The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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I have mentioned to you that there were a few old French slaves there.
They numbered, I think, one or two hundred. Besides that, there had been
a Territorial law for indenturing black persons. Under that law, in
violation of the Ordinance of '87, but without any enforcement of the
Ordinance to overthrow the system, there had been a small number of
slaves introduced as indentured persons. Owing to this, the clause for
the prohibition of slavery was slightly modified. Instead of running like
yours, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime,
of which the party shall have been duly convicted, should exist in the
State, they said that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should
thereafter be introduced; and that the children of indentured servants
should be born free; and nothing was said about the few old French
slaves. Out of this fact, that the clause for prohibiting slavery was
modified because of the actual presence of it, Douglas asserts again and
again that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. How far the
facts sustain the conclusion that he draws, it is for intelligent and
impartial men to decide. I leave it with you, with these remarks, worthy
of being remembered, that that little thing, those few indentured
servants being there, was of itself sufficient to modify a constitution
made by a people ardently desiring to have a free constitution; showing
the power of the actual presence of the institution of slavery to prevent
any people, however anxious to make a free State, from making it
perfectly so.

I have been detaining you longer, perhaps, than I ought to do.

I am in some doubt whether to introduce another topic upon which I could
talk a while. [Cries of "Go on," and "Give us it."] It is this, then:
Douglas's Popular sovereignty, as a principle, is simply this: If one man
chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that man nor anybody else
has a right to object. Apply it to government, as he seeks to apply it,
and it is this: If, in a new Territory into which a few people are
beginning to enter for the purpose of making their homes, they choose to
either exclude slavery from their limits, or to establish it there,
however one or the other may affect the persons to be enslaved, or the
infinitely greater number of persons who are afterward to inhabit that
Territory, or the other members of the family of communities of which
they are but an incipient member, or the general head of the family of
States as parent of all, however their action may affect one or the other
of these, there is no power or right to interfere. That is Douglas's
popular sovereignty applied. Now, I think that there is a real popular
sovereignty in the world. I think the definition of 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 in 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.

Douglas looks upon slavery as so insignificant that the people must
decide that question for themselves; and yet they are not fit to decide
who shall be their governor, judge, or secretary, or who shall be any of
their officers. These are vast national matters in his estimation; but
the little matter in his estimation is that of planting slavery there.
That is purely of local interest, which nobody should be allowed to say a
word about.

Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human
comforts and necessities are drawn. There is a difference in opinion
about the elements of labor in society. Some men assume that there is
necessary connection between capital and labor, and that connection draws
within it the whole of the labor of the community. They assume that
nobody works unless capital excites them to work. They begin next to
consider what is the best way. They say there are but two ways: one is to
hire men, and to allure them to labor by their consent; the other is to
buy the men, and drive them, to it, and that is slavery. Having assumed
that, they proceed to discuss the question of whether the laborers
themselves are better off in the condition of slaves or of hired
laborers, and they usually decide that they are better off in the
condition of slaves.

In the first place, I say that the whole thing is a mistake. That there
is a certain relation between capital and labor, I admit. That it does
exist, and rightfully exists, I think is true. That men who are
industrious, and sober, and honest in the pursuit of their own interests
should after a while accumulate capital, and after that should be allowed
to enjoy it in peace, and also, if they should choose, when they have
accumulated it, to use it to save themselves from actual labor, and hire
other people to labor for them, is right. In doing so they do not wrong
the man they employ, for they find men who have not of their own land to
work upon, or shops to work in, and who are benefited by working for
others, hired laborers, receiving their capital for it. Thus a few men,
that own capital, hire a few others, and these establish the relation of
capital and labor rightfully, a relation of which I make no complaint.
But I insist that that relation, after all, does not embrace more than
one eighth of the labor of the country.

