The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party was formed upon its supposed
superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of
property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and assuming that
the so-called Democracy of to-day are the Jefferson, and their opponents
the anti-Jefferson, party, it will be equally interesting to note how
completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they
were originally supposed to be divided. The Democracy of to-day hold the
liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with
another man's right of property; Republicans, on the contrary, are for
both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the
dollar.

I remember being once much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men
engaged in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long
and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of
his own coat and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of
this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and
Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men.

But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of
Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. One would state with great
confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler
propositions of Euclid are true; but nevertheless he would fail, utterly,
with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of
Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they
are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls
them "glittering generalities." Another bluntly calls them "self-evident
lies." And others insidiously argue that they apply to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and
effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring
those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a
convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the
vanguard, the miners and sappers, of returning despotism. We must repulse
them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensation; and he
who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny
freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God,
cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson to the man who, in the
concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single
people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a mere
revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all
times, and so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it
shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of
reappearing tyranny and oppression.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO T. CANISIUS.

SPRINGFIELD, May 17, 1859.

DR. THEODORE CANISIUS.

DEAR SIR:--Your note asking, in behalf of yourself and other German
citizens, whether I am for or against the constitutional provision in
regard to naturalized citizens, lately adopted by Massachusetts, and
whether I am for or against a fusion of the Republicans and other
opposition elements for the canvass of 1860, is received.

Massachusetts is a sovereign and independent State; and it is no
privilege of mine to scold her for what she does. Still, if from what she
has done an inference is sought to be drawn as to what I would do, I may
without impropriety speak out. I say, then, that, as I understand the
Massachusetts provision, I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any
other place where I have a right to oppose it. Understanding the spirit
of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to
whatever tends to degrade them. I have some little notoriety for
commiserating the oppressed negro; and I should be strangely inconsistent
if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white
men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different
languages from myself. As to the matter of fusion, I am for it if it can
be had on Republican grounds; and I am not for it on any other terms. A
fusion on any other terms would be as foolish as unprincipled. It would
lose the whole North, while the common enemy would still carry the whole
South. The question of men is a different one. There are good, patriotic
men and able statesmen in the South whom I would cheerfully support, if
they would now place themselves on Republican ground, but I am against
letting down the Republican standard a hairsbreadth.

I have written this hastily, but I believe it answers your questions
substantially.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE GOVERNOR, AUDITOR, AND TREASURER OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.

GENTLEMEN:

In reply to your inquiry; requesting our written opinion as to what your
duty requires you to do in executing the latter clause of the Seventh
Section of "An Act in relation to the payment of the principal and
interest of the State debt," approved Feb'y 22, 1859, we reply that said
last clause of said section is certainly indefinite, general, and
ambiguous in its description of the bonds to be issued by you; giving no
time at which the bonds are to be made payable, no place at which either
principal or interest are to be paid, and no rate of interest which the
bonds are to bear; nor any other description except that they are to be
coupon bonds, which in commercial usage means interest-paying bonds with
obligations or orders attached to them for the payment of annual or
semiannual interest; there is we suppose no difficulty in ascertaining,
if this act stood alone, what ought to be the construction of the terms
"coupon bonds" and that it, would mean bonds bearing interest from the
time of issuing the same. And under this act considered by itself the
creditors would have a right to require such bonds. But your inquiry in
regard to a class of bonds on which no interest is to be paid or shall
begin to run until January 1, 1860, is whether the Act of February 18,
1857, would not authorize you to refuse to give bonds with any coupons
attached payable before the first day of July, 1860. We have very
maturely considered this question and have arrived at the conclusion that
you have a right to use such measures as will secure the State against
the loss of six months' interest on these bonds by the indefiniteness of
the Act of 1859. While it cannot be denied that the letter of the laws
favor the construction claimed by some of the creditors that
interest-bearing bonds were required to be issued to them, inasmuch as
the restriction that no interest is to run on said bonds until 1st
January, 1860, relates solely to the bonds issued under the Act of 1857.
And the Act of 1859 directing you to issue new bonds does not contain
this restriction, but directs you to issue coupon bonds. Nevertheless the
very indefiniteness and generality of the Act of 1859, giving no rate of
interest, no time due, no place of payment, no postponement of the time
when interest commences, necessarily implies that the Legislature
intended to invest you with a discretion to impose such terms and
restrictions as would protect the interest of the State; and we think you
have a right and that it is your duty to see that the State Bonds are so
issued that the State shall not lose six months' interest. Two plans
present themselves either of which will secure the State. 1st. If in
literal compliance with the law you issue bonds bearing interest from 1st
July, 1859, you may deduct from the bonds presented three thousand from
every $100,000 of bonds and issue $97,000 of coupon bonds; by this plan
$3000 out of $100,000 of principal would be extinguished in consideration
of paying $2910 interest on the first of January, 1860--and the interest
on the $3000 would forever cease; this would be no doubt most
advantageous to the State. But if the Auditor will not consent to this,
then, 2nd. Cut off of each bond all the coupons payable before 1st July,
1860.

One of these plans would undoubtedly have been prescribed by the
Legislature if its attention had been directed to this question.

May 28, 1859.




ON LINCOLN'S SCRAP BOOK

TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, December 25, 1858.

H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have just received yours of the 23rd inquiring whether I
received the newspapers you sent me by express. I did receive them, and
am very much obliged. There is some probability that my scrap-book will
be reprinted, and if it shall, I will save you a copy.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




1859
FIRST SUGGESTION OF A PRESIDENTIAL OFFER.
TO S. GALLOWAY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., July 28, 1859.

HON. SAMUEL GALLOWAY.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your very complimentary, not to say flattering, letter of
the 23d inst. is received. Dr. Reynolds had induced me to expect you
here; and I was disappointed not a little by your failure to come. And
yet I fear you have formed an estimate of me which can scarcely be
sustained on a personal acquaintance.

Two things done by the Ohio Republican convention--the repudiation of
Judge Swan, and the "plank" for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law--I
very much regretted. These two things are of a piece; and they are viewed
by many good men, sincerely opposed to slavery, as a struggle against,
and in disregard of, the Constitution itself. And it is the very thing
that will greatly endanger our cause, if it be not kept out of our
national convention. There is another thing our friends are doing which
gives me some uneasiness. It is their leaning toward "popular
sovereignty." There are three substantial objections to this: First, no
party can command respect which sustains this year what it opposed last.
Secondly, Douglas (who is the most dangerous enemy of liberty, because
the most insidious one) would have little support in the North, and by
consequence, no capital to trade on in the South, if it were not for his
friends thus magnifying him and his humbug. But lastly, and chiefly,
Douglas's popular sovereignty, accepted by the public mind as a just
principle, nationalizes slavery, and revives the African slave trade
inevitably.

Taking slaves into new Territories, and buying slaves in Africa, are
identical things, identical rights or identical wrongs, and the argument
which establishes one will establish the other. Try a thousand years for
a sound reason why Congress shall not hinder the people of Kansas from
having slaves, and, when you have found it, it will be an equally good
one why Congress should not hinder the people of Georgia from importing
slaves from Africa.

As to Governor Chase, I have a kind side for him. He was one of the few
distinguished men of the nation who gave us, in Illinois, their sympathy
last year. I never saw him, but suppose him to be able and right-minded;
but still he may not be the most suitable as a candidate for the
Presidency.

I must say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. As you propose a
correspondence with me, I shall look for your letters anxiously.

I have not met Dr. Reynolds since receiving your letter; but when I
shall, I will present your respects as requested.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




IT IS BAD TO BE POOR.

TO HAWKINS TAYLOR

SPRINGFIELD, ILL. Sept. 6, 1859.

HAWKINS TAYLOR, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 3d is just received. There is some mistake about
my expected attendance of the U.S. Court in your city on the 3d Tuesday
of this month. I have had no thought of being there.

It is bad to be poor. I shall go to the wall for bread and meat if I
neglect my business this year as well as last. It would please me much to
see the city and good people of Keokuk, but for this year it is little
less than an impossibility. I am constantly receiving invitations which I
am compelled to decline. I was pressingly urged to go to Minnesota; and I
now have two invitations to go to Ohio. These last are prompted by
Douglas going there; and I am really tempted to make a flying trip to
Columbus and Cincinnati.

I do hope you will have no serious trouble in Iowa. What thinks Grimes
about it? I have not known him to be mistaken about an election in Iowa.
Present my respects to Col. Carter, and any other friends, and believe me

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH AT COLUMBUS, OHIO.

SEPTEMBER 16, 1859.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE STATE OF OHIO: I cannot fail to remember that I
appear for the first time before an audience in this now great State,--an
audience that is accustomed to hear such speakers as Corwin, and Chase,
and Wade, and many other renowned men; and, remembering this, I feel that
it will be well for you, as for me, that you should not raise your
expectations to that standard to which you would have been justified in
raising them had one of these distinguished men appeared before you. You
would perhaps be only preparing a disappointment for yourselves, and, as
a consequence of your disappointment, mortification to me. I hope,
therefore, that you will commence with very moderate expectations; and
perhaps, if you will give me your attention, I shall be able to interest
you to a moderate degree.

Appearing here for the first time in my life, I have been somewhat
embarrassed for a topic by way of introduction to my speech; but I have
been relieved from that embarrassment by an introduction which the Ohio
Statesman newspaper gave me this morning. In this paper I have read an
article, in which, among other statements, I find the following:

"In debating with Senator Douglas during the memorable contest of last
fall, Mr. Lincoln declared in favor of negro suffrage, and attempted to
defend that vile conception against the Little Giant."

I mention this now, at the opening of my remarks, for the purpose of
making three comments upon it. The first I have already announced,--it
furnishes me an introductory topic; the second is to show that the
gentleman is mistaken; thirdly, to give him an opportunity to correct it.

In the first place, in regard to this matter being a mistake. I have
found that it is not entirely safe, when one is misrepresented under his
very nose, to allow the misrepresentation to go uncontradicted. I
therefore propose, here at the outset, not only to say that this is a
misrepresentation, but to show conclusively that it is so; and you will
bear with me while I read a couple of extracts from that very "memorable"
debate with Judge Douglas last year, to which this newspaper refers. In
the first pitched battle which Senator Douglas and myself had, at the
town of Ottawa, I used the language which I will now read. Having been
previously reading an extract, I continued as follows:

"Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length, but this is
the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution
of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it; and anything that
argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the
negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a
man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here,
while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to
interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.
I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to
do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality
between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference
between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forbid their ever
living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it
becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge
Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior
position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that,
notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro
is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration
of Independence,--the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.
I agree with judge Douglas, he is not my equal in many respects,
--certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual
endowments. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody
else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge
Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

Upon a subsequent occasion, when the reason for making a statement like
this occurred, I said:

"While I was at the hotel to-day an elderly gentleman called upon me to
know whether I was really in favor of producing 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, or intermarry with the 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 inasmuch as they can not
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 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
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 the State which forbids
the marrying of white people with negroes."

There, my friends, you have briefly what I have, upon former occasions,
said upon this subject to which this newspaper, to the extent of its
ability, has drawn the public attention. In it you not only perceive, as
a probability, that in that contest I did not at any time say I was in
favor of negro suffrage, but the absolute proof that twice--once
substantially, and once expressly--I declared against it. Having shown
you this, there remains but a word of comment upon that newspaper
article. It is this, that I presume the editor of that paper is an honest
and truth-loving man, and that he will be greatly obliged to me for
furnishing him thus early an opportunity to correct the misrepresentation
he has made, before it has run so long that malicious people can call him
a liar.

The Giant himself has been here recently. I have seen a brief report of
his speech. If it were otherwise unpleasant to me to introduce the
subject of the negro as a topic for discussion, I might be somewhat
relieved by the fact that he dealt exclusively in that subject while he
was here. I shall, therefore, without much hesitation or diffidence,
enter upon this subject.

The American people, on the first day of January, 1854, found the African
slave trade prohibited by a law of Congress. In a majority of the States
of this Union, they found African slavery, or any other sort of slavery,
prohibited by State constitutions. They also found a law existing,
supposed to be valid, by which slavery was excluded from almost all the
territory the United States then owned. This was the condition of the
country, with reference to the institution of slavery, on the first of
January, 1854. A few days after that, a bill was introduced into
Congress, which ran through its regular course in the two branches of the
national legislature, and finally passed into a law in the month of May,
by which the Act of Congress prohibiting slavery from going into the
Territories of the United States was repealed. In connection with the law
itself, and, in fact, in the terms of the law, the then existing
prohibition was not only repealed, but there was a declaration of a
purpose on the part of Congress never thereafter to exercise any power
that they might have, real or supposed, to prohibit the extension or
spread of slavery. This was a very great change; for the law thus
repealed was of more than thirty years' standing. Following rapidly upon
the heels of this action of Congress, a decision of the Supreme Court is
made, by which it is declared that Congress, if it desires to prohibit
the spread of slavery into the Territories, has no constitutional power
to do so. Not only so, but that decision lays down principles which, if
pushed to their logical conclusion,--I say pushed to their logical
conclusion,--would decide that the constitutions of free States,
forbidding slavery, are themselves unconstitutional. Mark me, I do not
say the judges said this, and let no man say I affirm the judges used
these words; but I only say it is my opinion that what they did say, if
pressed to its logical conclusion, will inevitably result thus.

Looking at these things, the Republican party, as I understand its
principles and policy, believes that there is great danger of the
institution of slavery being spread out and extended until it is
ultimately made alike lawful in all the States of this Union; so
believing, to prevent that incidental and ultimate consummation is the
original and chief purpose of the Republican organization. I say "chief
purpose" of the Republican organization; for it is certainly true that if
the National House shall fall into the hands of the Republicans, they
will have to attend to all the other matters of national house-keeping,
as well as this. The chief and real purpose of the Republican party is
eminently conservative. It proposes nothing save and except to restore
this government to its original tone in regard to this element of
slavery, and there to maintain it, looking for no further change in
reference to it than that which the original framers of the Government
themselves expected and looked forward to.

The chief danger to this purpose of the Republican party is not just now
the revival of the African slave trade, or the passage of a Congressional
slave code, or the declaring of a second Dred Scott decision, making
slavery lawful in all the States. These are not pressing us just now.
They are not quite ready yet. The authors of these measures know that we
are too strong for them; but they will be upon us in due time, and we
will be grappling with them hand to hand, if they are not now headed off.
They are not now the chief danger to the purpose of the Republican
organization; but the most imminent danger that now threatens that
purpose is that insidious Douglas popular sovereignty. This is the miner
and sapper. While it does not propose to revive the African slave trade,
nor to pass a slave code, nor to make a second Dred Scott decision, it is
preparing us for the onslaught and charge of these ultimate enemies when
they shall be ready to come on, and the word of command for them to
advance shall be given. I say this "Douglas popular sovereignty"; for
there is a broad distinction, as I now understand it, between that
article and a genuine popular sovereignty.

I believe there is a genuine popular sovereignty. I think a definition of
"genuine popular sovereignty," in the abstract, would be about this: That
each man shall do precisely as he pleases with himself, and with all
those things which exclusively concern him. Applied to government, this
principle would be, that a general government shall do all those things
which pertain to it, and all the local governments shall do precisely as
they please in respect to those matters which exclusively concern them. I
understand that this government of the United States, under which we
live, is based upon this principle; and I am misunderstood if it is
supposed that I have any war to make upon that principle.