I never said the "Democratic" owners of Dred Scott got up the
case. I have never pretended to know whether Dred Scott's owners were
Democrats, or Abolitionists, or Freesoilers or Border Ruffians. I have
said that there is evidence about the case tending to show that it was a
made-up case, for the purpose of getting that decision. I have said that
that evidence was very strong in the fact that when Dred Scott was
declared to be a slave, the owner of him made him free, showing that he
had had the case tried and the question settled for such use as could be
made of that decision; he cared nothing about the property thus declared
to be his by that decision. But my time is out, and I can say no more.



LAST DEBATE,

AT ALTON, OCTOBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I have been somewhat, in my own mind, complimented
by a large portion of Judge Douglas's speech,--I mean that portion which
he devotes to the controversy between himself and the present
Administration. This is the seventh time Judge Douglas and myself have
met in these joint discussions, and he has been gradually improving in
regard to his war with the Administration. At Quincy, day before
yesterday, he was a little more severe upon the Administration than I had
heard him upon any occasion, and I took pains to compliment him for it. I
then told him to give it to them with all the power he had; and as some
of them were present, I told them I would be very much obliged if they
would give it to him in about the same way. I take it he has now vastly
improved upon the attack he made then upon the Administration. I flatter
myself he has really taken my advice on this subject. All I can say now
is to re-commend to him and to them what I then commended,--to prosecute
the war against one another in the most vigorous manner. I say to them
again: "Go it, husband!--Go it, bear!"

There is one other thing I will mention before I leave this branch of the
discussion,--although I do not consider it much of my business, anyway. I
refer to that part of the Judge's remarks where he undertakes to involve
Mr. Buchanan in an inconsistency. He reads something from Mr. Buchanan,
from which he undertakes to involve him in an inconsistency; and he gets
something of a cheer for having done so. I would only remind the Judge
that while he is very valiantly fighting for the Nebraska Bill and the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it has been but a little while since
he was the valiant advocate of the Missouri Compromise. I want to know if
Buchanan has not as much right to be inconsistent as Douglas has? Has
Douglas the exclusive right, in this country, of being on all sides of
all questions? Is nobody allowed that high privilege but himself? Is he
to have an entire monopoly on that subject?

So far as Judge Douglas addressed his speech to me, or so far as it was
about me, it is my business to pay some attention to it. I have heard the
Judge state two or three times what he has stated to-day, that in a
speech which I made at Springfield, Illinois, I had in a very especial
manner complained that the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case had
decided that a negro could never be a citizen of the United States. I
have omitted by some accident heretofore to analyze this statement, and
it is required of me to notice it now. In point of fact it is untrue. I
never have complained especially of the Dred Scott decision because it
held that a negro could not be a citizen, and the Judge is always wrong
when he says I ever did so complain of it. I have the speech here, and I
will thank him or any of his friends to show where I said that a negro
should be a citizen, and complained especially of the Dred Scott decision
because it declared he could not be one. I have done no such thing; and
Judge Douglas, so persistently insisting that I have done so, has
strongly impressed me with the belief of a predetermination on his part
to misrepresent me. He could not get his foundation for insisting that I
was in favor of this negro equality anywhere else as well as he could by
assuming that untrue proposition. Let me tell this audience what is true
in regard to that matter; and the means by which they may correct me if I
do not tell them truly is by a recurrence to the speech itself. I spoke
of the Dred Scott decision in my Springfield speech, and I was then
endeavoring to prove that the Dred Scott decision was a portion of a
system or scheme to make slavery national in this country. I pointed out
what things had been decided by the court. I mentioned as a fact that
they had decided that a negro could not be a citizen; that they had done
so, as I supposed, to deprive the negro, under all circumstances, of the
remotest possibility of ever becoming a citizen and claiming the rights
of a citizen of the United States under a certain clause of the
Constitution. I stated that, without making any complaint of it at all. I
then went on and stated the other points decided in the case; namely,
that the bringing of a negro into the State of Illinois and holding him
in slavery for two years here was a matter in regard to which they would
not decide whether it would make him free or not; that they decided the
further point that taking him into a United States Territory where
slavery was prohibited by Act of Congress did not make him free, because
that Act of Congress, as they held, was unconstitutional. I mentioned
these three things as making up the points decided in that case. I
mentioned them in a lump, taken in connection with the introduction of
the Nebraska Bill, and the amendment of Chase, offered at the time,
declaratory of the right of the people of the Territories to exclude
slavery, which was voted down by the friends of the bill. I mentioned all
these things together, as evidence tending to prove a combination and
conspiracy to make the institution of slavery national. In that
connection and in that way I mentioned the decision on the point that a
negro could not be a citizen, and in no other connection.