[The speaker proceeded to argue that the hired laborer, with his ability
to become an employer, must have every precedence over him who labors
under the inducement of force. He continued:]

I have taken upon myself in the name of some of you to say that we expect
upon these principles to ultimately beat them. In order to do so, I think
we want and must have a national policy in regard to the institution of
slavery that acknowledges and deals with that institution as being wrong.
Whoever desires the prevention of the spread of slavery and the
nationalization of that institution yields all when he yields to any
policy that either recognizes slavery as being right or as being an
indifferent thing. Nothing will make you successful but setting up a
policy which shall treat the thing as being wrong: When I say this, I do
not mean to say that this General Government is charged with the duty of
redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world, but I do think that
it is charged with preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs
to itself. This Government is expressly charged with the duty of
providing for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and
perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We
believe--nay, we know--that that is the only thing that has ever
threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself. The only thing which has
ever menaced the destruction of the government under which we live is
this very thing. To repress this thing, we think, is, Providing for the
general welfare. Our friends in Kentucky differ from us. We need not make
our argument for them, but we who think it is wrong in all its relations,
or in some of them at least, must decide as to our own actions and our
own course, upon our own judgment.

I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the
States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the
general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not withhold an
efficient Fugitive Slave law, because the Constitution requires us, as I
understand it, not to withhold such a law. But we must prevent the
outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor
general welfare requires us to extend it. We must prevent the revival of
the African slave trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial
slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either
Congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful
masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution,
but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

To do these things we must employ instrumentalities. We must hold
conventions; we must adopt platforms, if we conform to ordinary custom;
we must nominate candidates; and we must carry elections. In all these
things, I think that we ought to keep in view our real purpose, and in
none do anything that stands adverse to our purpose. If we shall adopt a
platform that fails to recognize or express our purpose, or elect a man
that declares himself inimical to our purpose, we not only take nothing
by our success, but we tacitly admit that we act upon no other principle
than a desire to have "the loaves and fishes," by which, in the end, our
apparent success is really an injury to us.

I know that this is very desirable with me, as with everybody else, that
all the elements of the opposition shall unite in the next Presidential
election and in all future time. I am anxious that that should be; but
there are things seriously to be considered in relation to that matter.
If the terms can be arranged, I am in favor of the union. But suppose we
shall take up some man, and put him upon one end or the other of the
ticket, who declares himself against us in regard to the prevention of
the spread of slavery, who turns up his nose and says he is tired of
hearing anything more about it, who is more against us than against the
enemy, what will be the issue? Why, he will get no slave States, after
all,--he has tried that already until being beat is the rule for him. If
we nominate him upon that ground, he will not carry a slave State; and
not only so, but that portion of our men who are high-strung upon the
principle we really fight for will not go for him, and he won't get a
single electoral vote anywhere, except, perhaps, in the State of
Maryland. There is no use in saying to us that we are stubborn and
obstinate because we won't do some such thing as this. We cannot do it.
We cannot get our men to vote it. I speak by the card, that we cannot
give the State of Illinois in such case by fifty thousand. We would be
flatter down than the "Negro Democracy" themselves have the heart to wish
to see us.

After saying this much let me say a little on the other side. There are
plenty of men in the slave States that are altogether good enough for me
to be either President or Vice-President, provided they will profess
their sympathy with our purpose, and will place themselves on the ground
that our men, upon principle, can vote for them. There are scores of
them, good men in their character for intelligence and talent and
integrity. If such a one will place himself upon the right ground, I am
for his occupying one place upon the next Republican or opposition
ticket. I will heartily go for him. But unless he does so place himself,
I think it a matter of perfect nonsense to attempt to bring about a union
upon any other basis; that if a union be made, the elements will scatter
so that there can be no success for such a ticket, nor anything like
success. The good old maxims of the Bible axe applicable, and truly
applicable, to human affairs, and in this, as in other things, we may say
here that he who is not for us is against us; he who gathereth not with
us, scattereth. I should be glad to have some of the many good and able
and noble men of the South to place themselves where we can confer upon
them the high honor of an election upon one or the other end of our
ticket. It would do my soul good to do that thing. It would enable us to
teach them that, inasmuch as we select one of their own number to carry
out our principles, we are free from the charge that we mean more than we
say.

But, my friends, I have detained you much longer than I expected to do. I
believe I may do myself the compliment to say that you have stayed and
heard me with great patience, for which I return you my most sincere
thanks.




ON PROTECTIVE TARIFFS

TO EDWARD WALLACE.

