The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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But here in Connecticut and at the North slavery does not exist, and we
see it through no such medium.

To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not
property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the
Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say we
think, most of us, that this charter of freedom applies to the slaves as
well as to ourselves; that the class of arguments put forward to batter
down that idea are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free
government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of
free society. We think slavery a great moral wrong, and, while we do not
claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a
wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a
respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God
that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will
properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white
men--in short, we think slavery a great moral, social, and political
evil, tolerable only because, and so far as, its actual existence makes
it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that it ought to be treated
as a wrong.

Now these two ideas, the property idea that slavery is right, and the
idea that it is wrong, come into collision, and do actually produce that
irrepressible conflict which Mr. Seward has been so roundly abused for
mentioning. The two ideas conflict, and must conflict.

Again, in its political aspect, does anything in any way endanger the
perpetuity of this Union but that single thing, slavery? Many of our
adversaries are anxious to claim that they are specially devoted to the
Union, and take pains to charge upon us hostility to the Union. Now we
claim that we are the only true Union men, and we put to them this one
proposition: Whatever endangers this Union, save and except slavery? Did
any other thing ever cause a moment's fear? All men must agree that this
thing alone has ever endangered the perpetuity of the Union. But if it
was threatened by any other influence, would not all men say that the
best thing that could be done, if we could not or ought not to destroy
it, would be at least to keep it from growing any larger? Can any man
believe, that the way to save the Union is to extend and increase the
only thing that threatens the Union, and to suffer it to grow bigger and
bigger?

Whenever this question shall be settled, it must be settled on some
philosophical basis. No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical
opinion can be permanently maintained. And hence there are but two
policies in regard to slavery that can be at all maintained. The first,
based on the property view that slavery is right, conforms to that idea
throughout, and demands that we shall do everything for it that we ought
to do if it were right. We must sweep away all opposition, for opposition
to the right is wrong; we must agree that slavery is right, and we must
adopt the idea that property has persuaded the owner to believe that
slavery is morally right and socially elevating. This gives a
philosophical basis for a permanent policy of encouragement.

The other policy is one that squares with the idea that slavery is wrong,
and it consists in doing everything that we ought to do if it is wrong.
Now, I don't wish to be misunderstood, nor to leave a gap down to be
misrepresented, even. I don't mean that we ought to attack it where it
exists. To me it seems that if we were to form a government anew, in view
of the actual presence of slavery we should find it necessary to frame
just such a government as our fathers did--giving to the slaveholder the
entire control where the system was established, while we possessed the
power to restrain it from going outside those limits. From the
necessities of the case we should be compelled to form just such a
government as our blessed fathers gave us; and, surely, if they have so
made it, that adds another reason why we should let slavery alone where
it exists.

If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might
seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed
with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the
children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more if I
found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a
solemn compact not to meddle with his children under any circumstances,
it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the
gentleman alone. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the
children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young
snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was
any question how I ought to decide!

That is just the case. The new Territories are the newly made bed to
which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to say whether
they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not. It does not seem as if
there could be much hesitation what our policy should be!

Now I have spoken of a policy based on the idea that slavery is wrong,
and a policy based on the idea that it is right. But an effort has been
made for a policy that shall treat it as neither right nor wrong. It is
based upon utter indifference. Its leading advocate [Douglas] has said,
"I don't care whether it be voted up or down." "It is merely a matter of
dollars and cents." "The Almighty has drawn a line across this continent,
on one side of which all soil must forever be cultivated by slave labor,
and on the other by free." "When the struggle is between the white man
and the negro, I am for the white man; when it is between the negro and
the crocodile, I am for the negro." Its central idea is indifference. It
holds that it makes no more difference to us whether the Territories
become free or slave States than whether my neighbor stocks his farm with
horned cattle or puts in tobacco. All recognize this policy, the
plausible sugar-coated name of which is "popular sovereignty."

This policy chiefly stands in the way of a permanent settlement of the
question. I believe there is no danger of its becoming the permanent
policy of the country, for it is based on a public indifference. There is
nobody that "don't care." All the people do care one way or the other! I
do not charge that its author, when he says he "don't care," states his
individual opinion; he only expresses his policy for the government. I
understand that he has never said as an individual whether he thought
slavery right or wrong--and he is the only man in the nation that has
not! Now such a policy may have a temporary run; it may spring up as
necessary to the political prospects of some gentleman; but it is utterly
baseless: the people are not indifferent, and it can therefore have no
durability or permanence.

But suppose it could: Then it could be maintained only by a public
opinion that shall say, "We don't care." There must be a change in public
opinion; the public mind must be so far debauched as to square with this
policy of caring not at all. The people must come to consider this as
"merely a question of dollars and cents," and to believe that in some
places the Almighty has made slavery necessarily eternal. This policy can
be brought to prevail if the people can be brought round to say honestly,
"We don't care"; if not, it can never be maintained. It is for you to say
whether that can be done.

You are ready to say it cannot, but be not too fast! Remember what a long
stride has been taken since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise! Do you
know of any Democrat, of either branch of the party--do you know one who
declares that he believes that the Declaration of Independence has any
application to the negro? Judge Taney declares that it has not, and Judge
Douglas even vilifies me personally and scolds me roundly for saying that
the Declaration applies to all men, and that negroes are men. Is there a
Democrat here who does not deny that the Declaration applies to the
negro? Do any of you know of one? Well, I have tried before perhaps fifty
audiences, some larger and some smaller than this, to find one such
Democrat, and never yet have I found one who said I did not place him
right in that. I must assume that Democrats hold that, and now, not one
of these Democrats can show that he said that five years ago! I venture
to defy the whole party to produce one man that ever uttered the belief
that the Declaration did not apply to negroes, before the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise! Four or five years ago we all thought negroes were
men, and that when "all men" were named, negroes were included. But the
whole Democratic party has deliberately taken negroes from the class of
men and put them in the class of brutes. Turn it as you will it is simply
the truth! Don't be too hasty, then, in saying that the people cannot be
brought to this new doctrine, but note that long stride. One more as long
completes the journey from where negroes are estimated as men to where
they are estimated as mere brutes--as rightful property!

That saying "In the struggle between white men and the negro," etc.,
which I know came from the same source as this policy--that saying marks
another step. There is a falsehood wrapped up in that statement. "In the
struggle between the white man and the negro" assumes that there is a
struggle, in which either the white man must enslave the negro or the
negro must enslave the white. There is no such struggle! It is merely the
ingenious falsehood to degrade and brutalize the negro. Let each let the
other alone, and there is no struggle about it. If it was like two
wrecked seamen on a narrow plank, when each must push the other off or
drown himself, I would push the negro off or a white man either, but it
is not; the plank is large enough for both. This good earth is plenty
broad enough for white man and negro both, and there is no need of either
pushing the other off.

So that saying, "In the struggle between the negro and the crocodile,"
etc., is made up from the idea that down where the crocodile inhabits, a
white man can't labor; it must be nothing else but crocodile or negro; if
the negro does not the crocodile must possess the earth; in that case he
declares for the negro. The meaning of the whole is just this: As a white
man is to a negro, so is a negro to a crocodile; and as the negro may
rightfully treat the crocodile, so may the white man rightfully treat the
negro. This very dear phrase coined by its author, and so dear that he
deliberately repeats it in many speeches, has a tendency to still further
brutalize the negro, and to bring public opinion to the point of utter
indifference whether men so brutalized are enslaved or not. When that
time shall come, if ever, I think that policy to which I refer may
prevail. But I hope the good freemen of this country will never allow it
to come, and until then the policy can never be maintained.

Now consider the effect of this policy. We in the States are not to care
whether freedom or slavery gets the better, but the people in the
Territories may care. They are to decide, and they may think what they
please; it is a matter of dollars and cents! But are not the people of
the Territories detailed from the States? If this feeling of indifference
this absence of moral sense about the question prevails in the States,
will it not be carried into the Territories? Will not every man say, "I
don't care, it is nothing to me"? If any one comes that wants slavery,
must they not say, "I don't care whether freedom or slavery be voted up
or voted down"? It results at last in nationalizing the institution of
slavery. Even if fairly carried out, that policy is just as certain to
nationalize slavery as the doctrine of Jeff Davis himself. These are only
two roads to the same goal, and "popular sovereignty" is just as sure and
almost as short as the other.

What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think
slavery wrong. But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed to
it, but yet act with the Democratic party--where are they? Let us apply a
few tests. You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all
attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong that
you are not willing to deal with as wrong? Why are you so careful, so
tender, of this one wrong and no other? You will not let us do a single
thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will even allow it
to be called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the free States, because
it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the slave States,
because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that
is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the
pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring
it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such
unsuitable places--and there is no single place, according to you, where
this wrong thing can properly be called wrong!

Perhaps you will plead that if the people of the slave States should
themselves set on foot an effort for emancipation, you would wish them
success, and bid them God-speed. Let us test that: In 1858 the
emancipation party of Missouri, with Frank Blair at their head, tried to
get up a movement for that purpose, and having started a party contested
the State. Blair was beaten, apparently if not truly, and when the news
came to Connecticut, you, who knew that Frank Blair was taking hold of
this thing by the right end, and doing the only thing that you say can
properly be done to remove this wrong--did you bow your heads in sorrow
because of that defeat? Do you, any of you, know one single Democrat that
showed sorrow over that result? Not one! On the contrary every man threw
up his hat, and hallooed at the top of his lungs, "Hooray for Democracy!"

Now, gentlemen, the Republicans desire to place this great question of
slavery on the very basis on which our fathers placed it, and no other.
It is easy to demonstrate that "our fathers, who framed this Government
under which we live," looked on slavery as wrong, and so framed it and
everything about it as to square with the idea that it was wrong, so far
as the necessities arising from its existence permitted. In forming the
Constitution they found the slave trade existing, capital invested in it,
fields depending upon it for labor, and the whole system resting upon the
importation of slave labor. They therefore did not prohibit the slave
trade at once, but they gave the power to prohibit it after twenty years.
Why was this? What other foreign trade did they treat in that way? Would
they have done this if they had not thought slavery wrong?

Another thing was done by some of the same men who framed the
Constitution, and afterwards adopted as their own the act by the first
Congress held under that Constitution, of which many of the framers were
members, that prohibited the spread of slavery into Territories. Thus the
same men, the framers of the Constitution, cut off the supply and
prohibited the spread of slavery, and both acts show conclusively that
they considered that the thing was wrong.

If additional proof is wanted it can be found in the phraseology of the
Constitution. When men are framing a supreme law and chart of government,
to secure blessings and prosperity to untold generations yet to come,
they use language as short and direct and plain as can be found, to
express their meaning In all matters but this of slavery the framers of
the Constitution used the very clearest, shortest, and most direct
language. But the Constitution alludes to slavery three times without
mentioning it once The language used becomes ambiguous, roundabout, and
mystical. They speak of the "immigration of persons," and mean the
importation of slaves, but do not say so. In establishing a basis of
representation they say "all other persons," when they mean to say
slaves--why did they not use the shortest phrase? In providing for the
return of fugitives they say "persons held to service or labor." If they
had said slaves it would have been plainer, and less liable to
misconstruction. Why did n't they do it? We cannot doubt that it was done
on purpose. Only one reason is possible, and that is supplied us by one
of the framers of the Constitution--and it is not possible for man to
conceive of any other--they expected and desired that the system would
come to an end, and meant that when it did, the Constitution should not
show that there ever had been a slave in this good free country of ours.

I will dwell on that no longer. I see the signs of approaching triumph of
the Republicans in the bearing of their political adversaries. A great
deal of their war with us nowadays is mere bushwhacking. At the battle of
Waterloo, when Napoleon's cavalry had charged again and again upon the
unbroken squares of British infantry, at last they were giving up the
attempt, and going off in disorder, when some of the officers in mere
vexation and complete despair fired their pistols at those solid squares.
The Democrats are in that sort of extreme desperation; it is nothing
else. I will take up a few of these arguments.

There is "the irrepressible conflict." How they rail at Seward for that
saying! They repeat it constantly; and, although the proof has been
thrust under their noses again and again that almost every good man since
the formation of our Government has uttered that same sentiment, from
General Washington, who "trusted that we should yet have a confederacy of
free States," with Jefferson, Jay, Monroe, down to the latest days, yet
they refuse to notice that at all, and persist in railing at Seward for
saying it. Even Roger A. Pryor, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, uttered
the same sentiment in almost the same language, and yet so little offence
did it give the Democrats that he was sent for to Washington to edit the
States--the Douglas organ there--while Douglas goes into hydrophobia and
spasms of rage because Seward dared to repeat it. This is what I call
bushwhacking, a sort of argument that they must know any child can see
through.

Another is John Brown: "You stir up insurrections, you invade the South;
John Brown! Harper's Ferry!" Why, John Brown was not a Republican! You
have never implicated a single Republican in that Harper's Ferry
enterprise. We tell you that if any member of the Republican party is
guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know
it, you are inexcusable not to designate the man and prove the fact. If
you do not know it, you are inexcusable to assert it, and especially to
persist in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does
not know to be true is simply malicious slander. Some of you admit that
no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair,
but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to
such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrines, and
make no declarations, which were not held to and made by our fathers who
framed the Government 'under which we live, and we cannot see how
declarations that were patriotic when they made them are villainous when
we make them. You never dealt fairly by us in relation to that
affair--and I will say frankly that I know of nothing in your character
that should lead us to suppose that you would. You had just been soundly
thrashed in elections in several States, and others were soon to come.
You rejoiced at the occasion, and only were troubled that there were not
three times as many killed in the affair. You were in evident glee; there
was no sorrow for the killed nor for the peace of Virginia disturbed; you
were rejoicing that by charging Republicans with this thing you might get
an advantage of us in New York, and the other States. You pulled that
string as tightly as you could, but your very generous and worthy
expectations were not quite fulfilled. Each Republican knew that the
charge was a slander as to himself at least, and was not inclined by it
to cast his vote in your favor. It was mere bushwhacking, because you had
nothing else to do. You are still on that track, and I say, go on! If you
think you can slander a woman into loving you or a man into voting for
you, try it till you are satisfied!

Another specimen of this bushwhacking, that "shoe strike." Now be it
understood that I do not pretend to know all about the matter. I am
merely going to speculate a little about some of its phases. And at the
outset, I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England
under which laborers can strike when they want to, where they are not
obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and
obliged to labor whether you pay them or not! I like the system which
lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might prevail everywhere.
One of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery is just here. What is the
true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave
each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get
wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it
would do more harm than good. So, while we do not propose any war upon
capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich
with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of
life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he
knows that there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life. I am
not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer,
mauling rails, at work on a flatboat--just what might happen to any poor
man's son! I want every man to have a chance--and I believe a Black man
is entitled to it--in which he can better his condition; when he may look
forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for
himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the
system. Up here in New England, you have a soil that scarcely sprouts
black-eyed beans, and yet where will you find wealthy men so wealthy, and
poverty so rarely in extremity? There is not another such place on earth!
I desire that if you get too thick here, and find it hard to better your
condition on this soil, you may have a chance to strike and go somewhere
else, where you may not be degraded, nor have your families corrupted, by
forced rivalry with negro slaves. I want you to have a clean bed and no
snakes in it! Then you can better your condition, and so it may go on and
on in one endless round so long as man exists on the face of the earth!

Now, to come back to this shoe strike,--if, as the senator from Illinois
asserts, this is caused by withdrawal of Southern votes, consider briefly
how you will meet the difficulty. You have done nothing, and have
protested that you have done nothing, to injure the South. And yet, to
get back the shoe trade, you must leave off doing something which you are
now doing. What is it? You must stop thinking slavery wrong! Let your
institutions be wholly changed; let your State constitutions be
subverted; glorify slavery, and so you will get back the shoe trade--for
what? You have brought owned labor with it, to compete with your own
labor, to underwork you, and to degrade you! Are you ready to get back
the trade on those terms?

But the statement is not correct. You have not lost that trade; orders
were never better than now! Senator Mason, a Democrat, comes into the
Senate in homespun, a proof that the dissolution of the Union has
actually begun! but orders are the same. Your factories have not struck
work, neither those where they make anything for coats, nor for pants nor
for shirts, nor for ladies' dresses. Mr. Mason has not reached the
manufacturers who ought to have made him a coat and pants! To make his
proof good for anything he should have come into the Senate barefoot!

Another bushwhacking contrivance; simply that, nothing else! I find a
good many people who are very much concerned about the loss of Southern
trade. Now either these people are sincere or they are not. I will
speculate a little about that. If they are sincere, and are moved by any
real danger of the loss of Southern trade, they will simply get their
names on the white list, and then, instead of persuading Republicans to
do likewise, they will be glad to keep you away! Don't you see that they
cut off competition? They would not be whispering around to Republicans
to come in and share the profits with them. But if they are not sincere,
and are merely trying to fool Republicans out of their votes, they will
grow very anxious about your pecuniary prospects; they are afraid you are
going to get broken up and ruined; they do not care about Democratic
votes, oh, no, no, no! You must judge which class those belong to whom
you meet: I leave it to you to determine from the facts.