Out of this Judge Douglas builds up his beautiful fabrication of my
purpose to introduce a perfect social and political equality between the
white and black races. His assertion that I made an "especial objection"
(that is his exact language) to the decision on this account is untrue in
point of fact.

Now, while I am upon this subject, and as Henry Clay has been alluded to,
I desire to place myself, in connection with Mr. Clay, as nearly right
before this people as may be. I am quite aware what the Judge's object is
here by all these allusions. He knows that we are before an audience
having strong sympathies southward, by relationship, place of birth, and
so on. He desires to place me in an extremely Abolition attitude. He read
upon a former occasion, and alludes, without reading, to-day to a portion
of a speech which I delivered in Chicago. In his quotations from that
speech, as he has made them upon former occasions, the extracts were
taken in such a way as, I suppose, brings them within the definition of
what is called garbling,--taking portions of a speech which, when taken
by themselves, do not present the entire sense of the speaker as
expressed at the time. I propose, therefore, out of that same speech, to
show how one portion of it which he skipped over (taking an extract
before and an extract after) will give a different idea, and the true
idea I intended to convey. It will take me some little time to read it,
but I believe I will occupy the time that way.

You have heard him frequently allude to my controversy with him in regard
to the Declaration of Independence. I confess that I have had a struggle
with Judge Douglas on that matter, and I will try briefly to place myself
right in regard to it on this occasion. I said--and it is between the
extracts Judge Douglas has taken from this speech, and put in his
published speeches:

"It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities
and impose them upon us, and to the extent that a necessity is imposed
upon a man he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which
we found ourselves when we established this government. We had slaves
among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to
remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we
grasped for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does
not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let the
charter remain as our standard."

Now, I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge Douglas
against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of
slavery. You hear me read it from the same speech from which he takes
garbled extracts for the purpose of proving upon me a disposition to
interfere with the institution of slavery, and establish a perfect social
and political equality between negroes and white people.

Allow me while upon this subject briefly to present one other extract
from a speech of mine, more than a year ago, at Springfield, in
discussing this very same question, soon after Judge Douglas took his
ground that negroes were, not included in the Declaration of
Independence:

"I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all
men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They
did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral
development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness
in what they did consider all men created equal,--equal in certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to
assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that
equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them.
In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to
declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as
circumstances should permit.

"They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be
familiar to all,--constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even,
though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby
constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the
happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere."

There again are the sentiments I have expressed in regard to the
Declaration of Independence upon a former occasion,--sentiments which
have been put in print and read wherever anybody cared to know what so
humble an individual as myself chose to say in regard to it.

At Galesburgh, the other day, I said, in answer to Judge Douglas, that
three years ago there never had been a man, so far as I knew or believed,
in the whole world, who had said that the Declaration of Independence did
not include negroes in the term "all men." I reassert it to-day. I assert
that Judge Douglas and all his friends may search the whole records of
the country, and it will be a matter of great astonishment to me if they
shall be able to find that one human being three years ago had ever
uttered the astounding sentiment that the term "all men" in the
Declaration did not include the negro. Do not let me be misunderstood. I
know that more than three years ago there were men who, finding this
assertion constantly in the way of their schemes to bring about the
ascendency and perpetuation of slavery, denied the truth of it. I know
that Mr. Calhoun and all the politicians of his school denied the truth
of the Declaration. I know that it ran along in the mouth of some
Southern men for a period of years, ending at last in that shameful,
though rather forcible, declaration of Pettit of Indiana, upon the floor
of the United States Senate, that the Declaration of Independence was in
that respect "a self-evident lie," rather than a self-evident truth. But
I say, with a perfect knowledge of all this hawking at the Declaration
without directly attacking it, that three years ago there never had lived
a man who had ventured to assail it in the sneaking way of pretending to
believe it, and then asserting it did not include the negro. I believe
the first man who ever said it was Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott
case, and the next to him was our friend Stephen A. Douglas. And now it
has become the catchword of the entire party. I would like to call upon
his friends everywhere to consider how they have come in so short a time
to view this matter in a way so entirely different from their former
belief; to ask whether they are not being borne along by an irresistible
current,--whither, they know not.