CLINTON, October 11, 1859

Dr. EDWARD WALLACE.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am here just now attending court. Yesterday, before I
left Springfield, your brother, Dr. William S. Wallace, showed me a
letter of yours, in which you kindly mention my name, inquiring for my
tariff views, and suggest the propriety of my writing a letter upon the
subject. I was an old Henry-Clay-Tariff Whig. In old times I made more
speeches on that subject than any other.

I have not since changed my views. I believe yet, if we could have a
moderate, carefully adjusted protective tariff, so far acquiesced in as
not to be a perpetual subject of political strife, squabbles changes, and
uncertainties, it would be better for us. Still it is my opinion that
just now the revival of that question will not advance the cause itself,
or the man who revives it.

I have not thought much on the subject recently, but my general
impression is that the necessity for a protective tariff will ere long
force its old opponents to take it up; and then its old friends can join
in and establish it on a more firm and durable basis. We, the Old Whigs,
have been entirely beaten out on the tariff question, and we shall not be
able to re-establish the policy until the absence of it shall have
demonstrated the necessity for it in the minds of men heretofore opposed
to it. With this view, I should prefer to not now write a public letter
on the subject. I therefore wish this to be considered confidential. I
shall be very glad to receive a letter from you.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON MORTGAGES

TO W. DUNGY.

SPRINGFIELD, November, 2, 1859.

WM. DUNGY, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of October 27 is received. When a mortgage is given to
secure two notes, and one of the notes is sold and assigned, if the
mortgaged premises are only sufficient to pay one note, the one assigned
will take it all. Also, an execution from a judgment on the assigned note
may take it all; it being the same thing in substance. There is
redemption on execution sales from the United States Court just as from
any other court.

You did not mention the name of the plaintiff or defendant in the suit,
and so I can tell nothing about it as to sales, bids, etc. Write again.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS,

DECEMBER, 1859.

............. But you Democrats are for the Union; and you greatly fear
the success of the Republicans would destroy the Union. Why? Do the
Republicans declare against the Union? Nothing like it. Your own
statement of it is that if the Black Republicans elect a President, you
"won't stand it." You will break up the Union. If we shall
constitutionally elect a President, it will be our duty to see that you
submit. Old John Brown has been executed for treason against a State. We
cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong.
That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason. It could avail him
nothing that he might think himself right. So, if we constitutionally
elect a President, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it
will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with.
We shall try to do our duty. We hope and believe that in no section will
a majority so act as to render such extreme measures necessary.




TO G. W. DOLE, G. S. HUBBARD, AND W. H. BROWN.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec. 14, 1859

MESSRS. DOLE, HUBBARD & BROWN.

GENT.:--Your favor of the 12th is at hand, and it gives me pleasure to be
able to answer it. It is not my intention to take part in any of the
rivalries for the gubernatorial nomination; but the fear of being
misunderstood upon that subject ought not to deter me from doing justice
to Mr. Judd, and preventing a wrong being done to him by the use of nay
name in connection with alleged wrongs to me.

In answer to your first question, as to whether Mr. Judd was guilty of
any unfairness to me at the time of Senator Trumbull's election, I answer
unhesitatingly in the negative; Mr. Judd owed no political allegiance to
any party whose candidate I was. He was in the Senate, holding over,
having been elected by a Democratic Constituency. He never was in any
caucus of the friends who sought to make me U. S. Senator, never gave me
any promises or pledges to support me, and subsequent events have greatly
tended to prove the wisdom, politically, of Mr. Judd's course. The
election of Judge Trumbull strongly tended to sustain and preserve the
position of that lion of the Democrats who condemned the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, and left them in a position of joining with us in
forming the Republican party, as was done at the Bloomington convention
in 1856.

During the canvass of 1858 for the senatorship my belief was, and still
is, that I had no more sincere and faithful friend than Mr.
Judd--certainly none whom I trusted more. His position as chairman of the
State Central Committee led to my greater intercourse with him, and to my
giving him a larger share of my confidence, than with or to almost any
other friend; and I have never suspected that that confidence was, to any
degree, misplaced.