In answer to my proposition at Galesburgh last week, I see that some man
in Chicago has got up a letter, addressed to the Chicago Times, to show,
as he professes, that somebody had said so before; and he signs himself
"An Old-Line Whig," if I remember correctly. In the first place, I would
say he was not an old-line Whig. I am somewhat acquainted with old-line
Whigs from the origin to the end of that party; I became pretty well
acquainted with them, and I know they always had some sense, whatever
else you could ascribe to them. I know there never was one who had not
more sense than to try to show by the evidence he produces that some men
had, prior to the time I named, said that negroes were not included in
the term "all men" in the Declaration of Independence. What is the
evidence he produces? I will bring forward his evidence, and let you see
what he offers by way of showing that somebody more than three years ago
had said negroes were not included in the Declaration. He brings forward
part of a speech from Henry Clay,--the part of the speech of Henry Clay
which I used to bring forward to prove precisely the contrary. I guess we
are surrounded to some extent to-day by the old friends of Mr. Clay, and
they will be glad to hear anything from that authority. While he was in
Indiana a man presented a petition to liberate his negroes, and he (Mr.
Clay) made a speech in answer to it, which I suppose he carefully wrote
out himself and caused to be published. I have before me an extract from
that speech which constitutes the evidence this pretended "Old-Line Whig"
at Chicago brought forward to show that Mr. Clay did n't suppose the
negro was included in the Declaration of Independence. Hear what Mr. Clay
said:

"And what is the foundation of this appeal to me in Indiana to liberate
the slaves under my care in Kentucky? It is a general declaration in the
act announcing to the world the independence of the thirteen American
colonies, that all men are created equal. Now, as an abstract principle,
there is no doubt of the truth of that declaration; and it is desirable,
in the original construction of society and in organized societies, to
keep it in view as a great fundamental principle. But, then, I apprehend
that in no society that ever did exist, or ever shall be formed, was or
can the equality asserted among the members of the human race be
practically enforced and carried out. There are portions, large portions,
women, minors, insane, culprits, transient sojourners, that will always
probably remain subject to the government of another portion of the
community.

"That declaration, whatever may be the extent of its import, was made by
the delegations of the thirteen States. In most of them slavery existed,
and had long existed, and was established by law. It was introduced and
forced upon the colonies by the paramount law of England. Do you believe
that in making that declaration the States that concurred in it intended
that it should be tortured into a virtual emancipation of all the slaves
within their respective limits? Would Virginia and other Southern States
have ever united in a declaration which was to be interpreted into an
abolition of slavery among them? Did any one of the thirteen colonies
entertain such a design or expectation? To impute such a secret and
unavowed purpose, would be to charge a political fraud upon the noblest
band of patriots that ever assembled in council,--a fraud upon the
Confederacy of the Revolution; a fraud upon the union of those States
whose Constitution not only recognized the lawfulness of slavery, but
permitted the importation of slaves from Africa until the year 1808."

This is the entire quotation brought forward to prove that somebody
previous to three years ago had said the negro was not included in the
term "all men" in the Declaration. How does it do so? In what way has it
a tendency to prove that? Mr. Clay says it is true as an abstract
principle that all men are created equal, but that we cannot practically
apply it in all eases. He illustrates this by bringing forward the cases
of females, minors, and insane persons, with whom it cannot be enforced;
but he says it is true as an abstract principle in the organization of
society as well as in organized society and it should be kept in view as
a fundamental principle. Let me read a few words more before I add some
comments of my own. Mr. Clay says, a little further on:

"I desire no concealment of my opinions in regard to the institution of
slavery. I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lament that we have
derived it from the parental government and from our ancestors. I wish
every slave in the United States was in the country of his ancestors. But
here they are, and the question is, How can they be best dealt with? If a
state of nature existed, and we were about to lay the foundations of
society, no man would be more strongly opposed than I should be to
incorporate the institution of slavery amongst its elements."

Now, here in this same book, in this same speech, in this same extract,
brought forward to prove that Mr. Clay held that the negro was not
included in the Declaration of Independence, is no such statement on his
part, but the declaration that it is a great fundamental truth which
should be constantly kept in view in the organization of society and in
societies already organized. But if I say a word about it; if I attempt,
as Mr. Clay said all good men ought to do, to keep it in view; if, in
this "organized society," I ask to have the public eye turned upon it; if
I ask, in relation to the organization of new Territories, that the
public eye should be turned upon it, forthwith I am vilified as you hear
me to-day. What have I done that I have not the license of Henry Clay's
illustrious example here in doing? Have I done aught that I have not his
authority for, while maintaining that in organizing new Territories and
societies this fundamental principle should be regarded, and in organized
society holding it up to the public view and recognizing what he
recognized as the great principle of free government?