My relations with Mr. Judo since the organization of the Republican
party, in, our State, in 1856, and especially since the adjournment of
the Legislature in Feb., 1857, have been so very intimate that I deem it
an impossibility that he could have been dealing treacherously with me.
He has also, at all times, appeared equally true and faithful to the
party. In his position as chairman of the committee, I believe he did all
that any man could have done. The best of us are liable to commit errors,
which become apparent by subsequent developments; but I do not know of a
single error, even, committed by Mr. Judd, since he and I have acted
together politically.

I, had occasionally heard these insinuations against Mr. Judd, before the
receipt of your letter; and in no instance have I hesitated to pronounce
them wholly unjust, to the full extent of my knowledge and belief. I have
been, and still am, very anxious to take no part between the many
friends, all good and true, who are mentioned as candidates for a
Republican gubernatorial nomination; but I can not feel that my own honor
is quite clear if I remain silent when I hear any one of them assailed
about matters of which I believe I know more than his assailants.

I take pleasure in adding that, of all the avowed friends I had in the
canvass of last year, I do not suspect any of having acted treacherously
to me, or to our cause; and that there is not one of them in whose
honesty, honor, and integrity I, today, have greater confidence than I
have in those of Mr. Judd.

I dislike to appear before the public in this matter; but you are at
liberty to make such use of this letter as you may think justice
requires.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO G. M. PARSONS AND OTHERS.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 19, 1859.

MESSRS. G. M. PARSONS AND OTHERS, CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, ETC.

GENTLEMEN:--Your letter of the 7th instant, accompanied by a similar one
from the governor-elect, the Republican State officers, and the
Republican members of the State Board of Equalization of Ohio, both
requesting of me, for publication in permanent form, copies of the
political debates between Senator Douglas and myself last year, has been
received. With my grateful acknowledgments to both you and them for the
very flattering terms in which the request is communicated, I transmit
you the copies. The copies I send you are as reported and printed by the
respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself, at the time--that is,
his by his friends, and mine by mine. It would be an unwarrantable
liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his, and the changes I
have made in mine, you perceive, are verbal only, and very few in number.
I wish the reprint to be precisely as the copies I send, without any
comment whatever.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

TO J. W. FELL,

SPRINGFIELD, December 20, 1859.

J. W. FELL, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not
much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If
anything be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and not to go beyond
the material. If it were thought necessary to incorporate anything from
any of my speeches I suppose there would be no objection. Of course it
must not appear to have been written by myself.

Yours very truly, A. LINCOLN

-----------------------

I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were
both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families,
perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a
family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others
in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln,
emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or
1782, where a year or two later he was killed by the Indians, not in
battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the
forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks
County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England
family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity
of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai,
Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he
grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is
now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home
about the time that State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with
many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.
There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever
required of a teacher beyond "readin', writin', and cipherin"' to the
Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to
sojourn in the neighborhood he was looked upon as a wizard. There was
absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I
came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and
cipher to the Rule of Three, but that was all. I have not been to school
since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have
picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At
twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at
that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a
sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk war; and I was elected
a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I
have had since. I went the campaign, was elected, ran for the Legislature
the same year (1832), and was beaten--the only time I ever have been
beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I
was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During
this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to
practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress.
Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive,
practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in
politics; and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active
canvasses. I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is
pretty well known.

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I
am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on
an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse
black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON NOMINATION TO THE NATIONAL TICKET

To N. B. JUDD.

SPRINGFIELD, FEBRUARY 9, 1859

HON. N. B. JUDD.

DEAR Sir:--I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me to not
be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt some
for me to not get the Illinois delegates. What I expected when I wrote
the letter to Messrs. Dole and others is now happening. Your discomfited
assailants are most bitter against me; and they will, for revenge upon
me, lay to the Bates egg in the South, and to the Seward egg in the
North, and go far toward squeezing me out in the middle with nothing.
Can you help me a little in this matter in your end of the vineyard. I
mean this to be private.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN






1860


SPEECH AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK FEBRUARY 27, 1860

MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW YORK:--The facts with which I
shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there
anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be
any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the
inferences and observations following that presentation.

In his speech last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in the New York
Times, Senator Douglas said: