- - V rf V ALEXANDER GOLDSTEIN The Speeches of Abraham Lincoln Including Inaugurals and Proclamations With Biographical Introductions and Prefatory Notes Lincoln Centenary Association New York lE&tiuw fnr ^ubfirribprH by Utnrnln (Erntrnarg in (Enmrnrmoration nf lljr ^unirrbtli AnnitifrBarg nf Sirtli nf Abraham Cmrnht Copyright 1908, by LINCOLN CENTENARY ASSOCIATION PREFACE. INTEREST in Lincoln, as man and politician "type, flower, and representative of all that is worthily Ameri can " in his historic day will, as it has been confidently predicted, never die. Nor should we of our day be in any haste to forget one whose many public virtues and estimable personal character have shed glory on the nation he so assiduously and patriotically served and loved. The popular heart, at least, will certainly not be blamed for continuing to go out warmly to the lovable, unostentatious man, whose human nature overflowed with sympathy for his kind, and whose devotion to public duty was that of a true patriot and a devoted, heroic figure at a most critical era in the nation s annals. That his many admirable and thoughtful Addresses and State Papers continue to be constantly referred to and read shows what hold Lincoln had upon the men and events of his time, and how effectively and beneficently he in fluenced the trend of affairs in his day. If the Fates did not suffer him to live to deal with the great problem of Reconstruction, there was much of magnitude that in his era he honestly and fearlessly dealt with, and that with signal ability, as well as with marvellous clearness, logical precision, and sagacity. These characteristics of the martyr President are manifestly well brought out in the following collection of his more important Speeches and Addresses, and especially so in his Inaugurals and Mes sages to Congress, together with a phenomenal power of reaching the core of a subject and of imparting to his audiences his views and conclusions thereon with justice, force, and lucidity. The present Collection, it need i 773200 {{ PREFACE. hardly be said, is not an attempt to vie with the ex haustive and authoritative one prepared under the able editorship of President Lincoln s private secretaries, Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, and published by The Century Co., of New York. The volume has a much more limited aim and modest purpose namely, to produce in popular and more compendious form selections from some of the chief public utterances of Mr. Lincoln of abiding interest ; and so help to perpetuate the well-deserved fame and extend the range and scope of public familiarity with the great " Liberator s " career and work. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Abraham Lincoln, 1864 - Frontispiece Birthplace of Lincoln . - $ Earliest Portrait of Lincoln, 1848 12 Home of Lincoln, Springfield, III. - 73 Lincoln Statue, by St. Gaudens, Chicago - - 162 Lincoln as President- Elect, I860 - 259 Lincoln Portrait by Sartain - 300 Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet - S62 Assassination of Lincoln 403 CONTENTS. FAGE oreneral Introduction by the Editor 1837 (Jan. 27) The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions : Address to Young Men s Lyceum, Spring field, 111 1 1848 (Jan. 12) Speecli in the U. S. House of Representatives. 12 1852 (July 16) Eulogy on Henry Clay, delivered in the State House, Springfield, 111 24 1854 (Oct. 16) Speecli in Reply to Judge S. A. Douglas, at Peoria, 111 34 1858 (June 16) Speech at Springfield, 111., at the close of the Republican State Convention that nomi nated Mr. Lincoln as United States Senator 52 (July 10) Speech at Chicago, 111 62 (July 17) Speech at Springfield, 111.. 77 (Aug. 21) Speecli at Ottawa, 111., in Debate with Judge Douglas 94 (Aug. 27) Speech at Freeport, 111., in Douglas Debate, with Lincoln s Rejoinder 110 (Sep. 15) Speech at Jonesboro, 111., in Douglas Debate.. 129 (Sep. 18) Speech at Charleston, 111., in Douglas Debate. 151 (Oct. 7) Speech at Galesburg, 111., in Douglas Debate.. 162 (Oct. 13) Speech at Quincy, 111., with Rejoinder 185 (Oct. 15) Speech at Alton, 111., in Douglas Joint Debate 195 1859 (Mar. 1) Speech at Chicago, on night of Municipal Elec tion 224 (Sep. 17) Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio 228 1860 (Feb. 27) Address at Cooper Institute, New York 259 (Mar. 6) Address at New Haven, Conn 283 1861 (Feb. 15) Speech at Pittsburg, Pa , 296 (Feb. 18) Address to Legislature of New York, at Albany , N. Y 301 iii IV CONTENTS. PAGK (Feb. 22) Address at Independence Hall, Philadelphia.. 303 Address to Legislature of Penri., at Harris- burg 305 (Mar. 4) First Inaugural at Washington, D. C 308 1861 (July 4) Message to Congress in Special Session 320 (Aug. 12) Proclamation of a National Fast-Day 339 (Dec. 3) Annual Message to Congress 341 1862 (Mar. 6) Message to Congress recommending Compen sated Emancipation 348 (April 10) Proclamation recommending Thanksgiving for Victories 350 (Sep. 22) Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation 351 (Dec. 1) Annual Message to Congress 354 1863 (Jan. 1) Emancipation Proclamation , 363 (July 15) Proclamation for Thanksgiving 366 (Nov. 19) Gettysburg Cemetery Address 368 (Dec. 8) Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. 369 Annual Message to Congress 373 1864 (April 18) Address at Sanitary Fair, at Baltimore, Md. 393 (June 16) Address at Sanitary Fair, at Philadelphia, Penn 396 (Aug. 22) Address to 166th Ohio Regiment 398 (Aug. 31) Address to 148th Ohio Regiment 399 (Oct. 20) Proclamation of Thanksgiving 400 (Nov. 10) Response to a Serenade 402 (Dec. 6) Annual Message to Congress, 404 1865 (Mar. 4) Second Inaugural Address 409 (April 11) Last Public Address 412 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE EMANCIPATOR PRESIDENT. FULLY two-score years Have passed since the assas sination, at Ford s Theatre, Washington, of Abraham Lincoln, " the great Emancipator " President, whose martyr death has consecrated his name to all coming generations of freemen and enshrined it indelibly in the hearts of every lover of Humanity. The tragic death of this " first of Americans," though it whelmed the nation he loved in sorrow when news of it fell upon the appalled ear, was yet a glorious and triumphal one, since it was the crowning sacrifice of a life spent in Freedom s cause and in the loved service at once of his kind and of his country. His lamented death and the hideous manner of his taking off were but the sad sequel of a period of ca lamitous strife in the nation s annals, when the South, seeking to preserve its cherished institution of slavery a vile traffic which Lincoln ever held in dire abhorrence and defying the moral sense of the North against the hideous wrong, plunged the nation into one of the most terrible wars in history. The conflict, as all know, en tailed a loss of nearly a million lives and the expenditure of about thirty-five hundred million dollars ; but it had at length its happy consummation, not only in reuniting and cementing the riven Union, but by the great edict of Emancipation, the work we might almost say alone of the kindly, humane President, in abolishing slavery for ever from the country and elevating the slave to the rights and privileges of freemen. What the conse- v j INTRODUCTION. quences of the edict were in the issues of the war there is little need to relate. As an act of astute and noble- minded statesmanship, " war measure " though it was deemed, it achieved its high and memorable purpose, of putting an end to the mighty conflict, restoring peace to the blood-sodden nation, and reestablishing it in its entire integrity, with undivided authority. The far-seeing de vice of Lincoln and his administration, with its beneficent results in banning slavery for all time from the country and relieving the oppressed black man from his shackles, was naturally hailed by the plaudits of the world. Care ful personally not to go beyond the Constitution in seek ing to liberate the slave in whatever State or Territory he was in bondage, Lincoln had heretofore bided his time to put his Emancipation measure in force, which was to end the hitherto " irrepressible conflict " and re store the dissevered Union. But when the fit occasion came, at a favorable turn in the protracted and harrow ing conflict, he, " the providential man raised up for his era," obeyed the behests of his own conscience and heart and launched with confident hand and will the tactful yet merciful edict. How potent and instant were its effects, we all know ; though we also know how, in cer tain quarters at the time, it was fought against and dis credited, and what wrath was loosed to descend upon the great chieftain s head who was alone responsible for its issuance and promulgation. This biding his time to abolish slavery has almost in explicably raised the question whether Lincoln really cared to put an end to the vile traffic, or whether he merely used the Emancipation edict as a war measure tactically directed against the South in rebellion. We need hardly argue the point with those who have raised it, since nothing, we hold, is plainer in the entire history of Lincoln s career than his sympathy for the slave and his abhorrence of an institution that kept him in a hated and cruel bondage. He was not, it is true, a negrophilist ; INTRODUCTION. VU but nothing, on the other hand, is more self-evident than that he was ever an abolitionist and opposed in his heart of hearts to the giant evil of slavery, which not only shocked his moral sense, but was emphatically alien to his kindly, humane nature. In proof of this, we need but mention his early threat against the institution at the period of his flat-boat trip down the Mississippi, when he saw slaves bought and sold like dumb cattle in the slave marts of New Orleans, or when he witnessed, with strained heart, the poor blacks manacled and cruelly flogged at whipping-posts by their tyrannous masters That threat, that some day " he would hit the institution hard," he long kept in his heart, while he knew that it never could be compromised with, and therefore sought by all means within his power to keep the infamous traffic within bounds and to hinder its extension wherever it was not law. Hardly less indicative of the great Emancipator s early attitude in opposition to the slave traffic is the stand he took in regard to the Dred Scott case, that slavery deprived the black man of the rights and privileges of citizenship, or that memorable assertion he made in 1858, at the Springfield (111.) Convention that nominated Lincoln for the United States Senate, when he told its members, in his appeal for unity, that " the Government of the country cannot endure permanently half-slave and half- free," adding that " a house divided against itself cannot stand." Still more emphatic were his words in 1864, when war was devastating the land, and when all knew that Secession had mainly been brought about by the imperious wish to perpetuate sla very in the South. Lincoln s words then were the once familiar dictum of Abolition orators, that " if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong " a dictum of unmis takable cogency and truth. It took, as we know, a great crisis in the affairs of the nation to get rid of the " hated thing ; " but this does not detract from the credit due to Lincoln for abolishing it, and thus striking down, by an INTRODUCTION. effective and fatal blow, the distinctive barrier, socially and politically, between North and South, and applying a remedy that determined the issues in the great Rebellion conflict. The controversy once rife over this matter is surely to-day in need of no further argument, any more than there is need to argue again the question, also once rife, as to the religious character of the great President and the precise complexion of his religious belief. In re gard to the latter, there can, we think, be little room for contention, since though Lincoln was himself chary of giving expression in words to the character and extent of his faith in God, his life, we know, was a highly moral and righteous one, and conspicuously human in its tend erness. Though in his early career he may have been indifferent to religion, his personal and public life was later on marked by a deep sense not only of responsibility to a Higher Power than that of man, but of an abiding trust in a Divine Being, whose will and purposes he sought to obey and give effect to in the administration of his great office. Notable also was his reverent consecra tion of himself to the service of his fellow-man and to the heavy and exacting calls of the nation. The spirit in which he addressed himself to the accomplishment of the great task he assumed at Washington is manifest in his parting words, at Springfield, 111., to his fellow citizens, on taking leave of them to engage in the arduous duties of the Presidency. "Friends," he said to them, "one who has never been placed in a like position can little understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me, I must fail ; but if the same Omniscient mind and Almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, I shall succeed." Here, undoubtedly, we have the true Lincoln, and see the spirit of inner trust and dependence in which he wrought INTRODUCTION. { X and achieved his work. With this manifestation of the real man, can we doubt the secret of his meditative moods, amid all his jocularities and racy story- tellings, which endeared him to everyone and brought him into close and kindly touch with his kind ? Curious as well as interesting is it to trace in Lincoln s early years the makings of this extraordinary, self-made man. Nothing could well be moro humble and obscure than the beginnings of his life, in cabin or camp, in the Kentucky scenes of his origin, or in the rough wilderness home in which he was " raised " in Indiana. In the latter State he early lost his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln; though in his shiftless father s second wife, the kindly and sensible Sally Johnston, he was fortunate to find a worthy substitute, to whom Honest Abe was ever greatly attached and of whom he grew to be gratefully and duti fully fond. At his parents humble home, at Pigeon Creek, Abe spent his youth time, snatching what irre gular and limited schooling he could obtain in the neigh borhood, while contributing to his growth by an active life in the woods, catching coons and opossums, inter spersed by " doing chores " at home for his stepmother, or helping his father in cutting the family firewood or in felling timber for rustic cabins for the more well-to-do settler. At this period, Abe, who had meantime grown up a tall, lanky, ill-knit lad, of homely appearance and somewhat rough though kindly manners, was deemed by those who knew him as lazy and disinclined to work, but who delighted to spin yarns with his fellows when he was not lying prone under a shade tree or up in the cabin- loft reading, ciphering or scribbling. About this time he began to develop gifts of native oratory, and when op portunity offered would take with avidity to political speech-making, enlivening his stump efforts with witty jokes and amusing stories. His ambition now became earnest to prepare himself for the public arena, and in this creditable purpose he became more assiduous after x INTRODUCTION. his trading expedition to New Orleans and when his father had immigrated to Illinois, where, however, he soon died. His son, Abraham, now settled near Salem, on the Sagamon river, some twenty miles or so northwest of Springfield. Here the future President became clerk in a store, captain of a militia company, which took part in what is known as the Black Hawk war, and after some brief experience as a surveyor he studied law and associ ated himself with a Mr, Herndon in a legal partnership, meanwhile acting temporarily as village postmaster and seeking election to the Illinois State Legislature. To the latter, on a second candidature, young Lincoln was suc cessful, and he now began to make a local reputation in politics, the while commending himself to his constitu ents as a staunch supporter of schemes for internal im provement and development. In storekeeping, Lincoln hadn t the plodding, steady- going habits that would enable him to succeed ; while as a lawyer, though he was neither widely nor soundly read in jurisprudence, he won for himself a respectable and even an honored position. Moreover, he was too honest to accept fees from suitors whose cases he knew or suspected were not such as should commend them to a man of scrupulous conscience and moral judgment. In the Legislature, while he was loyal to the wants of his own section of the State, and strove to advance its inter ests, he seems at times to have been too inconsiderate of the State purse when demands were made upon it for railway projects and schemes for improved river naviga tion. He was however careful not to lend himself to party jobbery, still less to log-rolling schemes of ques tionable morality; while he became widely known for his manly, consistent probity and his sensitiveness to matters affecting his personal honor. As a speaker in and out of the Legislature, he interested his audiences by his effective utterances, set forth in plain, terse language, seasoned with humor and at times with a biting wit. His INTRODUCTION. XI manner of address was usually awkward, but was often impassioned and full of fire ; while his great fund of aptly told stories enabled him always to draw large and de lighted gatherings of people, whenever he was known or expected to appear on the stump. , It was at this, or rather at an earlier, period of his career that Lincoln had his unhappy experience of love- making, the first episode ending calamitously in the death of Ann Rutledge, a young lady to whom the now rising Western publicist and orator seems to have been tenderly attached. The shock of her early death, we are told, threw the devoted lover into transports of grief, which appears for a time to have threatened his reason. With the assuagement of Time and preoccupation in his pro fessional and political life, Lincoln, as we know, however, got over his early bereavement, and in 1842 married Mary Todd, of Lexington, Ky. This marriage, it is ad mitted, was not a happy one, owing partly to the lady s superior education and higher social position, though per haps more truly to incompatibility of temper. Of the al liance, Lincoln, however, was never known to complain, obviously influenced in this respect by motives which did him honor ; while he ever bore himself towards his wife as became a considerate and leal-hearted gentleman. Great issues were now commencing to loom on the political horizon, when Lincoln was to take a prominent, and at length a commanding, position in their discussion and direction. To the consideration and handling of these issues the orator s phenomenal gifts and qualities of heart and brain were very helpful in enabling him to unravel the knots, and in leading him to divine the course the issues ought to take in the broadest interests of the nation. Before this era, the frontier " rail-splitter " had provisionally become a member of Congress ; but it was not until the year 1854, four years after Clay s Mis souri Compromise Bill had transferred the preponder ance of power to the South, by opening the territories to x ii INTRODUCTION. the extension of slavery and enforcing the Fugitive- Slave Law, that Lincoln s political career actively and influentially began. It was at this juncture also that Judge Stephen A. Douglas, an Illinois senator, came into national prominence and influence. With the latter, " the little giant " as Douglas was popularly called, Lin coln had ere this crossed swords in heated debate, when in 1858 both men were in the running for the United States Senate, Lincoln on the Republican and anti-slavery side, and his opponent on the Democratic ticket, favoring the South and its eagerness for non-interference with its peculiar institution and opposing sectional limitation to the extension of slavery. By this time, the die was now about to be cast, the several political parties ranging themselves in opposing camps, and heralding the coming of the "irrepressible conflict/ which for years was to sunder the nation and bring on the dire horrors of the War of the Rebellion. Meanwhile Lincoln s notable controversy with Douglas greatly enhanced the reputa tion the orator had gained as a debater, while it brought him favorably into notice as a likely candidate for the Republican nomination to the Presidency. His availa bility for the high post was further shown when an Illi nois committee that had favored his claims despatched Lincoln to make a speech at New York and rouse the East by his discussion of the momentous questions of the time. The mission was Lincoln s opportunity, and grandly did he rise to the occasion, as we see in the memorable speech he delivered in Feb. 1860, before an immense and enthusiastic audience at the Cooper In stitute, New York. The speech, which was remarkable for its earnestness and moral force, as well as for its astute use of constitutional logic, created a furore and spread the Western orator s fame throughout the East, where his name was already spoken of as a possible nominee for the chief office in the nation. The speech was followed by other effective utterances in New Eng- INTRODUCTION, xiii land, where, in his inimitable way, Lincoln made a deep impression, despite his rough, almost uncouth, appear ance, and the caution that had been given him, which he literally obeyed, to refrain from diverting his audiences with his witticisms and amusing Western stories. On his return to Illinois, political matters advanced rapidly, and Mr. Seward, Honest Abe s chief rival for the Presi dency, was soon to hear of the two great political parties ranging themselves in hostile array, and to see the North dividing itself into a preponderating element, styled Lin coln States. This was followed by party dissensions and waverings, and by an ominous split in the Democra tic camp, hastened by the rising indignation in the North over the threat of Southern Secession and the precipita tion of armed strife. The nation now neared the era of its heavy and sore trial, at the approach of which Buchanan, then chief magistrate, stood perplexed and irresolute, unable to meet and deal with, far less to avert, the coming crisis. His term of office was to expire in the following March (1861), and in the month of May, 1860, the National Republican Convention met at Chicago to select a candidate to suc ceed Buchanan in the Presidency. That the choice was likely now to be a Western man was pretty evident, since of late the centre of political power had crept West ward ; while the " available " man, as we have indicated, appeared to be the plain, modest, undistinguished lawyer of Springfield, 111., a man thought to be eminently " safe " from the politician s point of view, yet who was exceed ingly popular in his own State, and was now beginning to be widely known for his great oratorical and logical powers, his moderate views, and his intimate acquaint ance with the distracting questions of the time. The contest, on the Republican side, was between Seward, Chase, and Lincoln ; on the Democratic side, the rival candidates were Breckinridge, the Southern favorite ; Douglas, the representative of Northern Democracy ; and INTRODUCTION. Bell (Governor of Tennessee), the standard-bearer ol what was then termed the Constitutional Union Party. Of these various men in the field for the high prize, Lin coln, in the estimation of the political wirepullers, was deemed the least likely to win, for, in comparison with his rivals, he was comparatively unknown ; while even up to this period few persons, as it has been said, " real ized the grandeur of Lincoln s character, his splendid common sense, and his marvellous insight into the real nature of things." He moreover represented, as the same authority (Prof. Edward Channing) has expressed it, " that which was best in American life, under every dis advantage of birth and breeding, he raised himself by his own exertions to the level of the best statesmen of the day. His sincerity, his straightforwardness, his keen perception of right and wrong, were all enforced by a sense of humor and a kindliness of bearing that endeared him to all with whom he came in contact." He was, moreover, as we know, ever near to the people, and had that gentleness of nature which put him in sympathy with the masses and tender towards human hearts in trouble. As the critic, Mr. Hamilton Mabie, writes : " It was this deep heart of pity and love in him which carried him far beyond the reaches of statesmanship or oratory, and gave his words the finality of expression which marks the noblest art." Of his poetic temperament, the same writer thoughtfully remarks, " that there was a deep vein of poetry in Mr. Lincoln is clear to one who reads the story of his early life ; and his innate idealism, set in sur roundings so harsh and rude, had something to do with his melancholy. The sadness which was mixed with his whole life, was, however, largely due to his temperament ; in which the final tragedy seemed always to be predicted. In that temperament, too, is hidden the secret of the rare quality of nature and mind which suffused his pub lic speech and turned so much of it into literature. There was humor in it, there was deep human sympathy, INTRODUCTION. xv there was clear mastery of words for the use to which he put them ; but there was something deeper and more persuasive, there was the quality of his temperament; and temperament is a large part of ge nius. The inner forces of his nature played through his thought; and when great occasions touched him to the quick, his whole nature shaped his speech and gave it clear intelligence, deep feeling, and that beauty which is distilled out of the depths of the sorrows and hopes of the world." Such was the manner, and such were the characteristic qualities, of the man whom Providence had now raised up to preside over the destinies of the nation at a most grave and calamitous crisis in its historic annals. What his political education had been, and what success he had hitherto gained, we have, in the course of this article, endeavored to point out, and especially the fame he had won as a speaker and debater after his contest with Judge Douglas over the senatorship, a contest, as the present writer has elsewhere said, " that showed in a remarkable manner what his powers were in the field of national as well as of local politics, and how effectively he had mastered the constitutional and other questions of the time that enabled him to vanquish his adversary. Other gifts and qualities as a debater brought him success, particularly those that extort admiration from an in telligent, dispassionate audience, namely, restraint in the speaker, that puts a check upon unfair as well as incon clusive argument, and the absence of temper and of any thing bitter or personal in the style and manner of his address. In these respects, the future President was invariably honest with himself, as well as with his opponent and his hearers, and never allowed himself to utter an unbecoming taunt or fling at those opposed to him, even in the most heated of party controversies. Such, as we have said, were the traits of the man who, when great issues were beginning to loom on the troubled political horizon, was to take a commanding position in. INTRODUCTION. their discussion and direction, and who brought with him the potent influences of a clean, high heart, and a record for all that was worthy and honorable in one aspiring to usefulness and patriotic duty in public life." But let us here return to the meeting at Chicago, in Nov. 1860, of the National Republican Convention, where the practical step was taken in the nomination of a president, in succession to Mr. Buchanan, a nomination that ranged the forces of slavery and freedom into deadly conflict in the struggle for supremacy in the government of the nation. To the attitude and decision of the Con vention the eyes of the whole country were naturally at the period turned to the prairie State, and keen was the interest felt by all when, after the third ballot, Lin coln was found to be the unanimous choice of the body for the presidency, with Hannibal Hamliri, of Maine, for the office of Vice-president. The election presently followed, the popular vote resulting in these figures. Lincoln, 1,866,462 ; Douglas, 1,875,157 ; Breckinridge, 847,953 ; Bell, 590,631. The electoral vote showed the following results: Lincoln, 180; Douglas, 12; Breckin ridge, 72 ; and Bell, 39. The sequel to this triumph of the Northern anti-slaver} 7 " platform was, as all know, the secession of South Carolina and the Gulf States, followed some few months later by that of the border Slave States, and the outbreak of the Civil War. For the next four years, the life of Abraham Lincoln becomes merged in that of the nation, and is inseparable from the tragic story of the fratricidal conflict which ensued, with the terrible period of strain through which both President and nation passed in its dire happenings. In March, 1861, Mr. Lincoln was quietly though impressively in stalled in office, on which occasion he made an earnest plea for peace and union, at the same time deprecating Southern apprehension of menace or danger arising from the accession of a Republican Administration. Address ing the South and its sympathizers particularly, Presi- INTRODUCTION. xv il dent Lincoln closed his address with these cautionary though friendly words : " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government ; while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it. . We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies : though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." With such wise restraint and extreme tenderness, did Lincoln appeal to the erring South at this critical juncture of affairs, the unhappy answer to which, only five weeks later, was the firing upon and capture by the Southern forces in the field of Fort Sumter. Meanwhile, other United States forts and arsenals had been seized by the seceders, and a Con federate Government had been created, with Jefferson Davis as President, and the States of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had joined South Carolina in passing ordinances of secession. Later on, the States of Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee joined the new-pledged Confederacy and took themselves out of the Union. While these momentous events were happening, the machinery of the Washington Government was organized, Mr. Lincoln calling to his Cabinet a number of able and experienced men, some of whom had been his rivals in the contest for the Presidency. Of these notable men called to the councils of the nation, Mr. Seward ac cepted the post of Secretary of State ; Salmon P. Chase, who had been a senator and governor of Ohio, was made INTRODUCTION. Secretary of the Treasury ; Gideon Welles became Secre tary of the Navy ; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster- General ; Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney -General ; Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior ; while the Secretary of War was Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, later on succeeded by Edwin M. Stanton. Of these states men, strong and able though they severally were, the master hand in the rule of the nation was Lincoln him self, as we see in his effective though quiet rebuke to Seward, who had showed a disposition shortly after the President s installation, if not to take the direction of affairs into his own hand, to assert his own individuality as chief minister of the State. Not to be borne was this impatience of Mr. Seward, for Mr. Lincoln s capacity was undoubted to manage both affairs and men under him, while doing no violence constitutionally by any arbitrary proceedings of his own, or in vital matters overriding the wise, legitimate counsels of his Cabinet. The aggressive act of the Confederacy in its attack on Fort Sumter, while it startled the North and inflamed its people with a righteous indignation, was promptly and vigorously met by President Lincoln, by an instant call, as commander-in-chief, for 75.000 men of the Union militia a call that was immediately and enthusiastically responded to. With its issue as a retort to the Southern challenge to battle, Mr. Lincoln commanded the seced ing States in arms to disperse and return peacefully to their homes within twenty days, while he at the same time appealed " to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid the effort to maintain the honor, the integrity and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government." This was followed by placing the Southern ports under blockade, and by calls for larger levies of troops to cope with the crisis, which, on and after the battle of Bull Run (July 21, 1861) assumed menacing and destructive proportions. So grave was the emergency, and so protracted as well as disastrous at INTRODUCTION. first to the Northern arms was the struggle, that the cares and responsibilities of his exalted office bore heavily on the President and put a most serious and constant strain upon him and his Administration. Especially onerous were the duties and depressing the effects upon Mr. Lincoln when a year even had elapsed with no decisive results, although at this time 200,000 men had been put in the field and experiment after experiment had been tried with the generals who had been succes sively appointed to chief command in the War. Amid the perplexities of the time, and the many discourage ments and saddening military reverses that marked his four years incumbency of office, only a resolute, patriotic purpose and an undaunted, invincible spirit could have sustained Mr. Lincoln in his duties until light at length, happily, broke through the gloom and the North emerged triumphant from the conflict. The details of the mighty struggle, we need hardly say, it is foreign to the motif of the present volume here to relate ; nor is there need obviously of this, with the many histories of the war and biographies of its several chief commanders available to the reader. Our purpose rather is to follow, in as brief compass as possible, the main incidents in the career of President Lincoln, as an introduction to his chief Speeches and Addresses, and to throw light upon the mental and moral character of the man and on his equipment as an orator and debater of the first eminence among great American Statesmen. As we have said, the conflict, with its repeated disasters and dismays throughout the dark days of its early conduct, told heavily upon the President ; and great was the tax upon his energies and anxieties in directing and manag ing affairs and in keeping the nation in heart to pursue the war to a successful close. Nor was the task made easier with dissension in the Cabinet, and criticisms from the outside, including all manner of misrepresentations and sometimes ridiculings and malignings, uncomplain- xx INTRODUCTION. ingly borne, with the sturdiness and chivalry of his kindly, inoffensive nature. Obviously, moreover, the matter of selecting and appointing the generals- in- chief placed a heavy responsibility upon the President s shoulders, and often, unfortunately, was he called to this duty, in consequence of the successive failures or tardi ness in movement of those in chief command. The re straint he placed upon himself in the matter of emanci pating the slaves was a further trial to Lincoln, since, however anxious he was to resort to the measure, which finally led to the discomfiture of the South and brought the War to a close, he was long deterred from putting the liberating edict in force until it became indispensable (as well as justifiable) as a means " to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation." At length, the time came when the peremptory decree of Emancipation could with reason and certain effectiveness be launched ; and this was done Jan. 1, 1868, with obvious and fortunate results. Almost instantly thereafter there were signs of breaking day, in the events that followed in the siege and capture of Vicksburg and the clearing and opening of the Mississippi; in the military move ments that led to the cutting of the Confederate States in twain ; and in the operations, later on, such as the great battle of Chattanooga, Sheridan s driving the enemy from the Valley of the Shenandoah, the capture of Mobile, and the movements of Grant on his onward march upon Richmond, with Lee s rout and surrender at Appomattox and the finale of the war. The conflict, on both sides, had its appalling losses of both life and treasure ; but the end, forecast even before his passing tragically from the scene, was to cheer Lincoln s heart and gladden his soul, despite all the sacrifices, on the Northern side, entailed to preserve the L T nion. Though the war in many quarters had its numberless active and noisy opponents, and though many, more reasonably, grumbled at the entailed alarming deprecia- INTRODUCTION. XXI tion of the currency and the heaping up of financial deficits, with burdening pension-list imposts, Mr. Lincoln, at the expiring of his first term, was reflected in 1864, with Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, on the ticket with him for Vice- President. Mr. Lincoln s election for a new term gave occasion for the preparation and delivery of the great Chief s Second Inaugural Address (delivered at Washington, Mar. 4. 1865), an utterance of brief, but dignified and memorable, interest. In the address, as it has been observed, are to be noted Mr. Lincoln s characteristic " tenderness and compassion, blended with stern energy and iron firmness of will, which shrank from bloodshed and violence, yet counted any sacrifice of blood and treasure as of little account in comparison with the transcendent blessing of national union and liberty." It closes with the following fine adjuration : " With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to build up the nation s wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and last ing peace among ourselves, and with all nations." More brief still, but surpassing the Second Inaugural in pathetic tenderness and high literary interest, is Mr. Lincoln s address at the Dedication (Nov. 19, 1863) of the Gettys burg National Cemetery. For simple but fervid eloquence and unstudied beauty of rhetoric, the Address has hardly its equal among the immortal utterances of the world s oratory. Especially noteworthy is the dignity of its rhythmic sentences, as are its reticence and its remark able condensation. How true and touching, as well as beautiful, is the following passage : " We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we INTRODUCTION. say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; and that Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The auspicious aspect of affairs in 1865, in the prospect of a speedy termination of the prolonged and disastrous war, spread elation over the North and was an immense relief to all classes of the people. By President Lincoln it was hailed with manifest inward satisfaction ; while great was his delight at the coming peaceful reunion of the nation. Happily, ere his own tragic death came, he was to learn of almost the final incident in the long chronicle of internecine strife, for at Appomattox, on April 9th, Lee, the great leader of the Southern arms, surrendered the army of Northern Virginia to General Grant, and practically the end came of the rebellion. In startling and pitiful contrast to the return of peace over the land, was the event which sent a thrill of horror throughout and beyond the nation, the striking down of the loved President, at Ford s Theatre in Washington, on the evening of April 14th, by the weapon of the assas sin, J. Wilkes Booth, " a demented sympathizer with the cause of disunion." Early in the morning of the follow ing fateful day, Lincoln s soul passed from its earthly tenement, and a pall of deep gloom spread over the land, broken only by" the lamentations of the people he loved so well. The funeral obsequies of the martyred chief tain a day or two later followed, and Lincoln s remains were borne amid mighty pageantries to their last resting- INTRODUCTION. xx iii place in Springfield, 111., the patriot President s former home. The Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, we need hardly relate, succeeded to the office of the chief magis tracy of the Republic ; while the great war reached its close with the fall of Richmond, the flight and subse quent capture of Jefferson Davis, and the clement issue of a proclamation of amnesty, with the happy return of the Union soldiers and sailors to private life. The work of Reconstruction, to which Lincoln had begun to address himself before his sadly-mourned death, now passed to other hands, while the nation lost in this important task what doubtless would have been of rich and priceless service to it. Though passed from earth, the memory of the great Emancipator is enshrined in the hearts of his admiring countrymen ; while he has a no less abiding- place in history and on the proud roll of a nation s benefactors. " Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American." ABRAHAM LINCOLN. BY TOM TAYLOR, IN LONDON Punch, APRIL, 1865. " How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be ; How, in good fortune and in ill. the same ; Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he. Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. He went about his work such work as few Ever had laid on head and heart and hand, As one who knows, where there s a task to do, Man s honest will must Heaven s good grace command ; Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That God makes instruments to work his will, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. INTRODUCTION. So he went forth to battle, on the side That he felt clear was Liberty s and Right s, As in his peasant boyhood he had plied His warfare with rude Nature s thwarting mights ; The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, The iron-bark that turns the lumberer s axe, The rapid that o erbears the boatman s toil, The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer s tracks. So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it ; four long-suffering years, Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, And then he heard the hisses, changed to cheers, The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, And took both with the same unwavering mood ; Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, A felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest, And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim , Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest ! The words of mercy were upon his lips. Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen. When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men." SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THE PERPETUATION OF OUR POLTICAL INSTITUTIONS. [An Address, delivered Jan. 27, 1837, to a Young Men s Lyceum organization in Springfield, 111., which Mr. Lincoln had taken part in founding for the mutual improvement of its members. In it, it will be seen, how thoughtfully Lincoln refers to the prevalent evils of mob rule, and points out the danger that menaces political institutions in a lack of reverence for law and the displacement of reason by passion and wild appeals to passion]. IN the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account run ning under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful pos session of the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essen tially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them ; they are a legacy bequeathed us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed, race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; t is ours only to transmit these the former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by 1 2 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. usurpation to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require ua faithfuHyto perform. How then shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect -the. approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?. Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If de struction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide. I hope I am over wary ; but if I am not, there is even now something of ill omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the coun try the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fear ful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have per vaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding States. Alike SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 3 they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever then their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. It would be tedious as well as useless to recount the horrors of all of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi and at St. Louis are perhaps the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity. In the Mississippi case they first commenced by hanging the regular gamblers a set of men certainly not follow ing for a livelihood a very useful or very honest occupa tion, but one which, so far from being forbidden by the laws, was actually licensed by an act of the legis lature passed but a single year before. Next, negroes suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State; then, white men supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers from neighboring States, going thither on business, were in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hang ing, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers, till dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every roadside, and in numbers almost sufficient to rival the native Spanish moss of the country as a drapery of the forest. Turn then to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim only was sacrificed there. This story is very short, and is perhaps the most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man by the name of Mclntosh was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman attending to his own business and at peace with the world. Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more and more frequent in this land 4 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. so lately famed for love of law and order, and the stories of which have even now grown too familiar to attract anything more than an idle remark. But you are perhaps ready to ask, " What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions? " I answer, " It has much to do with it." Its direct con sequences are, comparatively speaking, but a small evil, and much of its danger consists in the proneness of our minds to regard its direct as its only consequences. Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Yicksburg was of but little consequence. They con stitute a portion of population that is worse than use less in any community; and their death, if no per nicious example be set by it, is never matter of reason able regret with any one. If they were annually swept from the stage of existence by the plague or smallpox, honest men would perhaps be much profited by thts operation. Similar too is the correct reasoning in re gard to the burning of the negro at St. Louis. He had forfeited his life by the perpetration of an outrageous murder upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens of the city, and had he not died as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law in a very short time afterward. As to him alone, it was as well the way it was as it could otherwise have been. But the example in either case was fearful. When men take it in their heads to-day to hang gamblers or burn mur derers, they should recollect that in the confusion usually attending such transactions they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is, and that, act ing upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so ; the inno cent, those who have ever set their faces against viola tions of law in every shape, alike with the guilty fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 5 of the persons and property of individuals are trodden down and disregarded. But all this, even, is not the full extent of the evil. By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment, they thus become absolutely un restrained. Having ever regarded government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations, and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered, their persons injured, and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, become tired of and disgusted with a govern ment that offers them no protection, and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocratic spirit which all must admit is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed I mean the attachment of the people. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend on it, this government cannot last. By such things the feel ings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual. At such a time, and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and 6 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric which for the last half century has been the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world. I know the American people are much attached to their government ; I know they would suffer much for its sake; I know they would endure evils long and patiently before they would ever think of exchanging it for another, yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come. Here then is one point at which danger may be ex pected. The question recurs, " How shall we fortify against it? " The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his prop erty, and his sacred honor let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children s liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. f of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. While ever a state of feeling such as this shall uni versally or even very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom. When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with. There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any case that may arise, as, for in stance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protec tion of all law and all good citizens, or it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enact ments ; and in neither case is the interposition of mob law either necessary, justifiable, or excusable. But it may be asked, " Why suppose danger to our political institutions? Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years? And why may we not for fifty times as long? " We hope there is no sufficient reason. We hope all danger may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would itself be extremely dan gerous. There are now, and will hereafter be, many causes, dangerous in their tendency^ which have not existed heretofore, and which are not too insignificant to merit attention. That our government should have 3 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. been maintained in its original form, from its estab lishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period it was felt by all to be an undecided ex periment; now it is understood to be a successful one. Then, all that sought celebrity and fame and distinc tion expected to find them in the success of that ex periment. Their all was staked upon it; their destiny was inseparably linked with it. Their ambition as pired to display before an admiring world a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition which had hitherto been considered at best no better than proble matical namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves. If they succeeded they were to be immor talized; their names were to be transferred to counties, and cities, and rivers, and mountains ; and to be revered and sung, toasted through all time. If they failed, they were to be called knaves, and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded. The experiment is successful, and thousands have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is caught; and I believe it is true that with the catching end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they too will seek a field. It is to deny what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion as others have done before them. The question then is, Can that grati fication be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found whose ambition would aspire to nothing be yond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presiden- I SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 9 tial chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What ! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Cresar, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinc tion in adding story to story upon the monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen. Is it un reasonable, then, to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such an one does, it will re quire the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelli gent, to successfully frustrate his designs. Distinction will be his paramount object, and al though he would as willingly, perhaps more so, ac quire it by doing good as harm, yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down. Here then is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such an one as could not have well existed heretofore. Another reason which once was, but which, to the same extent, is now no more, has done much in main taining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolu tion had upon the passions of the people as distin guished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature, and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and con scious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, }Q SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest princi ples of our nature were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest of causes that of establishing and maintain ing civil and religious liberty. But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it. I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolu tion are now or ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participa tor in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family a history bearing the indubitable testi monies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foe- man could never do, the silent artillery of time has done the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurri cane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. n limbs more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more. They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason cold, cal culating, unimpassioned reason must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense. Let those materials be molded into general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws; and that we improved to the last, that we remained free to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we per mitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington. Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis, and, as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, " the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 12 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF KEPRESENTA- TIVES, WASHINGTON JAN. 12, 1848. [The following is the earliest of Mr. Lincoln s printed speeches in Congress, delivered during the Honorable Member s first Con gressional Session. The era was that of the War with Mexico, and the burden of the speech is a difference with President Polk over the cause of the War, in the vexed question at the period as to the true boundary of Texas, then recently admitted as a State of the Union. In the uncertainty as to the true boundary of the State, whether at the Nueces River, in South western Texas, or at the Rio Grande, Lincoln held that the Administration had done wrong to sanction the erection of Fort Brown, on the Rio Grande, and that the nation was guilty of aggression on Mexican territory, which led to " the shedding of American blood on American soil." The arraignment of the President, it will be seen, is a tart one, and in the forced issue it was naturally unpopular at the era, when the nation was exultant over the achievements of the War]. Mr. Chairman: Some if not all the gentlemen on the other side of the House who have addressed the com mittee within the last two days have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconsti tutionally commenced by the president. I admit that such a vote should not be given in mere party wantonness, and that the one given is justly censurable, if it have no other or better foundation. I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did so under my best impression of the truth of the case. How I got this impression, and how it may possibly be remedied, I will now try to show. When the war began, it was my opinion that all those who because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not con scientiously oppose the conduct of the President in the beginning of it should nevertheless, as good citizens Earliest Portrait of Lincoln, 1848 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 13 and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till the war should be ended. Some leading Democrats, including ex-President Van Buren, have taken this same view, as I understand them; and I adhered to it and acted upon it, until since I took my seat here ; and I think I should still adhere to it were it not that the President and his friends will not allow it to be so. Besides the continual effort of the President to argue every silent vote given for supplies into an indorse ment of the justice and wisdom of his conduct; besides that singularly candid paragraph in his late message in which he tells us that Congress with great una nimity had declared that u by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United States," when the same journals that informed him of this also informed him that when that declaration stood disconnected from the question of supplies sixty-seven in the House, and not fourteen merely, voted against it; besides this open attempt to prove by telling the truth what he could not prove by telling the whole truth demanding of all who will not submit to be misrepresented, in justice to them selves, to speak out, besides all this, one of my col leagues [Mr. Richardson] at a very early day in the ses sion brought in a set of resolutions expressly indors ing the original justice of the war on the part of the President. Upon these resolutions when they shall be put on their passage I shall be compelled to vote; so that I cannot be silent if I would. Seeing this, I went about preparing myself to give the vote understand- ingly when it should come. I carefully examined the President s message, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this ex amination was to make the impression that, taking for true all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification ; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not per- 14 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. mit him. Under the impression thus made I gave the vote before mentioned. I propose now to give con cisely the process of the examination I made, and how I reached the conclusion I did. The President, in his first war message of May, 1846, declares that the soil was ours on which hostilities were commenced by Mexico, and he repeats that declaration almost in the same language in each successive annual message, thus showing that he deems that point a highly essential one. In the importance of that point I entirely agree with the President. To my judgment it is the very point upon which he should be justified, or condemned. In his message of December, 1846, it seems to have oc curred to him, as is certainly true, that title owner ship to soil or anything else is not a simple fact, but is a conclusion following on one or more simple facts; and that it was incumbent upon him to present the facts from which he concluded the soil was ours on which the first blood of the war was shed. Accordingly, a little below the middle of page twelve in the message last referred to he enters upon that task ; forming an issue and introducing testimony, ex tending the whole to a little below the middle of page fourteen. Now, I propose to try to show that the whole of this issue and evidence is from beginning to end the sheerest deception. The issue, as he presents it, is in these words : " But there are those who, conceding all this to be true, assume the ground that the true western boundary of Texas is the Nueces, instead of the Rio Grande; and that, therefore, in marching our army to the east bank of the latter river, we passed the Texas line and invaded the territory of Mexico." Now this issue is made up of two affirmatives and no nega tive. The main deception of it is that it assumes as true that one river or the other is necessarily the boun dary ; and cheats the superficial thinker entirely out of the idea that possibly the boundary is somewhere between the two, and not actually at either. A further SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ^5 deception is that it will let in evidence which a true issue would exclude. A true issue made by the Presi dent would be about as follows: "I say the soil was ours, on which the first blood was shed; there are those who say it was not." I now proceed to examine the President s evidence as applicable to such an issue. When that evidence is analyzed, it is all included in the following proposi tions: (1) That the Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana as we purchased it of France in 1803. (2) That the Republic of Texas always claimed the Rio Grande as her western boundary. (3) That by various acts she had claimed it on paper. (4) That Santa Anna in his treaty with Texas recog nized the Rio Grande as her boundary. (5) That Texas before, and the United States after, annexation had exercised jurisdiction beyond the Neuces between the two rivers. (6) That our Congress understood the boundary of Texas to extend beyond the Neuces. Now for each of these in its turn. His first item is that the Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana, as we purchased it of France in 1803; and seeming to expect this to be disputed, he argues over the amount of nearly a page to prove it true ; at the end of which he lets us know that by the treaty of 1819 we sold to Spain the whole country from the Rio Grande eastward to the Sabine. Now, admitting for the pres ent that the Rio Grande was the boundary of Louisiana, what, under heaven, had that to do with the present boundary between us and Mexico? How, Mr. Chair man, the line that once divided your land from mine can still be the boundary between us after I have sold my land to you is to me beyond all comprehension. And how any man, with an honest purpose only of prov ing the truth, could ever have thought of introduc ing such a fact to prove such an issue is equally incom- 1Q SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. prehensible. His next piece of evidence is that " the Republic of Texas always claimed this river (Rio Grande) as her western boundary." That is not true, in fact. Texas has claimed it, but she has not always claimed it. There is at least one distinguished excep tion. Her State constitution the republic s most solemn and well-considered act ; that which may, with out impropriety, be called her last will and testa ment, revoking all others makes no such claim. But suppose she had always claimed it. Has not Mexico always claimed the contrary? So that there is but claim against claim, leaving nothing proved until we get back of the claims and find which has the better foundation. Though not in the order in which the President presents his evidence, I now consider that class of his statements which are in substance nothing more than that Texas has, by various acts of her Con vention and Congress, claimed the Rio Grande as her boundary, on paper. I mean here what he says about the fixing of the Rio Grande as her boundary in her old constitution (not her State constitution), about forming congressional districts, counties, etc. Now all of this is but naked claim; and what I have already said about claims is strictly applicable to this. If I should claim your land by word of mouth, that cer tainly would not make it mine; and if I were to claim it by a deed which I had made myself, and with which you had had nothing to do, the claim would be quite the same in substance or rather, in utter nothingness. I next consider the President s statement that Santa Anna in his treaty with Texas recognized the Rio Grande as the western boundary of Texas. Besides the position so often taken, that Santa Anna while a prisoner of war, a captive, could not bind Mexico by a treaty, which I deem conclusive besides this, I wish to say something in relation to this treaty, so called by the President, with Santa Anna. If any man would like to be amused by a sight of that little thing which SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 17 the President calls by that big name, he can have it by turning to " Niles s Register," Vol. L, p. 336. And if any one should suppose that u Niles s Register " is a curious repository of so mighty a document as a solemn treaty between nations, I can only say that I learned to a tolerable degree of certainty, by inquiry at the State Department, that the President himself never saw it anywhere else. By the way, I believe I should not err if I were to declare that during the first ten years of the existence of that document it was never by anybody called a treaty that it was never so called till the President, in his extremity, attempted by so call ing it to wring something from it in justification of himself in connection with the Mexican war. It has none of the distinguishing features of a treaty. It does not call itself a treaty. Santa Anna does not therein assume to bind" Mexico ; he assumes only to act as the President-Commander-in-Chief of the Mexican army and navy; stipulates that the then present hostilities should cease, and that he would not himself take up arms, nor influence the Mexican people to take up arms, against Texas during the existence of the war of inde pendence. He did not recognize the independence of Texas ; he did not assume to put an end to the war, but clearly indicated his expectation of its continuance; he did not say one word about boundary, and, most probably, never thought of it. It is stipulated therein that the Mexican forces should evacuate the territory of Texas, passing to the other side of the Rio Grande; and in another article it is stipulated that, to prevent collisions between the armies, the Texas army should not approach nearer than within five leagues of what is not said, but clearly, from the object stated, it is of the Rio Grande. Now, if this is a treaty recognizing the Rio Grande as the boundary of Texas, it contains the singular features of stipulating that Texas shall not go within five leagues of her own boundary. Next comes the evidence of Texas before annexation, 2 18 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. and the United States afterward, exercising jurisdic tion beyond the Nueces and between the two rivers. This actual exercise of jurisdiction is the very class or quality of evidence we want. It is excellent so far as it goes; but does it go far enough? He tells us it went beyond the Nueces, but he does not tell us it went to the Rio Grande. He tells us jurisdiction was ex ercised between the two rivers, but he does not tell us it was exercised over all the territory between them. Some simple-minded people think it is possible to cross one river and go beyond it without going all the way to the next, that jurisdiction may be exercised between two rivers without covering all the country between them. I know a man, not very unlike myself, who exercises jurisdiction over a piece of land between the Wabash and the Mississippi ; and yet so far is this from being all there is between those rivers that it is just one hundred and fifty-two feet long by fifty feet wide, and no part of it much within a hundred miles of either. He has a neighbor between him and the Miss issippi that is, just across the street, in that direction whom I am sure he could neither persuade nor force to give up his habitation; but which nevertheless he could certainly annex, if it were to be done by merely standing on his own side of the street and claiming it, or even sitting down and writing a deed for it. But next the President tells us the Congress of the United States understood the State of Texas they ad mitted into the Union to extend beyond the Nueces. Well, I suppose they did. I certainly so understood it. But how far beyond? That Congress did not under stand it to extend clear to the Rio Grande is quite certain, by the fact of their joint resolutions for admis sion expressly leaving all questions of boundary to future adjustment. And it may be added that Texas herself is proved to have had the same understanding of it that our Congress had, by the fact of the exact conformity of her new constitution to those resolu tions. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". 19 I am now through the whole of the President s evi dence ; and it is a singular fact that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there and thereby the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said which would either admit or deny the declaration. This strange omission it does seem to me could not have occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for his client s neck in a desperate case, em ploying every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words some point arising in the case which he dared not admit and yet could not deny. Party bias may help to make it appear so, but with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does appear to me that just such, and from just such neces sity, is the President s struggle in this case. Some time after my colleague [Mr. Richardson] in troduced the resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble, resolution, and interrogations, intended to draw the President out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground. To show their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true rule for ascer taining the boundary between Texas and Mexico. It is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers ; and that whatever separated the actual exer cise of jurisdiction of the one from that of the other was the true boundary between them. If, as is prob ably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, then neither river was the boundary; but the uninhabited country between the two was. The extent of our ter ritory in that region depended not on any treaty- 20 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on revolution. Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right a right which we hope and be lieve is to liberate the world. Nor is this right con fined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near about them, who may oppose this move ment. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revo lutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones. As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in 1803, and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President s statements. After this, all Mexico, including Texas, revolutionized against Spain; and still later Texas revolutionized against Mexico. In my view, just so far as she carried her resolution by obtaining the actual, willing or unwilling, submission of the people, so far the country was hers, and no far ther. Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him at tempt no evasion no equivocation. And if, so answer- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ^1 ing, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed, that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabi tants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas or of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown, then I am with him for his justification. In that case I shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. I have a selfish motive for desiring that the President may do this I expect to gain some votes, in connection with the war, which, without his so doing, will be of doubtful pro priety in my own judgment, but which will be free from the doubt if he does so. But if he can not or will not do this, if on any pretense or no pretense he shall refuse or omit it then I shall be fully convinced of what I more than suspect already that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him; that originally having some strong mo tive what, I will not stop now to give my opinion con cerning to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood that serpent s eye that charms to destroy, he plunged into it, and has swept on and on till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like the half-insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of his late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever that we can get but territory; at another showing us how we can support the war by levying contributions on Mexico. At one time urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign inter ference, and even the good of Mexico herself as among the objects of the war; at another telling us that "to reject indemnity, by refusing to accept a cession of 22 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. territory, would be to abandon all our just demands, and to wage the war bearing all its expenses, without a purpose or definite object." So then this national honor, security of the future, and everything but ter ritorial indemnity may be considered the no-purposes and indefinite objects of the war! But, having it now settled that territorial indemnity is the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here, all that he was content to take a few months ago, and the whole province of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the war to take all we are fighting for, and still fight on. Again, the President is resolved under all circumstances to have full territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the excess after those expenses shall have surpassed the value of the whole of the Mexican territory. So again, he insists that the separate national existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us how this can be done, after we shall have taken all her territory. Lest the questions I have suggested be considered speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show they are not. The war has gone on some twenty months ; for the ex penses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the President now claims about one half of the Mexican territory, and that by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to make anything out of it. It is comparatively uninhabited; so that we could establish land offices in it, and raise some money in that way. But the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country, and all its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private property. How then are we to make anything out of these lands with this encumbrance on them? or how remove the encum brance? I suppose no one would say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them ; or confiscate their property. How, then, can we make SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 23 much out of this part of the territory? If the prosecu tion of the war has in expenses already equaled the better half of the country, how long its future prose cution will be in equaling the less valuable half is not a speculative, but a practical, question, pressing closely upon us. And yet it is a question which the President seems never to have thought of. As to the mode of terminating the war and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy s country; and after ap parently talking himself tired on this point, the Presi dent drops down into a half-despairing tone, and tells us that " with a people distracted and divided by con tending factions, and a government subject to con stant changes by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace." Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and, trusting in our protestations, to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us that " this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace." But soon he falls into doubt of this too ; and then drops back onto the already half-abandoned ground of " more vigorous prosecu tion." All this shows that the President is in nowise satisfied with his own positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it he argues himself out of it, then seizes another and goes through the same process, and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tor tured creature on a burning surface, finding no posi tion on which it can settle down and be at ease. Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates w r hen the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, General Scott was 24; SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. by this same President driven into disfavor, if not dis grace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes, every de partment and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever be fore been thought men could not do after all this, this same President gives a long message, without showing us that as to the end he himself has even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplened man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more pain ful than all his mental perplexity. EULOGY ON HENRY CLAY. [The following is the substance of a laudatory Address, de livered July 16, 1852, by Mr. Lincoln in the State House at Springfield, 111., on the life and distinguished services of Henry Clay, who died at Washington, D. C., on the 29th of the preced ing month, in his seventy-fifth year. The Eulogy of the eloquent and eminent statesman is a well-reasoned and appreciative one, dwelling on Mr. Clay s great services to the nation throughout his lengthened and useful career, during which he wielded a potent as well as salutary influence in legislation. Mr. Lincoln, it will be seen, speaks justly and approvingly of Mr. Clay s dis tinctive service in effecting the Missouri Compromise of 1850, a measure which, unhappily, was repealed four years later. The speech appeared at the time in the Illinois State Journal]. ON the fourth day of July, 1776, the people of a few- feeble and oppressed colonies of Great Britain, inhabit ing a portion of the Atlantic coast of North America, publicly declared their national independence, and made their appeal to the justice of their cause and to the God of battles for the maintenance of that declara tion. That people were few in number and without re- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 25 sources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within the first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance was yet problematical, while the bloody struggle between those resolute rebels and their haughty would-be masters was still waging, of undistinguished parents and in an obscure district of one of those colonies Henry Clay was born. The in fant nation and the infant child began the race of life together. For three quarters of a century they have traveled hand in hand. They have been companions ever. The nation has passed its perils, and it is free, prosperous, and powerful. The child has reached his manhood, his middle age, his old age, and is dead. In all that has concerned the nation the man ever sympa thized; and now the nation mourns the man. Henry Clay was born on the twelfth day of April, 1777, in Hanover County, Virginia. Of his father, who died in the fourth or fifth year of Henry s age, little seems to be known, except that he was a respectable man and a preacher of the Baptist persuasion. Mr. Clay s education to the end of life was comparatively limited. I say " to the end of life," because I have un derstood that from time to time he added something to his education during the greater part of his whole life. Mr. Clay s lack of a more perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally, teaches at least one profitable lesson : it teaches that in this country one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably. In his twenty-third year Mr. Clay was licensed to practise law, and emigrated to Lexington, Kentucky. Here he commenced and continued the practice till the year 1803,. when he was first elected to the Kentucky legislature. By successive elections he was continued in the legislature till the latter part of 1806, when he was elected to fill a vacancy of a single session in the United States Senate. In 1807 he was 26 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. again elected to the Kentucky House of Representa tives, and by that body chosen Speaker. In 1808 he was reflected to the same body. In 1809 he was again chosen to fill a vacancy of two years in the United States Senate. In 1811 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, and on the first day of taking his seat in that body he w r as chosen its Speaker. In 1813 he was again elected Speaker. Early in 1814, being the period of our last British war, Mr. Clay was sent as commissioner, with others, to negotiate a treaty of peace, which treaty was concluded in the latter part of the same year. On his return from Europe he was again elected to the lower branch of Congress, and on taking his seat in December, 1815, was called to his old post the Speaker s chair, a posi tion in w r hich he was retained by successive elections, with one brief intermission, till the inauguration of John Quincy Adams, in March, 1825. He w r as then ap pointed Secretary of State, and occupied that im portant station till the inauguration of General Jack son, in March, 1829. After this he returned to Kentucky, resumed the practice of law, and continued it till the autumn of 1831, when he was by the legisla ture of Kentucky again placed in the United States Senate. By a reelection he was continued in the Senate till he resigned his seat and retired, in March, 1848. In December, 1849, he again took his seat in the Senate, which he again resigned only a few months be fore his death. By the foregoing it is perceived that the period from the beginning of Mr. Clay s official life in 1803 to the end of 1852 is but one year short of half a century, and that the sum of all the intervals in it will not amount to ten years. But mere duration of time in office con stitutes the smallest part of Mr. Clay s history. Throughout that long period he has constantly been the most loved and most implicitly followed by friends, and the most dreaded by opponents, of all living Ameri- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 27 can politicians. In all the great questions which have agitated the country, and particularly in those fearful crises, the Missouri question, the nullification question, and the late slavery question, as connected with the newly acquired territory, involving and endangering the stability of the Union, his has been the leading and most conspicuous part. In 1824 he was first a candi date for the Presidency, and was defeated; and al though he was successively defeated for the same office in 1832 and in 1844, there has never been a moment since 1824 till after 1848 when a very large portion of the American people did not cling to him with an enthusiastic hope and purpose of still elevating him to the Presidency. With other men, to be defeated was to be forgotten ; but with him defeat was but a trifling incident, neither changing him nor the world s esti mate of him. Even those of both political parties who have been preferred to him for the highest office have run far briefer courses than he, and left him still shin ing high in the heavens of the political world. Jack son, Van Buren, Harrison, Polk, and Taylor all rose after, and set long before him. The spell the long- enduring spell with which the souls of men were bound to him is a miracle. Who can compass it? It is probably true he owed his preeminence to no one quality, but to a fortunate combination of several. He was surpassingly eloquent; but many eloquent men fail utterly, and they are not, as a class, generally successful. His judgment was excellent; but many men of good judgment live and die unnoticed. His will was indomitable; but this quality often secures to its owner nothing better than a character for useless obstinacy. These, then, were Mr. Clay s leading quali ties. No one of them is very uncommon; but all to gether are rarely combined in a single individual, and this is probably the reason why such men as Henry Clay are so rare in the world. Mr Clay s eloquence did not consist, as many fine 2g SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. specimens of eloquence do, of types and figures, of antithesis and elegant arrangement of words and sen tences, but rather of that deeply earnest and impas sioned tone and manner which can proceed only from great sincerity, and a thorough conviction in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause. This it is that truly touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard Mr. Clay never failed to be moved by it, or ever afterward forgot the impression. All his efforts were made for practical effect. He never spoke merely to be heard. He never delivered a Fourth of July oration, or a eulogy on an occasion like this. As a politician or statesman, no one was so habitually careful to avoid all sectional ground. Whatever he did he did for the whole country. In the construction of his measures, he ever carefully surveyed every part of the field, and duly weighed every conflicting interest. Feeling as he did, and as the truth surely is, that the world s best hope depended on the continued Union of these States, he was ever jealous of and watchful for whatever might have the slightest tendency to separate them. Mr. Clay s predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep devotion to the cause of human liberty a strong sympathy with the oppressed everywhere, and an ardent wish for their elevation. With him this was a primary and all-controlling passion. Subsidiary to this was the conduct of his whole life. He loved his country partly because it was his own country, and mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such the advancement, prosperity, and glory of human liberty, human right, and human nature. He desired the prosperity of his countrymen, partly because they were his countrymen, but chiefly to show to the world that free men could be prosperous. That his views and measures were always the wisest SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 29 needs not to be affirmed; nor should it be on this oc casion, where so many thinking differently join in doing honor to his memory. A free people in times of peace and quiet when pressed by no common danger naturally divide into parties. At such times the man who is of neither party is not, cannot be, of any consequence. Mr. Clay therefore was of a party. Tak ing a prominent part as he did, in all the great political questions of his country for the last half century, the w r isdom of his course on many is doubted and denied by a large portion of his countrymen ; and of such it is not now proper to speak particularly. But there are many others, about his course upon which there is little or no disagreement amongst intelligent and patriotic Americans. Of these last are the war of 1812, the Missouri question, nullification, and the now recent compromise measures. In 1812 Mr. Clay, though not unknown, was still a young man. Whether we should go to war with Great Britain being the question of the day, a minority opposed the declaration of war by Congress, while the majority, though apparently in clined to war, had for years wavered, and hesitated to act decisively. Meanwhile British aggressions multi plied, and grew more daring and aggravated. By Mr. Clay more than any other man the struggle was brought to a decision in Congress. The question, being now fully before Congress, came up in a variety of ways in rapid succession, on most of which occasions Mr. Clay spoke. Adding to all the logic of which the subject was susceptible that noble inspiration which came to him as it came to no other, he afoused and nerved and inspired his friends, and confounded and bore down all opposition. Several of his speeches on these occasions were reported and are still extant, but the best of them all never w r as. During its delivery the reporters forgot their vocations, dropped their pens, and sat enchanted from near the beginning to quite the close. The speech now lives only in the mem* 30 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ory of a few old men, and the enthusiasm with which they cherish their recollection of it is absolutely as tonishing. The precise language of this speech we shall never know; but we do know we cannot help knowing that with deep pathos it pleaded the cause of the injured sailor, that it invoked the genius of the Revolution, that it apostrophized the names of Otis, of Henry, and of Washington, that it appealed to the interest, the pride, the honor, and the glory of the na tion, that it shamed and taunted the timidity of friends, that it scorned and scouted and withered the temerity of domestic foes, that it bearded and defied the British lion, and, rising and swelling and maddening in its course, it sounded the onset, till the charge, the shock, the steady struggle, and the glorious victory all passed in vivid review before the entranced hearers. Important and exciting as was the war question of 1812, it never so alarmed the sagacious statesmen of the country for the safety of the Republic as afterward did the Missouri question. This sprang from that un fortunate source of discord negro slavery. When our Federal Constitution was adopted, we owned no terri tory beyond the limits or ownership of the States, ex cept the territory northwest of the River Ohio and east of the Mississippi. What has since been formed into the States of Maine, Kentucky, and Tennessee, was, I believe, within the limits of or owned by Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina. As to the Northwestern Territory, provision had been made even before the adoption of the Constitution that slavery should never go there. On the admission of States into the Union, carved from the territory we owned before the Con stitution, no question, or at most no considerable ques tion, arose about slavery those which were within the limits of or owned by the old States following re spectively the condition of the parent State, and those within the Northwest Territory following the pre viously made provision. But in 1803 we purchased SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. 3^ Louisiana of the French, and it included with much more what has since been formed into the State of Missouri. With regard to it, nothing had been done to forestall the question of slavery. When, therefore, in 1819, Missouri, having formed a State constitution, without excluding slavery, and with slavery already actually existing within its limits, knocked at the door of the Union for admission, almost the entire repre sentation of the non-slaveholding States objected. A fearful and angry struggle instantly followed. This alarmed thinking men more than any previous ques tion, because, unlike all the former, it divided the country by geographical lines. Mr. Clay was in Congress, and, perceiving the danger, at once engaged his whole energies to avert it. It began, as I have said, in 1819 ; and it did not terminate till 1821. Missouri would not yield the point; and Congress that is, a majority in Congress by repeated votes showed a determination not to admit the State unless it should yield. After several failures and great labor on the part of Mr. Clay to so present the ques tion that a majority could consent to the admission, it was by a vote rejected, and as all seemed to think, finally. A sullen gloom hung over the nation. All felt that the rejection of Missouri was equivalent to a dissolution of the Union, because those States which already had what Missouri was rejected for refusing to relinquish would go with Missouri. All deprecated and deplored this, but none saw how to avert it. For the judgment of members to be convinced of the neces sity of yielding was not the whole difficulty; each had a constituency to meet and to answer to. Mr. Clay, though worn down and exhausted, was appealed to by members to renew his efforts at compromise. He did so, and by some judicious modifications of his plan, coupled with laborious efforts with individual members, and his own overmastering eloquence upon that floor, he finally secured the admission of the State. Brightly 32 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. and captivating as it had previously shown, it was now perceived that his great eloquence was a mere embellishment, or at most but a helping hand to his inventive genius, and his devotion to his country in the day of her extreme peril. After the settlement of the Missouri question, al though a portion of the American people have differed with Mr. Clay, and a majority even appear generally to have been opposed to him on questions of ordinary administration, he seems constantly to have been re garded by all as the man for a crisis. Accordingly, in the days of nullification, and more recently in the re appearance of the slavery question connected with our territory newly acquired of Mexico, the task of devis ing a mode of adjustment seems to have been cast upon Mr. Clay by common consent and his perform ance of the task in each case was little else than a literal fulfilment of the public expectation. Mr. Clay s efforts in behalf of the South Americans, and afterward in behalf of the Greeks, in the times of their respective struggles for civil liberty, are among the finest on record, upon the noblest of all themes, and bear ample corroboration of what I have said was his ruling passion a love of liberty and right, un selfishly, and for their own sakes. Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so fre quently already, I am unwilling to close without re ferring more particularly to Mr. Clay s views and con duct in regard to it. He ever was on principle and in feeling opposed to slavery. The very earliest, and one of the latest, public efforts of his life, separated by a period of more than fifty years, were both made in favor of gradual emancipation. He did not perceive that on a question of human right the negroes were to be excepted from the human race. And yet Mr. Clay Was the owner of slaves. Cast into life when slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 33 how it could be at once eradicated without producing a greater evil even to the cause of human liberty itself. His feeling and his judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose both extremes of opinion on the subject. Those who would shiver into fragments the Union of these States, tear to tatters its now venerated Constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather than slavery should continue a single hour, together with all their more halting sympathizers, have received, and are receiving, their just execration ; and the name and opinions and influence of Mr. Clay are fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against them. But I would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence against the opposite extreme against a few but an increasing number of men who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to ridicule the white man s charter of free dom, the declaration that " all men are created free and equal." So far as I have learned, the first American of any note to do or attempt this was the late John C. Calhoun ; and if I mistake not, it soon after found its way into some of the messages of the Gov ernor of South Carolina. We, however, look for and are not much shocked by political eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina. But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country is prosperous and powerful ; but could it have been quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have demanded, and such in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone. Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that in future national emergen cies He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security. 3 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES. [In the subjoined speech of Mr. Lincoln s, delivered at Peoria, 111., Oct. 16, 1854, in reply to Judge Stephen A. Douglas, after ward Democratic Senator from Illinois, we have the begin nings of a series of notable debates, which marked especially the year 1858, when the two men were to engage in a close and exciting contest for a United States Senatorship, and at the same time thresh out, on opposite sides, the great slavery question, in the struggle soon afterwards to ensue between North and South for sectional supremacy. What immediately pre cipitated the oratorical strife between these two political adver saries and gladiators of debate was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the result of the passing in Congress of the Douglas Act for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, with the proviso that they should be free to regulate their domestic institutions (including the vexed and menacing slavery question) each in its own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. On this ground, that of popular, or " squatter," sovereignty, as it was at the period called, Douglas was a candidate for the Presidency in 1852, in 1856, and again in 1860 against Lincoln, whom two years before he had beaten in the race for the U. S. Senatorship. In the final outcome, it is only fair here to state, what must be known to all, that Senator Douglas reconsidered, and afterwards practically withdrew, his extreme views of local self-government, when he saw to what they logically and of necessity led ; and that to the close of his life, in 1861, he remained ever staunchly loyal to the Union, while he reprobated Secession and the dissevering doctrine of State-rights. In Mr. Lincoln s case, we all know also, what honor and preferment were his in consequence of his taking the line he did in opposition to Judge Douglas; and though, in 1858, he lost the Senatorship from his State, his candidature and the fame he gained throughout the country by championing so ably the anti-slavery cause and that of the integrity of the nation, were compensations he well won, together with his subsequent elevation to the Chief Magistracy]. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 35 SPEECH AT PEORIA, ILL. (OCT. 16, 1854) IN REPLY TO SENATOR STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. I INSIST that if there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people never to intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and per petuity of their own liberties and institutions. And if they shall think, as I do, that the extension of slavery endangers them more than any or all other causes, how recreant to themselves if they submit the question, and with it the fate of their country, to a mere handful of men bent only on self-interest. If this question of slavery extension were an insignificant one one hav ing no power to do harm it might be shuffled aside in this way; and being, as it is, the great Behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the nation be loosened upon him, to intrust him to the hands of such feeble keepers ? But Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving meas ure. Well, I too go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a greater one. But when I go to Union-saving, I must believe, at least, that the means I employ have some adaptation to the end. To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation. It hath no relish of salvation in it. It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one thing which ever endangers the Union. When it came upon us, all was peace and quiet. The nation was looking to the forming of new bonds of union, and a long course of peace and prosperity seemed to lie before us. In the whole range of possibility, there scarcely appears to me 36 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to have been anything out of which the slavery agita tion could have been revived, except the very project of repealing the Missouri Compromise. Every inch of territory we owned already had a definite settlement of the slavery question, by which all parties were pledged to abide. Indeed, there was no uninhabited country on the continent which we could acquire, if we except some extreme northern regions which are wholly out of the question. In this state of affairs the Genius of Discord himself could scarcely have invented a way of again setting us by the ears but by turning back and destroying the peace measures of the past. The counsels of that Genius seem to have prevailed. The Missouri Com promise was repealed ; and here we are in the midst of a new slavery agitation, such, I think, as we have never seen before. Who is responsible for this? Is it those who resist the measure, or those who causelessly brought it forward and pressed it through, having reason to know, and in fact knowing, it must and would be so resisted? It could not but be expected by its author that it would be looked upon as a measure for the extension of slavery, aggravated by a gross breach of faith. Argue as you will and long as you will, this is the naked front and aspect of the measure. And in this aspect it could not but produce agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man s nature opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and w T hen brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all compro mises, repeal the Declaration of Independence, repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man s heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 37 The structure, too, of the Nebraska bill is very pecu liar. The people are to decide the question of slavery for themselves; but when they are to decide, or how they are to decide, or whether, when the question is once decided, it is to remain so or is to be subject to an indefinite succession of new trials, the law does not say. Is it to be decided by the first dozen settlers who arrive there, or is it to await the arrival of a hundred? Is it to be decided by a vote of the people or a vote of the legislature, or, indeed, by a vote of any sort? To these questions the law gives no answer. There is a mystery about this; for when a member proposed to give the legislature express authority to exclude slavery, it was hooted down by the friends of the bill. This fact is worth remembering. Some Yankees in the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska to exclude slavery from it; and, so far as I can judge, they expect the question to be decided by voting in some way or other. But the Missourians are awake, too. They are within a stone s-throw of the contested ground. They hold meetings and pass resolutions, in which not the slightest allusion to voting is made. They resolve that slavery already exists in the Territory ; that more shall go there; that they, remaining in Missouri, will protect it, and that Abolitionists shall be hung or driven away. Through all this bowie-knives and six- shooters are seen plainly enough, but never a glimpse of the ballot-box. And, really, what is the result of all this? Each party within having numerous and determined backers without, is it not probable that the contest will come to blows and bloodshed? Could there be a more apt in vention to bring about collision and violence on the slavery question than this Nebraska project is? I do not charge or believe that such was intended by Con gress ; but if they had literally formed a ring and placed champions within it to fight out the controversy, the fight could be no more likely to come off than it is. 38 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. And if this fight should begin, is it likely to take a very peaceful Union-saving turn? Will not the first drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the Union? The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored. For the sake of the Union, it ought to be restored. We ought to elect a House of Representatives which will vote its restoration. If by any means we omit to do this, what follows? Slavery may or may not be es tablished in Nebraska. But whether it be or not, we shall have repudiated discarded from the councils of the nation the spirit of compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national compromise? The spirit of mutual concession that spirit which first gave us the Constitution, and which has thrice saved the Union we shall have strangled and cast from us forever. And what shall we have in lieu of it? The South flushed with triumph and tempted to excess; the North, betrayed as they believe, brooding on wrong and burning for revenge. One side will provoke, the other resent. The one will taunt, the other defy; one aggresses, the other retaliates. Already a few in the North defy all constitutional restraints, resist the exe cution of the fugitive-slave law, and even menace the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. Already a few in the South claim the constitutional right to take and to hold slaves in the free States de mand the revival of the slave-trade and demand a treaty with Great Britain by which fugitive slaves may be reclaimed from Canada. As yet they are but few on either side. It is a grave question for lovers of the Union, whether the final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these, and fatally increase the number of both. But restore the compromise, and what then? We thereby restore the national faith, the national con fidence, the national feeling of brotherhood. We there by reinstate the spirit of concession and compromise, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 39 that spirit which has never failed us in past perils, and which may be safely trusted for all the future. The South ought to join in doing this. The peace of the nation is as dear to them as to us. In memories of the past and hopes of the future, they share as largely as we. It would be on their part a great act great in its spirit, and great in its effect. It would be worth to the nation a hundred year s purchase of peace and pros perity. And what of sacrifice would they make? They only surrender to us what they gave us for a considera tion long, long ago ; what they have not now asked for, struggled or cared for ; what has been thrust upon them, not less to their astonishment than to ours. But it is said we cannot restore it; that though we elect every member of the lower House, the Senate is still against us. It is quite true that of the senators who passed the Nebraska bill, a majority of the whole Senate will retain their seats in spite of the elections of this and the next year. But if at these elections their several constituencies shall clearly express their will against Nebraska, will these senators disregard their will? Will they neither obey nor make room for those w r ho will? But even if we fail to technically restore the com promise, it is still a great point to carry a popular vote in favor of the restoration. The moral weight of such a vote cannot be estimated too highly. The authors of Nebraska are not at all satisfied with the destruction of the compromise an indorsement of this principle they proclaim to be the great object. With them, Ne braska alone is a small matter to establish a principle for future use is what they particularly desire. The future use is to be the planting of slavery wher ever in the wide world local and unorganized opposi tion cannot prevent it. Now, if you wish to give them this indorsement, if you wish to establish this principle, do so. I shall regret it, but it is your right. On the contrary, if you are opposed to the principle, intend 46 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to give it no such indorsement, let no wheedling, no sophistry, divert you from throwing a direct vote against it. Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they be thrown in company with the Abolitionists. Will they allow me, as an old Whig, to tell them, good-humoredly, that I think this is very silly? Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the Abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the fugitive-slave law. In the latter case you stand with the Southern dis- unionist. What of that? you are still right. In both cases you are right. In both cases you expose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand on middle ground, and hold the ship level and steady. In both you are national, and nothing less than national. This is the good old Whig ground. To desert such ground because of any company, is to be less than a Whig less than a man less than an American. I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dal liance for a free people a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere. I object to it because the fathers of the republic eschewed and rejected it. The argument of " necessity " was the only argument they ever admitted in favor of slavery; and so far, and so far only, as it carried them did they ever go. They found the institution existing among us, which they could not help, and they cast blame upon the British king for having permitted its introduction. Before the Constitution they prohibited its introduction into the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 41 Northwestern Territory, the only country we owned then free from it. At the framing and adoption of the Constitution, they forbore to so much as mention the word " slave " or " slavery " in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a " person held to serve or labor." In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave-trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as " the migra tion or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit," etc. These are the only provisions alluding to slavery. Thus the thing is hid away in the Constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or cancer which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death, with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at a certain time. Less than this our fathers could not do, and more they would not do. Necessity drove them so far, and further they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress under the Constitu tion took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity. In 1794 they prohibited an outgoing slave-trade that is, the taking of slaves from the United States to sell. In 1798 they prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa into the Mississippi Territory, this Ter ritory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. This was ten years before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the Constitution. In 1800 they prohibited American citizens from trading in slaves between foreign countries, as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil. In 1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two slave-State laws, in restraint of the internal slave-trade. In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance, to take effect the first day of 1808, the very first day the Con stitution would permit, prohibiting the African slave- trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties. In 42 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1820, finding these provisions ineffectual, they declared the slave-trade piracy, and annexed to it the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in the General Government, five or six of the original slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation, by which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within their limits. Thus we see that the plain, un mistakable spirit of that age toward slavery was hos tility to the principle and toleration only by necessity. But now it is to be transformed into a " sacred right." Nebraska brings it forth, places it on the highroad to extension and perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says to it, " Go, and God speed you." Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation the very figure head of the ship of state. Little by little, but steadily as man s march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other dec laration, that for some men to enslave others is a " sacred right of self-government." These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and who ever holds to the one must despise the other. When Pettit, in connection with his support of the Nebraska bill, called the Declaration of Independence " a self-evident lie," he only did what con sistency and candor require all other Nebraska men to do. Of the forty-odd Nebraska senators who sat pres ent and heard him, no one rebuked him. Nor am I apprised that any Nebraska newspaper, or any Ne braska orator, in the whole nation has ever yet rebuked him. If this had been said among Marion s men, Southerners though they were, what would have become of the man who said it? If this had been said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said it would probably have been hung sooner than Andre was. If it had been said in old Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the very doorkeeper would have throttled SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 43 the man and thrust him into the street. Let no one be deceived. The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska are utter antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter. Fellow-countrymen, Americans, South as well as North, shall we make no effort to arrest this? Already the liberal party throughout the world express the ap prehension " that the one retrograde institution in America is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it to despise it? Is there no danger to liberty itself in dis carding the earliest practice and first precept of our ancient faith? In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we " cancel and tear in pieces " even the white man s charter of freedom. Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of " moral right " back upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of " necessity." Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace. Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South let all Americans let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it for ever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest generations. At Springfield, twelve days ago, where I had spoken substantially as I have here, Judge Douglas replied to me ; and as he is to reply to me here, I shall attempt to anticipate him by noticing some of the points he made 44 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. there. He commenced by stating I had assumed all the way through that the principle of the Nebraska bill would have the effect of extending slavery. He denied that this was intended, or that this effect would follow. I will not reopen the argument upon this point. That such was the intention the world believed at the start, and will continue to believe. This was the count enance of the thing, and both friends and enemies in stantly recognized it as such. That countenance cannot now be changed by argument. You can as easily argue the color out of the negro s skin. Like the " bloody hand," you may wash it and wash it, the red witness of guilt still sticks and stares horribly at you. Next he says that congressional intervention never prevented slavery anywhere; that it did not prevent it in the Northwestern Territory, nor in Illinois; that, in fact, Illinois came into the Union as a slave State; that the principle of the Nebraska bill expelled it from Illinois, from several old States, from everywhere. Now this is mere quibbling all the way through. If the ordinance of 87 did not keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory, how happens it that the northwest shore of the Ohio River is entirely free from it, while the southeast shore, less than a mile distant, along nearly the whole length of the river, is entirely covered with it? If that ordinance did not keep it out of Illinois, what was it that made the difference between Illinois and Missouri? They lie side by side, the Mississippi River only dividing them while their early settlements were within the same latitude. Between 1810 and 1820, the number of slaves in Missouri increased 7211, while in Illinois in the same ten years they decreased 51. This appears by the census returns. During nearly all of that ten years both were Territories, not States. Dur ing this time the ordinance forbade slavery to go into Illinois, and nothing forbade it to go into Missouri. It did go into Missouri, and did not go into Illinois. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 45 That is the fact. Can any one doubt as to the reason of it? But he says Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. Silence, perhaps, would be the best answer to this flat contradiction of the known history of the country. What are the facts upon which this bold assertion is based? When we first acquired the country, as far back as 1787, there were some slaves within it held by the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia. The territorial legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave States as indentured servants. One year after the adoption of the first State constitution, the whole number of them was what do you think? Just one hundred and seventeen, while the aggregate free popula tion was 55,094, about four hundred and seventy to one. Upon this state of facts the people framed their constitution prohibiting the further introduction of slavery, with a sort of guarantee to the owners of the few indentured servants, giving freedom to their chil dren to be born thereafter, and making no mention whatever of any supposed slave for life. Out of this small matter the judge manufactures his argument that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. Let the facts be the answer to the argument. The principles of the Nebraska bill, he says, expelled slavery from Illinois. The principle of that bill first planted it here that is, it first came because there was no law to prevent it, first came before we owned the country; and finding it here, and having the ordinance of 87 to prevent its increasing, our people struggled along, and finally got rid of it as best they could. But the principle of the Nebraska bill abolished slavery in several of the old States. Well, it is true that several of the old States, in the last quarter of the last century, did adopt systems of gradual emanci pation by which the institution has finally become ex tinct within their limits; but it may or may not be true that the principle of the Nebraska bill was the cause that led to the adoption of these measures. It is now 46 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. more than fifty years since the last of these States adopted its system of emancipation. If the Nebraska bill is the real author of the benevo lent works, it is rather deplorable that it has for so long a time ceased working altogether. Is there not some reason to suspect that it was the principle of the Revolution, and not the principle of the Nebraska bill, that led to emancipation in these old States? Leave it to the people of these old emancipating States, and I am quite certain they will decide that neither that nor any other good thing ever did or ever will come of the Nebraska bill. In the course of my main argument, Judge Douglas interrupted me to say that fhe principle of the Nebraska bill was very old; that it originated when God made man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to choose for himself, being responsible for the choice he should make. At the time I thought this was merely playful, and I answered it accordingly. But in his reply to me he renewed it as a serious argument. In seriousness, then, the facts of this proposition are not true as stated. God did not place good and evil be fore man, telling him to make his choice. On the con trary, he did tell him there was one tree of the fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death. I should scarcely wish so strong a prohibition against slavery in Nebraska. But this argument strikes me as not a little remark able in another particular in its strong resemblance to the old argument for the " divine right of kings." By the latter, the king is to do just as he pleases with his white subjects, being responsible to God alone. By the former, the white man is to do just as he pleases with his black slaves, being responsible to God alone. The two things are precisely alike, and it is but natural that they should find similar arguments to sustain them. I had argued that the application of the principle of SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 47- self-government, as contended for, would require the revival of the African slave-trade; that no argument could be made in favor of a man s right to take slaves to Nebraska, which could not be equally well made in favor of his right to bring them from the coast of Africa. The judge replied that the Constitution re quires the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, but does not require the prohibition of slavery in the Territories. That is a mistake in point of fact. The Constitution does not require the action of Congress in either case, and it does authorize it in both. And so there is still no difference between the cases. In regard to what I have said of the advantage the slave States have over the free in the matter of repre sentation, the judge replied that w T e in the free States count five free negroes as five white people, while in the slave States they count five slaves as three whites only ; and that the advantage, at last, was on the side of the free States. Now, in the slave States they count free negroes just as we do; and it so happens that, besides their slaves, they have as many free negroes as we have, and thirty thousand over. Thus, their free negroes more than balance ours; and their advantage over us, in conse quence of their slaves, still remains as I stated it. In reply to my argument that the compromise meas ures of 1850 were a system of equivalents, and that the provisions of no one of them could fairly be carried to other subjects without its corresponding equivalent being carried with it, the judge denied outright that these measures had any connection with or dependence upon each other. This is mere desperation. If they had no connection, why are they always spoken of in connection ? Why has he so spoken of them a thousand times? Why has he constantly called them a series of measures? Why does everybody call them a com promise? Why was California kept out of the Union six or seven months,, if it was not because of its con- 48 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. nection with the other measures? Webster s leading definition of the verb " to compromise " is " to adjust and settle a difference, by mutual agreement, with con cessions of claims by the parties." This conveys pre cisely the popular understanding of the word " compromise." We knew, before the judge told us, that these mea sures passed separately, and in distinct bills, and that no two of them were passed by the votes of precisely the same members. But we also know, and so does he know, that no one of them could have passed both branches of Congress but for the understanding that the others were to pass also. Upon this understanding, each got votes which it could have got in no other way. It is this fact which gives to the measures their true character; and it is the universal knowledge of this fact that has given them the name of " compromises/ so expressive of that true character, laws to Nebraska, you could clear away other objec- I had asked " if, in carrying the Utah and New Mexico tion, how could you leave Nebraska * perfectly free to introduce slavery before she forms a constitution dur ing her territorial government, while the Utah and New Mexico laws only authorize it when they form con stitutions and are admitted into the Union? " To this Judge Douglas answered that the Utah and New Mexico laws also authorized it before ; and to prove this he read from one of their laws, as follows : " That the legislative power of said territory shall extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the Con stitution of the United States and the provisions of this act." Now it is perceived from the reading of this that there is nothing express upon the subject, but that the authority is sought to be implied merely for the general provision of " all rightful subjects of legislation." In reply to this I insist, as a legal rule of construction, as well as the plain, popular view of the matter/that the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 49 express provision for Utah and New Mexico coming in with slavery, if they choose, when they shall form con stitutions, is an exclusion of all implied authority on the same subject; that Congress, having the subject distinctly in their minds when they made the express provision, they therein expressed their whole meaning on that subject. The judge rather insinuated that I had found it con venient to forget the Washington territorial law passed in 1853. This was a division of Oregon organizing the northern part as the territory of Washington. He asserted that by this act the ordinance of 87, thereto fore existing in Oregon, was repealed ; that nearly all the members of Congress voted for it, beginning in the House of Representatives with Charles Allen of Mass achusetts, and ending with Richard Yates of Illinois; and that he could not understand how those who now oppose the Nebraska bill so voted there, unless it was because it was then too soon after both the great political parties had ratified the compromises of 1850, and the ratification therefore was too fresh to be then repudiated. Now 1 had seen the Washington act before, and I have carefully examined it since; and I aver that there is no repeal of the ordinance of 87, or of any pro hibition of slavery, in it. In express terms, there is absolutely nothing in the whole law upon the subject in fact, nothing to lead a reader to think of the subject. To my judgment it is equally free from everything from which repeal can be legally implied; but however this may be, are men now to be entrapped by a legal impli cation, extracted from covert language, introduced per haps for the very purpose of entrapping them? I sincerely wish every man could read this law quite through, carefully watching every sentence and every line for a repeal of the ordinance of 87, or anything equivalent to it. Another point on the Washington act. If it was 4 50 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. intended to be modeled after the Utah and New Mexico acts, as Judge Douglas insists, why was it not inserted in it, as in them, that Washington was to come in with or without slavery as she may choose at the adoption of her constitution? it has no such provision in it; and I defy the ingenuity of man to give a reason for the omission, other than that it was not intended to follow the Utah and New Mexico laws in regard to the ques tion of slavery. The Washington act not only differs vitally from the Utah and New Mexico acts, but the Nebraska act differs vitally from both. By the latter act the people are left " perfectly free " to regulate their own domestic con cerns, etc.; but in all the former, all their laws are to be submitted to Congress, and if disapproved are to be null. The Washington act goes even further; it abso lutely prohibits the territorial legislature, by very strong and guarded language, from establishing banks or borrowing money on the faith of the Territor} . Is this the sacred right of self-government we hear vaunted so much? No, sir; the Nebraska bill finds no model in the act of 50 or the Washington act. It finds no model in any law from Adam till to-day. As Phillips says of Napoleon, the Nebraska act is grand, gloomy and peculiar, wrapped in the solitude of its own originality, without a model and without a shadow upon the earth. In the course of his reply Senator Douglas remarked in substance that he had always considered this govern ment was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too. But in this remark of the judge there is a significance which I think is the key to the great mistake (if there is any such mistake) which he has made in this Ne braska measure. It shows that the judge has no very vivid impression that the negro is human, and conse quently has no idea that there can be any moral ques tion in legislating about him. In his view the question SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 5^ of whether a new country shall be slave or free, is a matter of as utter indifference as it is whether his neighbor shall plant his farm with tobacco or stock it with horned cattle. Now, whether this view is right or wrong, it is very certain that the great mass of mankind take a totally different view. They consider slavery a great moral wrong, and their feeling against it is not evanescent, but eternal. It lies at the very foundation of their sense of justice, and it cannot be trifled with. It is a great and durable element of popular action, and I think no statesman can safely disregard it. Our Senator also objects that those who oppose him in this matter do not entirely agree with one another. He reminds me that in my firm adherence to the con stitutional rights of the slave States, I differ widely from others who are cooperating with me in opposing the Nebraska bill, and he says it is not quite fair to oppose him in this variety of ways. He should re member that he took us by surprise astounded us by this measure. We were thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion. But we rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach a scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping-ax, or a butcher s cleaver. We struck in the direction of the sound, and we were rapidly closing in upon him. He must not think to divert us from our purpose by showing us that our drill, our dress, and our weapons are not entirely perfect and uniform. When the storm shall be past he shall find us still Americans, no less devoted to the continued union and prosperity of the country than heretofore. 52 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THE HISTORIC HOUSE-DIVIDED- AGAINST-IT- SELF " SPEECH, AT SPRINGFIELD, ILL., JUNE 16, 1858. [This notable speech was delivered at the close of the Re publican State Convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln as the sole choice of the Illinois Republicans for the United States Senate. In it, the future Liberator of the slave strongly and earnestly brought before the Convention and the entire Re publican party the urgent need of facing the great issue then confronting the nation, that of Slavery, with its ever-augmenting agitation, and consequent menace and peril. That menace and peril, Lincoln shrewdly saw, threatened the stability of the Union, though he expressed no fear of its ultimate downfall, yet saw and advanced abundant reason for concerted action and effort, as well as for wise counsels, if the national house was to stand undivided and un-rent by the contending forces and strife of the time. His now time-honored phrase is a memorable, as it was then an admonitory, one, that the " government cannot endure permanently half -slave and half -free]. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opin ion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. " A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot en dure permanently half slave and half free. I do not ex pect the Union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 53 the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinc tion; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition ? Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination piece of machinery, so to speak compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him con sider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief architects, from the beginning. The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State constitutions, and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that congressional prohibi tion. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained. But, so far, Congress only had acted ; and an indorse ment by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained and give chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argu ment of " squatter sovereignty," otherwise called " sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this : That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: " It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to 54 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Con stitution of the United States." Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of " squatter sovereignty " and " sacred right of self-government." " But," said opposition members, " let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." " Not we," said the friends of the measure ; and down they voted the amendment. While the Nebraska bill was passing through Con gress, a law case involving the question of a negro s freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and then into a Terri tory covered by the congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri ; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro s name was Dred Scott, which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Be fore the then next presidential election, the law case came to and was argued in the Supreme Court of the United States ; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory can con stitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answered : " That is a question for the Supreme Court." The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hun dred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not over whelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 55 as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming Presi dent in his inaugural address fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indors ing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently de nouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to in dorse and strongly construe that decision, and to ex press his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained ! At length a squabble springs up between the Presi dent and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas ; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up to be in tended by him other than as an apt definition of the pol icy he would impress upon the public mind the princi ple for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision " squatter sovereignty " squatted out of exist ence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding, like the mold at the foundry, served through one blast and fell back into loose sand, helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans against the Lecompton 56 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. constitution involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point the right of a people to make their own constitution upon which he and the Republicans have never differed. The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in con nection with Senator Douglas s " care not " policy, constitute the piece of machinery in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are : (1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro in every possible event of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that " the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." (2) That, " subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. (3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made not to be pressed immediately, but if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one or one thou sand slaves in Illinois or in any other free State. Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 57 with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are, and partially, also, whither we are tending. It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run the mind over the string of historical facts al ready stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were trans piring. The people were to be left " perfectly free," " subject only to the Constitution." What the Con stitution had to do with it outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and de clare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment expressly de claring the right of the people voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a senator s individual opinion withheld till after the presidential election? Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would have damaged the " perfectly free " argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing Presi dent s felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President s ad vance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the Presi dent and others? We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adap tations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and we see these timbers 58 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the differ ent pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the begin ning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck. It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a State as well as Territory were to be left " perfectly free," * subject only to the constitu tion." Why mention a State? They were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States ; but why is men tion of this lugged into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opin ions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither per mits Congress nor a territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution per mits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in be half of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 59 have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of de claring the power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion his exact language is : " Except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its juris diction." In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United States Constitution is left an open question, precisely as the same question as to the restraint on the power of the Territories was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of " care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up " shall gain upon the public mind suf ficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome, or unwel come, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it? There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect 60 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. that object. They wish us to infer all from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But " a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don t care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the " public heart " to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas s superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave- trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave-trade. How can he refuse that trade in that " property " shall be " perfectly free," unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the pro tection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposi tion. Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change of which he, him self, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (j| T wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us he does not pretend to be he does not promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the na tion mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now? now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come. 62 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH AT CHICAGO, ILL., JULY 10, 1858. [In this, and in the immediately following speech, delivered a week later at Springfield, 111., we have important utterances of Mr. Lincoln on the absorbing question of the time, both being, in part, and without collusion, rejoinders to Judge S. A. Douglas, who on both occasions had made immediately preceding addresses. The speeches, on both sides, created much en thusiasm and directed the eyes of the State, and indeed of the nation, to the rival Illinois orators, and especially to Lincoln, who had dared to tackle the able and popular " little giant," and that with great plainness of speech as well as with admi rable point and sound logic. The excitement the speeches oc casioned led to the acceptance by Douglas of Lincoln s proposal that they should be heard in joint debate at a series of meet ings over the State. These debates, which occupied seven dif ferent evenings of three hours each, will be found in these pages, following the present address and that at Springfield, vis;, those at Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton, during the months of Aug., Sept., and Oct., 1858]. JUDGE DOUGLAS made two points upon my recent speech at Springfield. He says they are to be the issues of this campaign. The first one of these points he bases upon the language in a speech which I deliv ered at Springfield, which I believe I can quote cor rectly from memory. I said there that " we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation ; under the opera tion of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. t A house divided against itself cannot stand/ I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved "-I am quoting from my speech "I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". 33 cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." That is the paragraph ! In this paragraph which I have quoted in your hearing, and to which I ask the attention of all, Judge Douglas thinks he discovers great political heresy. I want your attention particu larly to what he has inferred from it. He says I am in favor of making all the States of this Union uniform in all their internal regulations; that in all their domestic concerns I am in favor of making them entirely uni form. He draws this inference from the language I have quoted to you. He says that I am in favor of mak ing war by the North upon the South for the extinction of slavery; that I am also in favor of inviting (as he expresses it) the South to a war upon the North, for the purpose of nationalizing slavery. Now, it is singu lar enough, if you will carefully read that passage over, that I did not say that I was in favor of anything in it. I only said what I expected would take place. I made a prediction only it may have been a foolish one, perhaps. I did not even say that I desired that slavery should be put in course of ultimate extinction. I do say so now, however, so there need be no longer any difficulty about that. It may be written down in the great speech. Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine was probably carefully prepared. I admit that it was. I am not master of language; I have not a fine education ; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. But I don t care about a quibble in regard to words. 64 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can explain it to them, what 1 really meant in the use of that paragraph. I am not, in the first place, unaware that this govern ment has endured eighty-two years half slave and half free. I know that I am tolerably well ac quainted with the history of the country, and I know that it has endured eighty-two years half slave and half free. I believe and that is what I meant to allude to there I believe it has endured because during all that time, until the introduction of the Nebraska bill, the public mind did rest all the time in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction. That was what gave us the rest that we had through that period of eighty-two years; at least, so I believe. I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any Abolitionist I have been an old-line Whig I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska bill began. I always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in course of ultimate extinc tion. [Pointing to Mr. Browning, who stood near by.] Browning thought so ; the great mass of the nation have rested in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction. They had reason so to believe. The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led the people to believe so, and that such was the belief of the framers of the Constitution itself. Why did those old men, about the time of the adoption of the Constitution, decree that slavery should not go into the new Territory, where it had not already gone ? Why declare that within twenty years the African slave-trade, by which slaves are supplied, might be cut off by Congress? W T hy were all these acts? I might enumerate more of these acts but enough. What were they but a clear indication that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that institution? And now, when I say, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (55 as I said in my speech that Judge Douglas has quoted from, when I say that I think the opponents of slavery will resist the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, I only mean to say that they will place it where the founders of this govern ment originally placed it. I have said a hundred times, and I have now no in clination to take it back, that I believe there is no right and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States and interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always ; Judge Douglas has heard me say it if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by anything I have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever said. If by any means I have ever used language which could fairly be so construed (as, however, I believe I never have), I now correct it. So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in favor of setting the sections at war with one another. I know that I never meant any such thing, and I believe that no fair mind can infer any such thing from anything I have ever said. Now in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general consolidation of all the local institutions of the various States. I will attend to that for a little while, and try to inquire, if I can, how on earth it could be that any man could draw such an inference from anything I said. I have said very many times in Judge Douglas s hearing that no man believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies at the bottom of all my ideas of just government from beginning to end. I have denied that his use of that term applies properly. But for the thing itself I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in effi- 5 66 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ciency in advocating it. I think that I have said it in your hearing that I believe each individual is natur ally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man s rights; that each community, as a State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the right of no other State; and that the General Govern ment, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole. I have said that at all times. I have said as illustrations that I do not believe in the right of Illinois to interfere with the cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster law r s of Virginia, or the liquor laws of Maine. I have said these things over and over again, and I repeat them here as my sentiments. How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see slavery put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate ex tinction, that I am in favor of Illinois going over and interfering with the cranberry laws of Indiana? What can authorize him to draw any such inference? I sup pose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to draw such an inference that would not be true with me or many others; that is, because he looks upon all this matter of slavery as an exceedingly little thing this matter of keeping one sixth of the popula tion of the whole nation in a state of oppression and tyranny unequaled in the world. He looks upon it as being an exceedingly little thing, only equal to the question of the cranberry laws of Indiana as some thing having no moral question in it as something on a par with the question of whether a man shall pasture his land with cattle or plant it with tobacco so little and so small a thing that he concludes, if I could desire that anything should be done to bring about the ultimate extinction of that little thing, I must be in favor of bringing about an amalgamation of all the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ^7 other little things in the Union. Now, it so happens and there, I presume, is the foundation of this mistake that the judge thinks thus; and it so happens that there is a vast portion of the American people that do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look upon it as a vast moral evil ; they can prove it as such by the writings of those who gave UH the blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and that they so looked upon it, and not as an evil merely confining it self to the States where it is situated; and while we agree that, by the Constitution we assented to, in the States where it exists we have no right to interfere with it, because it is in the Constitution, we are by both duty and inclination to stick by that Constitution in all its letter and spirit from beginning to end. So much, then, as to my disposition my wish to have all the State legislatures blotted out, and to have one consolidated government, and a uniformity of do mestic regulations in all the States ; by which I suppose it is meant, if we raise corn here, we must make sugar cane grow here too, and we must make those which grow North grow in the South. All this I suppose he understands I am in favor of doing. Now, so much for all this nonsense for I must call it so. The judge can have no issue with me on a question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations of the States. A little now on the other point the Dred Scott decision. Another of the issues he says that is to be made with me, is upon his devotion to the Dred Scott decision, and my opposition to it. I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the Dred Scott decision ; but I should be allowed to state the nature of that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly im plied by the term Judge Douglas has used, " resistance to the decision " ? I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I would be interfering with property, and that terrible difficulty that Judge (jg SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, would arise. But I am doing no such thing as that ; all that I am doing is refusing to obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should. That is what I would do. Judge Douglas said last night that before the decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by it until it was reversed. Just so! We let this prop erty abide by the decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decis ion, since it is made ; and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably. What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. As rules of property they have two uses. First they decide upon the question before the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody resists that. Not only that, but they say to everybody else that persons standing just as Dred Scott stands are as he is. That is, they say that when a question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided again, unless the court decides in another way, unless the court overrules its decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to have the court decide the other way. That is one thing we mean to try to do. The sac-redness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is a degree of sacredness that has never been before thrown around any other decision. I have never heard of such a thing. Why, decisions apparently contrary to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were contrary to that decision, have been made by that very court before. It is the first of its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history. It is a new wonder of the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 59 world. It is based upon falsehood iii the main as to the facts, allegations of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in many instances, and no decis ion made on any question the first instance of a decis ion made under so many unfavorable circumstances thus placed, has ever been held by the profession as law, and it has always needed confirmation before the law yers regarded it as settled law. But Judge Douglas will have it that all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these extraordinary circum stances, and give their vote in Congress in accordance with it, yield to it and obey it in every possible sense. Circumstances alter cases. Do not gentlemen here re member the case of that same Supreme Court, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, deciding that a national bank was constitutional? I ask if somebody does not remember that a national bank was declared to be con stitutional? Such is the truth, whether it be remem bered or not. The bank charter ran out, and a recharter was granted by Congress. That recharter was laid be fore General Jackson. It was urged upon him, when he denied the constitutionality of the bank, that the Supreme Court had decided that it was constitutional ; and General Jackson then said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern a coordinate branch of the government, the members of which had sworn to support the Constitution that each member had sworn to support that Constitution as he under stood it. I will venture here to say that I have heard Judge Douglas say that he approved of General Jack son for that act. What has now become of all his tirade against " resistance to the Supreme Court " ? My fellow-citizens, getting back a little, for I pass from these points, when Judge Douglas makes his threat of annihilation upon the " alliance," he is cau tious to say that that warfare of his is to fall upon the leaders of the Republican party. Almost every word lie utters, and every distinction he makes, has its sig- YQ SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. nificance. He means for the Republicans who do not count themselves as leaders to be his friends; he makes no fuss over them ; it is the leaders that he is making war upon. He wants it understood that the mass of the Republican party are really his friends. It is only the leaders that are doing something, that are in tolerant, and require extermination at his hands. As this is clearly and unquestionably the light in which he presents that matter, I want to ask your attention, addressing myself to Republicans here, that I may ask you some questions as to where you, as the Republican party, would be placed if you sustained Judge Douglas in his present position by a reelection? I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish ; I do not pretend that I would not like to go to the United States Senate; I make no such hypocritical pretense, but I do say to you that in this mighty issue, it is nothing to you nothing to the mass of the people of the nation whether or not Judge Douglas or myself shall ever be heard of after this night; it may be a trifle to either of us, but in connection with this mighty question, upon which hang the destinies of the nation, perhaps, it is absolutely nothing. But where will you be placed if you reindorse Judge Douglas? Don t you know how apt he is how exceedingly anxious he is at all times to seize upon anything and everything to persuade you that some thing he has done you did yourselves? Why, he tried to persuade you last night that our Illinois legislature instructed him to introduce the Nebraska bill. There was nobody in that legislature ever thought of such a thing; and w r hen he first introduced the bill, he never thought of it ; but still he fights furiously for the propo sition, and that he did it because there was a standing instruction to our senators to be always introducing Nebraska bills. He tells you he is for the Cincinnati platform ; he tells you he is for the Dred Scott decision. He tells you, not in his speech last night, but sub stantially in a former speech, that he cares not if SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ft slavery is voted up or down ; he tells you the struggle on Lecompton is past it may come up again or not, and if it does he stands where he stood when in spite of him and his opposition you built up the Republican party. If you indorse him, you tell him you do not care whether slavery be voted up or down, and he will close, or try to close, your mouths with his declaration, repeated by the day, the week, the month, and the year. I think, in the position in which Judge Douglas stood in opposing the Lecompton constitution, he was right; he does not know that it will return, but if it does we may know where to find him, and if it does not we may know where to look for him, and that is on the Cin cinnati platform. Now I could ask the Republican party, after all the hard names Judge Douglas has called them by, all his repeated charges of their inclina tion to marry with and hug negroes, all his declarations of Black Republicanism, by the way, we are improv ing, the black has got rubbed off, but with all that, if he be indorsed by Republican votes, where do you stand? Plainly, you stand ready saddled, bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven over to the slavery extension camp of the nation, just ready to be driven over, tied together in a lot, to be driven over, every man with a rope around his neck, that halter being held by Judge Douglas. That is the question. If Republi can men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they had better not do it; but I think the Repub lican party is made up of those who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose the extension of slavery, and who will hope for its ultimate extinction. If they believe it is wrong in grasping up the new lands of the continent, and keeping them from the settlement of free white laborers, who want the land to bring up their families upon; if they are in earnest, although they may make a mistake, they will grow restless, and the time will come when they will come back again and reorganize, if not by the same name, at least upon the 72 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". same principles as their party now has. It is better, then, to save the work while it is begun. You have done the labor; maintain it, keep it. If men choose to serve you, go with them ; but as you have made up your organization upon principle, stand by it; for, as surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come back again after your wanderings, merely to do your work over again. We were often more than once at least in the course of Judge Douglas s speech last night reminded that this government was made for white men that he believed it was made for white men. Well, that is putting it into a shape in which no one wants to deny it; but the judge then goes into his passion for draw ing inferences that are not warranted. I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which pre sumes that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My under standing is that I need not have her for either; but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and enough black men to marry all the black women, and in God s name let them be so married. The judge re gales us with the terrible enormities that take place by the mixture of races; that the inferior race bears the superior down. Why, judge, if we do not let them get together in the Territories, they won t mix there. [A voice : " Three cheers for Lincoln ! " The cheers were given with a hearty good will.] I shall say at least that that is a self-evident truth. Now, it happens that w r e meet together once every year, somewhere about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 73 We are now a mighty nation : we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people, in point of num bers vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men. We look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men ; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of pros perity which we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it ; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men, in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this, we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have, besides these men descended by blood from our ancestors among us, perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men ; they are men who have come from Europe, German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian, men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equal in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none ; they cannot carry themselves back into that 74 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us ; but when they look through that old Dec laration of Independence, they find that those old men say that " We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their re lation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declara tion that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-lov ing men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of " don t care if slavery is voted up or voted down," for sustaining the Dred Scott decision, for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Indepen dence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. Accord ing to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you, in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and in dorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this government into a government of some other form? Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoy ing; that as much is to be done for them as their con dition will allow what are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the peopL SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. f5 not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argu ment, and this argument of the judge is the same old serpent that says. You work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will whether it come from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslav ing the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know taking this old Declaration of Independence, w r hich declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man ? If that Declara tion is not the truth, let us get the statute-book in which we find it, and tear it out ! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true, let us tear it out [cries of u No, no "]. Let us stick to it, then ; let us stand firmly by it, then. 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 w r as 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 re main in slavery; we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more ; but having by necessity submitted to that much, it does not destroy the princi ple that is the charter of our liberties. Let that charter stand as our standard. My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote Scripture. I will try it again, however. It is said in one of the admonitions of our Lord, l( Be ye 76 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. [therefore] perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." The Saviour, I suppose, did not ex pect that any human creature could be perfect as the Father in heaven; but he said, "As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect." He set that up as a standard, and he who did most toward reaching that standard attained the highest degree of moral perfec tion. So I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other crea ture. Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it. Let us stand firmly by each other. If we do not do so, we are tending in the contrary direction that our friend Judge Douglas proposes not intentionally working in the traces that tend to make this one universal slave nation. He is one that runs in that direction, and as such I resist him. My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior posi tion. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal. I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 77 SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, ILL., JULY 17, 1858. [In this address, Mr. Lincoln discusses what is "popular sovereignty " ; Judge Douglas s claim for credit in defeating the Lecompton constitution ; the Dred Scott decision ; and concludes by presenting afresh his views on the subject of negro slavery, based upon the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, in so far, at least, as they have a right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"]. FELLOW-CITIZENS: Another election, which is deemed an important one, is approaching; and, as I suppose, the Republican party will without much difficulty elect their State ticket. But in regard to the legislature, we, the Republicans, labor under some disadvantages. . . . There is [one] disadvantage under which we labor, and to which I will ask your attention. It arises out of the relative positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate. Senator Doug las is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politi cians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, burst ing and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, trium phal entries, and receptions beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever 78 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all, taken to gether, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone. I am, in a certain sense, made the standard- bearer in behalf of the Republicans. I was made so merely because there had to be some one so placed, I being in no wise preferable to any other one of the twenty-five, perhaps a hundred, we have in the Repub lican ranks. Then I say I wish it to be distinctly un derstood and borne in mind, that we have to fight this battle without many perhaps without any of the external aids which are brought to bear against us. So I hope those with whom I am surrounded have prin ciple enough to nerve themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can be fairly done to bring about the right result. After Senator Douglas left Washington, as his move ments were made known by the public prints, he tarried a considerable time in the city of New York ; and it was heralded that, like another Napoleon, he was lying by and framing the plan of his campaign. It was tele graphed to Washington City, and published in the " Union," that he was framing his plan for the purpose of going to Illinois to pounce upon and annihilate the treasonable and disunion speech which Lincoln had made here on the 16th of June. Now, I do suppose that the judge really spent some time in New York matur ing the plan of the campaign, as his friends heralded for him. I have been able, by noting his movements since his arrival in Illinois, to discover evidences con firmatory of that allegation. I think I have been able to see what are the material points of that plan. I will, for a little while, ask your attention to some of them. What I shall point out, though not showing the whole plan, are nevertheless the main points, as I sup pose. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 79 They are not very numerous. The first is popular sovereignty. The second and third are attacks upon my speech made on the 16th of June. Out of these three points drawing within the range of popular sover eignty the question of the Lecompton constitution he makes his principal assault. Upon these his succes sive speeches are substantially one and the same. On this matter of popular sovereignty I wish to be a little careful. Auxiliary to these main points, to be sure, are their thunderings of cannon, their inarching and music, their fizzle-gigs and fireworks ; but I will not waste time with them. They are but the little trappings of the campaign. Coming to the substance, the first point, " popular sovereignty." It is to be labeled upon the cars in which he travels; put upon the hacks he rides in; to be flaunted upon the arches he passes under, and the ban ners which wave over him. It is to be dished up in as many varieties as a French cook can produce soups from potatoes. Now, as this is so great a staple of the plan of the campaign, it is worth while to examine it carefully; and if we examine only a very little, and do not allow ourselves to be misled, we shall be able to see that the whole thing is the most arrant quixotism that was ever enacted before a community. What is the matter of popular sovereignty? The first thing, in order to understand it, is to get a good definition of what it is, and after that to see how it is applied. I suppose almost every one knows that, in this con troversy, whatever has been said has had reference to the question of negro slavery. We have not been in a controversy about the right of the people to govern themselves in the ordinary matters of domestic con cern in the States and Territories. Mr. Buchanan, in one of his late messages (I think when he sent up the Lecompton constitution), urged that the main point of public attention was not in regard to the great variety of small domestic matters, but was directed to the ques- 80 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". tion of negro slavery ; and he asserts that if the people had had a fair chance to vote on that question, there was no reasonable ground of objection in regard to minor questions. Now, while I think that the people had not had given, or offered them, a fair chance upon that slavery question, still, if there had been a fair sub mission to a vote upon that main question, the Presi dent s proposition would have been true to the utter most. Hence, when hereafter I speak of popular sover eignty, 1 wish to be understood as applying what I say to the question of slavery only, not to other minor domestic matters of a Territory or a State. Does Judge Douglas, when he says that several of the past years of his life have been devoted to the ques tion of " popular sovereignty," and that all the remain der of his life shall be devoted to it, does he mean to say that he has been devoting his life to securing to the people of the Territories the right to exclude slavery from the Territories? If he means so to say, he means to deceive ; because he and every one knows that the decision of the Supreme Court, which he approves and makes especial ground of attack upon me for dis approving, forbids the people of a Territory to exclude slavery. This covers. the whole ground, from the settle ment of a Territory till it reaches the degree of ma turity entitling it to form a State constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the judge is not sus taining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing it. He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of the Territories has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their territorial ex istence. This being so, the period of time from the first settlement of a Territory till it reaches the point of forming a State constitution is not the thing that the judge has fought for, or is fighting for; but on the con trary, he has fought for, and is fighting for the thing that annihilates and crushes out that same popular sovereignty. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 3^ Well, so much being disposed of, what is left? Why, he is contending for the right of the people, when they come to make a State constitution, to make it for them selves, and precisely as best suits themselves. I say, again, that is quixotic. I defy contradiction when I de clare that the judge can find no one to oppose him on that proposition. I repeat, there is nobody opposing that proposition on principle. Let me not be misunder stood. I know that, with reference to the Lecompton constitution, I may be misunderstood ; but when you understand me correctly, my proposition will be true and accurate. Nobody is opposing, or has opposed, the right of the people, when they form a constitution, to form it for themselves. Mr. Buchanan and his friends have not done it ; they, too, as well as the Republicans and the Anti-Lecompton Democrats, have not done it; but, on the contrary, they together have insisted on the right of the people to form a constitution for them selves. The difference between the Buchanan men on the one hand, and the Douglas men and the Republicans on the other, has not been on a question of principle, but on a question of fact. The dispute was upon the question of fact, whether the Lecompton constitution had been fairly formed by the people or not. Mr. Buchanan and his friends have not contended for the contrary principle any more than the Douglas men or the Republicans. They have in sisted that whatever of small irregularities existed in getting up the Lecompton constitution were such as happen in the settlement of all new Territories. The question was, was it a fair emanation of the people? It was a question of fact and not of principle. As to the principle, all were agreed. Judge Douglas voted with the Republicans upon that matter of fact. He and they, by their voices and votes, denied that it was a fair emanation of the people. The adminis tration affirmed that it was. With respect to the evi dence bearing upon that question of fact, I readily 6 82 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. agree that Judge Douglas and the Republicans had the right on their side, and that the administration was wrong. But I state again that, as a matter of principle, there is no dispute upon the right of a people in a Ter ritory merging into a State to form a constitution for themselves without outside interference from any quar ter. This being so, w T hat is Judge Douglas going to spend his life for? Does he expect to stand up in majestic dignity, and go through his apotheosis and be come a god, in the maintaining of a principle which neither man nor mouse in all God s creation is op posing? Now something in regard to the Lecompton constitution more specially; for I pass from this other question of popular sovereignty as the most arrant humbug that has ever been attempted on an intelli gent community. As to the Lecompton constitution, I have already said that on the question of facts as to whether it was a fair emanation of the people or not, Judge Douglas with the Republicans and some " Americans " had greatly the argument against the administration; and while I repeat this, I wish to know what there is in the opposi tion of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton constitution that entitles him to be considered the only opponent to it as being par excellence the very quintessence of that opposition. I agree to the rightfulness of his opposition. He in the Senate, and his class of men there, formed the number three and no more. In the House of Representatives his class of men the Anti- Lecompton Democrats formed a number of about twenty. It took one hundred and twenty to defeat the measure, against one hundred and twelve. Of the votes of that one hundred and twenty, Judge Douglas s friends furnished twenty, to add to which there were six Americans and ninety-four Republicans. I do not say that I am precisely accurate in their numbers, but I am sufficiently so for any use I am making of it. Why is it that twenty shall be entitled to all the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. $3 credit of doing that work, and the hundred none of it? Why, if, as Judge Douglas says, the honor is to be divided and due credit is to be given to other parties, why is just so much given as is consonant with the wishes, the interests, and advancement of the twenty? My understanding is, when a common job is done, or a common enterprise prosecuted, if I put in five dollars to your one, I have a right to take out five dollars to your one. But he does not so understand it. He de clares the dividend of credit for defeating Lecompton upon a basis which seems unprecedented and incom prehensible. Let us see. Lecompton in the raw was defeated. It afterward took a sort of cooked-up shape, and was passed in the English bill. It is said by the judge that the defeat w r as a good and proper thing. If it was a good thing, why is he entitled to more credit than others for the performance of that good act, unless there was something in the antecedents of the Repub licans that might induce every one to expect them to join in that good work, and at the same time something leading them to doubt that he would? Does he place his superior claim to credit on the ground that he performed a good act which was never expected of him? He says I have a proneness for quoting scripture. If I should do so now, it occurs that perhaps he places himself somewhat upon the ground of the parable of the lost sheep which went astray upon the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep found the one that was lost, and threw it upon his shoulders, and came home rejoicing, it was said that there was more rejoicing over the one sheep that was lost and had been found, than over the ninety and nine in the fold. The application is made by the Saviour in this parable, thus : " Verily, I say unto you, there is more rejoic ing in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance." And now, if the judge claims the benefit of this 84: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. parable, let him repent. Let him not come up here and say : " I am the only just person ; and you are the ninety-nine sinners!" Repentance before forgiveness is a provision of the Christian system, and on that con dition alone will the Republicans grant him forgive ness. How will he prove that we have ever occupied a different position in regard to the Leconipton constitu tion or any principle in it? He says he did not make his opposition on the ground as to whether it was a free or slave constitution, and he would have you under stand that the Republicans made their opposition be cause it ultimately became a slave constitution. To make proof in favor of himself on this point, he reminds us that he opposed Lecompton before the vote was taken declaring whether the State was to be free or slave. But he forgets to say that our Republican senator, Trumbull, made a speech against Lecompton even be fore he did. Why did he oppose it? Partly, as he declares, be cause the members of the convention who framed it were not fairly elected by the people; that the people were not allowed to vote unless they had been regis tered; and that the people of whole counties, in some instances, were not registered. For these reasons he declares the constitution was not an emanation, in any true sense, from the people. He also has an ad ditional objection as to the mode of submitting the constitution back to the people. But bearing on the question of whether the delegates were fairly elected, a speech of his, made something more than twelve months ago from this stand, becomes important. It was made a little while before the election of the dele gates who made Lecompton. In that speech he de clared there was every reason to hope and believe the election would be fair, and if any one failed to vote it would be his own culpable fault. I, a few days after, made a sort of answer to that speech. In that answer I made substantially the very SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 35 argument with which he combated his Lecompton ad versaries in the Senate last winter. I pointed to the facts that the people could not vote without being registered, and that the time for registering had gone by. I commented on it as wonderful that Judge Doug las could be ignorant of these facts, which every one else in the nation so well knew. I now pass from popular sovereignty and Lecomp ton. I may have occasion to refer to one or both. When he was preparing his plan of campaign, Na poleon-like, in New York, as appears by two speeches I have heard him deliver since his arrival in Illinois, he gave special attention to a speech of mine delivered here on the 16th of June last. He says that he care fully read that speech. He told us that at Chicago a week ago last night, and he repeated it at Blooming- ton last night. Doubtless he repeated it again to day, though I did not hear him. In the two first places Chicago and Bloomington I heard him; to-day I did not. He said he had carefully examined that speech ; when, he did not say ; but there is no reasonable doubt it was when he was in New York preparing his plan of campaign. I am glad he did read it carefully. He says it was evidently prepared with great care. I freely admit it was prepared with care. I claim not to be more free from errors than others perhaps scarcely so much ; but I was very careful not to put anything in that speech as a matter of fact, or make any in ferences which did not appear to me to be true and fully warrantable. If I had made any mistake I was willing to be corrected ; if I had drawn any inference in regard to Judge Douglas, or any one else, which was not warranted, I was fully prepared to modify it as soon as discovered. I planted myself upon the truth and the truth only, so far as I knew it, or could be brought to know it. Having made that speech with the most kindly feel ings toward Judge Douglas, as manifested therein, I 8(5 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. was gratified when I found that he had carefully ex amined it, and had detected no error of fact, nor any inference against him, nor any misrepresentations, of which he thought fit to complain. In neither of the two speeches I have mentioned, did he make any such complaint. I will thank any one who will inform me that he, in his speech to-day, pointed out anything I had stated, respecting him, as being erroneous. I presume there is no such thing. I have reason to be gratified that the care and caution used in that speech left it so that he, most of all others interested in dis covering error, has not been able to point out one thing against him which he could say was wrong. He seizes upon the doctrines he supposes to be included in that speech, and declares that upon them will turn the issues of the campaign. He then quotes, or attempts to quote, from my speech. I will not say that he wilfully misquotes, but he does fail to quote accurately. His attempt at quoting is from a passage which I believe I can quote accurately from memory. I shall make the quotation now, with some comments upon it, as I have already said, in order that the judge shall be left en tirely without excuse for misrepresenting me. I do so now, as I hope, for the last time. I do this in great caution, in order that if he repeats his misrepresenta tion, it shall be plain tq all that he does so wilfully. If, after all, he still persists, I shall be compelled to reconstruct the course I have marked out for myself, and draw upon such humble resources as I have for a new course, better suited to the real exigencies of the case. I set out, in this campaign, with the intention of conducting it strictly as a gentleman, in substance at least, if not in the outside polish. The latter I shall never be, but that which constitutes the inside of a gentleman I hope I understand, and am not less in clined to practise than others. It was my purpose and expectation that this canvass would be conducted upon principle, and with fairness on both sides, and it shall SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 37 not be my fault if this purpose and expectation shall be given up. He charges, in substance, that I invite a war of sec tions; that I propose all local institutions of the dif ferent States shall become consolidated and uniform. What is there in the language of that speech which ex presses such purpose or bears such construction? I have again and again said that I would not enter into any of the States to disturb the institution of slavery. Judge Douglas said, at Bloomington, that I used language most able and ingenious for concealing what 1 really meant; and that while I had protested against entering into the slave States, I nevertheless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio and throw missiles into Kentucky, to disturb them in their domestic institu tions. I said in that speech, and I meant no more, that the institution of slavery ought to be placed in the very attitude where the framers of this government placed it and left it. I do not understand that the framers of our Constitution left the people in the free States in the attitude of firing bombs or shells into the slave States. I was not using that passage for the purpose for which he infers I did use it. I said : We are now far advanced into the fifth year since a policy was created for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not only ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will not cease till a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe that this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will ar rest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate ex tinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall be come alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new. North as well as South. Now you all see, from that quotation, I did not ex press my wish on anything. In that passage I indi- 88 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. cated no wish or purpose of my own; I simply ex pressed my expectation. Cannot the judge perceive a distinction between a purpose and an expectation? I have often expressed an expectation to die, but I havt never expressed a wish to die. I said at Chicago, and now repeat, that I am quite aware this government has endured half slave and half free for eighty-two years. I understand that little bit of history. I ex pressed the opinion I did, because I perceived or thought I perceived a new set of causes introduced. I did say at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested, and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. I said that because I supposed, when the public mind shall rest in that belief, we shall have peace on the slavery question. I have believed and now believe the public mind did rest in that belief up to the introduc tion of the Nebraska bill. Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, so far I rested in the hope and belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. For that reason, it had been a minor question with me. I might have been mistaken ; but I had believed, and now believe, that the whole public mind, that is, the mind of the great ma jority, had rested in that belief up to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. But upon that event, I became convinced that either I had been resting in a delusion, or the institution was being placed on a new basis a basis for making it perpetual, national, and uni versal. Subsequent events have greatly confirmed me in that belief. I believe that bill to be the beginning of a conspiracy for that purpose. So believing, I have since then considered that question a paramount one. So believing, I think the public mind will never rest till the power of Congress to restrict the spread of it shall again be acknowledged and exercised on the one hand, or, on the other, all resistance be entirely SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. g9 crushed out. I have expressed that opinion, and I entertain it to-night. It is denied that there is any tendency to the nationalization of slavery in these States. Now, as to the Dred Scott decision ; for upon that he makes his last point at me. He boldly takes ground in favor of that decision. This is one half the on slaught, and one third of the entire plan of the cam paign. I am opposed to that decision in a certain sense, but not in the sense which he puts on it. I say that in so far as it decided in favor of Dred Scott s master, and against Dred Scott and his family, I do not propose to disturb or resist the decision. I never have proposed to do any such thing. I think that in respect for judicial authority, my humble his tory would not suffer in comparison with that of Judge Douglas. He would have the citizen conform his vote to that decision ; the member of Congress, his ; the President, his use of the veto power. He would make it a rule of political action for the people and all the departments of the government. I would not. By resisting it as a political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no disorder, excite no mobs. When he spoke at Chicago, on Friday evening of last week, he made this same point upon me. On Saturday evening I replied, and reminded him of a Supreme Court decision which he opposed for at least several years. Last night, at Bloomington, he took some notice of that reply, but entirely forgot to re member that part of it. He renews his onslaught upon me, forgetting to remember that I have turned the tables against himself on that very point. I renew the effort to draw his at tention to it. I wish to stand erect before the country, as well as Judge Douglas, on this question of judicial authority, and therefore I add something to the author ity in favor of my own position. I wish to show that I am sustained by authority, in addition to that hereto- 90 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. fore presented. I do not expect to convince the judge. It is part of the plan of his campaign, and he will cling to it with a desperate grip. Even turn it upon him the sharp point against him, and gaff him through he will still cling to it till he can invent some new dodge to take the place of it. There is one other point. Judge Douglas has a very affectionate leaning toward the Americans and Old Whigs. Last evening, in a sort of weeping tone, he described to us a death-bed scene. He had been called to the side of Mr. Clay, in his last moments, in order that the genius of " popular sovereignty " might duly descend from the dying man and settle upon him, the living and most worthy successor. He could do no less than promise that he would devote the remainder of his life to " popular sovereignty"; and then the great statesman departs in peace. By this part of the " plan of the campaign/* the judge has evidently promised himself that tears shall be drawn down the cheeks of all Old Whigs, as large as half-grown apples. Mr. Webster, too, was mentioned; but it did not quite come to a death-bed scene, as to him. It would be amusing, if it were not disgusting, to see how quick these compromise-breakers administer on the political effects of their dead adversaries, trumping up claims never before heard of, and dividing the assets among themselves. If I should be found dead to-morrow morn ing, nothing but my insignificance could prevent a speech being made on my authority, before the end of next week. It so happens that in that " popular sover eignty " with which Mr. Clay was identified, the Mis souri Compromise was expressly reserved ; and it was a little singular if Mr. Clay cast his mantle upon Judge Douglas on purpose to have that compromise repealed. Again, the judge did not keep faith with Mr Clay when he first brought in his Nebraska bill. He left the Missouri Compromise unrepealed, and in his report accompanying the bill, he told the world he did it on SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 91 purpose. The manes of Mr. Clay must have been in great agony, till thirty days later, when " popular sovereignty " stood forth in all its glory. One more thing. Last night Judge Douglas tor mented himself with horrors about my disposition to make negroes perfectly equal with white men in social and political relations. He did not stop to show that I have said any such thing, or that it legitimately fol lows from anything I have said, but he rushes on with his assertions. I adhere to the Declaration of Indepen dence. If Judge Douglas and his friends are not will ing to stand by it, let them come up and amend it. Let them make it read that all men are created equal, except negroes. Let us have it decided whether the Declaration of Independence, in this blessed year of 1858, shall be thus amended. In his construction of the Declaration last year, he said it only meant that Americans in America were equal to Englishmen in England. Then, when I pointed out to him that by that rule he excludes the Germans, the Irish, the Por tuguese, and all the other people who have come amongst us since the Revolution, he reconstructs his construction. In his last speech he tells us it meant Europeans. I press him a little farther, and ask if it meant to include the Russians in Aia? or does he mean to exclude that vast population from the principles of our Declaration of Independence? I expect ere long he will introduce another amendment to his definition. He is not at all particular. He is satisfied with any thing which does not endanger the nationalizing of negro slavery. It may draw white men down, but it must not lift negroes up. Who shall say, " I am the superior, and you are the inferior? " My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be misrepresented, but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men were created equal in all respects. 92 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. They are not our equal in color ; but I suppose that it does mean to declare that all men are equal in somb respects; they are equal in their right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Certainly the negro is not our equal in color perhaps not in many other re spects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black. In pointing out that more has been given you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given him. All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy. When our government was established, we had the institution of slavery among us. We were in a certain sense compelled to tolerate its existence. It was a sort of necessity. We had gone through our struggle, and secured our own independence. The framers of the Constitution found the institution of slavery amongst their other institutions at the time. They found that by an effort to eradicate it, they might lose much of what they had already gained. They were obliged to bow to the necessity. They gave power to Congress to abolish the slave-trade at the end of twenty years. They also prohibited slavery in the Territories where it did not exist. They did what they could and yielded to necessity for the rest. I also yield to all which follows from that necessity. What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races. One more point on this Springfield speech which Judge Douglas says he has read so carefully. I ex pressed my belief in the existence of a conspiracy to perpetuate and nationalize slavery. I did not profess to know it, nor do I now. I showed the part Judge Douglas had played in the string of facts, constituting to my mind the proof of that conspiracy. I showed the parts played by others. I charge that the people had been deceived into carry- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 93 ing the last presidential election, by the impression that the people of the Territories might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was known in advance by the con spirators, that the court was to decide that neither Con gress nor the people could so exclude slavery. These charges are more distinctly made than anything else in the speech. Judge Douglas has carefully read and re-read that speech. He has not, so far as I know, contradicted those charges. In the two speeches which I heard he certainly did not. On his own tacit admission I renew that charge. I charge him with having been a party to that conspiracy, and to that deception, for the sole purpose of nationalizing slavery. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. FIRST OF THE JOINT LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DE BATES AT OTTAWA, ILL., AUG. 21, 1858. LINCOLN S REPLY. [In this, the earliest, of the speeches of Lincoln in his famous tilts with Judge Douglas, Lincoln replies to his attempt to fasten upon him the odium of holding the perfect social and political equality of the black man and the white. This Lincoln emphatically disowned holding, and set himself right as to the views he did entertain with regard to the black race and the great question of slavery, which he sought not to interfere with in the States where it existed, but to prevent its extension. Douglas s catechizings of Lincoln the latter answers skilfully and effectively, though, unlike his adversary, honestly and without prevarication or sophistry. At the next meeting at Freeport, 111. Lincoln turns the tables upon Mr. Douglas by interrogating him upon some embarrassing but vital points, his answers to which, he shrewdly concluded^ would alienate the South from him, though it might, and probably would, add to his popularity in his own Illinois State. Lincoln s success in wringing these admissions from Douglas showed great sagacity on Lincoln s part, while manifesting his "intuitive perception of- the common sense of the situation"]. I WILL say here, that I have no purpose, either 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 forever forbid their liv ing 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 posi tion. 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 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 95 natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Inde pendence 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 endow ment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the 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. Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies. The judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a " grocery-keeper." I don t know that it would be a great sin if I had been ; but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little still-house up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my friend, the judge, is equally at^fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War. The judge did not make his charge very distinctly, but I tell you what he can prove, by referring to the record. You remember I was an Old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But whenever they asked for any money, or land-war rants, or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did. You can think as you please as to whether that was con sistent. Such is the truth; and the judge has the right to make all he can out of it. But when he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War, or did anything else to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether mistaken, as a consulta tion of the records will prove to him. As I have not used up so much of my time as I had 9(5 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. supposed, I will dwell a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics upon which the judge has spoken. He has read from my speech in Springfield in which I say that " a house divided against itself cannot stand." Does the judge say it can stand ? I don t know whether he does or not. The judge does not seem to be attend ing to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion that a house divided against itself can stand. If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not be tween him and me, but between the judge and an authority of a somewhat higher character. Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the purpose of saying something seriously. I know that the judge may readily enough agree with me that the maxim which was put forth by the Saviour is true, but he may allege that I misapply it ; and the judge has a right to urge that in my application I do misapply it, and then I have a right to show that I do not misapply it. When he undertakes to say that because I think this nation, so far as the question of slavery is con cerned, will all become one thing or all the other, I am in favor of bringing about a dead uniformity in the various States in all their institutions, he argues errone ously. The great variety of the local institutions in the States, springing from differences in the soil, dif ferences in the face of the country, and in the climate, are bonds of union. They do not make " a house di vided against itself," but they make a house united. If they produce in one section of the country what is called for by the wants of another section, and this other section can supply the wants of the first, they are not matters of discord but bonds of union, true bonds of union. But can this question of slavery be considered as among these varieties in the institutions of the coun try? I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to be a bond of union, and, on the con trary, been an apple of discord and an element of divi- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 97 sion in the house. I ask you to consider whether, so long as the moral constitution of men s minds shall continue to be the same, after this generation and as semblage shall sink into the grave, and another race shall arise with the same moral and intellectual devel opment we have whether, if that institution is stand ing in the same irritating position in which it now is, it will not continue an element of division? If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this question, the Union is a house divided against it self; and when the judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it restricting it from the new Ter ritories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by the abrogation of the slave-trade, thus put ting the seal of legislation against its spread. The public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But lately, I think and in this I charge nothing on the judge s motives lately, I think, that he, and those acting with him, have placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. And while it is placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Now I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of 7 98 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". ultimate extinction. The crisis would be past, and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years if it should live so long in the States where it exists, yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races. [A voice : " Then do you repudiate popular sovereignty?"] Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty! What is popular sovereignty? Is it the right of the people to have slavery or not have it, as they see fit, in the Territories? I will state and I have an able man to watch me my understanding is that popular sovereignty, as now ap plied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have slavery if they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do not want it. I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people were in a Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged to have a slave if he did not want one ; but I do say that, as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from holding them. When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the judge complains, and from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he ascribes to me at all. I had no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a war between the free and slave States. I had no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a political and social equality of the black and white races. It never oc curred to me that I was doing anything or favoring any thing to reduce to a dead uniformity all the local in stitutions of the various States. But I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better that I did not mean it. It is just as fatal to the coun try, if I have any influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not. But can it be true, that placing this institution upon the original basis the basis upon which our fathers placed it can have any tendency to SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 99 set the Northern and the Southern States at war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane because they raise it in Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut pine logs on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because they cut pine logs in Maine, where they do grow? The judge says this is a new prin ciple started in regard to this question. Does the judge claim that he is working on the plan of the founders of the government? I think he says in some of his speeches indeed, I have one here now that he saw evidence of a policy to allow slavery to be south of a certain line, while north of it, it should be excluded, and he saw an indisposition on the part of the country to stand upon that policy, and therefore he set about studying the subject upon original principles, and upon original principles he got up the Nebraska bill ! I am fighting it upon these " original principles " fighting it in the Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, and Madi- sonian fashion. Now, my friends, I wish you to attend for a little while to one or two other things in that Springfield speech. My main object was to show, so far as my humble ability was capable of showing to the people of this country, what I believe was the truth that there was a tendency, if not a conspiracy, among those who have engineered this slavery question for the last four or five years, to make slavery perpetual and universal in this nation. Having made that speech principally for that object, after arranging the evidences that I thought tended to prove my proposition, I concluded with this bit of comment : We cannot absolutely know that these exact adaptations are the result of pre-concert, but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance; and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the 100 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even the scaffolding, or if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such pieces in in such a case we feel it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin, and Roger and James, all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow was struck. When my friend, Judge Douglas, came to Chicago on the 9th of July, this speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an harangue there in which he took hold of this speech of mine, showing that he had carefully read it; and while he paid no attention to this matter at all, but complimented me as being a " kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman," notwithstanding I had said this, he goes on and deduces, or draws out, from my speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the niggers and white people to marry together. Then, as the judge had complimented me with these pleasant titles (I must confess to my weak ness), I was a little " taken," for it came from a great man. I was not very much accustomed to flattery, and it came the sweeter to me. I was rather like the Hoosier with the gingerbread, when he said he reck oned he loved it better than any other man, and got less of it. As the judge had so flattered me, I could not make up my mind that he meant to deal unfairly with me; so I went to work to show him that he misunder stood the whole scope of my speech, and that I really never intended to set the people at war with one an other. As an illustration, the next time I met him, which was at Springfield, I used this expression, that I claimed no right under the Constitution, nor had I any inclination, to enter into the slave States and interfere with the institutions of slavery. He says SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 101 upon that : Lincoln will not enter into the slave States, but will go to the banks of the Ohio, on this side, and shoot over! He runs on, step by step, in the horse- chestnut style of argument, until in the Springfield speech he says, " Unless he shall be successful in fir ing his batteries, until he shall have extinguished slavery in all the States, the Union shall be dissolved." Now I don t think that was exactly the way to treat " a kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman." I know if I had asked the judge to show when or where it was I had said, that if I didn t succeed in firing into the slave States until slavery should be extinguished, the Union should be dissolved, he could not have shown- it. I understand what lie would do. He woyfl3 >; sAy> u I don t mean to quote from you, but this wa s ;rho, re-suit of what you say." But I have the right IV a^k/ etfd T do ask now, did you not put it in such a form that an or dinary reader or listener would take it as an expression from me? In a speech at Springfield on the night of the 17th, I thought I might as well attend to my business a little, and I recalled his attention as well as I could to this charge of conspiracy to nationalize slavery. I called his attention to the fact that he had acknowl edged in my hearing twice that he had carefully read the speech; and, in the language of the lawyers, as he had twice read the speech, and still had put in no plea or answer, I took a default on him. I insisted that I had a right then to renew that charge of conspiracy. Ten days afterward I met the judge at Clinton that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the discussion and heard him make a speech. Then he comes in with his plea to this charge, for the first time, and his plea when put in, as well as I can recollect it, amounted to this: that he never had any talk with Judge Taney or the President of the United States with regard to the Dred Scott decision before it was made. I (Lincoln) ought to know that the man who makes a charge with- 102 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. out knowing it to be true, falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood; and lastly, that he would pronounce the whole thing a falsehood ; but he would make no personal application of the charge of false hood, not because of any regard for the " kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman," but because of his own personal self-respect! I have understood since then (but [turn ing to Judge Douglas] will not hold the judge to it if he is not willing) that he has broken through the " self- respect," and has got to saying the thing out. The judge nods to me that it is so. It is fortunate for me that I can keep as good-humored as I do, when the judge acknowledges that he has been trying to make a ques- tijoa of "veracity with me. I know the judge is a great man, while ,1 am only a small man, but I feel that I have .get him. I demur to that plea. I waive all ob jections that it was not filed till after default was taken, and demur to it upon the merits. What if Judge Douglas never did talk with Chief Justice Taney and the President before the Dred Scott decision was made; does it follow that he could not have had as perfect an understanding without talking as with it? I am not disposed to stand upon my legal advantage. I am dis posed to take his denial as being like an answer in chancery, that he neither had any knowledge, informa tion, nor belief in the existence of such a conspiracy. I am disposed to take his answer as being as broad as though he had put it in these words. And now, I ask, even if he had done so, have not I a right to prove it on him, and to offer the evidence of more than two wit nesses, by whom to prove it; and if the evidence proves the existence of the conspiracy, does his broad answer, denying all knowledge, information, or belief, disturb the fact? It can only show that he was used by con spirators, and was not a leader of them. Now, in regard to his reminding me of the moral rule that persons who tell what they do not know to be true, falsify as much as those who knowingly tell falsehoods. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I remember the rule, and it must be borne in mind that in what I have read to you, I do not say that I know such a conspiracy to exist. To that I reply, I believe it. If the judge says that I do not believe it, then he says what he does not know, and falls within his own rule that he who asserts a thing which he does not know to be true, falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood. I want to call your attention to a little discussion on that branch of the case, and the evidence which brought my mind to the conclusion which I ex pressed as my belief. If, in arraying that evidence, I had stated anything which was false or erroneous, it needed but that Judge Douglas should point it out, and I would have taken it back with all the kindness in the world. I do not deal in that way. If I have brought forward anything not a fact, if he will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take it back. But if he will not point out anything erroneous in the evidence, is it not rather for him to show by a comparison of the evidence that I have reasoned falsely, than to call the " kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar? If I have reasoned to a false conclusion, it is the vocation of an able debater to show by argument that I have wan dered to an erroneous conclusion. I want to ask your attention to a portion of the Nebraska bill which Judge Douglas has quoted : " It being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Thereupon Judge Douglas and others began to argue in favor of " popular sovereignty " the right of the people to have slaves if they wanted them, and to exclude slavery if they did not want them. " But," said, in substance, a senator from Ohio (Mr. Chase, I believe), " we more than suspect that you do not mean to allow the people to exclude slavery if they wish to; SPEECHES Or ABKAKAM and if you do mean it, accept an amendment which I propose expressly authorizing the people to exclude slavery." I believe I have the amendment here before me, which was offered, and under which the people of the Territory, through their proper representatives, might, if they saw fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein. And now I state it as a fact, to be taken back if there is any mistake about it, that Judge Douglas and those acting with him voted that amendment down. I now think that those men who voted it down had a real reason for doing so. They know what that reason was. It looks to us, since we have seen the Dred Scott decision pronounced, holding that, " under the Consti tution," the people cannot exclude slavery T say it looks to outsiders, poor, simple, "amiable, intelligent gentlemen," as though the niche was left as a place to put that Dred Scott decision in, a niche which would have been spoiled by adopting the amendment. And now I say again, if this was not the reason, it will avail the judge much more to calmly and good- humoredly point out to these people what that other reason was for voting the amendment down, than swelling himself up to vociferate that he may be pro voked to call somebody a liar. Again : there is in that same quotation from the Ne braska bill this clause: "It being the true intent and meaning of this bill not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State." I have always been puzzled to know what business the word " State " had in that connection. Judge Douglas knows. He put it there. He knows what he put it there for. We outsiders cannot say what he put it there for. The law they were passing was not about States, and was not making provision for States. What was it placed there for? After seeing the Dred Scott decision which holds that the people canot exclude slavery from a Territory, if another Dred Scott decision shall come, holding that they cannot exclude it from a State, we shall discover SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1Q5 that when the word was originally put there, it was in view of something which was to come in due time, w r e shall see that it was the other half of something. I now say again, if there is any different reason for putting it there, Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without calling anybody a liar, can tell what the reason was. Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the sub ject, in the little time I have left, to which to call your attention, and as I shall come to a close at the end of that branch, it is probable that I shall not occupy quite all the time allotted to me. Although on these ques tions I would like to talk twice as long as I have, I could not enter upon another head and discuss it properly without running over my time. I ask the attention of the people here assembled and elsewhere, to the course that Judge Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of making slavery national. Not going back to the records, but taking the speeches he makes, the speeches he made yesterday and day before, and makes constantly all over the country I ask your attention to them. In the first place, what is necessary to make the institution na tional ? Not war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets, and, with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into Illi nois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going over there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have al ready decided that under the Constitution neither Con gress nor the territorial legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done. This being true, and this being the way, as I think, that slavery is to be made national, let us con sider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that 106 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. end. In the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on public sentiment. In this and like com munities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail ; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed. This must be borne in mind, as also the additional fact that Judge Douglas is a man of vast influence, so great that it is enough for many men to profess to believe anything when they once find out that Judge Douglas professes to believe it. Consider also the attitude he occupies at the head of a large party a party which he claims has a majority of all the voters in the country. This man sticks to a decision which forbids the peo ple of a Territory to exclude slavery, and he does so not because he says it is right in itself, he does not give any opinion on that, but because it has been decided by the court, and, being decided by the court, he is, and you are, bound to take it in your political action as law not that he judges at all of its merits, but because a decision of the court is to him a " Thus saith the Lord." He places it on that ground alone, and you will bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision, commits him to the next one just as firmly as to this. He did not commit him self on account of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a " Thus saith the Lord." The next decision, as much as this, will be a " Thus saith the Lord." There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this decision. It is nothing that I point out to him that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force of decisions. It is nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe. I have said that I have often heard him approve of Jackson s course in disregarding the decision of the Supreme Court pro nouncing a national bank constitutional. He says I SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. l()7 did not hear him say so. He denies the accuracy of my recollection. I say he ought to know better than I, but I will make no question about this thing, though it still seems to me that I heard him say it twenty times. I will tell him though, that he now claims to stand on the Cincinnati platform, which affirms that Congress cannot charter a national bank, in the teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a bank. And I remind him of another piece of history on the question of respect for judicial decisions, and it is a piece of Illinois history, belonging to a time when a large party to which Judge Douglas belonged were dis pleased with a decision of the Supreme Court of Illi nois, because they had decided that a governor could not remove a secretary of state. You will find the whole story in Ford s " History of Illinois," and I know that Judge Douglas will not deny that he was then in favor of oversloughing that decision by the mode of adding five new judges, so as to vote down the four old ones. Not only so, but it ended in the judge s sitting down on the very bench as one of the five new judges to break down the four old ones. It was in this way precisely that he got his title of judge. Now, when the judge tells me that men appointed condition ally to sit as members of a court will have to be catechised beforehand upon some subject, I say, " You know, judge; you have tried it." When he says a court of this kind will lose the confidence of all men, will be prostituted and disgraced by such a proceed ing, I say, "You know best, judge; you have been through the mill." But I cannot shake Judge Douglas s teeth" loose from the Dred Scott decision. Like some obstinate animal (I mean no disrespect) that will hang on when he has once got his teeth fixed, you may cut off a leg, or you may tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold. And so I may point out to the judge, and say that he is bespattered all over, from the beginning of his political SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". life to the present time, with attacks upon judicial decisions, I may cut off limb after limb of his public record, and strive to wrench from him a single dictum of the court, yet I cannot divert him from it. He hangs to the last to the Dred Scott decision. These things show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he adheres to this decision, and for which he will adhere to all other decisions of the same court. [A Hibernian : " Give us something besides Drid Scott."] Yes; no doubt you want to hear something that don t hurt. Now, having spoken of the Dred Scott decision, one more word and I am done. Henry Clay, my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my humble life Henry Clay once said of a class of men who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation, that they must, if they would do this, go back to the era of our independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joy ous return ; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, could they perpetuate slavery in this country! To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by his example and vast influence, doing that very thing in this community when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declara tion of Independence. Henry Clay plainly understood the contrary. Judge Douglas is going back to the era of our Revolution, and to the extent of his ability muz zling the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. When he invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is blowing out the moral lights around us. When he says he " cares not whethef slavery is voted down or voted up " that it is a sacred right of self-government he is, in my judgment, pene trating the human soul and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people. And now I will only say that when, by all these means and appliances, Judge Douglas shall succeed in bring- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1Q9 ing public sentiment to an exact accordance with his own views when these vast assemblages shall echo back all these sentiments when they shall come to re peat his views and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says on these mighty questions then it needs only the formality of the second Dred Scott decision, which he indorses in advance, to make slavery alike lawful in all the States old as well as new, North as well as South. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH AT FREEPORT, ILL., (THE SECOND OF THE DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS), WITH RE JOINDER, AUG. 27, 1858. [Here is the substance of the second discussion with Juctgc Douglas on the leading political topics that at the time agitated the country. It contains, it will be seen, Lincoln s answers to Douglas s seven interrogatories, and the four questions he, so far, propounds to Douglas, and calls upon him for replies. Of these four questions, an entangling one is the second, which reads: "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution ? " Judge Douglas s answer was in the affirmative, and the admission was, as Lincoln foresaw, un palatable to the South, and fatal to Douglas when in the running, two years later, for the Presidency. It was a tactical thing in Lincoln to wrest this admission from his great adversary, since to assert that a territorial legislature could enact laws hostile to slavery was certain to offend Southern democrats and nullify the Dred Scott decision. To extort this admission from Douglas was therefore just what Lincoln wanted and obtained, and though it lost him the Illinois senatorship, it put Douglas out of the running for the Presidency]. Ladies and Gentlemen: On Saturday last, Judge Douglas and myself first met in public discussion. He spoke one hour, I an hour and a half, and he replied for half an hour. The order is now reversed. I am to speak an hour, he an hour and a half, and then I am to reply for half an hour. I propose to devote myself dur ing the first hour to the scope of what was brought within the range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa. Of course there was brought within the scope of that half-hour s speech something of his own opening speech. In the course of that opening argument Judge Douglas proposed to me seven distinct interrogatories. In my speech of an hour and a half, I attended to some other parts of his speech, and incidentally, as I thought, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. answered one of the interrogatories then. I then dis tinctly intimated to him that I would answer the rest of his interrogatories on condition only that he should agree to answer as many for me. He made no intima tion at the time of the proposition, nor did he in his re ply allude at all to that suggestion of mine. I do him no injustice in saying that he occupied at least half of his reply in dealing with me as though I had refused to answer his interrogatories. I now propose that I will answer any of the interrogatories, upon condition that he will answer questions from me not exceeding the same number. I give him an opportunity to re spond. The judge remains silent. I now say that I will answer his interrogatories, whether he answers mine or not; and that after I have done so, I shall pro pound mine to him. I have supposed myself, since the organization of the Republican party at Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by the platforms of the party then and since. If in any interrogatories which I shall answer I go beyond the scope of what is within these platforms, it will be perceived that no one is respon sible but myself. Having said this much, I will take up the judge s interrogatories as I find them printed in the Chicago " Times," and answer them seriatim. In order that there may be no mistake about it, I have copied the interrogatories in writing, and also my answers to them. The first one of these interrogatories is in these words : Question 1. " I desire to know whether Lincoln to day stands as he did in 1854, in favor of the uncon ditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law? " Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law. Q. 2. " I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the people want them ? " SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. A. I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union. Q. 3. " I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make?" A. I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make. Q. 4. " I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?" A. I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Q. 5. " I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?" A. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States. Q. 6. " I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States, North as well as South of the Missouri Com promise line? " A. I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories. Q. 7. " I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?" A. I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery question among ourselves. Now, my friends, it will be perceived upon an exami nation of these questions and answers, that so far I have only answered that I was not pledged to this, that, OP the other. The judge has not framed his interrogator- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ies to ask me anything more than this, and I have an swered in strict accordance with the interrogatories, and have answered truly that I am not pledged at all upon any of the points to which I have answered. But I am not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatory. I am really disposed to take up at least some of these questions, and state what I really think upon them. As to the first one, in regard to the fugitive-slave law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States are entitled to a congressional fugitive-slave law. Hav ing said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing fugitive-slave law, further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of slavery. In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you very frankly that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of hav ing to pass upon that question. I should be exceed ingly glad to know that there would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must add, that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories dur ing the territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt the Constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union. The third interrogatory is answered by the answer 8 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to the second, it being, as I conceive, the same as the second. The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In relation to that, I have my mind very distinctly made up. I should be exceed ingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia. I believe that Congress possesses the con stitutional power to abolish it. Yet as a member of Congress, I should not with my present views be in favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia unless it would be upon these conditions : First, that the abolition should be gradual ; second, that it should be on a vote of the majority of qualified voters in the District; and third, that compensation should be made to unwilling owners. With these three conditions, I confess I would be exceedingly glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and, in the language of Henry Clay, " sweep from our capital that foul blot upon our nation." In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must say here that as to the question of the abolition of the slave- trade between the different States, I can truly answer, as I have, that I am pledged to nothing about it. It is a subject to which I have not given that mature con sideration that would make me feel authorized to state a position so as to hold myself entirely bound by it. In other words, that question has never been prom inently enough before me to induce me to investigate whether we really have the constitutional power to do it. I could investigate it if I had sufficient time to bring myself to a conclusion upon that subject, but I have not done so, and I say so frankly to you here and to Judge Douglas. I must say, however, that if I should be of opinion that Congress does possess the con stitutional power to abolish the slave-trade among the different States, I should still not be in favor of the exercise of that power unless upon some conservative principle as I conceive it, akin to what I have said in SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM .LINCOLN. relation to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. My answer as to whether I desire that slavery should be prohibited in all the Territories of the United States is full and explicit within itself, and cannot be made clearer by any comments of mine. So I suppose in re gard to the question whether I am opposed to the ac quisition of any more territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein, my answer is such that I could add nothing by way of illustration, or making myself better understood, than the answer which I have placed in writing. Now in all this the judge has me, and he has me on the record. I suppose he had flattered himself that I was really entertaining one set of opinions for one place and another set for another place that I was afraid to say at one place what I uttered at another. What I am saying here I suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tending to Abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois, and I believe I am saying that which, if it would be offensive to any per sons and render them enemies to myself, would be offensive to persons in this audience. I now proceed to propound to the judge the interro gatories so far as I have framed them. I will bring forward a new instalment when I get them ready. I will bring them forward now, only reaching to number four. The first one is : Question 1. If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite number of in habitants according to the English bill, some ninety- three thousand, will you vote to admit them? Q. 2. Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution? Q. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopt ing, and following such decision as a rule of political action? Q. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional terri tory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question? As introductory to these interrogatories which Judge Douglas propounded to me at Ottawa, he read a set of resolutions which he said Judge Trumbull and my self had participated in adopting, in the first Repub lican State convention, held at Springfield, in October, 1854. He insisted that I and Judge Trumbull, and per haps the entire Republican party, were responsible for the doctrines contained in the set of resolutions which he read, and I understand that it was from that set of resolutions that he deduced the interrogatories which he propounded to me, using these resolutions as a sort of authority for propounding those questions to me. Now I say here to-day that I do not answer his interrogatories because of their springing at all from that set of resolutions which he read. I answered them because Judge Douglas thought fit to ask them. I do not now, nor ever did, recognize any responsibility upon myself in that set of resolutions. When I replied to him on that occasion, I assured him that I never had anything to do with them. I repeat here to-day, that I never in any possible form had anything to do with that set of resolutions. It turns out, I believe, that those resolutions were never passed at any convention held in Springfield. It turns out that they were never passed at any convention or any public meeting that I had any part in. I believe it turns out, in addition to all this, that there was not, in the fall of 1854, any convention holding a session in Springfield calling it- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. self a Republican State convention ; yet it is true there was a convention, or assemblage of men calling them selves a convention, at Springfield, that did pass some resolutions. I>ut so little did I really know of the pro ceedings of that convention, or what set of resolutions they had passed, though having a general knowledge that there had been such an assemblage of men there, that when Judge Douglas read the resolutions, I really did not know but that they had been the resolutions passed then and there. I did not question that they were the resolutions adopted. For I could not bring myself to suppose that Judge Douglas could say what he did upon this subject without knowing that it was true. I contented myself, on that occasion, with deny ing, as I truly could, all connection with them, not denying or affirming whether they were passed at Springfield. Now it turns out that he had got hold of some resolutions passed at some convention or public meeting in Kane County. I wish to say here, that I don t conceive that in any fair and just mind this dis covery relieves me at all. I had just as much to do with the convention in Kane County as that at Springfield. I am just as much responsible for the resolutions at Kane County as those at Springfield, the amount of the responsibility being exactly nothing in either case; no more than there would be in regard to a set of resolu tions passed in the moon. I allude to this extraordinary matter in this canvass for some further purpose than anything yet advanced. Judge Douglas did not make his statement upon that occasion as matters that he believed to be true, but he stated them roundly as being true, in such form as to pledge his veracity for their truth. When the whole matter turns out as it does, and when we consider who Judge Douglas is, that he is a distinguished senator of the United States ; that he has served nearly twelve years as such; that his character is not at all limited as an ordinary senator of the United States, but that SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. his name has become of world-wide renown, it is most extraordinary that he should so far forget all the sug gestions of justice to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the assertion of that which the slightest investigation would have shown him to be wholly false. I can only account for his having done so upon the supposition that that evil genius which has attended him through his life, giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, such as to lead very many good men to doubt there being any ad vantage in virtue over vice I say I can only account for it on the supposition that that evil genius has at last made up its mind to forsake him. And I may add that another extraordinary feature of the judge s conduct in this canvass made more ex traordinary by this incident is, that he is in the habit, in almost all the speeches he makes, of charging false hood upon his adversaries, myself and others. I now ask whether he is able to find in anything that Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything that I have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in this instance, for that sort of vulgarity. I have been in the habit of charging as a matter of belief on my part, that, in the introduction of the Ne braska bill into Congress, there was a conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and national. I have arranged from time to time the evidence which establishes and proves the truth of this charge. I recurred to this charge at Ottawa. I shall not now have time to dwell upon it at very great length; but inasmuch as Judge Douglas in his reply of half an hour made some points upon me in relation to it, I propose noticing a few of them. The judge insists that, in the first speech I made, in which I very distinctly made that charge, he thought for a good while I was in fun that I was playful that I was not sincere about it and that he only grew angry and somewhat excited when he found that I SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. insisted upon it as a matter of earnestness. He says he characterized it as a falsehood as far as I implicated his moral character in that transaction. Well, I did not know, till he presented that view, that I had impli cated his moral character. He is very much in the habit, when he argues me up into a position I never thought of occupying, of very cozily saying he has no doubt Lincoln is " conscientious " in saying so. He should remember that I did not know but what he was altogether " conscientious " in that matter. I can con ceive it possible for men to conspire to do a good thing, and I really find nothing in Judge Douglas s course of arguments that is contrary to or inconsistent with his belief of a conspiracy to nationalize and spread slavery as being a good and blessed thing, and so I hope he will understand that I do not at all question but that in all this matter he is entirely " conscientious." But to draw your attention to one of the points I made in this case, beginning at the beginning. When the Nebraska bill was introduced, or a short time after ward, by an amendment, I believe, it was provided that it must be considered " the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." I have called his attention to the fact that when he and some others began arguing that they were giving an in creased degree of liberty to the people in the Territories over and above what they formerly had on the question of slavery, a question was raised whether the law was enacted to give such unconditional liberty to the peo ple; and to test the sincerity of this mode of argu ment, Mr. Chase, of Ohio, introduced an amendment, in which he made the law if the amendment were adopted expressly declare that the people of the Terri tory should have the power to exclude slavery if they 120 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. saw fit. I have asked attention also to the fact that Judge Douglas, and those who acted with him, voted that amendment down, notwithstanding it expressed exactly the thing they said was the true intent and meaning of the law. I have called attention to the fact that in subsequent times a decision of the Supreme Court has been made in which it has been declared that a Territorial Legislature has no constitutional right to exclude slavery. And I have argued and said that for men who did intend that the people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery absolutely and unconditionally, the voting down of Chase s amend ment is wholly inexplicable. It is a puzzle a riddle. But I have said that with men who did look forward to such a decision, or who had it in contemplation that such a decision of the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting down of that amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible. It would keep Congress from coining in collision with the decis ion when it was made. Anybody can conceive that if there was an intention or expectation that such a decis ion was to follow, it would not be a very desirable party attitude to get into for the Supreme Court all or nearly all its members belonging to the same party to decide one way, when the party in Congress had decided the other way. Hence it would be very rational for men expecting such a decision to keep the niche in that law clear for it. After pointing this out, I tell Judge Doug las that it looks to me as though here was the reason why Chase s amendment was voted down. I tell him that as he did it, and knows why he did it, if it was done for a reason different from this, he knows what that reason was, and can tell us what it was. I tell him, also, it will be vastly more satisfactory to the country for him to give some other plausible, in telligible reason why it was voted down than to stand upon his dignity and call people liars. Well, on Satur day he did make his answer, and what do you think it SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. was? He says if I had only taken upon myself to tell the whole truth about that amendment of Chase s, no explanation would have been necessary on his part or words to that effect. Now I say here that I am quite unconscious of having suppressed anything material to the case, and I am very frank to admit if there is any sound reason other than that which appeared to me material, it is quite fair for him to present it. What reason does he propose? That when Chase came for ward with his amendment expressly authorizing the people to exclude slavery from the limits of every Ter ritory, General Cass proposed to Chase, if he (Chase) would add to his amendment that the people should have the power to introduce or exclude, they would let it go. This is substantially all of his reply. And because Chase would not do that they voted his amendment down. Well, it turns out, I believe, upon examination, that General Cass took some part in the little running debate upon that amendment, and then ran away and did not vote on it at all. Is not that the fact? So con fident, as I think, was General Cass that there was a snake somewhere about, he chose to run away from the whole thing. This is an inference I draw from the fact that though he took part in the debate his name does not appear in the ayes and noes. But does Judge Doug las s reply amount to a satisfactory answer? [Cries of " Yes," " Yes," and " No," " No."] There is some little difference of opinion here. But I ask attention to a few- more views bearing on the question of whether it amounts to a satisfactory answer. The men who were determined that that amendment should not get into the bill, and spoil the place where the Dred Scott decis ion was to come in, sought an excuse to get rid of it somewhere. One of these ways one of these excuses was to ask Chase to add to his proposed amendment a provision that the people might introduce slavery if they wanted to. They very well knew Chase would do SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. no such thing that Mr. Chase was one of the men differing from them on the broad principle of his in sisting that freedom was better than slavery a man who would not consent to enact a law penned with his own hand, by which he was made to recognize slavery on the one hand and liberty on the other as precisely equal; and when they insisted on his doing this, they very well knew they insisted on that which he would not for a moment think of doing, and that they were only bluffing him. I believe I have not, since he made his answer, had a chance to examine the journals or " Congressional Globe," and therefore speak from memory I believe the state of the bill at that time, according to parliamentary rules, was such that no member could propose an additional amendment to Chase s amendment. I rather think this is the truth the judge shakes his head. Very well. I would like to know then, if they wanted Chase s amendment fixed over, why somebody else could not have offered to do it? If they wanted it amended, why did they not offer the amendment? Why did they stand there taunting and quibbling at Chase? Why did they not put it in them selves? But to put it on the other ground: suppose that there was such an amendment offered, and Chase s was an amendment to an amendment ; until one is dis posed of by parliamentary law, you cannot pile another on. Then all these gentlemen had to do was to vote Chase s on, and then, in the amended form in which the whole stood, add their own amendment to it if they wanted to put it in that shape. This was all they were obliged to do, and the ayes and noes show that there were thirty-six who voted it down, against ten who voted in favor of it. The thirty-six held entire sway and control. They could in some form or other have put that bill in the exact shape they wanted. If there was a rule preventing their amending it at the time, they could pass that, and then, Chase s amendment being merged, put it in the shape they wanted. They SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 123 did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he would not, they stand upon that flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left room thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make slavery national throughout the United States. I pass one or two points I have because my time will very soon expire, but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln an insig nificant individiial like Lincoln upon his ipse dixit charging a conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery. I want to say that, in the first place, I have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse dixit. I have only arrayed the evidence tending to prove it, and presented it to the understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but giving you the means of judging whether it proves it or not. This is precisely what I have done. I have not placed it upon my ipse dixit at all. On this occasion, I wish to recall his attention to a piece of evidence which I brought forward at Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made substantially the same charge against substantially the same persons, excluding his dear self from the category. I ask him to give some attention to the evidence which I brought forward, that he himself had discovered a " fatal blow being struck " against the right of the people to exclude slavery from their limits, which fatal blow he assumed as in evidence in an article in the Washington " Union," published " by authority." I ask by whose authority? He discovers a similar or identical provision in the Lecompton con stitution. Made by whom? The framers of that con stitution. Advocated by whom? By all the member** of the party in the nation, who advocated the intro- 124 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". duction of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton constitution. I have asked his attention to the evidence that he arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was being struck, and to the facts which he brought forward in support of that charge being identical with the one which he thinks so villainous in me. He pointed it not at a newspaper editor merely, but at the President and his cabinet, and the members of Congress advocat ing the Lecompton constitution, and those framing that instrument. I must again be permitted to remind him, that although my ipse dixit may not be as great as his, yet it somewhat reduces the force of his calling my at tention to the enormity of my making a like charge against him. Mr. Lincoln s Rejoinder in the Freeport Joint Debate. My Friends: It will readily occur to you that I can not in half an hour notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossi bility for me to go over his whole ground. I can but take up some of the points that he has dwelt upon, and employ my half hour specially on them. The first thing I have to say to you is a word in re gard to Judge Douglas s declaration about the " vul garity and blackguardism " in the audience that no such thing, as he says, was shown by any Democrat while I was speaking. Now I only wish, by way of reply on this subject, to say that while I was speaking I used no " vulgarity or blackguardism " toward any Democrat. Now, my friends, I come to all this long portion of the judge s speech perhaps half of it which he has SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. devoted to the various resolutions and platforms that have been adopted in the different counties, in the different congressional districts, and in the Illinois legislature which he supposes are at variance with the positions I have assumed before you to-day. It is true that many of these resolutions are at variance with the positions I have here assumed. All I have to ask is that we talk reasonably and rationally about it. I happen to know, the judge s opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, that I have never tried to conceal my opinions, nor tried to deceive any one in reference to them. He may go and examine all the members who voted for me for United States senator in 1855, after the election of 1854. They were pledged to certain things here at home, and were determined to have pledges from me, and if he will find any of these per sons who will tell him anything inconsistent with what I say now, I will retire from the race, and give him no more trouble. The plain truth is this. At the introduction of the Nebraska policy, we believed there was a new era being introduced in the history of the republic, which tended to the spread and perpetuation of slavery. But in our opposition to that measure we did not agree with one another in everything. The people in the north end of the State were for stronger measures of opposition than we of the central and southern portions of the State, but we were all opposed to the Nebraska doctrine. We had that one feeling and that one sentiment in com mon. You at the north end met in your conventions and passed your resolutions. We in the middle of the State and further south did not hold such conventions and pass the same resolutions, although we had in general a common view and a common sentiment. So that these meetings which the judge has alluded to, and the resolutions he has read from, were local, and did not spread over the whole State. We at last met together in 1856, from all parts of the State, and we SPEECHES O/? ABRAHAM LINCOLN. agreed upon a common platform. You who held more extreme notions, either yielded those notions, or if not wholly yielding them, agreed to yield them practically, for the sake of embodying the opposition to the meas ures which the opposite party were pushing forward at that time. We met you then, and if there was anything yielded, it was for practical purposes. We agreed then upon a platform for the party throughout the entire State of Illinois, and now we are all bound, as a party, to that platform. And I say here to you, if any one expects of me, in the case of my election, that I will do" anything not signified by our Republican platform and my answers here to-day, I tell you very frankly that person will be deceived. I do not ask for the vote of any one who supposes that I have secret purposes or pledges that I dare not speak out. Cannot the judge be satisfied? If he fears, in the unfortunate case of my election, that my going to Washington will enable me to advocate sentiments contrary to those which I ex pressed when you voted for and elected me, I assure him that his fears are wholly needless and groundless. Is the judge really afraid of any such thing? I ll tell you what he is afraid of. He is afraid we ll all pull together. This is what alarms him more than anything else. For my part, I do hope that all of us, entertain ing a common sentiment in opposition to what appears to us a design to nationalize and perpetuate slavery, will waive minor differences on questions which either belong to the dead past or the distant future, and all pull together in this struggle. What are your senti ments ? If it be true that on the ground which I occupy ground which I occupy as frankly and boldly as Judge Douglas does his my views, though partly coin ciding with yours, are not as perfectly in accordance with your feelings as his are, I do say to you in all can dor, go for him and not for me. I hope to deal in all things fairly with Judge Douglas, and with the people pf the State, in this contest. And if I should never SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 127 be elected to any office, I trust I may go down with no stain of falsehood upon my reputation, notwithstand ing the hard opinions Judge Douglas chooses to enter tain of me. The judge has again addressed himself to the Aboli tion tendencies of a speech of mine, made at Springfield in June last. I have so often tried to answer what he is always saying on that melancholy theme, that I almost turn with disgust from the discussion from the repeti tion of an answer to it. I trust that nearly all of this intelligent audience have read that speech. If you have, I may venture to leave it to you to inspect it closely, and see whether it contains any of those " bugaboos " which frighten Judge Douglas. The judge complains that I did not fully answer his questions. If I have the sense to comprehend and answer those questions, I have done so fairly. If it can be pointed out to me how I can more fully and fairly answer him, I will do it but I aver I have not the sense to see how it is to be done. He says I do not declare I would in any event vote for the admission of a slave State into the Union. If I have been fairly re ported, he will see that I did give an explicit answer to his interrogatories. I did not merely say that I would dislike to be put to the test ; but I said clearly, if I were put to the test, and a Territory from which slavery had been excluded should present herself with a State con stitution sanctioning slavery, a most extraordinary thing and wholly unlikely to happen, I did not see how I could avoid voting for her admission. But he re fuses to understand that I said so, and he wants this audience to understand that I did not say so. Yet it will be so reported in the printed speech that he cannot help seeing it. He says if I should vote for the admission of a slave State I would be voting for a dissolution of the Union, because I hold that the Union cannot permanently exist half slave and half free. I repeat that I do not SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM UNCOIL. believe this government can endure permanently half slave and half free, yet I do not admit, nor does it at all follow, that the admission of a single slave State will permanently fix the character and establish this as a universal slave nation. The judge is very happy indeed at working up these quibbles. Before leaving the subject of answering questions, I aver as my confident belief, when you come to see our speeches in print, that you will find every question which he has asked me more fairly and boldly and fully answered than he has an swered those which I put to him. Is not that so? The two speeches may be placed side by side ; and I will ven ture to leave it to impartial judges whether his ques tions have not been more directly and circumstantially answered than mine. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. REPLY TO DOUGLAS IN THE JONESBORO JOINT DEBATE, SEP. 15, 1858. [In the following speech, Mr. Lincoln reaffirms his own attitude on the great controversy of the era and puts on record, in answer to Judge Douglas s question, his reasons for stating that the Union cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. He also asserts what is and what is not the Republican platform, with its principles and purposes, and enlightens his hearers, if not his redoubtable adversary, on other aspects of the creed pro fessed by him and the Republican party with reference to the great issue then under discussion. At the same time, he also propounds other questions to his formidable antagonist and seeks for answers to them]. Mr. Lincoln s Reply in the Jonesboro Joint Debate. Ladies and Gentlemen: There is very much in the principles that Judge Douglas has here enunciated that I most cordially approve, and over which I shall have no controversy with him. In so far as he has insisted that all the States have the right to do exactly as they please about all their domestic relations, including that of slavery, I agree entirely with him. He places me wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I repeat it again and again, insisting that I have made no dif ference with him upon this subject. I have made a great many speeches, some of which have been printed, and it will be utterly impossible for him to find any thing that I have ever put in print contrary to what I now say upon this subject. I hold myself under con stitutional obligations to allow the people in all the States, without interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as they please, and I deny that I have any in clination to interfere with them, even if there were no such constitutional obligation. I can only say again that I am placed improperly altogether improperly, 9 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. in spite of all I can say when it is insisted that I entertain any other view or purpose in regard to that matter. While I am upon this subject, I will make some answers briefly to certain propositions that Judge Douglas has put. He says, " Why can t this Union endure permanently, half slave and half free?" I have said that I supposed it could not, and I will try, before this new audience, to give briefly some of the reasons for entertaining that opinion. Another form of his question is, " Why can t we let it stand as our fathers placed it?" That is the exact difficulty be tween us. I say that Judge Douglas and his friends have changed it from the position in which our fathers originally placed it. I say, in the way our fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. I say when this government was first established, it was the policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new Territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and placed it upon a new basis by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have asked or desired anywhere is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the fathers of our government originally placed it upon. I have no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but readopted the policy of the fathers by restricting it to the limits it has already covered restricting it from the new Territories. I do not wish to dwell at great length on this branch of the subject at this time, but allow me to repeat one thing that I have stated before. Brooks, the man who assaulted Senator Sumner on the floor of the Senate, and who was complimented with dinners, and silver pitchers, and gold-headed canes, and a good many other SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. things for that feat, in one of his speeches declared that when this government was originally established, no body expected that the institution of slavery would last until this day. That was but the opinion of one man, but it was such an opinion as we can never get from Judge Douglas, or anybody in favor of slavery in the North at all. You can sometimes get it from a Southern man. He said at the same time that the framers of our government did not have the knowl edge that experience has taught us that experience and the invention of the cotton-gin have taught us that the perpetuation of slavery is a necessity. He insisted, therefore, upon its being changed from the basis upon which the fathers of the government left it to the basis of its perpetuation and nationalization. I insist that this is the difference between Judge Douglas and myself that Judge Douglas is helping that change along. I insist upon this government being placed where our fathers originally placed it. I remember Judge Douglas once said that he saw the evidences on the statute-books of Congress of a policy in the origin of government to divide slavery and free dom by a geographical line that he saw an indisposi tion to maintain that policy, and therefore he set about studying up a way to settle the institution on the right basis the basis which he thought it ought to have been placed upon at first; and in that speech he con fesses that he seeks to place it, not upon the basis that the fathers placed it upon, but upon one gotten up on " original principles." When he asks me why we can not get along with it in the attitude where our fathers placed it, he had better clear up the evidences that he has himself changed it from that basis; that lie has himself been chiefly instrumental in changing the policy of the fathers. Any one who will read his speech of the 22d of last March will see that he there makes an open confession, showing that he set about fixing the institution upon an altogether different set of princi- 132 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. pies. I think I have fully answered him when he asks ine why we cannot let it alone upon the basis where our fathers left it, by showing that he has himself changed the whole policy of the government in that regard. Now, fellow-citizens, in regard to this matter about a contract that was made between Judge Trumbull and myself, and all that long portion of Judge Douglas s speech on this subject, I wish simply to say what I have said to him before, that he cannot know whether it is true or not, and I do kno\v that there is not a word of truth in it. And I have told him so before. I don t want any harsh language indulged in, but I do not know how to deal with this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be utterly without truth. It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to es tablish it, and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was dropped. I don t know how to meet this kind of an argument. I don t want to have a fight with Judge Douglas, and I have no way of making an argument up into the consistency of a corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it. All I can do is, good-humoredly, to say that from the beginning to the end of all that story about a bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a word of truth in it. I can only ask him to show some sort of evidence of the truth of his story. He brings forward here and reads from what he con tends is a speech by James H. Matheny, charging such a bargain between Trumbull and myself. My own opinion is that Matheny did do some such immoral thing as to tell a story that he knew nothing about. I believe he did. I contradicted it instantly, and it has been contradicted by Judge Trumbull, while nobody has produced any proof, because there is none. Now, whether the speech which the judge brings forward here is really the one Matheny made, I do not know, and I hope the judge will pardon me for doubting the genu ineness of this document, since his production of those SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 333 Springfield resolutions at Ottawa. I do not wish to dwell at any great length upon this matter. I can say nothing when a long story like this is told, except that it is not true, and demand that he who insists upon it shall produce some proof. That is all any man can do, and I leave it in that way, for I know of no other way of dealing with it. The judge has gone over a long account of the Old Whig and Democratic parties, and it connects itself with this charge against Trumbull and myself. He says that they agreed upon a compromise in regard to the slavery question in 1850; that in a national Demo cratic convention resolutions were passed to abide by that compromise as a finality upon the slavery question. He also says that the Whig party in national conven tion agreed to abide by and regard as a finality the com promise of 1850. I understand the judge to be alto gether right about that ; I understand that part of the history of the country as stated by him to be correct. T recollect that I, as a member of that party, acquiesced in that compromise. I recollect in the presidential elec tion which followed, when we had General Scott up for the presidency, Judge Douglas was around berating us Whigs as Abolitionists, precisely as he does to-day not a bit of difference. T have often heard him. We could do nothing when the Old Whig party was alive that was not Abolitionism, but it has got an extremely good name since it has passed away. When that compromise was made, it did not repeal the old Missouri Compromise. It left a region of United States territory half as large as the present territory of the United States, north of the line of 36 30 , in which slavery was prohibited by act of Con gress. This compromise did not repeal that one. It did not affect or propose to repeal it. But at last it became Judge Douglas s duty, as he thought (and I find no fault w r ith him), as chairman of the Committee on Territories, to bring in a bill for the organization of SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. a territorial government first of one, then of two Territories north of that line. When he did so it ended in his inserting a provision substantially repeal ing the Missouri Compromise. That was because the compromise of 1850 had not repealed it. And now I ask why he could not have left that compromise alone? We were quiet from the agitation of the slavery ques tion. We were making no fuss about it. All had acquiesced in the compromise measures of 1850. We never had been seriously disturbed by any Abolition agitation before that period. W T hen he came to form governments for the Territories north of the line of 36 30 , why could he not have let that matter stand as it was standing? Was it necessary to the organization of a Territory? Not at all. Iowa lay north of the line and had been organized as a Territory, and came into the Union as a State without disturbing that com promise. There was no sort of necessity for destroying it to organize these Territories. But, gentlemen, it would take up all my time to meet all the little quib bling arguments of Judge Douglas to show that the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the compromise of 1850. My own opinion is that a careful investiga tion of all the arguments to sustain the position that that compromise was virtually repealed by the compro mise of 1850 would show that they are the merest fallacies. I have the report that Judge Douglas first brought into Congress at the time of the introduction of the Nebraska bill, which in its original form did not repeal the Missouri Compromise, and he there expressly stated that he had forborne to do so because it had not been done by the compromise of 1850. I close this part of the discussion on my part by asking him the question again, " Why, when we had peace under the Missouri Compromise, could you not have let it alone? " In complaining of what I said in my speech at Springfield, in which he says I accepted my nomination for the senatorship (where, by the way, he is at fault, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 135 for if he will examine it, he will find no acceptance in it), he again quotes that portion in which I said that " a house divided against itself cannot stand." Let me say a word in regard to that matter. He tries to persuade us that there must be a variety in the different institutions of the States of the Union ; that that variety necessarily proceeds from the variety of soil, climate, of the face of the country, and the difference in the natural features of the States. I agree to all that. Have these very matters ever pro duced any difficulty amongst us? Not at all. Have we ever had any quarrel over the fact that they have laws in Louisiana designed to regulate the commerce that springs from the production of sugar? or because we have a different class relative to the production of flour in this State? Have they produced any differences? Not at all. They are the very cements of this Union. They don t make the house a house divided against it self. They are the props that hold up the house and sustain the Union. But has it been so with this element of slavery? Have w T e not always had quarrels and difficulties over it? And when will we cease to have quarrels over it? Like causes produce like effects. It is worth while to observe that we have generally had comparative peace upon the slavery question, and that there has been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the effort to spread it into new territory. Whenever it has been limited to its present bounds, and there has been no effort to spread it, there has been peace. All the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to spread it over more territory. It was thus at the date of the Missouri Compromise. It was so again with the an nexation of Texas; so with the territory acquired by the Mexican war; and it is so now. Whenever there has been an effort to spread it there has been agitation and resistance. Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political friends), as national SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. men, whether we have reason to expect that the agita tion in regard to this subject will cease while the causes that tend to reproduce agitation are actively at work? Will not the same cause that produced agitation in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was formed, that which produced the agitation upon the annexa tion of Texas, and at other times, work out the same results always? Do you think that the nature of man will be changed that the same causes that produced agitation at one time will not have the same effect at another? This has been the result so far as my observation of the slavery question and my reading in history extend. What right have we then to hope that the trouble will cease, that the agitation will come to an end; until it shall either be placed back where it originally stood, and where the fathers originally placed it, or, on the other hand, until it shall entirely master all opposi tion? This is the view I entertain, and this is the reason why I entertained it, as Judge Douglas has read from my Springfield speech. Now, my friends, there is one other thing that I feel under some sort of obligation to mention. Judge Douglas has here to-day in a very rambling way, I was about saying spoken of the platforms for which he seeks to hold me responsible. He says, " Why can t you come out and make an open avowal of principles in all places alike?" and he reads from an advertise ment that he says was used to notify the people of a speech to be made by Judge Trumbull at Waterloo. In commenting on it he desires to know whether we cannot speak frankly and manfully as he and his friends do! How, I ask, do his friends speak out their own sentiments? A convention of his party in this State met on the 21st of April, at Springfield, and passed a set of resolutions which they proclaim to the country as their platform. This does constitute their platform, and it is because Judge Douglas claims it is his plat- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 137 form that these are his principles and purposes that he has a right to declare that he speaks his sentiments " frankly and manfully." On the 9th of June, Colonel John Dougherty, Governor Reynolds, and others, call ing themselves National Democrats, met in Springfield, and adopted a set of resolutions which are as easily understood, as plain and as definite in stating to the country and to the world what they believed in and would stand upon, as Judge Douglas s platform. Now, what is the reason that Judge Douglas is not willing that Colonel Dougherty and Governor Reynolds should stand upon their own written and printed platform as well as he upon his? Why must he look farther than their platform when he claims himself to stand by his platform? Again, in reference to our platform: On the 16th of June the Republicans had their convention and pub lished their platform, which is as clear and distinct as Judge Douglas s. In it they spoke their principles as plainly and as definitely to the world. What is the reason that Judge Douglas is not willing that I should stand upon that platform? Why must he go around hunting for some one who is supporting me, or has sup ported me at some time in his life, and who has said something at some time contrary to that platform? Does the judge regard that rule as a good one? If it turn out that the rule is a good one for me, that I am responsible for any and every opinion that any man has expressed who is my friend, then it is a good rule for him. I ask, is it not as good a rule for him as it is for me? In my opinion, it is not a good rule for either of us. Do you think differently, judge? Mr. Douglas : I do not. Mr. Lincoln : Judge Douglas says he does not think differently. I am glad of it. Then can he tell me why he is looking up resolutions of five or six years ago, and insisting that they were my platform, notwithstanding my protest that they are not, and never were, my plat- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". form, and my pointing out the platform of the State convention which he delights to say nominated me for the Senate? I cannot see what he means by parading these resolutions, if it is not to hold me responsible for them in some way. If he says to me here, that he does not hold the rule to be good, one way or the other, I do not comprehend how he could answer me more fully if he answered me at greater length. I will therefore put in as my answer to the resolutions that he has hunted up against me what I, as a lawyer, would call a good plea to a bad declaration. I understand that it is a maxim of law, that a poor plea may be a good plea to a bad declaration. I think that the opinions the judge brings from those who support me, yet differ from me, are a bad declaration against me, But if I can bring the same things against him, I am putting in a good plea to, that kind of declaration, and now I pro pose to try it. At Freeport Judge Douglas occupied a large part of his time in producing resolutions and documents of various sorts, as I understood, to make me somehow responsible for them ; and I propose now doing a little of the same sort of thing for him. In 1850 a very clever gentleman by the name of Thompson Campbell, a per sonal friend of Judge Douglas and myself, a political friend of Judge Douglas and opponent of mine, was a candidate for Congress in the Galena district. He was interrogated as to his views on this same slavery ques tion. I have here before me the interrogatories, and Campbell s answers to them. I will read them : Interroga tories. 1. Will you, if elected, vote for and cordially support a bill prohibiting slavery in the Territories of the United States? 2. Will you vote for and support a bill abolishing slavery In the District of Columbia? 3. Will you oppose the admission of any slave States which may be formed out of Texas or the Territories? 4. Will you vote for and advocate the repeal of the fugitive- slave law passed at the recent session of Congress? SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 5. Will you advocate and vote for the election of a Speaker of the House of Representatives who shall be willing to organize the committees of that House so as to give the free States their just influence in the business of legislation? 6. What are your views, not only as to the constitutional right of Congress to prohibit the slave-trade between the States, but also as to the expediency of exercising that right immedi ately ? Campbell s Reply. To the first and second interrogatories, I answer unequivocally in the affirmative. To the third interrogatory, I reply that I am opposed to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, that may be formed out of Texan or any other territory. To the fourth and fifth interrogatories, I unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. To the sixth interrogatory, I reply that so long as the slave States continue to treat slaves as articles of commerce, the Constitution confers power on Congress to pass laws regulating that peculiar commerce, and that the protection of human rights imperatively demands the interposition of every con stitutional means to prevent this most inhuman and iniquitous traffic. T. CAMPBELL. I want to say here that Thompson Campbell was elected to Congress on that platform, as the Democratic candidate in the Galena district, against Martin P. Sweet. Judge Douglas : Give me the date of the letter. Mr. Lincoln : The time Campbell ran was in 1850. I have not the exact date here. It was some time in 1850 that these interrogatories were put and the answer given. Campbell was elected to Congress, and served out his term. I think a second election came up before he served out his term, and he was not reflected. Whether defeated or not nominated, I do not know. [Mr. Campbell was nominated for reelection by the Democratic party, by acclamation.] At the end of his term his very good friend, Judge Douglas, got him a high office from President Pierce, and sent him off to California. Is not that the fact? Just at the end of his term in Congress it appears that our mutual friend 140 SPEECHES OF ABKAHAM LINCOLN. Judge Douglas got our mutual friend Campbell a good office, and sent him to California upon it. And not only so, but on the 27th of last month, when Judge Douglas and myself spoke at Freeport in joint discussion, there was his same friend Campbell, come all the way from California, to help the judge beat me; and there was poor Martin P. Sweet standing on the platform, try ing to help poor me to be elected. That is true of one of Judge Douglas s friends. At Freeport I answered several interrogatories that had been propounded to me by Judge Douglas at the Ottawa meeting. The judge has yet not seen fit to find any fault with the position that I took in regard to those seven interrogatories, which were certainly broad enough, in all conscience, to cover the entire ground. In my answers, which have been printed, and all have had the opportunity of seeing, I take the ground that those who elect me must expect that I will do nothing which will not be in accordance with those answers. I have some right to assert that Judge Doug las has no fault to find with them. But he chooses to still try to thrust me upon different ground without paying any attention to my answers, the obtaining of which from me cost him so much trouble and con cern. At the same time, I propounded four interroga tories to him, claiming it as a right that he should answer as many interrogatories for me as I did for him, and I would reserve myself for a future instalment when I got them ready. The judge, in answering me upon that occasion, put in what I suppose he intends as answers to all four of my interrogatories. The first one of these interrogatories I have before me, and it is in these words : Question 1. If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the English bill, some ninety- three thousand, will you vote to admit them? SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. As I read the judge s answer in the newspaper, and as I remember it as pronounced at the time, he does not give any answer which is equivalent to yes or no I will or I won t. He answers at very considerable length, rather quarreling with me for asking the ques tion, and insisting that Judge Trumbull had done some^ thing that I ought to say something about ; and finally getting out such statements as induce me to infer that he means to be understood he will, in that supposed case, vote for the admission of Kansas. I only bring this forward now for the purpose of saying that, if he chooses to put a different construction upon his answer, he may do it. But if he does not, I shall from this time forward assume that he will vote for the admission of Kansas in disregard of the English bill. He has the right to remove any misunderstanding I may have. I only mention it now that I may hereafter assume this to be the true construction of his answer, if he does not now choose to correct me. The second interrogatory that I propounded to him was this : Question 2. Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution? To this Judge Douglas answered that they can law fully exclude slavery from the Territory prior to the formation of a constitution. He goes on to tell us how it can be done. As I understand him, he holds that it can be done by the territorial legislature refusing to make any enactments for the protection of slavery in the Territory, and especially by adopting unfriendly legislation to it. For the sake of clearness, I state it again : that they can exclude slavery from the Terri tory first, by withholding what he assumes to be an indispensable assistance to it in the way of legislation; and, second, by unfriendly legislation. If I rightly un- 142 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. derstand him, I wish to ask your attention for a while to his position. In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that any congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories is unconstitutional they have reached this proposition as a conclusion from their former proposition, that the Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes property in slaves; and from that other constitutional provision, that no per son shall be deprived of property without due process of law. Hence they reach the conclusion that as the Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes property in slaves, and prohibits any person from being deprived of property without due process of law, to pass an act of Congress by which a man who owned a slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him if he took him on the other side is depriving him of that property without due process of law. That I under stand to be the decision of the Supreme Court. I un derstand also that Judge Douglas adheres most firmly to that decision ; and the difficulty is, how is it possible for any power to exclude slavery from the Territory unless in violation of that decision? That is the diffi culty. In the Senate of the United States, in 1856, Judge Trumbull, in a speech, substantially, if not directly, put the same interrogatory to Judge Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory had the lawful power to exclude slavery prior to the formation of a consti tution? Judge Douglas then answered at considerable length, and his answer will be found in the " Con gressional Globe," under the date of June 9, 1856. The judge said that whether the people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a constitution or not was a question to be decided by the Supreme Court. He put that proposition, as will be seen by the " Congres sional Globe," in a variety of forms, all running to the same thing in substance that it was a question for the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Supreme Court. I maintain that when he says, after the Supreme Court has decided the question, that the people may yet exclude slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is not a question for the Supreme Court. He shifts his ground. I appeal to you whether he did not say it was a question for the Su preme Court? Has not the Supreme Court decided that question? When he now says that the people may exclude slavery, does he not make it a question for the people? Does he not virtually shift his ground and say that it is not a question for the court, but for the people? This is a very simple proposition a very plain and naked one. It seems to me that there is no difficulty in deciding it. In a variety of ways he said that it was a question for the Supreme Court. He did not stop then to tell us that, whatever the Supreme Court decides, the people can by withholding necessary " police regulations " keep slavery out. He did not make any such answer. I submit to you now, whether the new state of the case has not induced the judge to sheer away from his original ground. Would not this be the impression of every fair-minded man? I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new country without police regulations is historically false. It is not true at all. I hold that the history of this country shows that the institution of slavery was originally planted upon this continent without these " police regulations " which the judge now thinks necessary for the actual establishment of it. Not only so, but is there not another fact how came this Dred Scott decision to be made? It was made upon the case of a negro being taken and actually held in slavery in Minnesota Territory, claiming his freedom because the act of Congress prohibited his being so held there. Will the judge pretend that Dred Scott was not held there without police regulations? There is at least one mat ter of record as to his having been held in slavery in the Territory, not only without police regulations, but 144 SPEECHES OF ABKAHAM LINCOLN. in the teeth of congressional legislation supposed to be valid at the time. This shows that there is vigor enough in slavery to plant itself in a new country even against unfriendly legislation. It takes not only law but the enforcement of law to keep it out. That is the history of this country upon the subject. I wish to ask one other question. It being under stood that the Constitution of the United States guar antees property in slaves in the Territories, if there is any infringement of the right of that property, would not the United States courts, organized for the govern ment of the Territory, apply such remedy as might be necessary in that case? It is a maxim held by the courts, that there is no wrong without its remedy ; and the courts have a remedy for whatever is acknowledged and treated as a wrong. Again : I will ask you, my friends, if you were elected members of the legislature, what would be the first thing you would have to do before entering upon your duties? Swear to support the Constitution of the United States. Suppose you believe, as Judge Douglas does, that the Constitution of the United States guaran tees to your neighbor the right to hold slaves in that Territory, that they are his property, how can you clear your oaths unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to enable him to enjoy that property? What do you understand by supporting the Constitu tion of a State, or of the United States? Is it not to give such constitutional helps to the rights established by that Constitution as may be practically needed? Can you, if you swear to support the Constitution, and believe that the Constitution establishes a right, clear your oath, without giving it support? Do you support the Constitution if, knowing or believing there is a right established under it which needs specific legisla tion, you withhold that legislation? Do you not vio late and disregard your oath? I can conceive of noth ing plainer in the world. There can be nothing in the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 145 words "support the Constitution," if you may run counter to it by refusing support to any right estab lished under the Constitution. And what I say here will hold with still more force against the judge s doc trine of " unfriendly legislation." How could you, hav ing sworn to support the Constitution, and believing that it guaranteed the right to hold slaves in the Ter ritories, assist in legislation intended to defeat that right? That would be violating your own view of the Constitution. Not only so, but if you were to do so, how long would it take the courts to hold your votes un constitutional and void? Not a moment. Lastly I would ask Is not Congress itself under obligation to give legislative support to any right that is established under the United States Constitution? I repeat the question Is not Congress itself bound to give legislative support to any right that is established in the United States Constitution? A member of Con gress swears to support the Constitution of the United States, and if he sees a right established by that Con stitution which needs specific legislative protection, can he clear his oath without giving that protection? Let me ask you why many of us who are opposed to slavery upon principle give our acquiescence to a fugi tive-slave law? Why do we hold ourselves under ob ligations to pass such a law, and abide by it when it is passed? Because the Constitution makes provision that the owners of slaves shall have the right to reclaim them. It gives the right to reclaim slaves, and that right is, as Judge Douglas says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that will enforce it. The mere declaration, u No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping in to another, shall in consequence of any law or regula tion therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce it. Now, on what ground 10 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". would a member of Congress who is opposed to slavery in the abstract vote for a fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do? Because there is a constitu tional right which needs legislation to enforce it. And although it is distasteful to me, I have sworn to support the Constitution, and having so sworn, I cannot con ceive that I do support it if I withhold from that right any necessary legislation to make it practical. And if that is true in regard to a fugitive-slave law, is the right to have fugitive slaves reclaimed any better fixed in the Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the Territories? For this decision is a just exposition of the Constitution, as Judge Douglas thinks. Is the one right any better than the other? Is there any man who, while a member of Congress, would give support to the one any more than the other? If I wished to refuse to give legislative support to slave property in the Terri tories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it, holding the view that the Constitution establishes that right. If I did it at all, it would be because I deny that this decision properly construes the Constitution. But if I acknowledge, with Judge Douglas, that this decision properly construes the Constitution, I can not conceive that I would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in Congress to give such protection to that property as in its nature it needed. At the end of what I have said here I propose to give the judge my fifth interrogatory, which he may take and answer at his leisure. My fifth interrogatory is this : If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Terri tory should need and demand congressional legislation for the protection of their slave property in such Terri tory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for or against such legislation? Judge Douglas: Will you repeat that? I want to answer that question. Mr. Lincoln : If the slaveholding citizens of a United SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 147 States Territory should need and demand congressional legislation for the protection of their slave property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for or against such legislation? I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge Douglas has made, he has spoken as if he did not know or think that the Supreme Court had decided that a tei- ritorial legislature cannot exclude slavery. Precisely what the judge would say upon the subject whether he would say definitely that he does not understand they have so decided, or whether he would say he does understand that the court have so decided, I do not know; but I know that in his speech at Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not decided yet; and in his answer to me at Freeport, he spoke of it again, so far as I can comprehend it, as a thing that had not yet been decided. Now I hold that if the judge does entertain that view, I think that he is not mis taken in so far as it can be said that the court has not decided anything save the mere question of jurisdic tion. I know the legal arguments that can be made that after a court has decided that it cannot take jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all that is be fore it, and that is the end of it. A plausible argu ment can be made in favor of that proposition, but I know that Judge Douglas has said in one of his speeches that the court went forward, like honest men as they were, and decided all the points in the case. If any points are really extra-judicially decided because not necessarily before them, then this one as to the power of the territorial legislature to exclude slavery is one of them, as also the one that the Missouri Com promise was null and void. They are both extra- judicial, or neither is, according as the court held that they had no jurisdiction in the case between the parties, because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a suit in that court. I want, if I have sufficient time, to ghow that the court did pass its opinion, but that is the 148 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. only thing actually done in the case. If they did not decide, they showed what they were ready to decide whenever the matter was before them. What is that opinion? After having argued that Congress had no power to pass a law excluding slavery from a United States Territory, they then used language to this effect: That inasmuch as Congress itself could not exercise such a power, it followed as a matter of course that it could not authorize a territorial government to exercise it, for the territorial legislature can do no more than Congress could do. Thus it expressed its opinion em phatically against the power of a territorial legislature to exclude slavery, leaving us in just as little doubt on that point as upon any other point they really decided. Now, fellow-citizens, my time is nearly out. I find a report of a speech made by Judge Douglas at Joliet, since we last met at Freeport, published, I believe, in the Missouri " Republican," on the 9th of this month, in which Judge Douglas says : You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked him if he concurred in each and all of the principles set forth in it. He would not answer these questions At last I said frankly, " I wish you to answer them, because when I get them up here where the color of your principles is a little darker than in Egypt, I intend to trot you down to Jonesboro." The very notice that I was going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble in the knees so that he had to be carried from the platform. He laid up seven days, and in the meantime held a consultation with his political physicians; they had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders of the Abolition party. They consulted it all over, and at last Lincoln came to the conclusion that he would answer; so he came to Freeport last Friday. Now that statement altogether furnishes a subject for philosophical contemplation. I have been treating it in that way, and I have really come to the conclus ion that I can explain it in no other way than by be lieving the judge is crazy. If he was in his right mind, I cannot conceive how he would have risked disgust ing the four or five thousand of his own friends who SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". stood there and knew, as to my having been carried from the platform, that there was not a word of truth in it. Judge Douglas : Did n t they carry you off? Mr. Lincoln: There; that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas, exactly. He smiles now and says, " Did n t they carry you off? " But he said then, " He had to be carried off ; " and he said it to convince the country that he had so completely broken me down by his speech that I had to be carried away. Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, " Did n t they carry you off?" Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, why did n t you tell the truth? I would like to know why you did n t tell the truth about it. And then again, " He laid up seven days." He puts this in print for the people of the country to read as a serious document. I think if he had been in his sober senses he would not have risked that barefacedness in the presence of thou sands of his own friends, who knew that I made speeches within six of the seven days at Henry, Mar shall County; Augusta, Hancock County; and Ma- comb, McDonough County, including all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport at the end of the six days. Now, I say, there is no charitable way to look at that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy. There is another thing in that state ment that alarmed me very greatly as he states it that he was going to " trot me down to Egypt." There by he would have you to infer that I would not come to Egypt unless he forced me that I could not be got here, unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here. That statement he makes, too, in the teeth of the knowl edge that I made the stipulation to come down here, and that he himself had been very reluctant to enter into the stipulation. More than all this, Judge Doug las, when he made that statement, must have been crazy, and wholly out of his sober senses, or else he would have known that, when he got me down here, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. that promise that windy promise of his powers to annihilate me would n t amount to anything. Now, how little do I look like being carried away trembling? Let the judge go on, and after he is done with his half hour, I want you all, if I can t go home myself, to let me stay and rot here; and if anything happens to the judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel and put him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, then, there is something extraordinary in this statement. I ask you if you know any other living man who would make such a statement? I will ask my friend Casey, over there, if he would do such a thing? Would he send that out and have his men take it as the truth? Did the judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt to scare me to death? Why, I know this people better than he does. I was raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this people. But the judge was raised further north, and perhaps he has some horrid idea of what this people might be induced to do. But really I have talked about this matter perhaps longer than I ought, for it is no great thing, and yet the smallest are often the most difficult things to deal with. The judge has set about seriously trying to make the impression that when we meet at different places I am literally in his clutches that I am a poor, helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do nothing at all. This is one of the ways he has taken to create that impression. I don t know any other way to meet it, except this. I don t want to quarrel with him, to call him a liar, but when I come square up to him I don t know what else to call him, if I must tell the truth out. I want to be at peace, and reserve all my fighting powers for neces sary occasions. My time, now, is very nearly out, and I give up the trifle that is left to the judge to let him set my knees trembling again if he can. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH IN THE FOURTH JOINT DEBATE WITH DOUGLAS, AT CHARLESTON, ILL., SEP. 18, 1858. [Here we give the reader only part of Mr. Lincoln s address at Charleston, since much of it is taken up with the controversy between Judge Douglas and Judge Trumbull, Illinois senator in Congress, arising out of the charge made by Trumbull, that " there was a plot entered into to have a constitution formed for Kansas, and put in force without giving the people an oppor tunity to vote upon it, and that Mr, Douglas was in the plot." Into this matter and the evidence in support of it, together with Judge Douglas s partial disclaimer or explanation of what oc curred, we do not deem it necessary here to enter; hence the ex clusion of Mr. Lincoln s argument in regard to it. By pref erence, we confine our extract to what Mr. Lincoln had otherwise to say on this occasion, and in his rejoinder to Douglas]. Mr. Lincoln s Rejoinder in the Charleston Joint Debate. Fellow citizens: Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from me an answer to the question whether I am in favor of negro citizenship. So far as I know, the judge never asked me the question before. He shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I am not in favor of negro citizenship. This furnishes me an occasion for saying a few words upon the subject. I mentioned in a certain speech of mine, which has been printed, that the Supreme Court had decided that a negro could not possibly be made a citizen, and without saying what was my ground of complaint in regard to that, or whether I had any ground of complaint, Judge Douglas has from that thing manufactured nearly everything that he ever says about my disposition to produce an equality between the negroes and the white people. If any one will read my speech, he will find I mentioned that as one of the points decided in the course of the 152 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Supreme Court opinions, but I did not state what objection I had to it. But Judge Douglas tells the people what my objection was when I did not tell them myself. Now my opinion is that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Con stitution of the United States, if they choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If the State of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise of it. That is all I have to say about it. Judge Douglas has told me that he heard my speeches north and my speeches south that he had heard me at Ottawa and at Freeport in the north, and recently at Jonesboro in the south, and there was a very different cast of sentiment in the speeches made at the different points. I will not charge upon Judge Douglas that he wilfully misrepresents me, but I call upon every fair- minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him to point out any difference between my speeches north and south. While I am here perhaps I ought to say a word, if I have the time, in regard to the latter portion of the judge s speech, which was a sort of declamation in reference to my having said I entertained the belief that this government would not endure half slave and half free. I have said so, and I did not say it without what seemed to me to be good reasons. It perhaps would require more time than I have now to set forth these reasons in detail; but let me ask you a few questions. Have we ever had any peace on this slavery question? When are we to have peace upon it if it is kept in the position it now oc cupies? How are we ever to have peace upon it? That is an important question. To be sure, if we will all stop and allow Judge Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career until they plant the institution all over the nation, here and wherever else our flag waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be peace. But let me ask Judge Douglas how he is going SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 153 to get the people to do that? They have been wrangling over this question for at least forty years. This was the cause of the agitation resulting in the Missouri compromise; this produced the troubles at the annexa tion of Texas, in the acquisition of the territory ac quired in the Mexican war. Again, this was the trouble which was quieted by the compromise of 1850, when it was settled " forever," as both the great political parties declared in their national conventions. That " for ever" turned out to be just four years, when Judge Douglas himself reopened it. When is it likely to come to an end? He introduced the Nebraska bill in 1854 to put another end to the slavery agitation. He promised that it would finish it all up immediately, and he has never made a speech since until he got into a quarrel with the President about the Lecompton constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at the end of the slavery agitation. But in one speech, I think last winter, he did say that he did n t quite see when the end of the slavery agitation would come. Now he tells us again that it is all over, and the people of Kansas have voted down the Lecompton constitution. How is it over? That was only one of the attempts at putting an end to the slavery agitation one of these " final settle ments." Is Kansas in the Union? Has she formed a constitution that she is likely to come in under? Is not the slavery agitation still an open question in that Territory? Has the voting down of that constitution put an end to all the trouble? Is that more likely to settle it than every one of these previous attempts to settle the slavery agitation? Now, at this day in the history of the world we can no more foretell where the end of this slavery agitation will be than we can see the end of the world itself. The Nebraska-Kansas bill was introduced four years and a half ago, and if the agitation is ever to come to an end, we may say we are four years and a half nearer the end. So, too, we can SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. say we are four years and a half nearer the end of the world; and we can just as clearly see the end of the world as we can see the end of this agitation. The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the earth s surface, this vexed question would still be among us. I say, then, there is no w r ay of putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back upon the basis where our fathers placed it, no way but to keep it out of our new Territories to restrict it forever to the old States where it now exists. Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. That is one way of putting an end to the slavery agitation. The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his friends have their way and plant slavery over all the States cease speaking of it as in any way a wrong regard slavery as one of the common matters of property, and speak of negroes as we do of our horses and cattle. But while it drives on in its state of progress as it is now driving, and as it has driven for the last five years, I have ventured the opin ion, and I say to-day, that we will have no end to the slavery agitation until it takes one turn or the other. I do not mean that when it takes a turn toward ulti mate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two years. I do not suppose that in the most peace ful way ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in God s own good time, 1 have no doubt. But, my friends, I have used up more of my time than I intended on this point. Now, in regard to this matter about Trumbull and myself having made a bargain to sell out the entire Whig and Democratic parties in 1854, Judge Douglas brings forward no evidence to sustain his charge, except the speech Matheny is said to have made in 1856, in which he told a cock-and-bull story of that sort, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. upon the same moral principles that Judge Douglas tells it here to-day. This is the simple truth. I do not care greatly for the story, but this is the truth of it, and I have twice told Judge Douglas to his face, that from beginning to end there is not one word of truth in it. I have called upon him for the proof, and he does not at all meet me as Trumbull met him upon that of which we were just talking, by producing the record. He did n t bring the record, because there was no record for him to bring. When he asks if I am ready to indorse Truni bull s veracity after he has broken a bargain with me, I reply that if Trumbull had broken a bargain with me, I would not be likely to indorse his veracity; but I am ready to indorse his veracity because neither in that thing, nor in any other, in all the years that I have known Lyman Trumbull, have 1 known him to fail of his word or tell a falsehood, large or small. It is for that reason that I indorse Lyman Trumbull. Mr. James Brown [Douglas postmaster] : What does Ford s history say about him? Mr. Lincoln : Some gentleman asks me what Ford s history says about him. My only recollection is, that Ford speaks of Trumbull in very disrespectful terms in several portions of his book, and that he talks a great deal worse of Judge Douglas. I refer you, sir, to the history for examination. Judge Douglas complains at considerable length about a disposition on the part of Trumbull and myself to attack him personally. I want to attend to that suggestion a moment. I don t want to be unjustly accused of dealing illiberally or unfairly with an ad versary, either in court, or in a political canvass, or anywhere else. I would despise myself if I supposed myself ready to deal less liberally with an adversary than I was willing to be treated myself. Judge Doug las, in a general way, without putting it in a direct shape, revives the old charge against me in reference 156 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to the Mexican war. He does not take the responsi bility of putting it in a very definite form, but makes a general reference to it. That charge is more than ten years old. He complains of Trumbull and myself, because he says we bring charges against him one or two years old. He knows, too, that in regard to the Mexican war story, the more respectable papers of his own party throughout the State have been compelled to take it back and acknowledge that it was a lie. [Here Mr. Lincoln turned to the crowd on the plat form, and selecting Hon. Orlando B. Ficklin, led him forward and said:] I do not mean to do anything with Mr. Ficklin, ex cept to present his face and tell you that he personally knows it to be a lie ! He was a member of Congress at the only time I was in Congress, and he knows that whenever there was an attempt to procure a vote of mine which would indorse the origin and justice of the war, I refused to give such indorsement, and voted against it; but I never voted against the supplies for the army, and he knows, as well as Judge Douglas, that whenever a dollar was asked by way of compensation or otherwise, for the benefit of the soldiers, I gave all the votes that Ficklin or Douglas did, and perhaps more. Mr. Ficklin: My friends, I wish to say this in refer ence to the matter. Mr. Lincoln and myself are just as good personal friends as Judge Douglas and myself. In reference to this Mexican war, my recollection is that when Ashmun s resolution [amendment] was offered by Mr. Ashmun of Massachusetts, in which he declared that the Mexican war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President, my recollection is that Mr. Lincoln voted for that resolu tion. Mr. Lincoln: That is the truth. Now you all remember that was a resolution censuring the Presi dent for the manner in which the war was begun. You SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 157 know they have charged that I voted against the supplies, by which I starved the soldiers who were out lighting the battles of their country. I say that Fick- lin knows it is false. When that charge was brought forward by the Chicago " Times," the Springfield "Register" [Douglas organ] reminded the "Times" that the charge really applied to John Henry; and I do know that John Henry is now making speeches and fiercely battling for Judge Douglas. If the judge now says that he offers this as a sort of a set-off to what I said to-day in reference to Trumbull s charge, then I remind him that he made this charge before I said a word about Trumbull s. He brought this forward at Ottawa, the first time we met face to face; and in the opening speech that Judge Douglas made, he attacked me in regard to a matter ten years old. Is n t he a pretty man to be whining about people making charges against him only two years old! The judge thinks it is altogether wrong that I should have dwelt upon this charge of Trumbull s at all. I gave the apology for doing so in my opening speech. Perhaps it did n t fix your attention. I said that when Judge Douglas was speaking at places where I spoke on the succeeding day, he used very ha-rsh language about this charge. Two or three times afterward I said I had confidence in Judge Trumbull s veracity and intelligence; and my own opinion was, from what I knew of the character of Judge Trumbull, that he would vindicate his position, and prove whatever he had stated to be true. This I repeated two or three times; and then I dropped it, without saying anything more on the subject for weeks perhaps a month. I passed it by without noticing it at all till I found at Jacksonville that Judge Douglas, in the plenitude of his power, is not willing to answer Trumbull and let me alone; but he comes out there and uses this lan guage: "He should not hereafter occupy his time in refuting such charges made by Trumbullj but that Lin- 158 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. coin having indorsed the character of Truinbull for veracity, he should hold him [Lincoln] responsible for the slanders." What was Lincoln to do? Did he not do right, when he had the fit opportunity of meeting Judge Douglas here, to tell him he was ready for the responsibility? I ask a candid audience whether in doing thus Judge Douglas was not the assailant rather than I? Here I meet him face to face, and say I am ready to take the responsibility so far as it rests on me. Having done so, I ask the attention of this audience to the question whether I have succeeded in sustaining the charge, and whether Judge Douglas has at all suc ceeded in rebutting it. You all heard me call upon him to say which or these pieces of evidence was a for gery. Does he say that whajt I present here as a copy of the original Toombs bill is a forgery? Does he say that what I present as a copy of the bill reported by himself is a forgery? Or what is presented as a tran script from the " Globe," of the quotations from Big- ler s speech, is a forgery? Does he say the quotations from his own speech are forgeries? Does he say this transcript from TrumbulFs speech is a forgery? [" He did n t deny one of them."] I would then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of a story is true, the whole story turns out false? I take it these people have some sense; they see plainly that Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish, a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes. Is not the judge playing the cuttlefish? Now I would ask very special attention to the con sideration of Judge Douglas s speech at Jacksonville; and when you shall read his speech of to-day, I ask you to watch closely and see which of these pieces of testi mony, every one of which he says is a forgery, he has shown to be such. Not one of them has he shown to SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. be a forgery. Then I ask the original question, if each of the pieces of testimony is true, how is it possible that the whole is a falsehood? In regard to TrumbulPs charge that he [Douglas] inserted a provision into the bill to prevent the consti tution being submitted to the people, what was his answer? He comes here and reads from the " Congres sional Globe " to show that on his motion that pro vision was struck out of the bill. Why, Trumbull has not said it was not stricken out, but Trumbull says he [Douglas] put it in, and it is no answer to the charge to say he afterward took it out. Both are perhaps true. It was in regard to that thing precisely that 1 told him he had dropped the cub. Trumbull shows you by his introducing the bill that it was his cub. It is no answer to that assertion to call Trumbull a liar merely because he did not specially say that Douglas struck it out. Suppose that were the case, does it answer Trumbull? I assert that you [pointing to an individual] are here to-day, and you undertake to prove me a liar by showing that you were in Mattoon yester day. I say that you took your hat off your head, and you prove me a liar by putting it on your head. That is the whole force of Douglas s argument. Now, I want to come back to my original question. Trumbull says that Judge Douglas had a bill with a provision in it for submitting a constitution to be made to a vote of the people of Kansas. Does Judge Doug las deny that fact? Does he deny that the provision which Trumbull reads was put in that bill? Then Trumbull says he struck it out. Does he dare to deny that? He does not, and I have the right to repeat the question why Judge Douglas took it out? Bigler has said there was a combination of certain senators, among whom he did not include Judge Douglas, bv which it was agreed that the Kansas bill should have a clause in it not to have the constitution formed under it submitted to a vote of the people. He did not sa\ 1(50 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. that Douglas was among them, but we prove by another source that about the same time Douglas comes into the Senate with that provision stricken out of the bill. Al though Bigler cannot say they were all working in concert, yet it looks very much as if the thing was agreed upon and done with a mutual understanding after the conference ; and while we do not know that it was absolutely so, yet it looks so probable that we have a right to call upon the man who know^s the true reason why it was done, to tell what the true reason was. When he will not tell what the true reason was, he stands in the attitude of an accused thief who has stolen goods in his possession, and when called to ac count refuses to tell where he got them. Not only is this the evidence, but when he comes in with the bill having the provision stricken out, he tells us in a speech, not then, but since, that these alterations and modifications in the bill had been made by him, in consultation with Toombs, the originator of the bill. He tells us the same to-day. He says there w r ere certain modifications made in the bill in committee that he did not vote for. I ask you to remember while certain amendments were made which he disapproved of, but which a majority of the committee voted in, he has him self told us that in this particular the alterations and modifications were made by him upon consultation with Toombs. We have his own word that these altera tions were made by him and not by the committee. Now, I ask what is the reason Judge Douglas is so chary about coming to the exact question? What is the reason he will not tell you anything about how it was made, by whom it was made, or that he remembers it being made at all ? Why does he stand playing upon the meaning of words, and quibbling around the edges of the evidence? If he can explain all this, but leaves it unexplained, I have a right to infer that Judge Doug las understood it was the purpose of his party, in engineering that bill through, to make a constitution, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. and have Kansas come into the Union with that con stitution, without its being submitted to a vote of the people. If he will explain his action on this question, by giving a better reason for the facts that happened than he has done, it will be satisfactory. But until he does that until he gives a better or more plausible reason than he has offered against the evidence in the case I suggest to him it will not avail him at all that he swells himself up, takes on dignity, and calls people liars. Why, sir, there is not a word in TrumbulFs speech that depends on Trumbull s veracity at all. He has only arrayed the evidence and told you what fol lows as a matter of reasoning. There is not a state ment in the whole speech that depends on TrumbulFs word. If you have ever studied geometry, you remem ber that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Euclid has shown you how to work it out. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, and to show that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar? They tell me that my time is out, and therefore I close. 11 1(32 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH IN REPLY TO DOUGLAS (IN THE FIFTH JOINT DEBATE) AT GALESBURG, ILL., OCT. 7, 1858. [In this rejoinder to Douglas, Lincoln insists upon his con tention that negroes are, by implication, included in the Declara tion of Independence, and challenges his adversary to prove, front the writings of the author of it, or from other public men of eminence, that he is wrong in so saying. He also rebuts what Douglas had said of the Republican party, that it was a sectional and not a national one, and that there was an unholy, unnatural alliance between the Republicans and the National Democrats. Another matter discussed in the address includes Lincoln s as sertion, or belief, in opposition to Douglas s contention, that the right of property in a slave is not distinctly and expressly af firmed in the U. S. Constitution. Still another matter debated or inquired into is, whether either of the contending men in these debates would oppose the acquisition of further territory within the United States if slavery were first prohibited therein? These and other points discussed add interest to the present instalment of Lincoln s contribution to the remarkable debates]. Mr. Lincoln s Reply in the Galesburg Joint Debate. My Fellow-citizens: A very large portion of the speech which Judge Douglas has addressed to you has previously been delivered and put in print. I do not mean that for a hit upon the judge at all. If I had not been interrupted, I was going to say that such an answer as I was able to make to a very large portion of it, had already been more than once made and pub lished. There has been an opportunity afforded to the public to see our respective views upon the topics dis cussed in a large portion of the speech which he has just delivered. I make these remarks for the purpose of excusing myself for not passing over the entire ground that the judge has traversed. I, however, desire to take up some of the points that he has attended to, and ask your attention to them, and I shall follow him Lincoln Statue, by St. Gaudens, Chicago SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1(53 backward upon some notes which I have taken, re versing the order by beginning where he concluded. The judge has alluded to the Declaration of Indepen dence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument to suppose that negroes were meant therein ; and he asks you : Is it possible to believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the lan guage of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them? I only have to remark upon this part of the judge s speech (and that, too, very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for any great length of time), that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Dec laration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any president ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject, he used the strong language that " he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just " ; and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Doug las if he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson. The next thing to which I will ask your attention is the judge s comments upon the fact, as he assumes it to be, that we cannot call our public meetings as Re publican meetings; and he instances Tazewell County SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. as one of the places where the friends of Lincoln have called a public meeting and have not dared to name it a Republican meeting. He instances Monroe County as another where Judge Trumbull and Jehu Baker addressed the persons whom the judge assumes to be the friends of Lincoln, calling them the " Free Democ racy." I have the honor to inform Judge Douglas that he spoke in that very county of Tazewell last Saturday, and I was there on Tuesday last, and when he spoke there he spoke under a call not venturing to use the word " Democrat." [Turning to Judge Douglas.] What think you of this? So, again, there is another thing to which I would ask the judge s attention upon this subject. In the contest of 1856 his party delighted to call themselves together as the " National Democracy," but now, if there should be a notice put up anywhere for a meeting of the " National Democracy," Judge Douglas and his friends would not come. They would not suppose themselves invited. They would understand that it was a call for those hateful postmasters whom he talks about. Now a few words in regard to these extracts from speeches of mine which Judge Douglas has read to you, and which he supposes are in very great contrast to each other. Those speeches have been before the public for a considerable time, and if they have any inconsis tency in them, if there is any conflict in them, the pub lic have been able to detect it. When the judge says, in speaking on this subject, that I make speeches of one sort for the people of the northern end of the State, and of a different sort for the southern people, he as sumes that I do not understand that my speeches will be put in print and read north and south. I knew all the while that the speech that I made at Chicago and the one I made at Jonesboro and the one at Charleston would all be put in print, and all the reading and intel ligent men in the community would see them and know SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1(55 all about my opinions; and I have not supposed, and do not now suppose, that there is any conflict whatever between them. But the judge will have it that if we do not confess that there is a sort of inequality between the white and black races which justifies us in making them slaves, we must, then, insist that there is a degree of equality that requires us to make them our wives. Now, I have all the while taken a broad distinction in regard to that matter; and that is all there is in these different speeches which he arrays here, and the entire reading of either of the speeches will show that that distinction was made. Perhaps by taking two parts of the same speech he could have got up as much of a conflict as the one he has found. I have all the while maintained that in so far as it should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and black races that should produce a perfect social and political equality, it was an impossibility. This you have seen in my printed speeches, and with it I have said that in their right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi ness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the infe rior races are our equals. And these declarations I have constantly made in reference to the abstract moral question, to contemplate and consider when we are legislating about any new country which is not already cursed with the actual presence of the evil slavery. I have never manifested any impatience with the necessities that spring from the actual presence of black people amongst us, and the actual existence of slavery amongst us where it does already exist; but I have insisted that, in legislating for new countries where it does not exist, there is no just rule other than that of moral and abstract right. With reference to those new countries, those maxims as to the right of a people to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness " were the just rules to be constantly referred to. There is no misunderstanding this, except by men interested to misunderstand it. I take it that I have to address SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. an intelligent and reading community who will peruse what I say, weigh it, and then judge whether I advance improper or unsound views, or whether I advance hypo critical and deceptive and contrary views in different portions of the country. I believe myself to be guilty of no such thing as the latter, though, of course, I can not claim that I am entirely free from all error in the opinions I advance. The judge has also detained us aw r hile in regard to the distinction between his party and our party. His he assumes to be a national party ours a sectional one. He does this in asking the question whether this country has any interest in the maintenance of the Re publican party? He assumes that our party is alto gether sectional that the party to which he adheres is national ; and the argument is that no party can be a rightful party can be based upon rightful principles unless it can announce its principles everywhere. I presume that Judge Douglas could not go into Russia and announce the doctrine of our national Democracy; he could not denounce the doctrine of kings and em perors and monarchies in Russia ; and it may be true of this country, that in some places we may not be able to proclaim a doctrine as clearly true as the truth of De mocracy, because there is a section so directly opposed to it that they w r ill not tolerate us in doing so. Is it the true test of the soundness of a doctrine, that in some places people won t let you proclaim it? Is that the way to test the truth of any doctrine? Why, I under stand that at one time the people of Chicago would not let Judge Douglas preach a certain favorite doctrine of his. I commend to his consideration the question, whether he takes that as a test of the unsoundness of what he wanted to preach. There is another thing to which I wish to ask atten tion for a little while on this occasion. What has always been the evidence brought forward to prove that the Republican party is a sectional party? The SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. main one was that in the Southern portion of the Union the people did not let the Republicans proclaim their doctrines amongst them. That has been the main evi dence brought forward that they had no supporters. or substantially none, in the slave States. The South have not taken hold of our principles as we announce them ; nor does Judge Douglas now grapple with those principles. We have a Republican State platform, laid down in Springfield in June last, stating our position all the way through the questions before the country. We are now far advanced in this canvass. Judge Doug las and I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we have now for the fifth time met face to face in de bate, and up to this day I have not found either Judge Douglas or any friend of his taking hold of the Repub lican platform or laying his finger upon anything in it that is wrong. I ask you all to recollect that. Judge Douglas turns away from the platform of principles to the fact that he can find people somewhere who will not allow us to announce those principles. If he had great confidence that our principles were w r rong, he would take hold of them and demonstrate them to be wrong. But he does not do so. The only evidence he has of their being wrong is in the fact that there are people who won t allow us to preach them. I ask again is that the way to test the soundness of a doctrine? I ask his attention also to the fact that by the rule of nationality he is himself fast becoming sectional. I ask his attention to the fact that his speeches would not go as current now south of the Ohio River as they have formerly gone there. I ask his attention to the fact that he felicitates himself to-day that all the Demo crats of the free States are agreeing w r ith him, while he omits to tell us that the Democrats of any slave State agree with him. If he has not thought of this, I commend to his consideration the evidence in his own declaration, on this day, of his becoming sectional too. I see it rapidly approaching. Whatever may be the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. result of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas and myself, I see the day rapidly approaching when his pill of sectionalism, which he has been thrusting down the throats of Republicans for years past, will be crowded down his own throat. Now in regard to what Judge Douglas said (in the beginning of his speech) about the compromise of 1850 containing the principle of the Nebraska bill ; although I have often presented my views upon that subject, yet as I have not done so in this canvass, I will, if you please, detain you a little with them. I have always maintained so far as I was able that there was nothing of the principle of the Nebraska bill in the compromise of 1850 at all nothing whatever. Where can you find the principle of the Nebraska bill in that compromise? If anywhere, in the two pieces of the compromise organ izing the Territories of New Mexico and Utah. It was expressly provided in these two acts that, when they came to be admitted into the Union, they should be admitted with or without slavery, as they should choose, by their own constitutions. Nothing was said in either of those acts as to what was to be done in relation to slavery during the territorial existence of those Territories, while Henry Clay constantly made the declaration (Judge Douglas recognizing him as a leader) that, in his opinion, the old Mexican laws would control that question during the territorial ex istence, and that these old Mexican laws excluded slavery. How can that be used as a principle for de claring that during the territorial existence, as well as at the time of framing the constitution, the people, if you please, might have slaves if they wanted them? I am not discussing the question whether it is right or wrong; but how are the New Mexican and Utah laws patterns for the Nebraska bill? I maintain that the organization of Utah and New Mexico did not establish a general principle at all. It had no feature establish ing a general principle. The acts to which I have SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. referred were a part of a general system of compro mises. They did not lay down what was proposed as a regular policy for the Territories; only an agreement in this particular case to do in that way, because other things were done that were to be a compensation for it. They were allowed to come in in that shape, be cause in another way it was paid for considering that as a part of that system of measures called the compro mise of 1850, which finally included half a dozen acts. It included the admission of California as a free State, which was kept out of the Union for half a year because it had formed a free constitution. It included the settlement of the boundary of Texas, which had been undefined before, which was in itself a slavery question ; for if you pushed the line further west, you made Texas larger, and made more slave Territory; while if you drew the line toward the east, you narrowed the boundary and diminished the domain of slavery, and by so much increased free Territory. It included the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. It included the passage of a new fugitive-slave law. All these things were put together, and though passed in separate acts, were nevertheless in legislation (as the speeches at the time will show) made to depend upon each other. Each got votes, with the understanding that the other measures were to pass, and by this sys tem of compromise, in that series of measures, those two bills the New Mexico and Utah bills were passed; and I say for that reason they could not be taken as models, framed upon their own intrinsic prin ciple, for all future Territories. And I have the evi dence of this in the fact that Judge Douglas, a year afterward, or more than a year afterward perhaps, when he first introduced bills for the purpose of fram ing new Territories, did not attempt to follow these bills of New Mexico and Utah; and even when he intro duced this Nebraska bill, I think you will discover that he did not exactly follow them. But I do not wish to 170 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. dwell at great length upon this branch of the dis cussion. My own opinion is that a thorough investi gation will show most plainly that the New Mexico and Utah bills were part of a system of compromise, and not designed as patterns for future territorial legislation, and that this Nebraska bill did not follow them as a pattern at all. The judge tells us, in proceeding, that he is opposed to making any odious distinctions between free and slave States. I am altogether unaware that the Re publicans are in favor of making any odious distinc tions between the free and slave States. But there still is a difference, I think, between Judge Douglas and the Republicans in this. I suppose that the real differ ence between Judge Douglas and his friends and the Republicans, on the contrary, is that the judge is not in favor of making any difference between slavery and lib erty that he is in favor of eradicating, of pressing out of view, the questions of preference in this country for free or slave institutions; and consequently every sentiment he utters discards the idea that there is any wrong in slavery. Everything that emanates from him or his coadjutors in their course of policy carefully excludes the thought that there is anything wrong in slavery. All their arguments, if you will consider them, will be .seen to exclude the thought that there is any thing whatever wrong in slavery. If you will take the judge s speeches, and select the short and pointed sentences expressed by him, as his declaration that he " don t care whether slavery is voted up or down," you will see at once that this is perfectly logical, if you do not admit that slavery is wrong. If you do admit that it is wrong, Judge Douglas cannot logically say he don t care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down. Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong. He insists that, upon the score of equality, the owners of slaves and owners of property of horses and every other sort of property should be alike, and hold them alike in a new Territory. That is perfectly logical, if the two species of property are alike, and are equally founded in right. But if you admit that one of them is wrong, you cannot institute any equality between right and wrong. And from this difference of sentiment the belief on the part of one that the insti tution is wrong, and a policy springing from that belief which looks to the arrest of the enlargement of that wrong; and this other sentiment, that it is no wrong, and a policy sprung from that sentiment which will tolerate no idea of preventing that wrong from growing larger, and looks to there never being an end of it through all the existence of things arises the real difference between Judge Douglas and his friends on the one hand, and the Republicans on the other. Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the coun try who contemplates slavery as a moral, social, and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown about it ; but who, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the preven tion of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end. Judge Douglas has again, for, I believe, the fifth time, if not the* seventh, in my presence, reiterated his charge of a conspiracy or combination between the National Democrats and Republicans. What evidence Judge Douglas has upon this subject I know not, in asmuch as he never favors us with any. I have said upon a former occasion, and I do not choose to suppress it now, that I have no objection to the division in the judge s party. He got it up himself. It was all bis and their work. He had, I think, a great deal more to SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. do with the steps that led to the Lecompton constitu tion than Mr. Buchanan had; though at last, when they reached it, they quarreled over it, and their friends divided upon it. I am very free to confess to Judge Douglas that I have no objection to the division; but I defy the judge to show any evidence that I have in any way promoted that division, unless he insists on being a witness himself in merel} T saying so. I can give all fair friends of Judge Douglas here to under stand exactly the view that Republicans take in regard to that division. Don t you remember how two years ago the opponents of the Democratic party were divided between Fremont and Fillmore? I guess you do. Any Democrat who remembers that division will remember also that he was at the time very glad of it, and then he will be able to see all there is between the National Democrats and the Republicans. What we now think of the two divisions of Democrats, you then thought of the Fremont and Fillmore divisions. That is all there is of it. But if the judge continues to put forward the declara tion that there is an unholy, unnatural alliance between the Republicans and the National Democrats, I now want to enter my protest against receiving him as an entirely competent witness upon that subject. I want to call to the judge s attention an attack he made upon me in the first one of these debates, at Ottawa, on the 21st of August. In order to fix extreme Abolitionism upon me, Judge Douglas read a set of resolutions which he declared had been passed by a Republican State convention, in October, 1854, at Springfield, Illinois, and he declared I had taken part in that convention. It turned out that although a few men calling them selves an anti-Nebraska State convention had sat at Springfield about that time, yet neither did I take any part in it, nor did it pass the resolutions or any such resolutions as Judge Douglas read. So apparent had it become that the resolutions which he read had SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. not been passed at Springfield at all, nor by any State convention in which I had taken part, that seven days afterward, at Freeport, Judge Douglas declared that he had been misled by Charles H. Lanphier, editor of the " State Register," and Thomas L. Harris, member of Congress in that district, and he promised in that speech that when he went to Springfield he would inves tigate the matter. Since then Judge Douglas has been to Springfield, and I presume has made the investiga tion ; but a month has passed since he has been there, and so far as I know, he has made no report of the result of his investigation. I have waited as I think a sufficient time for the report of that investigation, and I have some curiosity to see and hear it. A fraud, an absolute forgery, was committed, and the perpetration of it was traced to the three Lanphier, Harris, and Douglas. Whether it can be narrowed in any way, so as to exonerate any one of them, is what Judge Doug las s report would probably show. It is true that the set of resolutions read by Judge Douglas were published in the Illinois " State Regis ter " on the 16th of October, 1854, as being the resolu tions of an anti-Nebraska convention which had sat in that same month of October, at Springfield. But it is also true that the publication in the " Register " was a forgery then, and the question is still behind, which of the three, if not all of them, committed that forgery? The idea that it was done by mistake is absurd. The article in the Illinois " State Register " contains part of the real proceedings of that Springfield convention, showing that the writer of the article had the real pro ceedings before him, and purposely threw out the genuine resolutions passed by the convention, and fraudulently substituted the others. Lanphier then, as now, was the editor of the " Register," so that there seems to be but little room for his escape. But then it is to be borne in mind that Lanphier had less interest in the object of that forgery than either of the other 174 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. two. The main object of that forgery at that time was to beat Yates and elect Harris to Congress, and that object was known to be exceedingly dear to Judge Douglas at that time. Harris and Douglas were both in Springfield when the convention was in session, and although they both left before the fraud appeared in the " Register," subsequent events show that they have both had their eyes fixed upon that convention. The fraud having been apparently successful upon that occasion, both Harris and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to put it to new uses. As the fisherman s wife, w r hose drowned husband was brought home with his body full of eels, said when she was asked what was to be done with him, " Take the eels out and set him again," so Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris s election, and set the fraud again more than once. On the 9th of July, 1856, Douglas attempted a repetition of it upon Trumbull on the floor of the Senate of the United States, as will appear from the appendix to the " Con gressional Globe" of that date. On the 9th of August, Harris attempted it again upon Norton in the House of Representatives, as will appear by the same document the appendix to the " Congressional Globe " of that date. On the 21st of August last, all three Lanphier, Douglas, and Harris reattempted it upon me at Ottawa. It has been clung to and played out again and again as an exceedingly high trump by this blessed trio. And now that it has been discovered publicly to be a fraud, we find that Judge Douglas manifests no sur prise at it at all. He makes no complaint of Lanphier, who must have known it to be a fraud from the begin ning. He, Lanphier, and Harris are just as cozy now, and just as active in the concoction of new schemes as they were before the general discovery of this fraud. Now all this is very natural if they are all alike guilty in that fraud, and it is very unnatural if any one of SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. them is innocent. Lanphier perhaps insists that the rule of honor among thieves does not quite require him to take all upon himself, and consequently my friend Judge Douglas finds it difficult to make a satis factory report upon his investigation. But meanwhile the three are agreed that each is " a most honorable man." Judge Douglas requires .an indorsement of his truth and honor by a reelection to the United States Senate, and he makes and reports against me and against Judge Trumbull, day after day, charges which we know to be utterly untrue, without for a moment seeming to think that this one unexplained fraud, which he promised to investigate, will be the least drawback to his claim to belief. Harris ditto. He asks a reelection to the lower House of Congress without seeming to re member at all that he is involved in this dishonorable fraud! The Illinois " State Register," edited by Lan phier, then, as now, the central organ of both Harris and Douglas, continues to din the public ear with these assertions without seeming to suspect that they are at all lacking in title to belief. After all, the question still recurs upon us, how did that fraud originally get into the "State Register"? Lanphier then, as now, was the editor of that paper. Lanphier knows. Lanphier cannot be ignorant of how and by whom it was originally concocted. Can he be induced to tell, or if he has told, can Judge Douglas be induced to tell, how it originally was concocted? It may be true that Lanphier insists that the two men for whose benefit it was originally devised shall at least bear their share of it! How that is, 1 do not know, and while it remains unexplained, I hope to be par doned if I insist that the mere fact of Judge Douglas making charges against Trumbull and myself is not quite sufficient evidence to establish them ! While we were at Freeport, in one of these joint discussions, I answered certain interrogatories which If6 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Judge Douglas had propounded to me, and there in turn propounded some to him, which he in a sort of way answered. The third one of these interrogatories I have with me, and wish now to make some comments upon it. It was in these words : " If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action? " To this interrogatory Judge Douglas made no answer in any just sense of the word. He contented himself with sneering at the thought that it was possible for the Supreme Court ever to make such a decision. He sneered at me for propounding the interrogatory. 1 had not propounded it without some reflection, and I wish now to address to this audience some remarks upon it. In the second clause of the sixth article, I believe it is, of the Constitution of the United States, we find the following language: "This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pur suance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary not withstanding." The essence of the Dred Scott case is compressed into the sentence which I will now read : " Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of this opinion, upon a different point, the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitu tion." I repeat it, " the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution"! What is it to be "affirmed" in the Constitution? Made firm in the Constitution so made that it cannot be separated from the Constitution without breaking the Constitution durable, as the Constitution, and SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 177 part of the Constitution? Now, remembering the pro vision of the Constitution which I have read, affirm ing that that instrument is the supreme law of the land; that the judges of every State shall be bound by it, any law or constitution of any State to the contrary notwithstanding; that the right of property in a slave is affirmed in that Constitution, is made, formed into, and cannot be separated from it without breaking it; durable as the instrument, part of the instrument, what follows as a short and even syllogistic argument from it? I think it follows, and I submit to the con sideration of men capable of arguing, whether as 1 state it, in syllogistic form, the argument has any fault in it? Nothing in the constitution or laws of any State can destroy a right distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United States. The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United States. Therefore, nothing in the constitution or laws of any State can destroy the right of property in a slave. I believe that no fault can be pointed out in that argument ; assuming the truth of the premises, the con clusion, so far as I have capacity at all to understand it, follows inevitably. There is a fault in it, as I think, but the fault is not in the reasoning; the falsehood, in fact, is a fault in the premises. I believe that the right of property in a slave is not distinctly and ex pressly affirmed in the Constitution, and Judge Doug las thinks it is. I believe that the Supreme Court and the advocates of that decision may search in vain for the place in the Constitution where the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed. I say, therefore, that I think one of the premises is not true in fact. But it is true with Judge Douglas. It is true with the Supreme Court who pronounced it. They are estopped from denying it, and being estopped from 12 178 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. denying it, the conclusion follows that the Constitu tion of the United States, being the supreme law, no constitution or law can interfere with it. It being affirmed in the decision that the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Consti tution, the conclusion inevitably follows that no State law or constitution can destroy that right. I then say to Judge Douglas, and to all others, that I think it will take a better answer than a sneer to show that those who have said that the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Con stitution are not prepared to show that no constitution or law can destroy that right. I say I believe it will take a far better argument than a mere sneer to show to the minds of intelligent men that whoever has so said is not prepared, whenever public sentiment is so far advanced as to justify it, to say the other. This is but an opinion, and the opinion of one very humble man ; but it is my opinion that the Dred Scott decision, as it is, never would have been made in its present form if the party that made it had not been sustained previously by the elections. My own opinion is that the new Dred Scott decision, deciding against the right of the people of the States to exclude slavery, will never be made if that party is not sustained by the elections. I believe, further, that it is just as sure to be made as to-morrow is to come, if that party shall be sustained. I have said upon a former occasion, and I repeat it now, that the course of argument that Judge Douglas makes use of upon this subject (I charge not his motives in this) is preparing the public mind for that new Dred Scott decision. I have asked him again to point out to me the reasons for his first adherence to the Dred Scott decision as it is. I have turned his at tention to the fact that General Jackson differed with him in regard to the political obligation of a Supreme Court decision. I have asked his attention to the fact that Jefferson differed with him in regard to the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. political obligation of a Supreme Court decision. Jef ferson said that " judges are as honest as other men, and not more so." And he said, substantially, that whenever a free people should give up in absolute sub mission to any department of government, retaining for themselves no appeal from it, their liberties were gone. I have asked his attention to the fact that the Cincinnati platform, upon which he says he stands, disregards a time-honored decision of the Supreme Court, in defying the power of Congress to establish a national bank. I have asked his attention to the fact that he himself was one of the most active instruments at one time in breaking down the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois, because it had made a decision distasteful to him a struggle ending in the remarkable circumstance of his sitting down as one of the new judges who were to overslough that decision, getting his title of judge in that very way. So far in this controversy I can get no answer at all from Judge Douglas upon these subjects. Not one can I get from him, except that he swells himself up and says: " All of us who stand by the decision of the Supreme Court are the friends of the Constitution; all you fellows that dare question it in any way are the enemies of the Constitution." Now in this very devoted adherence to this decision, in opposition to all the great political leaders whom he has recognized as leaders in opposition to his former self and history, there is something very marked. And the manner in which he adheres to it not as being right upon the merits, as he conceives (because he did not discuss that at all), but as being absolutely obligatory upon every one simply because of the source from whence it comes as that which no man can gainsay, whatever it may be this is another marked feature of his adherence to that decision. It marks it in this respect, that it com mits him to the next decision, whenever it comes, as being as obligatory as this one, since he does not in- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. vestigate it, and won t inquire whether this opinion is right or wrong. So he takes the next one without inquiring whether it is right or wrong. He teaches men this doctrine, and in so doing prepares the public mind to take the next decision when it comes without any inquiry. In this I think I argue fairly (without questioning motives at all) that Judge Douglas is most ingeniously and powerfully preparing the public mind to take that decision when it comes; and not only so, but he is doing it in various other ways. In these general maxims about liberty in his assertions that he " don t care whether slavery is voted up or voted down " ; that " whoever wants slavery has a right to have it " ; that " upon principles of equality it should be allowed to go everywhere " ; that " there is no in consistency between free and slave institutions " in this he is also preparing (whether purposely or not) the way for making the institution of slavery national. I repeat again, for I wish no misunderstanding, that I do not charge that he means it so; but I call upon your minds to inquire, if you were going to get the best in strument you could, and then set it to work in the most ingenious way, to prepare the public mind for this movement, operating in the free States, where there is now an abhorrence of the institution of slavery, could you find an instrument so capable of doing it as Judge Douglas, or one employed in so apt a way to do it? I have said once before, and I will repeat it now, that Mr. Clay, when he was once answering an objection to the Colonization Society, that it had a tendency to the ultimate emancipation of the slaves, said that " those who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ulti mate emancipation must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of the Colonization Society they must go back to the era of our liberty and indepen dence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return they must blot out the moral lights around us they must penetrate the human soul, and SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. eradicate the light of reason and the love of liberty " ! And I do think I repeat, though I said it on a former occasion that Judge Douglas, and whoever, like him, teaches that the negro has no share, humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far as in him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that who ever wants slaves has a right to hold them ; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national. There is, my friends, only one other point to which I will call your attention for the remaining time that I have left me, and perhaps I shall not occupy the entire time that I have, as that one point may not take me clear through it. Among the interrogatories that Judge Douglas pro pounded to me at Freeport, there was one in about this language : " Are you opposed to the acquisition of any further territory to the United States, unless slavery shall first be prohibited therein?" I answered as I thought, in this way, that I am not generally opposed to the acquisition of additional territory, and that I would support a proposition for the acquisition of additional territory, according as my supporting it was or was not calculated to aggravate this slavery ques tion amongst us. I then proposed to Judge Douglas another interrogatory, which was correlative to that : " Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory in disregard of how it may affect us upon the slavery question?" Judge Douglas answered that is, in his own way he answered it. I believe that, although he took a good many words to answer it, it was little more fully answered than any other. The substance of his answer was that this country would continue to expand 182 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. that it would need additional territory that it was as absurd to suppose that we could continue upon our present territory, enlarging in population as we are, as it would be to hoop a boy twelve years of age, and expect him to grow to man s size without bursting the hoops. I believe it was something like that. Conse quently he was in favor of the acquisition of further territory, as fast as we might need it, in disregard of how it might affect the slavery question. I do not say this as giving his exact language, but he said so sub stantially, and he would leave the question of slavery where the territory was acquired, to be settled by the people of the acquired territory. [" That s the doc trine."] Maybe it is; let us consider that for a while. This will probably, in the run of things, become one of the concrete manifestations of this slavery question. If Judge Douglas s policy upon this question succeeds and gets fairly settled down until all opposition is crushed out, the next thing will be a grab for the terri tory of poor Mexico, an invasion of the rich lands of South America, then the adjoining islands will fol low, each one of which promises additional slave-fields. And this question is to be left to the people of those countries for settlement. When we shall get Mexico, I don t know whether the judge will be in favor of the Mexican people that we get with it settling that ques tion for themselves and all others; because we know the judge has a great horror for mongrels, and I under stand that the people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels. I understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is a pure white, and I suppose from the judge s previous declaration that when we get Mexico, or any considerable portion of it, he w r ill be in favor of these mongrels settling the question, which would bring him somewhat into collision with his horror of an inferior race. It is to be remembered, though, that this power of acquiring additional territory is a power confided to the President and Senate of the United States. It is a SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 153 power not under the control of the representatives of the people any further than they, the President and the Senate, can be considered the representatives of the people. Let me illustrate that by a case we have in our history. When we acquired the territory from Mexico in the Mexican war, the House of Representatives, com posed of the immediate representatives of the people, all the time insisted that the territory thus to be ac quired should be brought in upon condition that slavery should be forever prohibited therein, upon the terms and in the language that slavery had been prohibited from coming into this country. That was insisted upon constantly, and never failed to call forth an assurance that any territory thus acquired should have that prohibition in it, so far as the House of Repre sentatives was concerned. But at last the President and Senate acquired the territory without asking the House of Representatives anything about it, and took it without that prohibition. They have the power of acquiring territory without the immediate representa* tives of the people being called upon to say anything about it, thus furnishing a very apt and powerful means of bringing new territory into the Union, and, when it is once brought into the country, involving us anew in this slavery agitation. It is therefore, as I think, a very important question for the consideration of the American people, whether the policy of bringing in additional territory, without considering at all how it will operate upon the safety of the Union in reference to this one great disturbing element in our national politics, shall be adopted as the policy of the country. You will bear in mind that it is to be acquired, accord ing to the judge s view, as fast as it is needed, and the indefinite part of this proposition is that we have only Judge Douglas and his class of men to decide how fas*; it is needed. We have no clear and certain way of determining or demonstrating how fast terri tory is needed by the necessities of the country. Who ever wants to go out filibustering, then, thinks that 184 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. more territory is needed. Whoever wants wider slave- fields feels sure that some additional territory is needed as slave territory. Then it is as easy to show the neces sity of additional slave territory as it is to assert any thing that is incapable of absolute demonstration. Whatever motive a man or a set of men may have for making annexation of property or territory, it is very easy to assert, but much less easy to disprove, that it is necessary for the wants of the country. And now it only remains for me to say that I think it is a very grave question for the people of this Union to consider whether, in view of the fact that this slavery question has been the only one that has ever endangered our republican institutions the only one that has ever threatened or menaced a dissolution of the Union that has ever disturbed us in such a way as to make us fear for the perpetuity of our liberty in view of these facts, I think it is an exceedingly interesting and important question for this people to consider whether we shall engage in the policy of acquiring additional territory, discarding altogether from our consideration, while obtaining new territory, the question how it may affect us in regard to this the only endangering element to our liberties and national greatness. The judge s view has been expressed. I, in my answer to his ques tion, have expressed mine. I think it will become an important and practical question. Our views are before the public. I am willing and anxious that they should consider them fully that they should turn it about and consider the importance of the question, and arrive at a just conclusion as to whether it is or is not wise in the people of this Union, in the acquisition of new territory, to consider whether it will add to the dis turbance that is existing among us whether it will add to the one only danger that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union or our own liberties. I think it is extremely important that they shall decide, and rightly decide, that question before entering upon that policy. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 135 SPEECH ON OPENING THE SIXTH JOINT DE BATE AT QUINCY, ILL., OCT. 13, 1858, WITH LINCOLN S REJOINDER TO DOUGLAS. [In this speech, Mr. Lincoln once more deals interestingly and broadly, with the question of slavery and of the attitude of the Republican party with regard to it, on " a moral, a social, and a political wrong." He then looks at the question from tht. Democratic, pro-slavery side the side that deems slavery not only an historically existing one, but not in itself wrong. In his rejoinder to his adversary, he meets the latter s inquiry: " Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part-slave and part-free, continue as our fathers made it forever?" with this pointed and notable contention, that " the fathers did not make the nation half-slave and half-free." He insisted that " they found the institution of slavery existing here," adding " that they did not make it so, but left it so be cause they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time." He clinched his argument with the further statement that when the fathers of the government abolished the slave-trade and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, they placed it where they and all sensible men understood it was in the course of repression and ultimate ex tinction]. WE HAVE in this nation the element of domestic slavery. It is a matter of absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. It is the opinion of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is a dangerous element. We keep up a controversy in re gard to it. That controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion, and if we can learn exactly can reduce to the lowest elements what that difference of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the different systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that disturbing element. I sug gest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think 1S6 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. it wrong. The Republican party think it wrong we think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong. We think it is a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong which in its tendency, to say the least, affects the existence of the whole nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. W T e have a due regard to the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations thrown about it. 1 suppose that in reference both to its actual existence in the nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we have no right at all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we profess that we have no more in clination to disturb it than we have the right to do it. We go further than that: we don t propose to disturb it where, in one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us. We think the Constitution would permit us to disturb it in the District of Columbia. Still we do not propose to do that, unless it should be in terms which I don t suppose the nation is very likely soon to agree to the terms of making the emancipation gradual and compensating the unwilling owners. Where we suppose we have the constitutional right, we restrain ourselves in reference to the actual existence of the institution and the difficulties thrown about it. We also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall restrict it to its present limits. We don t sup pose that in doing this we violate anything due to the actual presence of the institution, or anything due to the constitutional guaranties thrown around it. We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way, upon which I ought perhaps to address you a few SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 137 words. We do not propose that when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will decide him to be free. We do not propose that, when any other one, or one thousand, shall be decided by that court to be slaves, we will in any violent way disturb the rights of property thus settled; but we nevertheless do oppose that decision as a political rule, which shall be binding on the voter to vote for nobody who thinks it wrong, which shall be binding on the members of Congress or the President to favor no meas ure that does not actually concur with the principles of that decision. We do not propose to be bound by it as a political rule in that way, because we think it lays the foundation not merely of enlarging and spreading out what we consider an evil, but it lays the foundation for spreading that evil into the States themselves. We propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject. I will add this, that if there be any man who does not believe that slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in any one of them, that man is misplaced and ought to leave us. While, on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the constitu tional guaranties thrown around it, and would act in disregard of these, he too is misplaced, standing with us. He will find his place somewhere else; for we have a due regard, so far as we are capable of understand ing them, for all these things. This, gentlemen, as well as I can give it, is a plain statement of our principles in all their enormity. I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country contrary to me a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, and therefore it goes for the policy that does not propose dealing with it as a wrong. That policy is the Democratic policy, and that sentiment is tbe Democratic sentiment. If there be a doubt in the 185 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. mind of any one of this vast audience that this is really the central idea of the Democratic party, in relation to this subject, I ask him to bear with me while I state a few things tending, as I think, to prove that proposi tion. In the first place, the leading man I think I may do my friend Judge Douglas the honor of calling him such advocating the present Democratic policy never himself says it is wrong. He has the high dis tinction, so far as I know, of never having said slavery is either right or wrong. Almost everybody else says one or the other, but the judge never does. If there be a man in the Democratic party who thinks it is wrong, and yet clings to that party, I suggest to him in the first place that his leader don t talk as he does, for he never says that it is wrong. In the second place, I suggest to him that if he will examine the policy proposed to be carried forward, he will find that he carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it. If you will examine the arguments that are made on it, you will find that every one carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in slavery. Perhaps that Democrat who says he is as much opposed to slavery as I am, will tell me that I am wrong about this. I wish him to examine his own course in regard to this matter a moment, and then see if his opinion will not be changed a little. You say it is wrong; but don t you constantly object to anybody else saying so? Do you not constantly argue that this is not the right place to oppose it? You say it must not be opposed in the free States, because slavery is not there; it must not be opposed in the slave States, because it is there; it must not be opposed in politics, because that will make a fuss; it must not be opposed in the pulpit, because it is not religion. Then where is the place to oppose it? There is no suitable place to oppose it. There is no plan in the country to oppose this evil overspreading the continent, which you say yourself is coming. Frank Blair and Gratz Brown tried SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to get up a system of gradual emancipation in Mis souri, had an election in August, and got beat ; and you, Mr. Democrat, threw up your hat and hallooed, " Hur rah for Democracy ! " So I say again, that in regard to the arguments that are made, when Judge Douglas says he " don t care whether slavery is voted up or voted down," whether he means that as an individual expression of sentiment, or only as a sort of statement of his views on national policy, it is alike true to say that he can thus argue logically if he don t see anything wrong in it; but he cannot say so logically if he admits that slavery is wrong. He cannot say that he would as soon see a wrong voted up as voted down. When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that any body has a right to do wrong. When he says that slave property and horse and hog property are alike to be allowed to go into the Territories, upon the prin ciples of equality, he is reasoning truly if there is no difference between them as property; but if the one is property, held rightfully, and the other is wrong, then there is no equality between the right and wrong; so that, turn it in any way you can, in all the arguments sustaining the Democratic policy, and in that policy itself, there is a careful, studied exclusion of the idea that there is anything wrong in slavery. Let us under stand this. I am not, just here, trying to prove that we are right and they are wrong. I have been stating where we and they stand, and trying to show what is the real difference between us; and I now say that whenever we can get the question distinctly stated, can get all these men who believe that slavery is in some of these respects wrong, to stand and act with us in treating it as a wrong, then, and not till then, I think, will we in some way come to an end of this slavery agitation. 190 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Mr. Lincoln s Rejoinder in the Quincy Joint Debate. My Friends: I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public annunciation here to day to be put on record, that his system of policy in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall last forever. We are getting a little nearer the true issue of this controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge Douglas asks you, " Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, con tinue as our fathers made it forever?" In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so be cause they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of choice, the fathers of the government made this nation part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that : when the fathers of the government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction ; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our fathers made it? It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the in stitution of slavery, that it shall be placed upon the basis that our fathers placed it upon. Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, once said, and truly said, that when this government was established, no one expected the institution of slavery to last until this day; and that SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. the men who formed this government were wiser and better than the men of these days ; but the men of these days had experience which the fathers had not, and that experience had taught them the invention of the cotton-gin, and this had made the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a necessity in this country. Judge Douglas could not let it stand upon the basis where our fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it upon the cotton-gin basis. It is a question, therefore, for him and his friends to answer why they could not let it remain where the fathers of the government originally placed it. I hope nobody has understood me as trying to sustain the doctrine that we have a right to quarrel with Kentucky or Virginia, or any of the slave States, about the institution of slavery thus giving the judge an opportunity to make himself eloquent and valiant against us in fighting for their rights. I expressly declared in my opening speech that I had neither the in clination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence of, the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in doing as they pleased with slavery or any other existing institution. Then what becomes of all his eloquence in behalf of the rights of States, which are assailed by no living man? But I have to hurry on, for I have but a half-hour. The judge has informed me, or informed this audience, that the Washington " Union " is laboring for my elec tion to the United States Senate. This is news to me not very ungrateful news either. [Turning to Mr. W. H. Carlin, who was on the stand :] I hope that Carlin will be elected to the State Senate and will vote for me. [Mr. Carlin shook his head.] Carlin don t fall in, I perceive, and I suppose he will not do much for me; but I am glad of all the support I can get any where, if I can get it without practising any deception to obtain it. In respect to this large portion of Judge Douglas s speech, in which he tries to show that in the 192 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". controversy between himself and the administration party he is in the right, I do not feel myself at all com petent or inclined to answer him. I say to him, Give it to them give it to them just all you can; and, on the other hand, I say to Carlin, and Jake Davis, and to this man Wagley up here in Hancock, Give it to Doug las just pour it into him. Now in regard to this matter of the Dred Scott decis ion, I wish to say a word or two. After all, the judge will not say whether, if a decision is made holding that the people of the States cannot exclude slavery, he will support it or not. He obstinately refuses to say what he will do in that case. The judges of the Supreme Court as obstinately refused to say what they would do on this subject. Before this I reminded him that at Galesburg he said the judges had expressly declared the contrary, and you remember that in my opening speech I told him I had the book containing that de cision here, and I would thank him to lay his finger on the place where any such thing was said. He has oc cupied his hour and a half, and he has not ventured to try to sustain his assertion. He never will. But he is desirous of knowing how we are going to reverse the Dred Scott decision. Judge Douglas ought to know how. Did not he and his political friends find a way to reverse the decision of that same court in favor of the constitutionality of the national bank? Did n t they find a way to do it so effectually that they have reversed it as completely as any decision ever was re versed, so far as its practical operation is concerned? And, let me ask you, did n t Judge Douglas find a way to reverse the decision of our Supreme Court, when it decided that Carlin s father old Governor Carlin had not the constitutional power to remove a secretary of state? Did he not appeal to the " mobs," as he calls them? Did he not make speeches in the lobby to show how villainous that decision was, and how it ought to be overthrown? Did he not succeed, too, in getting an SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 393 act passed by the legislature to have it overthrown? And did n t he himself sit down on that bench as one of the five added judges who were to overslough the four old ones getting his name of " judge " in that way and in no other? If there is a villainy in using disre spect or making opposition to Supreme Court decis ions, I commend it to Judge Douglas s earnest consider ation. I know of no man in the State of Illinois who ought to know so well about how much villainy it takes to oppose a decision of the Supreme Court, as our honorable friend, Stephen A. Douglas. Judge Douglas also makes the declaration that I say the Democrats are bound by the Dred Scott decision, while the Republicans are not. In the sense in which he argues, I never said it; but I will tell you what 1 have said and what I do not hesitate to repeat to-day. I have said that, as the Democrats believe that decision to be correct, and that the extension of slavery is af firmed in the National Constitution, they are bound to support it as such ; and I will tell you here that General Jackson once said each man was bound to support the Constitution, " as he understood it." Now, Judge Douglas understands the Constitution according to the Dred Scott decision, and he is bound to support it as he understands it. I understand it another way, and therefore I am bound to support it in the way in which I understand it. And as Judge Douglas believes that decision to be correct, I will remake that argument if I have time to do so. Let me talk to some gentleman down there among you who looks me in the face. We will say you are a member of the territorial legislature and, like Judge Douglas, you believe that the right to take and hold slaves there is a constitutional right. The first thing you do is to swear you will support the Constitution and all rights guaranteed therein; that you will, whenever your neighbor needs your legisla tion to support his constitutional rights, not withhold that legislation. If you withhold that necessary legis- 13 194: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. lation for the support of the Constitution and constitu tional rights, do you not commit perjury? I ask every sensible man if that is not so? That is undoubtedly just so, say what you please. Now, that is precisely what Judge Douglas says that this is a constitutional right. Does the judge mean to say that the territorial legislature in legislating may, by withholding neces sary laws or by passing unfriendly laws, nullify that constitutional right? Does he mean to say that? Does he mean to ignore the proposition, so long and well established in law, that what you cannot do direct ly, you cannot do indirectly? Does he mean that? The truth about the matter is this : Judge Douglas has sung paeans to his " popular sovereignty " doctrine until his Supreme Court, cooperating with him, has squatted his squatter sovereignty out. But he will keep up this species of humbuggery about squatter sovereignty. Hfe has at last invented this sort of do-nothing sovereignty that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of " sovereignty " that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is not that running his popular sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin as the homeo pathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death? But at last, when it is brought to the test of close reasoning, there is not even that thin decoction of it left. It is a presumption impossible in the domain of thought. It is precisely no other than the putting of that most unphilosophical proposition, that two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. The Dred Scott decision covers the whole ground, and while it occupies it, there is no room even for the shadow of a starved pigeon to occupy the same ground. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. REPLY TO DOUGLAS AT ALTON, ILL., IN THE SEVENTH AND LAST JOINT DEBATE, OCT. 15, 1858. [Tn this final speech in the series of Lincoln-Douglas debates, Mr. Lincoln answers, by a direct denial, Douglas s statement with reference to the decision in the Dred Scott case, that he (Lincoln) had complained that the Supreme Court had decided that a negro could never be a citizen of the United States. To say this was to misrepresent Lincoln. The latter went on, in his argument, to deny also that the negro was Hot included in the Declaration of Independence, since he found him covered in the phrase that all men are created equal. On the general question of slavery, he enforces his argument by quoting Henry Clay, in remarkable passage where that statesman spoke of it as a great evil " which \ve had lamentably derived from the parent govern ment and from our ancestors." On the subject of the fugitive- slave law, Lincoln admitted that he respected it only from its being in the Constitution and a right fixed there; while he characterized as false Douglas s charge that he (Lincoln) was in favor of a perfect social and political equality between the white and the black races. On the other hand, he expatiated on the wrong of slavery that being the real issue of the time, and the one that had led to these Joint Debates between Douglas and himself]. Mr. Lincoln s Reply in the Alton Joint Debate. 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 adminis tration than I had heard him upon any occasion, and 1 took pains to compliment him for It. I then told him 196 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 that he has now vastly improved upon the attack he made then upon the administra tion. 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 man ner. 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 under takes 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 fight ing for the Nebraska bill and the repeal of the Mis souri Compromise, it has been but a little while since he was the valiant advocate of the Missouri Compro mise. 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 ne.ver be a citizen of the United States. I have omitted, by some accident, heretofore to analyze this SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 per sistently insisting that I have done so has strongly im pressed 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 198 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 Ne braska bill, and the amendment of Chase, offered at the time, declaratory of the right of the people of the Terri tories to exclude slavery, which was voted down by the friends of the bill. I mentioned all these things to gether, 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 citi zen, 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 the 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 south ward 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 de livered in Chicago. In his quotations from that speech, as he has made them upon former occasions, the ex tracts 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 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ^99 which he skipped over (taking an extract before and an extract after) will give a different idea, and the true idea 1 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 con troversy with him in regard to the Declaration of In dependence. 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 that 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, made 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 Declara tion of Independence: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say that all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capa city. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created equal equal in certain in alienable 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, nor 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 and revered by all constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly at tained, constantly approximated; and thereby constantly spread ing 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 Galesburg 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 Indepen dence 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 sen timent 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 per- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 201 petuation 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 Declara tion 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 Jus tice 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 con sider 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 Galesburg last week, I see that some man in Chicago has got up a letter addressed to the Chicago " Times," to show, as he pro fesses, 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-lin Whig. I am somewhat acquainted with old-line Whigs. I was with the old-line Whigs from the origin to the end of that party; I became pretty well ac quainted 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 man had, prior to the time I named, said that 202 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. negroes were not included in the term " all men " in the Declaration of Independence. What is the evi dence 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 for ward part of a speech from Henry Clay the part of the speech of Henry Clay which I used to bring for ward 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 1 suppose he carefully wrote himself and caused to be published. I have before me an extract from that speech which constitutes the evidence this pretended u Old-Line Whig " at Chicago brought forward to show that Mr. Clay didn 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 in dependence 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 ghould be tortured into a virtual emancipation of all the slaves SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 203 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 ex pectation? 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 con federacy 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 cases. He illustrates this by bringing forward the cases of females, minors, and insane persons, w r it!i whom it cannot be enforced; but he says that 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 institu tion of slavery. I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lament that we have derived it from the parent 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 incorporating the institution of slavery among 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 we find no such state ment on his part, but instead the declaration that it is 204: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. a great fundamental truth, which should be con stantly 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 "or ganized 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 main taining 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? And when this new principle this new proposition that no human being ever thought of three years ago is brought forward, I combat it as having an evil tendency, if not an evil design. I combat it as having a tendency to dehumanize the negro to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man. I combat it as being one of the thousand things con stantly done in these days to prepare the public mind to make property, and nothing but property, of the negro in all the States in this Union. But there is a point that I wish, before leaving this part of the discussion, to ask attention to. I have read, and I repeat, the words of Henry Clay: I desire no concealment of my opinions in regard to the institu tion of slavery. I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lamenu that we have derived it from the parent 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 best be 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 incorporating the institution of slavery among its elements. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. The principle upon which I have insisted in this canvass, is in relation to laying the foundations of new societies. I have never sought to apply these principles to the old States for the purpose of abolish ing slavery in those States. It is nothing but a miser able perversion of what I have said, to assume that I have declared Missouri, or any other slave State, shall emancipate her slaves. I have proposed no such thing. But when Mr. Clay says that in laying the foundations of societies in our Territories where it loes not exist, he would be opposed to the introduction of slavery as an element, I insist that we have his warrant his license for insisting upon the exclusion of that element which he declared in such strong and emphatic language was most hateful to him. Judge Douglas has again referred to a Springfield speech in which I said, " A house divided against it self cannot stand. " The judge has so often made the entire quotation from that speech that I can make it from memory. I used this language: We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the slavery agitation. Under the operation of this policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. " A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure per manently half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will be come all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States old as well as new, North as well as South. That extract, and the sentiments expressed in it, have been extremely offensive to Judge Douglas. He has warred upon them as Satan wars upon the Bible. His perversions upon it are endless. Here now are my views upon it in brief. 206 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I said we were now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and con fident promise of putting an end to the slavery agi tation. Is it not so? When that Nebraska bill was brought forward four years ago last January, was it not for the " avowed object " of putting an end to the slavery agitation? We were to have no more agitation in Congress; it was all to be banished to the Terri tories. By the way, I will remark here that, as Judge Douglas is very fond of complimenting Mr. Crittenden in these days, Mr. Crittenden has said there was a falsehood in that whole business, for there was no slavery agitation at that time to allay. We were for a little while quiet on the troublesome thing, and that very allaying-plaster of Judge Douglas s stirred it up again. But was it not undertaken or initiated with the " confident promise " of putting an end to the slavery agitation? Surely it was. In every speech you heard Judge Douglas make, until he got into this "imbroglio," as they call it, with the administration about the Lecompton constitution, every speech on that Nebraska bill was full of his felicitations that we wer just at the end of the slavery agitation. The last tip of the last joint of the old serpent s tail was just drawing out of view. But has it proved so? I have asserted that under that policy that agitation " has not only ceased, but has constantly augmented." When was there ever a greater agitation in Congress than last winter? When was it as great in the country as to day? There was a collateral object in the introduction of that Nebraska policy which was to clothe the people of the Territories with a superior degree of self-govern ment, beyond what they had ever had before. The first object and the main one of conferring upon the people a higher degree of " self-government," is a question of fact to be determined by you in answer to a single question. Have you ever heard or known of SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 207 a people anywhere on earth who had as little to do as, in the first instance of its use, the people of Kansas had with this same right of " self-government "? In its main policy and in its collateral object, it has been nothing but a living, creeping lie from the time of its introduction till to-day. I have intimated that I thought the agitation would not cease until a crisis should have been reached and passed. I have stated in what way I thought it woujd be reached and passed. I have said that it might go one way or the other. We might, by arresting the further spread of it, and placing it where the fathers originally placed it, put it where the public mind should rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. Thus the agitation may cease. It may be pushed forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. I have said, and I repeat, my wish is that the further spread of it may be arrested, and that it may be placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. I have expressed that as my wish. I entertain the opinion, upon evidence sufficient to my mind, that the fathers of this government placed that institution where the public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. Let me ask why they made provision that the source of slavery the African slave-trade should be cut off at the end of twenty years? Why did they make provision that in all the new territory we owned at that time, slavery should be forever inhibited? Why stop its spread in one direction and cut off its source in another, if they did not look to its being placed in the course of ulti mate extinction? Again, the institution of slavery is only mentioned in the Constitution of the United States two or three times, and in neither of these cases does the word "slavery" or "negro race" occur; but covert Ian- 208 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. guage is used each time, and for a purpose full of significance. What is the language in regard to the prohibition of the African slave-trade? It runs in about this way : " The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808." The next allusion in the Constitution to the question of slavery and the black race, is on the subject of the basis of representation, and there the language used is : " Representatives and direct taxes shall be appor tioned among the several States which may be in cluded within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of three persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons." It says " persons," not slaves, not negroes ; but this " three-fifths " can be applied to no other class among us than the negroes. Lastly, in the provision for the reclamation of fugi tive slaves, it is said : " No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regu lation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." There, again, there is no mention of the word " negro," or of slavery. In all three of these places, being the only allusion to slavery in the instrument, covert language is used. Language is used not suggesting that slavery existed or that the black race were among us. And I understand the contemporaneous history of those times to be that covert language was used with a purpose, and that purpose was that in our Constitution, w r hich it was hoped, and is still hoped, will endure forever, when it should be read by intelligent and patriotic men, after the institution of slavery had passed from SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 209 among us, there should be nothing on the face of the great charter of liberty suggesting that such a thing as negro slavery had ever existed among us. This is part of the evidence that the fathers of the government expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to an end. They expected and intended that it should be in the course of ultimate extinction. And when I say that I desire to see the further spread of it arrested, I only say I desire to see that done which the fathers have first done. When I say I desire to see it placed where the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate ex tinction I only say I desire to see it placed w r liere they placed it. It is not true that our fathers, as Judge Douglas assumes, made this government part slave and part free. Understand the sense in which he puts it. He assumes that slavery is a rightful thing within itself was introduced by the framers of the Consti tution. The exact truth is that they found the insti tution existing among us, and they left it as they found it. But in making the government they left this insti tution with many clear marks of disapprobation upon it. They found slavery among them, and they left it among them because of the difficulty the absolute impossibility of its immediate removal. And when Judge Douglas asks me why w r e cannot let it remain part slave and part free, as the fathers of the govern ment made it, he asks a question based upon an as sumption which is itself a falsehood; and I turn upon him and ask him the question, when the policy that the fathers of the government had adopted in relation to this element among us was the best policy in the world, the only wise policy, the only policy that we can ever safely continue upon, that will ever give us peace, unless this dangerous element masters us all and be comes a national institution, I turn upon him and ask him why he could not leave it alone. I turn and ask him why he was driven to the necessity of intro- 14 210 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ducing a new policy in regard to it. He has himself said he introduced a new policy. He said so in his speech on the 22d of March of the present year, 1858. I ask him why he could not let it remain where our fathers placed it. I ask, too, of Judge Douglas and his friends, why we shall not again place this insti tution upon the basis on which the fathers left it? I ask you, when he infers that I am in favor of setting the free and the slave States at war, when the insti tution was placed in that attitude by those who made the Constitution, did they make any war? If we had no war out of it when thus placed, wherein is the ground of belief that we shall have war out of it if w T e return to that policy? Have we had any peace upon this matter springing from any other basis? I main tain that we have not. I have proposed nothing more than a return to the policy of the fathers. I confess, when I propose a certain measure of policy, it is not enough for me that I do not intend anything evil in the result, but it is incumbent on me to show that it has not a tendency to that result. I have met Judge Douglas in that point of view. I have not only made the declaration that I do not mean to produce a conflict between the States, but I have tried to show by fair reasoning, and I think I have shown to the minds of fair men, that I propose nothing but what has a most peaceful tendency. The quotation that I happened to make in that Springfield speech, that " a house divided against itself cannot stand," and which has proved so offensive to the judge, was part and parcel of the same thing. He tries to show that variety in the domestic institutions of the different States is necessary and indispensable. I do not dispute it. I have no controversy with Judge Douglas about that. I shall very readily agree with him that it would be foolish for us to insist upon having a cranberry law here, in Illinois, where we have no cranberries, because they have a cranberry law in Indiana, where they have SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 211 cranberries. I should insist that it would be exceed ingly wrong in us to deny to Virginia the right to enact oyster laws, where they have oysters, because we want no such laws here. I understand, I hope, quite as well as Judge Douglas, or anybody else, that the vari ety in the soil and climate and face of the country, and consequent variety in the industrial pursuits and productions of a country, require systems of laws con forming to this variety in the natural features of the country. I understand quite as well as Judge Doug las, that if we here raise a barrel of flour more than we want, and the Louisianians raise a barrel of sugar more than they want, it is of mutual advantage to exchange. That produces commerce, brings us to gether, and makes us better friends. We like one another the more for it. And I understand as well as Judge Douglas, or anybody else, that these mutual accommodations are the cements which bind together the different parts of this Union; that instead of being a thing to " divide the house " figuratively expressing the Union they tend to sustain it; they are the props of the house tending always to hold it up. But when 1 have admitted all this, I ask if there is any parallel between these things and this institution of slavery? I do not see that there is any parallel at all between them. Consider it. When have we had any difficulty or quarrel amongst ourselves about the cranberry laws of Indiana, or the oyster laws of Vir ginia, or the pine-lumber laws of Maine, or the fact that Louisiana produces sugar, and Illinois flour? When have we had any quarrels over these things? When have we had perfect peace in regard to this thing which I say is an element of discord in this Union? We have sometimes had peace, but when was it? It was when the institution of slavery remained quiet where it was. We have had difficulty and tur moil whenever it has made a struggle to spread itself where it was not. I ask, then, if experience does not 212 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. speak in thunder-tones, telling us that the policy which has given peace to the country heretofore, being re turned to, gives the greatest promise of peace again. You may say, and Judge Douglas has intimated the same thing, that all this difficulty in regard to the institution of slavery is the mere agitation of office- seekers and ambitious northern politicians. He thinks we want to get " his place," I suppose. I agree that there are office-seekers amongst us. The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible. I do not claim that I am any less so than the average of men, but I do claim that I am not more selfish than Judge Douglas. But is it true that all the difficulty and agitation we have in regard to this institution of slavery springs from office-seeking from the mere ambition of poli ticians? Is that the truth? How many times have we had danger from this question? Go back to the day of the Missouri Compromise. Go back to the nullification question, at the bottom of which lay this same slavery question. Go back to the time of the annexation of Texas. Go back to the troubles that led to the compromise of 1850. You will find that every time, with the single exception of the nullifica tion question, they sprang from an endeavor to spread this institution. There never was a party in the his tory of this country, and there probably never will be, of sufficient strength to disturb the general peace of the country. Parties themselves may be divided and quarrel on minor questions, yet it extends not beyond the parties themselves. But does not this question make a disturbance outside of political circles? Does it not enter into the churches and rend them asunder? What divided the great Methodist Church into two parts, North and South? What has raised this con stant disturbance in every Presbyterian general assem bly that meets? What disturbed the Unitarian SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Church in this very city two years ago? What has jarred and shaken the great American Tract Society recently not yet splitting it, but sure to divide it in the end? Is it not this same mighty, deep-seated power that somehow operates on the minds of men, exciting and stirring them up in every avenue of society in politics, in religion, in literature, in morals, in all the manifold relations of life? Is this the work of poli ticians? Is that irresistible power, which for fifty years has shaken the government and agitated the people, to be stilled and subdued by pretending that it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought not to talk about it? If you will get everybody else to stop talking about it, I assure you I will quit before they have half done so. But where is the philosophy or statesmanship which assumes that you can quiet that disturbing element in our society which has dis turbed us for more than half a century, which has been the only serious danger that has threatened our institutions I say, where is the philosophy or the statesmanship based on the assumption that we are to quit talking about it, and that the public mind is all at once to cease being agitated by it? Yet this is the policy here in the North that Douglas is advo cating that we are to care nothing about it! I ask you if it is not a false philosophy? Is it not a false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that everybody does care the most about a thing which all experience has shown we care a very great deal about? The judge alludes very often in the course of his re marks to the exclusive right which the States have to decide the whole thing for themselves. I agree with him very readily that the different States have that right. He is but fighting a man of straw when ho assumes that I am contending against the right of the States to do as they please about it. Our controversy 214 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. with him is in regard to the new Territories. We agree that when the States come in as States they have the right and the power to do as they please. We have no pover as citizens of the free States, or in our federal capacity as members of the Federal Union through the General Government, to disturb slavery in the States where it exists. We profess constantly that we have no more inclination than belief in the power of the government to disturb it; yet we are driven constantly to defend ourselves from the as sumption that we are warring upon the rights of the States. What I insist upon is, that the new Terri tories shall be kept free from it while in the territorial condition. Judge Douglas assumes that we have no interest in them that we have no right whatever to interfere. I think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Do we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express myself ? Do we not feel an interest in getting to that outlet with such institutions as we would like to have prevail there? If you go to the Territory opposed to slavery, and another man comes upon the same ground with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are equal, it turns out that he has the equal right all his way, and you have no part of it your way. If he goes in and makes it a slave Territory, and by consequence a slave State, is it not time that those who desire to have it a free State were on equal ground? Let me suggest it in a different way. How many Demo crats are there about here [" A thousand "] who have left slave States and come into the free State of Illi nois to get rid of the institution of slavery? [Another voice: "A thousand and one."] I reckon there are a thousand and one. I will ask you, if the policy you are now advocating had prevailed when this country was in a territorial condition, where would you have gone to get rid of it? Where would you have found your free State or Territory to go to? And when SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 215 hereafter, for any cause, the people in this place shall desire to find new homes, if they wish to be rid of the institution, where will they find the place to go to? Now, irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there is a right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I am still in favor of our new Territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home may find some spot where they can better their condition where they can settle upon new soil, and better their condition in life. I am in favor of this not merely (I must say it here as I have elsewhere) for our own people who are born amongst us, but as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over in which Hans, and Baptiste, and Patrick, and all other men from all the world, may find new homes and better their condition in life. I have stated upon former occasions, and I may as well state again, what I understand to be the real issue of this controversy between Judge Douglas and myself. On the point of my wanting to make war between the free and the slave States, there has been no issue between us. So, too, when he assumes that I am in favor of introducing a perfect social and poli tical equality between the white and black races. These are false issues, upon which Judge Douglas has tried to force the controversy. There is no foundation in truth for the charge that I maintain either of these propositions. The real issue in this controversy the one pressing upon every mind is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong. The sentiment that con templates the institution of slavery in this country as a wrong is the sentiment of the Republican party. It is the sentiment around which all their actions, all their arguments, circle; from which all their propo sitions radiate. They look upon it as being a moral social, and political wrong; and while they contem- 216 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. plate it as such, they nevertheless have due regard for its actual existence among us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations thrown about it. Yet having a due regard for these, they desire a policy in regard to it that looks to its not creating any more danger. They insist that it, as far as may be, be treated as a wrong, and one of the methods of treating it as a wrong is to make provision that it shall grow no larger. They also desire a policy that looks to a peaceful end of slavery some time, as being a wrong. These are the view r s they entertain in regard to it, as I understand them; and all their sentiments, all their arguments and propositions, are brought within this range. I have said, and I repeat it here, that if there be a man amongst us who does not think that the insti tution of slavery is wrong in any one of the aspects of which I have spoken, he is misplaced, and ought not to be with us. And if there be a man amongst us who is so impatient of it as a wrong as to disregard its actual presence among us and the difficulty of getting rid of it suddenly in a satisfactory way, and to disregard the constitutional obligations thrown about it, that man is misplaced if he is on our platform. We disclaim sympathy with him in practical action. He is not placed properly with us. On this subject of treating it as a wrong, and limit ing its spread, let me say a word. Has anything ever threatened the existence of this Union save and except this very institution of slavery? What is it that we hold most dear amongst us? Our own liberty and prosperity. What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of slavery? If this is true, how do you propose to in> prove the condition of things by enlarging slavery by spreading it out and making it bigger? You may have a wen or cancer upon your person, and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death; but surely it is SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 217 no way to cure it, to engraft it and spread it over your whole body. That is no proper way of treating what you regard as a wrong. You see this peaceful way of dealing with it as a wrong restricting the spread of it, and not allowing it to go into new countries where it has not already existed. That is the peaceful way, the old-fashioned way, the way in which the fathers themselves set us the example. On the other hand, I have said there is a sentiment which treats it as not being wrong. That is the Demo cratic sentiment of this day. I do not mean to say that every man who stands within that range positively asserts that it is right. That class will include all who positively assert that it is right, and all who, like Judge Douglas, treat it as indifferent, and do not say it is either right or wrong. These two classes of men fall within the general class of those who do not look upon it as a wrong. And if there be among you anybody who supposes that he, as a Democrat, can consider himself " as much opposed to slavery as anybody," I would like to reason with him. You never treat it as a wrong. What other thing that you consider as a wrong, do you deal with as you deal with that? Perhaps you say it is wrong, but your leader never does, and you quarrel w r ith anybody who says it is wrong. Although you pretend to say so yourself, you can find no fit place to deal with it as a wrong. You must not say anything about it in the free States, because it is not here. You must not say anything about it in the slave States, because it is there. You must not say anything about it in the pulpit, because that is religion, and has nothing to do with it. Y r ou must not say anything about it in politics, because that will disturb the security of " my place." There is no place to talk about it as being a wrong, although you say yourself it is a wrong. But finally you will screw yourself up to the belief that if the people of the slave States should adopt a system of gradual emanci- 218 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. pation on the slavery question; you would be in favor of it. You would be in favor of it! You say that is getting it in the right place, and you would be glad to see it succeed. But you are deceiving yourself. You all know that Frank Blair and Gratz Brown, down there in St. Louis, undertook to introduce that system in Missouri. They fought as valiantly as they could for the system of gradual emancipation which you pre tend you would be glad to see succeed. Now I will bring you to the test. After a hard fight, they were beaten ; and when the news came over here, you threw up your hats and hurrahed for Democracy. More than that, take all the argument made in favor of the system you have proposed, and it carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in the institution of slavery. The arguments to sustain that policy carefully exclude it. Even here to-day you heard Judge Douglas quarrel with me because I uttered a wish that it might some time come to an end. Al though Henry Clay could say he wished every slave in the United States was in the country of his an cestors, I am denounced by those pretending to respect Henry Clay, for uttering a wish that it might some time, in some peaceful way, come to an end. The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not tolerate the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least degree of wrong about it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas s arguments. He says he " don t care whether it is voted up or voted down " in the Territories. I do not care myself, in dealing with that expression, whether it is intended to be expressive of his individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the national policy he desires to have established. It is alike valuable for my purpose. Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in it; because no man can logically say he don t care .whether a wrong is voted up or voted down. He SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 219 may say he don t care whether an indifferent thing is voted up or down, but he must logically have a choice between a right thing and a wrong thing. He contends that whatever community wants slaves has a right to have them. So they have if it is not a wrong. But if it is a w r rong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong. He says that, upon the score of equality, slaves should be allowed to go into a new Territory like other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference between it and other property. If it and other property are equal, his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a comparison between right and w r rong. You may turn over every thing in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute-book, in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments it everywhere carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it. That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles right and w r rong throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the begin ning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in what ever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, " You toil and work and earn bread, and I ll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the peo ple of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for en slaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle. I was glad to express my gratitude at Quincy, and I reexpress it here to Judge Douglas that he looks to 220 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. no end of the institution of slavery. That will help the people to see where the struggle really is. It will hereafter place with us all men who really do wish the wrong may have an end. And whenever we can get rid of the fog which obscures the real question, when we can get Judge Douglas and his friends to avow a policy looking to its perpetuation, we can get out from among them that class of men and bring them to the side of those who treat it as a wrong. Then there will soon be an end of it, and that end will be its " ultimate extinction." Whenever the issue can be distinctly made, and all extraneous matter thrown out, so that men can fairly see the real difference between the parties, this controversy will soon be settled, and it will be done peaceably too. There will be no war, no violence. It will be placed again where the wisest and best men of the world placed it. Brooks of South Carolina once declared that when this Constitution was framed, its framers did not look to the institution existing until this day. When he said this, I think he stated a fact that is fully borne out by the history of the times. But he also said they were better and wiser men than the men of these days; yet the men of these days had experience which they had not, and by the invention of the cotton-gin it became a necessity in this country that slavery should be perpetual. I now say that, willingly or unwillingly, purposely or with out purpose, Judge Douglas has been the most promi nent instrument in changing the position of the insti tution of slavery, which the fathers of the government expected to come to an end ere this, and putting it upon Brooks s cotton-gin basis placing it where he openly confesses he has no desire there shall ever be an end of it. I understand I have ten minutes yet. I will employ it in saying something about this argument Judge Douglas uses, while he sustains the Dred Scott decision, that the people of the Territories can still somehow SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 221 exclude slavery. The first thing I ask attention to is the fact that Judge Douglas constantly said, before the decision, that whether they could or not, was a question for the Supreme Court. But after the court has made the decision, he virtually says it is not a question for the Supreme Court, but for the people. And how is it he tells us they can exclude it? He says it needs " police regulations," and that admits of " unfriendly legislation." Although it is a right es tablished by the Constitution of the United States to take a slave into a Territory of the United States and hold him as property, yet unless the territorial legis lature will give friendly legislation, and, more espec ially, if they adopt unfriendly legislation, they can practically exclude him. Now, without meeting this proposition as a matter of fact, I pass to consider the real constitutional obligation. Let me take the gentle man who looks me in the face before me, and let us sup pose that he is a member of the territorial legislature. The first thing he will do will be to swear that he will support the Constitution of the United States. His neighbor by his side in the Territory has slaves and needs territorial legislation to enable him to enjoy that constitutional right. Can he withhold the legislation which his neighbor needs for the enjoyment of a right which is fixed in his favor in the Constitution of the United States which he has sworn to support? Can he withhold it without violating his oath? And more especially, can he pass unfriendly legislation to vio late his oath? Why, this is a monstrous sort of talk about the Constitution of the United States! There has never been as outlandish or lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any respectable man on earth. I do not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United States. I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go for reversing it. Judge Douglas is furious against those who go for reversing a decision. But he is for legislating it out of all force 222 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. while the law itself stands. I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doctrine uttered from the mouth of a respectable man. I suppose most of us (I know it of myself) believe that the people of the Southern States are entitled to a congressional fugitive-slave law ; that is a right fixed in the Constitution. But it cannot be made available to them without congressional legislation. In the judge s language, it is a " barren right," which needs legislation before it can become efficient and valuable to the persons to whom it is guaranteed. And, as the right is constitutional, I agree that the legislation shall be granted to it. Not that we like the institu tion of slavery; we profess to have no taste for run ning and catching negroes at least, I profess no taste for that job at all. Why then do I yield support to a fugitive-slave law? Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it. And if I believe that the right to hold a slave in a Territory was equally fixed in the Constitution with the right to reclaim fugitives, I should be bound to give it the legislation necessary to support it. I say that no man can deny his obliga tion to give the necessary legislation to support slavery in a Territory, who believes it is a constitutional right to have it there. No man can, who does not give the Abolitionist an argument to deny the obligation en joined by the Constitution to enact a fugitive-slave law. Try it now. It is the strongest Abolition argu ment ever made. I say, if that Dred Scott decision is correct, then the right to hold slaves in a Territory is equally a constitutional right with the right of a slave holder to have his runaway returned. No one can show the distinction between them. The one is express, so that we cannot deny it ; the other is construed to be in the Constitution, so that he who believes the decision to be correct believes in the right. And the man who argues that by unfriendly legislation, in spite of that SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 223 constitutional right, slavery may be driven from the Territories, cannot avoid furnishing an argument by which Abolitionists may deny the obligation to return fugitives, and claim the power to pass laws unfriendly to the right of the slaveholder to reclaim his fugitive. I do not know how such an argument may strike a popu lar assembly like this, but I defy anybody to go before a body of men whose minds are educated to estimating evidence and reasoning, and show that there is an iota of difference between the constitutional right to re claim a fugitive, and the constitutional right to hold a slave, in a Territory, provided this Dred Scott deci sion is correct. I defy any man to make an argument that will justify unfriendly legislation to deprive a slaveholder of his right to hold his slave in a Terri tory, that will not equally, in all its length, breadth, and thickness, furnish an argument for nullifying the fugitive-slave law. Why, there is not such an Aboli tionist in the nation as Douglas, after all. 224: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH AT CHICAGO ON THE NIGHT OF THE MUNICIPAL ELECTION, MARCH 1, 1859. [Here Mr. Lincoln brings forward once more the wrong of slavery and the danger to the nation, as well as to the Republican cause, in tampering with the evil institution or in closing one s eyes to the fact of its menacing existence. On the question of its perpetuation and spreading into the new Territories and States, he speaks strongly and earnestly, urging its limitation in area and resistance to it as a giant wrong, and with the fixed idea that some day it must and will come to an end. In this, the speaker, by intuition, seems to foreshadow, under Provi dence, the great and momentous act of which Lincoln, later on, was to be the instrument of liberating the slave, though calamitous and trying days were to intervene ere emancipation finally came about]. I UNDERSTAND that you have to-day rallied around your principles, and they have again triumphed in the city of Chicago. I am exceedingly happy to meet you under such cheering auspices on this occasion the first on which I have appeared before an audience since the campaign of last year. It is unsuitable to enter into a lengthy discourse, as is quite apparent, at a moment like this. I shall therefore detain you only a very short while. It gives me peculiar pleasure to find an opportunity under such favorable circumstances to return my thanks for the gallant support that the Republicans of the city of Chicago and of the State gave to the cause in which we were all engaged in the late momentous struggle in Illinois. . . . I wish now to aad a word that has a bearing on the future. The Republican principle, the profound cen tral truth that slavery is wrong and ought to be dealt with as a wrong, though we are always to remember the fact of its actual existence amongst us and faith- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 225 fully observe all the constitutional guarantees, the unalterable principle never for a moment to be lost sight of, that it is a wrong and ought to be dealt with as such, cannot advance at all upon Judge Douglas s ground; that there is a portion of the country in which slavery must always exist; that he does not care whether it is voted up or voted down, as it is simply a question of dollars and cents. Whenever in any com promise, or arrangement, or combination that may promise some temporary advantage we are led upon that ground, then and there the great living principle Upon which we have organized as a party is surrendered. The proposition now in our minds that this thing is wrong being once driven out and surrendered, then the institution of slavery necessarily becomes national. One or two words more of what I did not think of when I rose. Suppose it is true that the Almighty has drawn a line across this continent, on the south side of which part of the people will hold the rest as slaves; that the Almighty ordered this; that it is right, un changeably right, that men ought there to be held as slaves; that their fellow-men will always have the right to hold them as slaves. I ask you, this once admitted, how can you believe that it is not right for us, or for them coming here, to hold slaves on this other side of the line? Once we come to acknowledge that it is right, that it is the law of the Eternal Being for slavery to exist on one side of that line, have Ave any sure ground to object to slaves being held on the other side? Once admit the position that a man rightfully holds another man as property on one side of the line, and you must, w r hen it suits his convenience to come to the other side, admit that he has the same right to hold his property there. Once admit Judge Douglas s prop osition, and w r e must all finally give way. Although we may not bring ourselves to the idea that it is to our interest to have slaves in this Northern country, we shall soon bring ourselves to admit that while we may 15 226 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. not want them, if any one else does, he has the moral right to have them. Step by step, south of the judge s moral climate line in the States, in the Territories everywhere, and then in all the States it is thus that Judge Douglas would lead us inevitably to the nation alization of slavery. Whether by his doctrine of squat ter sovereignty, or by the ground taken by him in his recent speeches in Memphis and through the South, that wherever the climate makes it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property they will pass a slave code, whether it is covertly nationalized by congressional legislation, or by Dred Scott decision, or by the sophistical and misleading doctrine he has last advanced, the same goal is inevitably reached by the one or the other device. It is only traveling to the same place by different roads. It is in this direction lies all the danger that now exists to the great Republican cause. I take it that so far as concerns forcibly establishing slavery in the Territories by congressional legislation, or by virtue of the Dred Scott decision, that day has passed. Our only serious danger is that we shall be led upon this ground of Judge Douglas, on the delusive assumption that it is a good way of whipping our opponents, when in fact it is a way that leads straight to final sur render. The Republican party should not dally with Judge Douglas when it knows where his proposition and his leadership would take us, nor be disposed to listen to it because it was best somewhere else to sup port somebody occupying his ground. That is no just reason why we ought to go over to Judge Douglas, as we were called upon to do last year. Never forget that we have before us this whole matter of the right or wrong of slavery in this Union, though the immediate question is as to its spreading out into new Territories and States. I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist ; SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 227 and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetua tion of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end. If we do not allow ourselves to be allured from the strict path of our duty by such a device as shifting our ground and throwing us into the rear of a leader who denies our first principle, denies that there is an absolute wrong in the institution of slavery, then the future of the Republican cause is safe, and victory is assured. You Republicans of Illinois have deliberately taken your ground; you have heard the whole subject discussed again and again; you have stated your faith in platforms laid down in a State con vention and in a national convention ; you have heard and talked over and considered it until you are now all of opinion that you are on a ground of unques tionable right. All you have to do is to keep the faith, to remain steadfast to the right, to stand by your ban ner. Nothing should lead you to leave your guns. Stand together, ready, with match in hand. Allow nothing to turn you to the right or to the left. Re member how long you have been in setting out on the true course; how long you have been in getting your neighbors to understand and believe as you now do. Stand by your principles, stand by your guns, and vic tory, complete and permanent, is sure at the last. 228 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH AT CINCINNATI, OHIO, SEP. 17, 1859. [This address of Mr. Lincoln, at Cincinnati, following upon a visit of Judge S. A. Douglas to that city, may be said to be a sort of aftermath of the notable Lincoln-Douglas Debates in Illinois, for it reviews a good deal of the ground gone over and comment upon many of the subjects discussed in the historic tilts with the Illinois " little Giant " Senator. The reiteration of these topics, aside from their fresh setting, will however not be unwelcome, it is thought, to readers of this volume, or to those who wish to learn how the public mind was at the time educated and influenced in regard to the great question of slavery and the agitation for its limitation and ultimate sup pression, now about to corne forward for final settlement at the assize of the nation]. My Fellow-citizens of the State of Ohio: This is the first time in my life that I have appeared before an audience in so great a city as this. I therefore though I am no longer a young man make this ap pearance under some degree of embarrassment. But I have found that when one is embarrassed, usually the shortest way to get through with it is to quit talk ing or thinking about it, and go at something else. I understand that you have had recently with you my very distinguished friend, Judge Douglas, of Illi nois, and I understand, without having had an oppor tunity (not greatly sought, to be sure) of seeing a re port of the speech that he made here, that he did me the honor to mention my humble name. I suppose that he did so for the purpose of making some objection to some sentiment at some time expressed by me. I should expect, it is true, that Judge Douglas had re minded you, or informed you, if you had never before heard it, that I had once in my life declared it as my opinion that this government cannot " endure per manently half slave and half free; that a house divided SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. against itself cannot stand," and, as I had expressed it, I did not expect the house to fall; that I did not expect the Union to be dissolved, but that I did expect it would cease to be divided ; that it would become all one thing or all the other; that either the opposi tion of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind would rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction, or the friends of slavery will push it forward until it becomes alike lawful in all the States, old or new, free as well as slave. I did, fifteen months ago, express that opinion, and upon many occasions Judge Douglas has denounced it, and has greatly, intentionally or unin tentionally, misrepresented my purpose in the expres sion of that opinion. I presume, without having seen a report of his speech, that he did so here. I presume that he alluded also to that opinion in different language, having been ex pressed at a subsequent time by Governor Seward, of New York, and that he took the two in a lump and de nounced them ; that he tried to point out that there was something couched in this opinion which led to the making of an entire uniformity of the local institu tions of the various States of the Union, in utter dis regard of the different States, which in their nature would seern to require a variety of institutions, and a variety of laws conforming to the differences in the nature of the different States. Not only so; I presume he insisted that this was a declaration of war between the free and slave States that it was the sounding to the onset of continual war between the different States, the slave and free States. This charge, in this form, was made by Judge Doug las on, I believe, the 9th of July, 1858, in Chicago, in my hearing. On the next evening, I made some reply to it. I informed him that many of the inferences he drew from that expression of mine were altogether foreign to any purpose entertained by me, and in so 230 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. far as he should ascribe these inferences to me, as ray purpose, he was entirely mistaken; and in so far as he might argue that whatever might be my purpose, actions, conforming to my views, would lead to these results, he might argue and establish if he could; but, so far as purposes were concerned, he was totally mis taken as to me. When I made that reply to him, I told him, on the question of declaring war between the different States of the Union, that I had not said I did not expect any peace upon this question until slavery was exter minated; that I had only said I expected peace when that institution was put where the public mind should rest in the belief that it was in course of ultimate ex tinction; that I believed, from the organization of our government until a very recent period of time, the in stitution had been placed and continued upon such a basis ; that we had had comparative peace upon that question through a portion of that period of time, only because the public mind rested in that belief in re gard to it, and that when we returned to that position in relation to that matter, I supposed we should again have peace as we previously had. I assured him, as I now assure you, that I neither then had, nor have, nor ever had, any purpose in any way of interfering with the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe we have no power, under the Constitution of the United States, or rather under the form of government under which we live, to interfere with the institution of slavery, or any other of the institutions of our sister States, be they free or slave States. I declared then, and I now re-declare, that I have as little inclination to interfere with the institution of slavery where it now exists, through the instrumentality of the General Government, or any other instrumentality, as I believe we have no power to do so. I accidentally used this ex pression : I had no purpose of entering into the slave States to disturb the institution of slavery. So, upon SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 231 the first occasion that Judge Douglas got an oppor tunity to reply to me, he passed by the whole body of what I had said upon that subject, and seized upon the particular expression of mine, that I had no purpose of entering into the slave States to disturb the institu tion of slavery. " Oh, no," said he; "he [Lincoln] won t enter into the slave States to disturb the institu tion of slavery; he is too prudent a man to do such a thing as that ; he only means that he will go on to the line between the free and slave States, and shoot over at them. This is all he means to do. He means to do them all the harm he can, to disturb them all he can, in such a way as to keep his own hide in perfect safety." Well, now, I did not think, at that time, that that was either a very dignified or very logical argument; but so it was, and I had to get along with it as well as I could. It has occurred to me here to-night that if I ever do shoot over the line at the people on the other side of the line, into a slave State, and propose to do so keep ing my skin safe, that I have now about the best chance I shall ever have. I should not wonder if there are some Kentuckians about this audience; we are close to Ken tucky ; and whether that be so or not, we are on elevated ground, and by speaking distinctly I should not wonder if some of the Kentuckians would hear me on the other side of the river. For that reason I propose to address a portion of what I have to say to the Kentuckians. I say, then, in the first place, to the Kentuckians, that I am what they call, as I understand it, a " Black Republican." I think slavery is wrong, morally and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union. While I say this for myself, I say to you Kentuckians that I understand you differ radically with me upon this proposition; that you believe slavery is a good thing; that slavery is right; that it ought to be extended and SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. perpetuated in this Union. Now, there being this broad difference between us, I do not pretend, in ad dressing myself to you Kentuckians, to attempt pros elyting you; that would be a vain effort. I do not enter upon it. I only propose to try to show you that you ought to nominate for the next presidency, at Charleston, my distinguished friend, Judge Douglas. In all that there is no real difference between you and him ; I understand he is as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you, than you are for yourselves. 1 will try to demonstrate that proposition. Understand now, I say that I believe he is as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you, than you are for yourselves. What do you want more than anything else to make successful your views of slavery to advance the out spread of it, and to secure and perpetuate the nation ality of it? What do you want more than anything else? What is needed absolutely? What is indispen sable to you? Why, if I may be allowed to answer the question, it is to retain a hold upon the North it is to retain support and strength from the free States. If you can get this support and strength from the free States, you can succeed. If you do not get this support and this strength from the free States, you are in the minority, and you are beaten at once. If that proposition be admitted, and it is unde niable, then the next thing I say to you is, that Doug las of all the men in this nation is the only man that affords you any hold upon the free States; that no other man can give you any strength in the free States. This being so, if you doubt the other branch of the prop osition, whether he is for you, whether he is really for you, as I have expressed it, I propose asking your attention for a while to a few facts. The issue between you and me, understand, is that I think slavery is wrong, and ought not to be outspread, and you think it is right, and ought to be extended and perpetuated. I now proceed to try to show to you that SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 933 Douglas is as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you, than you are for yourselves. In the first place, we know that in a government like this, a government of the people, where the voice of all the men of the country, substantially, enters into the administration of the government, what lies at the bot tom of all of it is public opinion. I lay down the prop osition that Judge Douglas is not only the man that promises you in advance a hold upon the North, and support in the North, but that he constantly molds public opinion to your ends; that in every possible way he can, he molds the public opinion of the North to your ends; and if there are a few things in which he seems to be against you, a few things which he says that appear to be against you, and a few that he forbears to say which you would like to have him say, you ought to remember that the saying of the one, or the forbearing to say the other would lose his hold upon the North, and, by consequence, would lose his capacity to serve you. Upon this subject of molding public opinion, I call your attention to the fact for a w T ell-established fact it is that the judge never says your institution of slavery is wrong: he never says it is right, to be sure, but he never says it is wrong. There is not a public man in the United States, I believe, with the exception of Senator Douglas, who has not, at some time in his life, declared his opinion whether the thing is right or wrong ; but Senator Douglas never declares it is wrong. He leaves himself at perfect liberty to do all in your favor which he would be hindered from doing if he were to declare the thing to be wrong. On the contrary, he takes all the chances that he has for inveigling the sentiment of the North, opposed to slavery, into your support, by never saying it is right. This you ought to set down to his credit. You ought to give him full credit for this much, little though it be in comparison to the whole which he does for you. 234 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Some other things I will ask your attention to. He said upon the floor of the United States Senate, and he has repeated it, as I understand, a great many times, that he does not care whether slavery is " voted up or voted down." This again shows you, or ought to show you, if you would reason upon it, that he does not be lieve it to be wrong; for a man may say, when he sees nothing wrong in a thing, that he does not care whether it be voted up or voted down ; but no man can logically say that he cares not whether a thing goes up or goes down which appears to him to be wrong. You there fore have a demonstration in this, that to Judge Doug las s mind your favorite institution, which you desire to have spread out and made perpetual, is no wrong. Another thing he tells you, in a speech made at Mem phis, in Tennessee, shortly after the canvass in Illinois, last year. He there distinctly told the people that there was a " line drawn by the Almighty across this con tinent, on the one side of which the soil must always be cultivated by slaves "; that he did not pretend to know exactly where that line was, but that there was such a line. I want to ask your attention to that proposition again that there is one portion of this continent where the Almighty has designed the soil shall always be cultivated by slaves; that its being cultivated by slaves at that place is right; that it has the direct sympathy and authority of the Almighty. Whenever you can get these Northern audiences to adopt the opinion that slavery is right on the other side of the Ohio; whenever you can get them, in pursuance of Douglas s views, to adopt that sentiment, they will very readily make the other argument, which is perfectly logical, that that which is right on that side of the Ohio cannot be wrong on this, and that if you have that property on that side of the Ohio, under the seal and stamp of the Almighty, when by any means it escapes over here, it is wrong to have constitutions and laws " to devil " you about it. So Douglas is molding the public opinion of the North, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 235 first to say that the thing is right in your State over the Ohio River, and hence to say that that which is right there is not wrong here, and that all laws and constitutions here, recognizing it as being wrong, are themselves w r rong, and ought to be repealed and abro gated. He will tell you, men of Ohio, that if you choose here to have laws against slavery, it is in con formity to the idea that your climate is not suited to it; that your climate is not suited to slave labor, and therefore you have constitutions and laws against it. Let us attend to that argument for a little while, and see if it be sound. You do not raise sugar-cane (except the new-fashioned sugar-cane, and you won t raise that long), but they do raise it in Louisiana. You don t raise it in Ohio because you can t raise it profitably, because the climate don t suit it. They do raise it in Louisiana because there it is profitable. Now Doug las will tell you that is precisely the slavery question; that they do have slaves there because they are profit able, and you don t have them here because they are not profitable. If that is so, then it leads to dealing with the one precisely as with the other. Is there, then, anything in the constitution or laws of Ohio against raising sugar-cane? Have you found it neces sary to put any such provision in your law? Surely not ! No man desires to raise sugar-cane in Ohio ; but if any man did desire to do so, you would say it was a tyrannical law that forbids his doing so; and when ever you shall agree with Douglas, whenever your minds are brought to adopt his argument, as surely you will have reached the conclusion that although slavery is not profitable in Ohio, if any man want it, it is wrong to him not to let him have it. In this matter Judge Douglas is preparing the public mind for you of Kentucky, to make perpetual that good thing in your estimation, about which you and I differ. In this connection let me ask your attention to an other thing. I believe it is safe to assert that, five 236 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. years ago, no living man had expressed the opinion that the negro had no share in the Declaration of Indepen dence. Let me state that again : Five years ago no living man had expressed the opinion that the negro had no share in the Declaration of Independence. If there is in this large audience any man who ever knew of that opinion being put upon paper as much as five years ago, I will be obliged to him now, or at a subse quent time, to show it. If that be true, I wish you then to note the next fact that within the space of five years Senator Douglas, in the argument of this question, has got his entire party, so far as I know, without exception, to join in saying that the negro has no share in the Declaration of Independence. If there be now in all these United States one Douglas man that does not say this, I have been unable upon any occasion to scare him up. Now, if none of you said this five years ago, and all of you say it now, that is a matter that you Kentuckians ought to note. That is a vast change in the Northern public sentiment upon that question. Of what tendency is that change? The tendency of that change is to bring the public mind to the conclu sion that whenmen are spoken of, the negro is not meant; that when negroes are spoken of, brutes alone are contemplated. That change in public sentiment has already degraded the black man, in the estimation of Douglas and his followers, from the condition of a man of some sort, and assigned him to the condition of a brute. Now you Kentuckians ought to give Douglas credit for this. That is the largest possible stride that can be made in regard to the perpetuation of your good thing of slavery. In Kentucky, perhaps, in many of the slave States certainly, you are trying to establish the rightfulness of slavery by reference to the Bible. You are trying to show that slavery existed in the Bible times by divine ordinance. Now Douglas is wiser than you for SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 37 your own benefit, upon that subject. Douglas knows that whenever you establish that slavery was right by the Bible, it will occur that that slavery was the slavery of the white man, of men without reference to color, and lie knows very well that you may entertain that idea in Kentucky as much as you please, but you will never win any Northern support upon it. He makes a wiser argument for you ; he makes the argument that the slavery of the black man, the slavery of the man who has a skin of a different color from your own, is right. He thereby brings to your support Northern voters who could not for a moment be brought by your own argument of the Bible-right of slavery. Will you not give him credit for that? Will you not say that in this matter he is more wisely for you than you are for yourselves ? Now, having established with his entire party this doctrine, having been entirely successful in that branch of his efforts in your behalf, he is ready for another. At this same meeting at Memphis, he declared that in all contests between the negro and the white man, he was for the white man, but that in all questions be tween the negro and the crocodile he was for the negro. He did not make that declaration accidentally at Mem phis. He made it a great many times in the canvass in Illinois last year (though I don t know that it was reported in any of his speeches there ; but he frequently made it). I believe he repeated it at Columbus, and I should not wonder if he repeated it here. It is, then, a deliberate way of expressing himself upon that sub ject. It is a matter of mature deliberation with him thus to express himself upon that point of his case. It therefore requires some deliberate attention. The first inference seems to be that if you do not enslave the negro you are w r ronging the white man in some way or other ; and that whoever is opposed to the negro being enslaved is, in yoine way or other, against 238 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". the white man. Is not that a falsehood? If there was a necessary conflict between the white man and the negro, I should be for the white man as much as Judge Douglas; but I say there is no such necessary conflict. I say that there is room enough for us all to be free, and that it not only does not wrong the white man that the negro should be free, but it positively w r rougs the mass of the white men that the negro should be en slaved; that the mass of white men are really injured by the effects of slave-labor in the vicinity of the fields of their own labor. But I do not desire to dwell upon this branch of the question more than to say that this assumption of his is false, and I do hope that that fallacy will not long prevail in the minds of intelligent white men. At all events, you ought to thank Judge Douglas for it. It is for your benefit it is made. The other branch of it is, that in a struggle between the negro and the crocodile, he is for the negro. Well, I don t know that there is any struggle between the negro and the crocodile, either. I suppose that if a crocodile (or, as we old Ohio River boatmen used to call them, alligators) should come across a white man, he would kill him if he could, and so he would a negro. But what, at last, is this proposition? I believe that it is a sort of proposition in proportion, which may be stated thus : " As the negro is to the white man, so is the crocodile to the negro; and as the negro may right fully treat the crocodile as a beast or reptile, so the white man may rightfully treat the negro as a beast or reptile." That is really the point of all that argu ment of his. Now, my brother Kentuckians, who believe in this, you ought to thank Judge Douglas for having put that in a much more taking way than any of yourselves have done. Again, Douglas s great principle, " popular sove reignty," as he calls it, gives you by natural conse- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 239 quence the revival of the slave-trade whenever you want it. If you are disposed to question this, listen awhile, consider awhile, what I shall advance in sup port of that proposition. He says that it is the sacred right of the man who goes into the Territories to have slavery if he wants it. Grant that for argument s sake. Is it not the sacred right of the man who don t go there, equally to buy slaves in Africa, if he wants them? Can you point out the difference? The man who goes into the Ter ritories of Kansas and Nebraska, or any other new Territory, with the sacred right of taking a. slave there which belongs to him, would certainly have no more right to take one there than I would who own no slave, but who would desire to buy one and take him there. You will not say you, the friends of Judge Douglas but that the man who does not own a slave, has an equal right to buy one and take him to the Territory as the other does? I say that Douglas s popular sovereignty, establishing his sacred right in the people, if you please, if carried to its logical conclusion, gives equally the sacred right to the people of the States or the Territories themselves to buy slaves, wherever they can buy them cheapest; and if any man can show a distinction, I should like to hear him try it. If any man can show how the people of Kansas have a better right to slaves because they want them, than the people of Georgia have to buy them in Africa, I want him to do it. I think it cannot be done. If it is " popular sovereignty " for the people to have slaves because they want them, it is pop ular sovereignty for them to buy them in Africa, be cause they desire to do so. I know that Douglas has recently made a little effort not seeming to notice that he had a different theory has made an effort to get rid of that. He has written a letter, addressed to somebody, I believe, who resides in Iowa, declaring his opposition to the repeal of the 240 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". laws that prohibit the African slave-trade. He bases his opposition to such repeal upon the ground that these laws are themselves one of the compromises of the Constitution of the United States. Now it would be very interesting to see Judge Douglas, or any of his friends, turn to the Constitution of the United States and point out that compromise, to show where there is any compromise in the Constitution, or provision in the Constitution, expressed or implied, by which the administrators of that Constitution are under any obli gation to repeal the African slave-trade. I know, or at least I think I know, that the framers of that Constitu tion did expect that the African slave-trade would be abolished at the end of twenty years, to which time their prohibition against its being abolished extended. I think there is abundant contemporaneous history to show that the framers of the Constitution expected it to be abolished. But while they so expected, they gave nothing for that expectation, and they put no provision in the Constitution requiring it should be so abolished. The migration or importation of such persons as the States shall see fit to admit shall not be prohibited, but a certain tax might be levied upon such importa tion. But what was to be done after that time? The Constitution is as silent about that as it is silent, personally, about myself. There is absolutely nothing in it about that subject there is only the expectation of the framers of the Constitution that the slave-trade would be abolished at the end of that time, and they expected it would be abolished, owing to public senti- ment, before that time, and they put that provision in, in order that it should not be abolished before that time, for reasons which I suppose they thought to be sound ones, but which I will not now try to enumerate before you. But while they expected the slave-trade would be abolished at that time, they expected that the spread of slavery into the new Territories should also be re- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 241 stricted. It is as easy to prove that the framers of the Constitution of the United States expected that slavery should be prohibited from extending into the new Ter ritories, as it is to prove that it was expected that the slave-trade should be abolished. Both these things were expected. One was no more expected than the other, and one was no more a compromise of the Con stitution than the other. There was nothing said in the Constitution in regard to the spread of slavery into the Territories. I grant that, but there was something very important said about it by the same generation of men in the adoption of the old ordinance of 87, through the influence of which you here in Ohio, our neighbors in Indiana, we in Illinois, our neighbors in Michigan and Wisconsin, are happy, prosperous, teem ing millions of free men. That generation of men, though not to the full extent members of the conven tion that framed the Constitution, were to some extent members of that convention, holding seats at the same time in one body and the other, so that if there was any compromise on either of these subjects, the strong evidence is that that compromise w r as in favor of the restriction of slavery from the new Territories. But Douglas says that he is unalterably opposed to the repeal of those laws; because, in his view, it is a compromise of the Constitution. You Kentuckians, no doubt, are somewhat offended with that! You ought not to be! You ought to be patient! You ought to know that if he said less than that, he would lose the power of " lugging " the Northern States to your sup port. Really, what you would push him to do would take from him his entire power to serve you. And you ought to remember how long, by precedent, Judge Douglas holds himself obliged to stick by compromises. You ought to remember that by the time you yourselves think you are ready to inaugurate measures for the revival of the African slave-trade, that sufficient time will have arrived, by precedent, for Judge Douglas to 16 242 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. break through that compromise. He says now nothing more strong than he said in 1849 when he declared in favor of the Missouri Compromise that precisely four years and a quarter after he declared that compromise to be a sacred thing, which " no ruthless hand would ever dare to touch," he, himself, brought forward the measure ruthlessly to destroy it. By a mere calcula tion of time it will only be four years more until he is ready to take back his profession about the sacred- ness of the compromise abolishing the slave-trade. Precisely as soon as you are ready to have his services in that direction, by fair calculation, you may be sure of having them. But you remember and set down to Judge Douglas s debt, or discredit, that he, last year, said the people of Territories can, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, exclude your slaves from those Territories; that he de clared by " unfriendly legislation " the extension of your property into the new Territories may be cut off in the teeth of that decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. He assumed that position at Freeport, on the 27th of August, 1858. He said that the people of the Ter ritories can exclude slavery, in so many words. You ought, however, to bear in mind that he has never said it since. You may hunt in every speech that he has since made, and he has never used that expression once. He has never seemed to notice that he is stating his views differently from what he did then ; but by some sort of accident, he has always really stated it differ ently. He has always since then declared that " the Constitution does not carry slavery into the Territories of the United States beyond the power of the people legally to control it, as other property." Now there is a difference in the language used upon that former occasion and in this latter day. There may or may not be a difference in the meaning, but it is worth while SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. considering whether there is not also a difference in meaning. What is it to exclude? Why, it is to drive it out. It is in some way to put it out of the Territory. It is to force it across the line, or change its character, so that as property it is out of existence. But what is the controlling of it "as other property"? Is con trolling it as other property the same thing as destroy ing it, or driving it away? I should think not. I should think the controlling of it as other property would be just about what you in Kentucky should want. I understanding the controlling of property means the controlling of it for the benefit of the owner of it. While I have no doubt the Supreme Court of the United States would say " God speed " to any of the territorial legislatures that should thus control slave property, they would sing quite a different tune if by the pretense of controlling it they were to under take to pass laws which virtually excluded it, and that upon a very well known principle to all lawyers, that what a legislature cannot directly do, it cannot do by indirection; that as the legislature has not the power to drive slaves out, they have no power by indirection, by tax, or by imposing burdens in any way on that property, to effect the same end, and that any attempt to do so would be held by the Dred Scott court uncon stitutional. Douglas is not willing to stand by his first proposi tion that they can exclude it, because we have seen that that proposition amounts to nothing more or less than the naked absurdity that you may lawfully drive out that which has a lawful right to remain. He ad mitted at first that the slave might be lawfully taken into the Territories under the Constitution of the United States, and yet asserted that he might be law fully driven out. That being the proposition, it is the absurdity I have stated. He is not willing to stand in the face of that direct, naked, and impudent absur- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. dity ; he has, therefore, modified his language into that of being " controlled as other property." The Kentuckians don t like this in Douglas! I will tell you where it will go. He now swears by the court. He was once a leading man in Illinois to break down a court because it had made a decision he did not like. But he now not only swears by the court, the courts having got to working for you, but he denounces all men that do not swear by the courts as unpatriotic, as bad citizens. When one of these acts of unfriendly legislation shall impose such heavy burdens as to, in effect, destroy property in slaves in a Territory, and show plainly enough that there can be no mistake in the purpose of the legislature to make them so burden some, this same Supreme Court will decide that law to be unconstitutional, and he will be ready to say for your benefit, " I swear by the court ; I give it up " ; and while that is going on he has been getting all his men to swear by the courts, and to give it up with him. In this again he serves you faithfully, and, as I say, more wisely than you serve yourselves. Again, I have alluded in the beginning of these re marks to the fact that Judge Douglas has made great complaint of my having expressed the opinion that this government " cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." He has complained of Seward for using different language, and declaring that there is an " irrepressible conflict " between the principles of free and slave labor. [A voice : " He says it is not original with Seward. That is original with Lin coln. 7 ] I will attend to that immediately, sir. Since that time, Hickman, of Pennsylvania, expressed the same sentiment. He has never denounced Mr. Hick man. Why? There is a little chance, notwithstand ing that opinion in the mouth of Hickman, that he may yet be a Douglas man. That is the difference. It is not unpatriotic to hold that opinion, if a man is a Douglas man. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 245 But neither I, nor Seward, nor Hickraan is entitled to the enviable or unenviable distinction of having first expressed that idea. That same idea was ex pressed by the Richmond " Enquirer " in Virginia, in 1856, quite two years before it was expressed by the first of us. And while Douglas was pluming himself that in his conflict with my humble self, last year, he had " squelched out " that fatal heresy, as he delighted to call it, and had suggested that if he only had had a chance to be in New York and meet Seward he would have " squelched " it there also, it never occurred to him to breathe a word against Pryor. I don t think that you can discover that Douglas ever talked of going to Virginia to " squelch " out that idea there. No. More than that. That same Roger A. Pryor was brought to Washington City and made the editor of the par excellence Douglas paper after making use of that ex pression which, in us, is so unpatriotic and heretical. From all this my Kentucky friends may see that this opinion is heretical in his view only when it is ex pressed by men suspected of a desire that the country shall all become free, and not when expressed by those fairly known to entertain the desire that the whole country shall become slave. When expressed by that class of men, it is in no wise offensive to him. In this again, my friends of Kentucky, you have Judge Doug las with you. There is another reason why you Southern people ought to nominate Douglas at your convention at Charleston. That reason is the wonderful capacity of the man ; the power he has of doing what would seem to be impossible. Let me call your attention to one of these apparently impossible things. Douglas had three or four very distinguished men, of the most extreme antislavery views of any men in the Republican party, expressing their desire for his reelection to the Senate last year. That would, of it self, have seemed to be a little wonderful, but that 246 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. wonder is heightened when we see that Wise, of Vir ginia, a man exactly opposed to them, a man who be lieves in the divine right of slavery, was also express ing his desire that Douglas should be reflected; that another man that may be said to be kindred to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your own State, was also agreeing with the antislavery men in the North that Douglas ought to be reflected. Still, to heighten the wonder, a senator from Kentucky, whom I have always loved with an affection as tender and endearing as I have ever loved any man, who was opposed to the antislavery men for reasons which seemed sufficient to him, and equally opposed to Wise and Breckinridge, was writing letters into Illinois to secure the reelection of Douglas. Now that all these conflicting elements should be brought, while at dag gers points with one another, to support him, is a feat that is worthy for you to note and consider. It is quite probable that each of these classes of men thought, by the reelection of Douglas, their peculiar views would gain something: it is probable that the antislavery men thought their views would gain some thing; that Wise and Breckinridge thought so too, as regards their opinions; that Mr. Crittenden thought that his views would gain something, although he was opposed to both these other men. It is probable that each and all of them thought that they were using Douglas, and it is yet an unsolved problem whether he was not using them all. If he was, then it is for you to consider whether that power to perform wonders is one for you lightly to throw away. There is one other thing that I will say to you in this relation. It is but my opinion; I give it to you with out a fee. It is my opinion that it is for you to take him or be defeated; and that if you do take him you may be beaten. You will surely be beaten if you do not take him. We, the Republicans and others forming the opposition of the country, intend to " stand SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 247 by our guns," to be patient and firm, and in the long run to beat you whether you take him or not. We know that before we fairly beat you, we have to beat you both together. We know that "you are all of a feather," and that we have to beat you altogether, and we expect to do it. We don t intend to be very im patient about it. W T e mean to be as deliberate and calm about it as it is possible to be, but as firm and resolved as it is possible for men to be. When we do as we say, beat you, you perhaps want to know what we will do with you. I will tell you, so far as I am authorized to speak for the opposition, what we mean to do with you, we mean to treat you, as near as we possibly can, as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison treated you. We mean to leave you alone, and in no way to interfere with your institution; to abide by all and every com promise of the Constitution, and, in a word, coming back to the original proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerated men (if we have degenerated) may, accord ing to the example of those noble fathers Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. We mean to remember that you are as good as we; that there is no difference be tween us other than the difference of circumstances. We mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and treat you accord ingly. We mean to marry your girls when we have a chance the white ones, I mean, and I have the honor to inform you that I once did have a chance in that way. I have told you what we mean to do. I want to know, now, when that thing takes place, what do you mean to do? I often hear it intimated that you mean to divide the Union whenever a Republican or anything like it is elected President of the United States. [A voice: "That is so."] "That is so," one of them says; I wonder if he is a Kentuckian? [A voice: 248 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". " He is a Douglas man."] Well, then, I want to know what you are going to do with jour half of it? Are you going to split the Ohio down through, and push your half off a piece? Or are you going to keep it right alongside of us outrageous fellows? Or are you going to build up a wall some way between your country and ours, by which that movable property of yours can t come over here any more, to the danger of your losing it? Do you think you can better yourselves on that subject by leaving us here under no obligation whatever to return those specimens of your movable property that come hither? You have divided the Union because we would not do right with you, as you think, upon that subject; when we cease to be under obligations to do anything for you, how much better off do you think you will be? Will you make war upon us and kill us all? Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living; that you have shown yourselves capable of this upon various occasions ; but man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us. You will never make much of a hand at whipping us. If we were fewer in num bers than you, I think that you could whip us; if we were equal it would likely be a drawn battle; but being- inferior in numbers, you will make nothing by attempt ing to master us. But perhaps I have addressed myself as long, or longer, to the Kentuckians than I ought to have done, inasmuch as I have said that whatever course you take, we intend in the end to beat you. I propose to address a few remarks to our friends, by way of dis cussing with them the best means of keeping that promise that I have in good faith made. It may appear a little episodical for me to mention the topic of which I shall speak now. It is a favorite proposition of Douglas s that the interference of the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 249 General Government, through the ordinance of ? 87, or through any other act of the General Government, never has made, nor ever can make, a free State; that the ordinance of 87 did not make free States of Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois; that these States are free upon his " great principle " of popular sovereignty, because the people of those several States have chosen to make them so. At Columbus, and probably here, he under took to compliment the people that they themselves had made the State of Ohio free, and that the ordinance of 87 was not entitled in any degree to divide the honor with him. I have no doubt that the people of the State of Ohio did make her free according to their own will and judgment; but let the facts be remem bered. In 1802, I believe, it was you who made your first constitution, with the clause prohibiting slavery, and you did it, I suppose, very nearly unanimously; but you should bear in mind that you speaking of you as one people that you did so unembarrassed by the actual presence of the institution amongst you; that you made it a free State, not with the embarrassment upon you of already having among you many slaves, which, if they had been here, and you had sought to make a free State, you would not know what to do with. If they had been among you, embarrassing dif ficulties, most probably, would have induced you to tolerate a slave Constitution instead of a free one; as, indeed, these very difficulties have constrained every people on this continent who have adopted slavery. Pray, what was it that made you free? What kept you free? Did you not find your country free when you came to decide that Ohio should be a free State? It is important to inquire by what reason you found it so. Let us take an illustration between the States of Ohio and Kentucky. Kentucky is separated by this river Ohio, not a mile wide. A portion of Ken tucky, by reason of the course of the Ohio, is further 250 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. north than this portion of Ohio in which we now stand. Kentucky is entirely covered with slavery Ohio is entirely free from it. What made that difference? Was it climate? No! A portion of Kentucky was further north than this portion of Ohio. Was it soil? No! There is nothing in the soil of the one more favorable to slave-labor than the other. It was not climate or soil that caused one side of the line to be entirely covered with slavery and the other side free of it. What was it? Study over it. Tell us, if you can, in all the range of conjecture, if there be anything you can conceive of that made that difference, other than that there was no law of any sort keeping it out of Kentucky, while the ordinance of 87 kept it out of Ohio. If there is any other reason than this, I confess that it is wholly beyond my power to conceive of it. This, then, I offer to combat the idea that that ordin ance has never made any State free. I don t stop at this illustration. I come to the State of Indiana ; and what I have said as between Kentucky and Ohio, I repeat as between Indiana and Kentucky; it is equally applicable. One additional argument is applicable also to Indiana. In her territorial condi tion she more than once petitioned Congress to abro gate the ordinance entirely, or at least so far as to suspend its operation for a time, in order that they should exercise the " popular sovereignty " of having slaves if they wanted them. The men then controlling the General Government, imitating the men of the Revolution, refused Indiana that privilage. And so we have the evidence that Indiana supposed she could have slaves, if it were not for that ordinance ; that she besought Congress to put that barrier out of the w^ay ; that Congress refused to do so, and it all ended at last in Indiana being a free State. Tell me not then that the ordinance of 87 had nothing to do with making Indiana a free State, when we find some men chafing against and only restrained by that barrier. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Come down again to our State of Illinois. The great Northwest Territory, including Ohio, Indi ana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was acquired first, I believe, by the British government, in part, at least, from the French. Before the establishment 01 our independence, it became a part of Virginia, en abling Virginia afterward to transfer it to the General Government. There were French settlements in what is now Illinois, and at the same time there were French settlements in what is now Missouri in the tract of country that was not purchased till about 1803. In these French settlements negro slavery had existed for many years perhaps more than a hundred, if not as much as two hundred, years at Kaskaskia, in Illinois, and at St. Genevieve, or Cape Girardeau, perhaps, in Missouri. The number of slaves was not very great, but there was about the same number in each place. They were there when we acquired the Territory. There was no effort made to break up the relation of master and slave, and even the ordinance of 87 was not so enforced as to destroy that slavery in Illinois; nor did the ordinance apply to Missouri at all. What I want to ask your attention to, at this point, is that Illinois and Missouri came into the Union about the same time, Illinois in the latter part of 1818, and Missouri, after a struggle, I believe, some time in 1820. They had been filling up with American people about the same period of time, their progress enabling them to come into the Union about the same. At the end of that ten years, in which they had been so preparing (for it was about that period of time), the number of slaves in Illinois had actually decreased; while in Missouri, beginning with very few, at the end of that ten years there were about ten thousand. This being so, and it being remembered that Missouri and Illinois are, to a certain extent, in the same parallel of latitude, that the northern half of Missouri and the southern half of Illinois are in the same parallel of latitude, so 252 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. that climate would have the same effect upon one as upon the other; and that in the soil there is no material difference so far as bears upon the question of slavery being settled upon one or the other; there being none of those natural causes to produce a difference in filling them, and yet there being a broad difference in their filling up, we are led again to inquire what was the cause of that difference. It is most natural to say that in Missouri there was no law to keep that country from filling up with slaves, while in Illinois there was the ordinance of 87. The ordinance being there, slavery decreased during that ten years the ordinance not being in the other, it increased from a few to ten thousand. Can anybody doubt the reason of the difference? I think all these facts most abundantly prove that my friend Judge Douglas s proposition, that the ordin ance of 87, or the national restriction of slavery, never had a tendency to make a free State, is a fallacy a proposition without the shadow or substance of truth about it. Douglas sometimes says that all the State (and it is part of that same proposition I have been discussing? that have become free, have become so upon his " great principle"; that the State of Illinois itself came into the Union as a slave State, and that the people, upon the " great principle " of popular sovereignty, have since made it a free State. Allow me but a little while to state to you what facts there are to justify him in saying that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. 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 terri torial 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 intro- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 253 duced 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 involun tary 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 prohibit ing slavery was modified because of the actual pres ence of it, Douglas asserts again and again that Illi nois 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 remem bered, that that little thing, those few indentured ser vants 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 awhile. [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 mak ing 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 after ward to inhabit that Territory, or the other members 254 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". 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 sover eignty applied. Now I think that there is a real popu lar sovereignty in the world. I think a 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 a 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 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 255 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 capi tal and labor, I admit. That it does exist, and right fully exists, I think is true. That men who are indus trious 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 accu mulated 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 their own land to work upon, or shops to work in, and who are benefited by working for others hired laborers, receiving their cap ital 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 la borer, 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 nationali zation 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 256 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 ex pressly 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 per petuity 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 effi cient fugitive-slave law, because the Constitution re quires 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 gen eral 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 pre vent each of these things being done by either con gresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, Viot 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 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 it 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 ana 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 17 258 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 them selves on such 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 an 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 him self, I think it is a matter of perfect nonsense to at tempt 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 any thing like success. The good old maxims of the Bible are 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, inas much 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. Lincoln as President-Elect, 1860 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 259 ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 27, 1860. [This, one of the great speeches of Mr. Lincoln, is worthy of the notable gathering which turned out at New York to hear the rough Western orator, who loved to be taken for what he was, a rude but kindly child of the people. The audience he addressed was a cultured and critical one, composed largely of eminent men in the various learned professions; while on the platform with him, besides the chairman, the poet Bryant, were men of the stamp of Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Joseph Choate, David Dudley Field, and other men of high intellectual and social position. The address made a profound impression, not only by the pure logic and forcible argument that mark the whole speech, but by the masterly manner in which Mr. Lincoln reviewed the history of the Slave question from the early years of the fathers downwards, and his lucid statement of the attitude of the two great political parties toward it. Admirable wa the speaker s restraint, though all the more effective, when speaking of the South, and of slavery as a wrong, and when treating of the moral necessity of excluding slavery from the Territories. The fervor of the orator s appeal to do right and to be true to duty- did much also to move his audience and call forth their enthusi asm ; while the effect of the whole was to draw favorable atten tion to Mr. Lincoln, over the length and breadth of the country, as a possible future candidate for the Presidency]. 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 Co lumbus, Ohio, as reported in the " New- York Times," Senator Douglas said: Our fathers, when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now. I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as p. tpyt for this 260 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting-point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry : What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned? What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must be, "The Constitution of the United States." That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, and under which the present government first went into operation, and twelve sub sequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789. Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution ? I suppose the " thirty-nine " who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated. I take these " thirty-nine," for the present, as being " our fathers who framed the government under which we live." What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood "just as well, and even better, than we do now " ? It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, for bid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories? Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and de nial form an issue; and this issue this question is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood " better than we." Let us now inquire whether the " thirty-nine," or any of them, ever acted upon this question ; and if they did, how they acted upon it how SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 261 they expressed that better understanding. In 1784, three years before the Constitution, the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the " thirty -nine " who afterward framed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, prop erly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. The other of the four, James McHenry, voted against the prohibition, show ing that for some cause he thought it improper to vote for it. In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only Territory owned by the United States, the same question of pro hibiting slavery in the Territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation ; and two more of the " thirty-nine " who afterward signed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition thus showing that in their understanding no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the ordinance of 87. The question of Federal control of slavery in the Ter ritories seems not to have been directly before the con vention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the " thirty-nine," or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question. 262 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the ordi nance of 87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the " thirty-nine " Thomas Fitz- simmons, then a member of the House of Representa tives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without ayes and nays, which is equiv alent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Oilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abra ham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, and James Madison. This shows that, in their understanding, no line di viding local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to pro hibit slavery in the Federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to op pose the prohibition. Again, George Washington, another of the " thirty- nine," was then President of the United States, and as such approved and signed the bill, thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting the State of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a con- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 26,1 dition by the ceding States that the Federal Govern ment should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere with it take control of it even there, to a certain extent. In 1798 Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so brought. This act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the " thirty-nine " who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read, and Abraham Baldwin. They all prob ably voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record if, in their under standing, any line dividing local from Federal author ity, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. In 1803 the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States; but this Louisi ana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804 Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the people. Con gress did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it take control of it in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein made in relation to slaves was: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1st. That no slave should be imported into the Ter ritory from foreign parts. 2d. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported into the United States since the first day of May, 1798. 3d. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler; the pen alty in all the cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave. This act also was passed without ayes or nays. In the Congress which passed it there were two of the " thirty-nine." They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their oppo sition to it if, in their understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local from Federal author ity, or any provision of the Constitution. In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of the " thirty-nine " Rufus King and Charles Pinckney were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohi bition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinck ney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in Fed eral territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that case. The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the " thirty-nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover. To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (35 1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-20, there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Koger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin three times. The true number of those of the " thirty- nine " whom I have shown to have acted upon the question which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way. Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty- nine fathers " who framed the government under which we live," who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they " understood just as well, and even better, than we do now T " ; and twenty-one of them a clear majority of the whole " thirty-nine " so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross polit ical impropriety and wilful perjury if, in their un derstanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions under such responsibility speak still louder. Two of the twenty-three voted against congressional prohibition of slavery in the Federal Territories, in the instances in which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not known. They may have done so because they thought a proper division of local from Federal authority, or some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the way ; or they may, without any such question, have voted against the prohibition on what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to sup port the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and 0(56 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ought to vote against a measure which he deems con stitutional if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition as having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to con trol as to slavery in Federal territory. The remaining sixteen of the " thirty-nine," so far as I have discovered, have left no record of their un derstanding upon the direct question of Federal con trol of slavery in the Federal Territories. But there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon that question would not have appeared different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all. For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of the " thirty-nine " even on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would ap pear to us that on the direct question of Federal con trol of slavery in Federal Territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted antislavery men of those times, as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris, while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina. The sum of the whole is that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 267 one a clear majority of the whole certainly under stood that no proper division of local from Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the Fed eral Territories; while all the rest had probably the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution ; and the text affirms that they understood the question " better than we." But, so far, I have been considering the understand ing of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instru ment, a mode was provided for amending it ; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of " the govern ment under which we live " consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, they all fix upon pro visions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of " life, liberty, or property without due process of law "; while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that " the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution " " are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first Congress which sat under the Con stitution the identical Congress which passed the act, already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only w r as it the same Congress, but they were the identical, same indi vidual men who, at the same session, and at the same time within the session, had under consideration, and 2(58 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. in progress toward maturity, these constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after, the act enforcing the ordinance of 87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the ordinance, the constitutional amendments were also pending. The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were preeminently our fathers who framed that part of " the government under which we live " which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the Federal Terri tories. Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation, from the same mouth, that those who did the two things alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent? It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy- six members of the Congress which framed the amend ments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called " our fathers who framed the government under which we live." And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understand ing, any proper division of local from Federal author ity, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 269 (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from Fed eral authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. To those who now so declare I give not only " our fathers who framed the government under which we live," but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them. Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current ex perience to reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is that if we would supplant the opin ions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we. If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Govern ment to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that " our fathers who framed the govern ment under which we live " were of the same opinion thus substituting falsehood and deception for truth ful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led 270 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. them to understand that a proper division of local from Federal authority, or some part of the Consti tution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the respon sibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they " understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now." But enough ! Let all who believe that " our fathers who framed the government under which we live under stood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask all Republicans desire in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it be not grudg ingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content. And now, if they would listen, as I suppose they will not, I would address a few words to the South ern people. I would say to them : You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not in ferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as rep tiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hedring to pirates or murderers, but noth ing like it to " Black Republicans." In all your con tentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of " Black Republican ism " as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite license, so to speak among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now can you or not be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify. You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. Y r ou will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your mak ing, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the bene fit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section ; and so meet us as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which " our fathers who framed the govern- 272 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ment under which we live" thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment s con sideration. Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the yarn ing against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time hrve a confederacy of free States. Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we com mend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it. But you say you are conservative eminently con servative while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by " our fathers who framed the government under which we live"; while you with one accord re ject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denounc ing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a congress ional slave code for the Territories ; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the Terri tories through the judiciary; some for the " gur-reat pur-rinciple " that " if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called " pop ular sovereignty " ; but never a man among you is in favor of Federal prohibition of slavery in Federal Ter ritories, according to the practice of " our fathers who framed the government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our govern ment originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations. Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times. You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Har per s Ferry ! John Brown ! ! John Brown was no Re publican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know 18 274 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. it, or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting 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 mali cious 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 neces sarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold no doctrine, and make no declara tion, which were not held to and made by " our fathers who framed the government under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elec tions came, and your expectations were not quite ful filled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Re publican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with " our fathers who framed the government under which we live," declare our be lief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Repub licanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 275 Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder among the slaves. Slave insurrections arc no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organ ized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the con clusion that Southampton was " got up by Black Re publicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave insurrection is possible. The indispen sable concert of action cannot be obtained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incen diary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explo sive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains. Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty indi viduals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by conse quence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. 276 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Whoever much fears, or much hopes, for such an event, will be alike disappointed. In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, " It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up." Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Govern ment. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institu tion the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery. John Brown s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves re fused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An en thusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little less than his own execution. Orsini s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown s attempt at Harper s Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not dis prove the sameness of the two things. And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper s Book, and the like, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 277 break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature can not be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling that sentiment by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peace ful channel of the ballot-box into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation? But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your constitutional rights. That has a somewhat reckless sound ; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing. When you make these declarations you have a spe cific and well understbod allusion to an assumed con stitutional right of yours to take slaves into the Fede ral Territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Consti tution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication. Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the government, unless you be allowed to con strue and force the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed 278 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer s distinction between dictum and decision, the court has decided the question for you in a sort of way. The court has substantially said, it is your constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as prop erty. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact the state ment in the opinion that " the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Consti tution." An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not " distinctly and expressly affirmed " in it. Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution ; but they pledge their veracity that it is " distinctly and ex pressly " affirmed there " distinctly," that is, not mingled with anything else " expressly," that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any infer ence, and susceptible of no other meaning. If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to show that neither the word " slave " nor " slavery " is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word " property " even, in any connection with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person"; and wherever his master s legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as " service or labor which may be due " as a debt payable in service or labor. Also it would be open to show, by contemporaneous SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 279 history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man. To show all this is easy and certain. When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it? And then it is to be remembered that " our fathers who framed the government under which we live " the men who made the Constitution decided this same constitutional question in our favor long ago: decided it without division among themselves when making the decision ; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts. Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this government unless such a court decision as yours is shall be at once sub mitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Re publican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, " Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer ! " To be sure, what a robber demanded of me my money was my own ; and I had a clear right to keep it ; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own ; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle. A few words now to the Republicans. It is exceed ingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony one with another. 280 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through pas sion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their con troversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them. Will they be satisfied if the Territories be uncon ditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections ; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation. The question recurs, What will satisfy them? Simply this: we must not only let them alone, but we must somehow convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have never de tected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them. These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only : cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Sena tor Douglas s new sedition law must be enacted and SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugi tive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. I am quite aware they do not state their case pre cisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, " Let us alone; do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone, have never disturbed them, so that, after all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. They will con tinue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying. I am also aware they have not as yet in terms de manded the overthrow of our free-State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of slavery with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it as a legal right and a social blessing. Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly ob ject to its nationality its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension its en largement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right ; all we ask they could as readily 282 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition as being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fear lessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong: vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of " don t care " on a question about which all true men do care ; such as Union appeals be seeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, re versing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by men aces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 283 SPEECH AT NEW HAVEN, CONN., MAR. 6, 1860. [In the following speech, somewhat condensed, to a Connecti cut audience, Mr. Lincoln directs attention to the national im portance and magnitude of the engrossing question of the time, which he was so instrumental in effectively dealing with. In its political aspects, the right and wrong of slavery, and the " irrepressible conflict " now launched upon the nation, the orator pointed out, were endangering the perpetuity of the Union. In the address, he repeats what he had elsewhere affirmed, that the fathers who framed the national government looked on slavery as a wrong, sought to prohibit its spreading, and looked for ward to a time when the evil institution would cease. These are the main points brought forward and discussed in the sub joined address]. Mr. President and Fellow-citizens of New Haven: If the Republican party of this nation shall ever have the national house intrusted to its keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs of national housekeeping. Whatever matters of impor tance may come up, whatever difficulties may arise, in the way of its administration of the government, that party will then have to attend to : it will then be com pelled to attend to other questions besides this ques tion which now assumes an overwhelming importance the question of slavery. It is true that in the organi zation of the Republican party this question of slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present. The old question of tariff a matter that will remain one of the chief affairs of national housekeeping to all time; the question of the management of financial affairs; the question of the disposition of the public domain : how shall it be managed for the purpose of getting it well settled, and of making there the homes of a free 284: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. and happy people these will remain open and require attention for a great while yet, and these questions will have to be attended to by whatever party has the con trol of the government. Yet just now they cannot even obtain a hearing, and I do not purpose to detain you upon these topics, or what sort of hearing they should have when opportunity shall come. For whether we will or not, the question of slavery is the question, the all-absorbing topic, of the day. It is true that all of us and by that I mean not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people here and else where all of us wish this question settled; wish it out of the way. It stands in the way and prevents the ad justment and the giving of necessary attention to other questions of national housekeeping. The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled, and yet it is not settled ; and the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth ; different bodies are pulling in different directions, and none of them having a decided majority are able to accomplish the common object. In the beginning of the year 1854, a new policy was inaugurated with the avowed object and confident promise that it would entirely and forever put an end to the slavery agitation. It was again and again declared that under this policy, when once successfully established, the country would be forever rid of this whole question. Yet under the operation of that policy this agitation has not only not ceased, but it has been constantly augmented. And this, too, although from the day of its introduction its friends, who promised that it would wholly end all agitation, constantly in sisted, down to the time that the Lecompton bill was introduced, that it was working admirably, and that its inevitable tendency was to remove the question for ever from the politics of the country. Can you call to SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 285 mind any Democratic speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise down to the time of the Lecompton bill, in which it was not predicted that the slavery agitation was just at an end; that "the Aboli tion excitement was played out," " the Kansas question was dead," " they have made the most they can out of this question and it is now forever settled "? But since the Lecompton bill, no Democrat within my experience has ever pretended that he could see the end. That cry has been dropped. They themselves do not pretend now that the agitation of this subject has come to an end yet. The truth is that this question is one of national importance, and we cannot help dealing with, it; we must do something about it, whether we will or not. We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot avoid considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live without eating. It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as much and as closely as the natural wants attach to our natural bodies. Now I think it important that this matter should be taken up in earnest and really settled. And one way to bring about a true settlement of the question is to understand its true magnitude. There have been many efforts to settle it. Again and again it has been fondly hoped that it was settled, but every time it breaks out afresh, and more violently than ever. It was settled, our fathers hoped, by the Missouri Compromise, but it did not stay settled. Then the compromises of 1850 were declared to be a full and final settlement of the question. The two great parties, each in national convention, adopted resolu tions declaring that the settlement made by the com promise of 1850 was a finality that it would last for ever. Yet how long before it was unsettled again? It broke out again in 1854, and blazed higher and raged more furiously than ever before, and the agitation has not rested since. These repeated settlements must have some fault 286 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. about them. There must be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose for which they were de signed. We can only speculate as to where that fault that inadequacy is, but we may perhaps profit by past experience. I think that one of the causes of these repeated fail ures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question. They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary, so evanescent. Look at the magnitude of this subject. One sixth of our population, in round numbers not quite one sixth, and yet more than a seventh about one sixth of the whole population of the United States, are slaves. The owners of these slaves consider them property. The effect upon the minds of the owners is that of prop erty, and nothing else; it induces them to insist upon all that will favorably affect its value as property, to demand laws and institutions and a public policy that shall increase and secure its value, and make it durable, lasting, and universal. The effect on the minds of the owners is to persuade them that there is no wrong in it. The slaveholder does not like to be considered a mean fellow for holding that species of property, and hence he has to struggle within himself, and sets about arguing himself into the belief that slavery is right. The property influences his mind. The dissenting minister who argued some theological point with one of the established church was always met by the reply, " I can t see it so." He opened the Bible and pointed him to a passage, but the orthodox minister replied, " I can t see it so." Then he showed him a single word "Can you see that?" "Yes, I see it," was the reply. The dissenter laid a guinea over the word, and asked, " Do you see it now ? " So here. Whether the owners of this species of property do really see it as SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 287 it is, it is not for me to say ; but if they do, they see it as it is through two billions of dollars, and that is a pretty thick coating. Certain it is that they do not see it as we see it. Certain it is that this two thousand million of dollars invested in this species of property is all so concentrated that the mind can grasp it at once. This immense pecuniary interest has its in fluence upon their minds. 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 Inde pendence apply to them as well as to us. I say we think, most of us, that this charter of freedom applies to the slave 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 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 re gard 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 exis tence 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 for ever conflict. 288 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 : What ever endangered 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 philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained. And hence there are but two policies in regard to slavery that can be at all main tained. 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 every thing 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 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 possess the power to restrain it from going outside those limits. From the neces sities 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 circum stances, it would become me to let that particular motio 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 upon 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 advo cate has said : " I don t care whether it be voted up or 19 290 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 it into tobacco. All recognize this policy, the plausible sugar-coated name of which is " popular sovereignty." That saying, " In the struggle between the white man 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 state ment. " 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 an ingenious falsehood to de grade 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, where 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 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 291 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 opin ion 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 free men 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 a wrong, but you renounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you 292 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 allow it to be even 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 re ligion; we must not bring it into the tract society, or 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 slave States should of 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 emanci pation 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 sor row 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, " Hoo ray 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 eaay to demonstrate that " our fathers who framed this govern ment 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 necessi ties arising from its existence permitted. In forming the Constitution they found the slave-trade existing, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 293 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 afterward adopted as their own act by the first Congress held under that Con stitution, of which many of the framers were members they prohibited the spread of slavery in the Terri tories. Thus the same men, the framers of the Con stitution, 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 wanting, it can be found in the phraseology of the Constitution. When men are fram ing 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 mat ters but this of slavery the framers of the Constitu tion 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 es tablishing 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 re turn 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? W T e cannot doubt that it was done on purpose. Only one reason is possible, and that is sup plied us by one of the framers of the Constitution and it is not possible for man to conceive of any other. 294 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 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 the approaching triumph of the Republicans in the bearing of their political adversaries. A great deal of this 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 offense did it give the Democrats that he was sent for to Washington to edit the " States " the Douglas organ there, while Douglas goes into hydro phobia and spasms of rage because Seward dared to repeat it. That 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 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". 295 Ferry enterprise. We tell you 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 nevep dealt fairly by us in relation to that affair and I will say frankly that I know of nothing in your char acter that should lead us to suppose that you would. You had just been soundly thrashed in elections in sev eral 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 rejoic ing 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 satis fied. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. LINCOLN S NOMINATION AND ELECTION AS PRESIDENT. [On his return from the East, in the early Spring of 1860, Lincoln, though he had hitherto no aspiration for the Presidency, was greeted enthusiastically in many quarters in the West as a possible candidate for the high office: and after his Cooper Institute speech at New York, his name was, even in the East, favorably considered. At Decatur, in his own State, " the rail- splitter," " Honest Old Abe," was publicly brought forward in the Republican State Convention of Illinois. Finally, in May, 1860, at the great rally of the Republican National Convention, which met at Chicago, Lincoln s name was coupled with those of Seward and Chase as the prominent candidates for nomination. After two or three ballots had been cast, the issue which has be come historic gave Mr. Lincoln the unanimous nomination of the convention, and the election, following in order, sustained the choice, with that of the people at large, and the humble, unpre tentious rail-splitter * of early days became President of the United States, with Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, as vice-presi dent]. ADDRESS AT PITTSBURG, PENN., FEB. 15, 1861. [The following speech was one among many others delivered by Mr. Lincoln, after his election to the Presidency, on his triumphal progress from Springfield, 111., to assume the reins of govern ment at Washington. When the Republican victory was won, in the choice of Mr. Lincoln, the South, making the excuse of the election of " a sectional and minority President/ seceded from the Union, organized a confederate government, and seized upon Federal property. At this crisis, the President s journey to the Capital began, stops being made here and there to allow Mr. Lincoln to receive addresses of welcome, and, with some brief remarks, to acknowledge them. The subjoined is one of these addresses, in reply to the Mayor and citizens of Pittsburg, Pa. Naturally, allusion was made in his replies to the then dis tracted state of the country, and here, at Pittsburg, he specially gives expression to his optimism in regard to events, and com mends all to retain their self-possession and calmly abide the issues of things. The subject of the tariff, it will be seen, comes in for some remarks on the occasion]. I MOST cordially thank his Honor Mayor Wilson, and SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 297 the citizens of Pittsburg generally, for their flattering reception. I am the more grateful because I know that it is not given to me alone, but to the cause I represent, which clearly proves to me their good-will, and that sincere feeling is at the bottom of it. And here I may remark that in every short address I have made to the people, in every crowd through which I have passed of late, some allusion has been made to the present dis tracted condition of the country. It is natural to ex pect that I should say something on this subject; but to touch upon it at all would involve an elaborate dis cussion of a great many questions and circumstances, requiring more time than I can at present command, and would, perhaps, unnecessarily commit me upon matters which have not yet fully developed themselves. The condition of the country is an extraordinary one, and fills the mind of every patriot with anxiety. It is my intention to give this subject all the consideration I possibly can before specially deciding in regard to it, so that when I do speak it may be as nearly right as possible. When I do speak I hope I may say nothing in opposition to the spirit of the Constitution, contrary to the integrity of the Union, or which will prove ini mical to the liberties of the people, or to the peace of the whole country. And, furthermore, when the time arrives for me to speak on this great subject, I hope I may say nothing to disappoint the people generally throughout the country, especially if the expectation has been based upon anything which I may have here tofore said. Notwithstanding the troubles across the river [the speaker pointing southwardly across the Monongahela, and smiling], there is no crisis but an artificial one. What is there now to warrant the con dition of affairs presented by our friends over the river? Take even their own view of the questions in volved, and there is nothing to justify the course they are pursuing. I repeat, then, there is no crisis, except ing such a one as may be gotten up at any time by tur- 298 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. bulent men aided by designing politicans. My advice to them, under such circumstances, is to keep cool. If the great American people only keep their temper on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled, just as surely as all other difficulties of a like character which have originated in this govern ment have been adjusted. Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this great nation continue to prosper as heretofore. But, fellow-citizens, I have spoken longer on this subject than I intended at the outset. It is often said that the tariff is the specialty of Pennsylvania. Assuming that direct taxation is not to be adopted, the tariff question must be as durable as the government itself. It is a question of national housekeeping. It is to the government what replenish ing the meal-tub is to the family. Ever-varying cir cumstances will require frequent modifications as to the amount needed and the sources of supply. So far there is little difference of opinion among the people. It is as to whether, and how far, duties on imports shall be adjusted to favor home production in the home market, that controversy begins. One party insists that such adjustment oppresses one class for the ad vantage of another; while the other party argues that, with all its incidents, in the long run all classes are benefited. In the Chicago platform there is a plank upon this subject which should be a general law to the incoming administration. We should do neither more nor less than w r e gave the people reason to believe we would when they gave us their votes. Permit me, fel low-citizens, to read the tariff plank of the Chicago platform, or rather have it read in your hearing by one who has younger eyes. Mr. Lincoln s private secretary then read Section 12 of the Chicago platform, as follows: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 299 That while providing revenue for the support of the General Government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as will encourage the develop ment of the industrial interest of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to working-men liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence. Mr. Lincoln resumed: As with all general proposi tions, doubtless there will be shades of difference in construing this. I have by no means a thoroughly ma tured judgment upon this subject, especially as to de tails; some general ideas are about all. I have long thought it would be to our advantage to produce any necessary article at home which can be made of as good quality and with as little labor at home as abroad, at least by the difference of the carrying from abroad. In such case the carrying is demonstrably a dead loss of labor. For instance, labor being the true standard of value, is it not plain that if equal labor get a bar of railroad iron out of a mine in England, and another out of a mine in Pennsylvania, each can be laid down in a track at home cheaper than they could exchange countries, at least by the carriage? If there be a present cause why one can be both made and carried cheaper in money price than the other can be made without carrying, that cause is an unnatural and in jurious one, and ought gradually, if not rapidly, to be removed. The condition of the treasury at this time would seem to render an early revision of the tariff indispensable. The Morill [tariff] bill, now pending before Congress, may or may not become a law. I am not posted as to its particular provisions, but if they are generally satisfactory, and the bill shall now pass, there will be an end for the present. If, however, it shall not pass, I suppose the whole subject will be one of the most pressing and important for the next Con gress. By the Constitution, the executive may reconi- 300 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. mend measures which he may think proper, and he may veto those he thinks improper, and it is supposed that he may add to these certain indirect influences to affect the action of Congress. My political education strongly inclines me against a very free use of any of these means by the executive to control the legislation of the country. As a rule, I think it better that Con gress should originate as well as perfect its measures without external bias. I therefore would rather recom mend to every gentleman who knows he is to be a mem ber of the next Congress to take an enlarged view, and post himself thoroughly, so as to contribute his part to such an adjustment of the tariff as shall produce a sufficient revenue, and in its other bearings, so far as possible, be just and equal to all sections of the country and classes of the people. Lincoln Portrait by Sartain SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 30! ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW YORK, AT ALBANY, N. Y., FEB. 18, 1861. [In the subjoined speech, one of those delivered on his journey from his Illinois home to the Capital, the president-elect returns thanks to the General Assembly of New York State for its greet ings and warm reception. He speaks with becoming modesty of himself as the recipient of the united support of the great Em pire State in the difficult task before him, in assuming the reins of government at a most critical juncture in the affairs of the Nation. Of the policy of the new government, he, as yet, wisely says nothing, as the time and place had not come for that. Meantime, he indicates that he is seeking diligently for light on the problems with which he must shortly deal, and promises that when ready to speak and act it shall be in the best interests of both sections of the country, South as well as North], Mr. President and Gentlemen of the General As sembly of the State of New York: It is with feelings of great diffidence, and, I may say, with feelings of awe, perhaps greater than I have recently experienced, that I meet you here in this place. The history of this great State, the renown of those great men who have stood here, and have spoken here, and been heard here, all crowd around my fancy, and incline me to shrink from any attempt to address you. Yet I have some confidence given me by the generous manner in which you have invited me, and by the still more generous manner in which you have received me, to speak further. You have invited and received me without distinction of party. I cannot for a moment suppose that this has been done in any considerable degree with reference to my personal services, but that it is done, in so far as I am regarded, at this time, as the representative of the majesty of this great nation. I doubt not this is the truth, and the whole truth, of the case, and this is as it should be. It is much more gratifying to me that this reception has been given to me as the elected 302 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. representative of a free people, than it could possibly be if tendered merely as an evidence of devotion to me, or to any one man personally. And now I think it were more fitting that I should close these hasty remarks. It is true that, while I hold myself, without mock modesty, the humblest of all individuals that have ever been elevated to the presi dency, I have a more difficult task to perform than any one of them. You have generously tendered me the support the united support of the great Empire State. For this, in behalf of the nation in behalf of the present and future of the nation in behalf of civil and religious liberty for all time to come, most gratefully do I thank you. I do not propose to enter into an explanation of any particular line of policy, as to our present difficul ties, to be adopted by the incoming administration. I deem it just to you, to myself, to all, that I should see everything, that I should hear everything, that I should have every light that can be brought within my reach, in order that, when I do so speak, I shall have enjoyed every opportunity to take correct and true ground; and for this reason I do not propose to speak at this time of the policy of the government. But when the time comes, I shall speak, as well as I am able, for the good of the present and future of this country for the good both of the North and of the South for the good of the one and the other, and of all sections of the coun try. In the mean time, if we have patience, if we re strain ourselves, if we allow ourselves not to run off in a passion, I still have confidence that the Almighty, the Maker of the universe, will, through the instrumen tality of this great and intelligent people, bring us through this as he has through all the other difficulties of our country. Relying on this, I again thank you for this generous reception. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 393 ADDRESS IN INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILA DELPHIA, FEB. 22, 1861. [Mr. Lincoln, in this Address, speaks feelingly, and, obviously, with impressive effect, on finding himself in the historic Hall " from which sprang the institutions under which we live/ and over which he was on the occasion called upon to raise a flag to mark the recent admission of Kansas as a State of the Union. The day was the anniversary of Washington s birth, and the president-elect recalls with patriotic unction the efforts of those who had achieved independence, while he rejoices in the famous Declaration which gave liberty to the American people and hope to the world. The reference in the address to Mr. Lincoln s pur pose, to seek to save the country at this grave juncture in its annals by loyal adherence to the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, even at the cost of assassination, was suggested by the current rumors of intended personal as sault upon the President, which it seems were but too well founded, and against which he was guarded by the vigilance of the National secret police]. Mr. Cuyler: I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing in this place, where were collected to gether the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live. You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of restoring peace to our dis tracted country. I can say in return, sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the senti ments which originated in and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pon dered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed and adopted that Dec laration. I have pondered over the toils that were en dured by the officers and soldiers of the army who 304 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. achieved that independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not alone to the peo pie of this country, but hope to all the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course ; and I may say in advance that there will be no blood shed unless it is forced upon the government. The government will not use force, unless force is used against it. My friends, this is wholly an unprepared speech. I did not expect to be called on to say a word when I came here. I supposed I was merely to do something toward raising a flag. I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet. [Cries of " No, no."] But I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 305 ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYL VANIA, AT HARRISBURG, PA., FEB. 22, 1861. [In this speech, addressed to the speakers and members of the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania, President Lin coln, it will be observed, makes allusion to his engagement in the early functions of the day the anniversary of Washington s birth and of his visit to the historic Independence Hall. He depreciates, it will be seen, the call for the services of the mili tary arm of the Nation in the then crisis, and trusts that the oc casion may not arise for its use, especially in shedding fraternal blood. He nevertheless expresses pleasure in relying upon the military aid which the general government may expect from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in any emergency that may arise, though the call for such, so far as wisdom may direct, shall not come through any fault or neglect of his]. Mr. Speaker of the Senate, and also Mr. Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Gentlemen of the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania: I ap pear before you only for a very few brief remarks in re sponse to what has been said to me. I thank you most sincerely for this reception, and the generous words in which support has been promised me upon this oc casion. I thank your great commonwealth for the over whelming support it recently gave, not me personally, but the cause which I think a just one, in the late election. Allusion has been made to the fact the interesting fact perhaps we should say that I for the first time appear at the capital of the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania upon the birthday of the Father of his Country. In connection with that beloved anniver sary connected with the history of this country, I have already gone through one exceedingly interesting scene this morning in the ceremonies at Philadelphia. Under the kind conduct of gentlemen there, I was for 20 306 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. the first time allowed the privilege of standing in old Independence Hall to have a few words addressed to me there, and opening up to me an opportunity of mani festing my deep regret that I had not more time to ex press something of my own feelings excited by the oc casion, that had been really the feelings of my whole life. Besides this, our friends there had provided a mag nificent flag of the country. They had arranged it so that I was given the honor of raising it to the head of its staff, and when it went up I was pleased that it went to its place by the strength of my own feeble arm. When, according to the arrangement, the cord was pulled, and it floated gloriously to the wind, without an accident, in the bright, glowing sunshine of the morn ing, I could not help hoping that there was in the entire success of that beautiful ceremony at least something of an omen of what is to come. Nor could I help feel ing then, as I have often felt, that in the whole of that proceeding I was a very humble instrument. I had not provided the flag; I had not made the arrange ments for elevating it to its place; I had applied but a very small portion of even my feeble strength in raising it. In the whole transaction I was in the hands of the people who had arranged it, and if I can have the same generous cooperation of the people of this nation, I think the flag of our country may yet be kept flaunt ing gloriously. I recur for a moment but to repeat some words ut tered at the hotel in regard to what has been said about the military support which the General Government may expect from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in a proper emergency. To guard against any pos sible mistake do I recur to this. It is not with any pleasure that I contemplate the possibility that a necessity may arise in this country for the use of the military arm. While I am exceedingly gratified to see the manifestation upon your streets of your niili- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 307 tary force here, and exceedingly gratified at your promise to use that force upon a proper emergency while I make these acknowledgments I desire to repeat, in order to preclude any possible misconstruction, that I do most sincerely hope that we shall have no use for them; that it will never become their duty to shed blood, and most especially never to shed fraternal blood. I promise that so far as I may have wisdom to direct, if so painful a result shall in any wise be brought about, it shall be through no fault of mine. Allusion has also been made by one of your honored speakers to some remarks recently made by myself at Pittsburg in regard to what is supposed to be the especial interest of this great commonwealth of Penn sylvania. I now wish only to say in regard to that matter, that the few remarks which I uttered on that occasion were rather carefully worded. I took pains that they should be so. I have seen no occasion since to add to them or subtract from them. I leave them precisely as they stand, adding only now that I am pleased to have an expression from you, gentlemen of Pennsylvania, signifying that they are satisfactory to you. And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, allow me again to return to you my most sincere thanks. 308 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1861. [By the time the following memorable address was delivered, President Lincoln had reached Washington and been sworn into office as successor to President Buchanan. He had, moreover, organized his government, calling to the Cabinet such influential men of the anti-slavery and national party as Seward, Chase, Blair, Welles, Cameron, Stanton, Caleb B. Smith, and Edward Bates. The Confederate government had also been organized, with Jefferson Davis as President, and Alex. H. Stevens as Vice-President ; though actual hostilities had not as yet com menced, if we except the grave menace of seizing Federal property, the investment in Charleston harbor of Fort Sum- ter, and holding and expressing disunion sentiments. A little more than a month later, came the firing on Fort Sumter, its surrender to the South Carolina troops, and the indignant rising and patriotic enthusiasm of the North, with the call to arms in support of the Union. Lincoln, as the choice of the nation for the presidency, was soon justified by the force of will, firmness, and justice which characterized Mr. Lincoln s every word and act ; while he won all to him by his urbanity, modesty, approachableness, and the un wearying care which he gave to the exacting duties of his oner ous office. His ability and judgment, as well as his conciliatory manner and kindliness of mood, won over to him and the North ern cause, of which he was the embodiment, even his old ad versary, Judge S. A. Douglas, whose regretted death was soon now to occur. At the same time, Lincoln succeeded in gaining the support and confidence of all his Cabinet, and won the esteem and respect of so commanding a figure in the councils of the Nation as his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, who was compelled, on a notable occasion which shortly arose, to bow be fore the President s will-power and ready, tactical resource. The Inaugural, it will be seen, is a remarkable and statesmanlike utterance, marked by an earnest appeal for unity and peace, despite its announcement of the law-abiding policy of the gov ernment, and the placing of responsibility for any bloodshed upon those who should defy and resist Federal authority and engage in the breaking of the law]. Fellow-citizens of the United States: In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take in your SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 399 presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President " before he enters on the execution of his office." I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republi can administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare 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 inclina tion to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment ex clusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the per fection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most con clusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, andsecurity of no section are to be 310 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. in any wise endangered by the now incoming adminis tration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause as cheerfully to one section as to another. There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the -Constitution as any other of its provisions : No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution to this pro vision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause " shall be delivered up," their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal un animity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath? There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should any one in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept? Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that " the citizen of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States"? I take the official oath to-day with no mental reser vations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitu tion or laws by any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Con gress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be un constitutional. It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession, administered the executive branch of the government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disrup tion of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted. I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is per petual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure for ever it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. 312 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union it self. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declara tion of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was " to form a more per fect Union." But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union ; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circum stances. I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitu tion and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitu tion itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part ; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless iny SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 313 rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and main tain itself. In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the prop erty and places belonging to the government, and to col lect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, 110 using of force against or among the people any where. Where hostility to the United States, in any interior locality, shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the govern ment to enforce the exercise of these offices, the at tempt to do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices. The mails, unless repelled, w r ill continue to be fur nished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible, the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless current events and experience shall show a modi fication or change to be proper, and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised accord ing to circumstances actually existing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections. That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of 314 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. any pretext to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak ? Before entering upon so grave a matter as the de struction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real exis tence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake? All profess to be content in the Union if all con stitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not. Happily the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the auda city of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single in stance in which a plainly written provision of the Con stitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution certainly would if such a right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirma tions and negations, guarantees and prohibitions, in the Constitution, that controversies never arise con cerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every ques tion which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reason able length contain, express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not ex- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. pressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. From questions of this class spring all our constitu tional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them ; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being edu cated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interest among the States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession? Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitu tional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly in admissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Su preme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect follow ing it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, hav ing to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to poli tical purposes. One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, w r hile the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured; and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sec tions than before. The foreign slave-trade, now im perfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 317; build an impassable wall between them. A husband and w T ife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always ; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you. This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolu tionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitu tion amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself ; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be pre cisely such as they would wish to either accept or re fuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Con stitution which amendment, however, I have not seen has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal 318 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seri ously injure the government in the short space of four J^ears. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the govern ment, while I shall have the most solemn one to " pre serve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 320 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, CONVENED IN SPECIAL SESSION, JULY 4, 1861. [The occasion for summoning Congress in special session at this juncture was, as all know, the seceding of ten States from the Union, the organization of the Confederate Government, together with the seizure by the seceding States of United States forts and arsenals, the consequent defiance of Federal authority and the power of the general government, and the determined resort to hostilities on the part of the aggressing South. In the syn opsis here given of the Message, Mr. Lincoln justifies the resort to arms in defense of the Union, forced upon the country by the attitude and acts of the South. Disintegration of the Union he cannot tolerate, consistent with his oath of office and loyalty to the Constitution ; nor can he refrain from denying and repudi ating the Confederate right of Secession; and hence the duty which devolved upon him to resist and combat the formidable internal attempt to overthrow the Republic, even by employing the war power of the Nation for its maintenance and the reas- sertion of the Federal authority]. Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Represen tatives: Having been convened on an extraordinary oc casion, as authorized by the Constitution, your at tention is not called to any ordinary subject of legis lation. At the beginning of the present presidential term, four months ago, the functions of the Federal Govern ment were found to be generally suspended within the several States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, excepting only those of the Post-office Department. Within these States all the forts, arsenals, dock yards, customhouses, and the like, including the mov able and stationary property in and about them, had been seized, and were held in open hostility to this government, excepting only Forts Pickens, Taylor, and Jefferson, on and near the Florida coast, and Fort SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 321 Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The forts thus seized had been put in improved condition, new ones had been built, and armed forces had been organized and were organizing, all avowedly with the same hostile purpose. The forts remaining in the possession of the Federal Government in and near these States were either be sieged or menaced by warlike preparations, and espec ially Fort Sumter was nearly surrounded by well-pro tected hostile batteries, with guns equal in quality to the best of its own, and outnumbering the latter as perhaps ten to one. A disproportionate share of the Federal muskets and rifles had somehow found their way into these States, and had been seized to be used against the government. Accumulations of the public revenue lying within them had been seized for the same object. The navy was scattered in distant seas, leav ing but a very small part of it within the immediate reach of the government. Officers of the Federal army and navy had resigned in great numbers; and of those resigning a large proportion had taken up arms against the government. Simultaneously, and in connection with all this, the purpose to sever the Federal Union was openly avowed. In accordance with this purpose, an ordinance had been adopted in each of these States, declaring the States respectively to be separated from the National Union. A formula for instituting a com bined government of these States had been promul gated; and this illegal organization, in the character of confederate States, was already invoking recognition, aid, and intervention from foreign powers. Finding this condition of things, and believing it to be an imperative duty upon the incoming executive to prevent, if possible, the consummation of such attempt to destroy the Federal Union, a choice of means to that end became indispensable. This choice was made and was declared in the inaugural address. The policy chosen looked to the exhaustion of all peaceful meas- 21 322 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ures before a resort to any stronger ones. It sought only to hold the public places and property not al ready wrested from the government, and to collect the revenue, relying for the rest on time, discussion, and the ballot-box. It promised a continuance of the mails, at government expense, to the very people who were resisting the government; and it gave repeated pledges against any disturbance to any of the people, or any of their rights. Of all that which a President might constitutionally and justifiably do in such a case, every thing was forborne without which it was believed pos sible to keep the government on foot. On the 5th of March (the present incumbent s first full day in office), a letter of Major Anderson, com manding at Fort Sumter, written on the 23th of February and received at the War Department on the 4th of March, was by that department placed in his hands. This letter expressed the professional opinion of the writer that reinforcements could not be thrown into that fort within the time for his relief, rendered necessary by the limited supply of provisions, and with a view of holding possession of the same, with a force of less than twenty thousand good and well-disciplined men. This opinion was concurred in by all the officers of his command, and their memoranda on the subject were made inclosures of Major Anderson s letter. The whole was immediately laid before Lieutenant-Gen- eral Scott, who at once concurred with Major Ander son in opinion. On reflection, however, he took full time, consulting with other officers, both of the army and the navy, and at the end of four days came reluc tantly but decidedly to the same conclusion as before. He also stated at the same time that no such sufficient force was then at the control of the government, or could be raised and brought to the ground within the time when the provisions in the fort would be ex hausted. In a purely military point of view, this re duced the duty of the administration in the case to SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 303 the mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of the fort. It was believed, however, that to so abandon that position, under the circumstances, would be utterly ruinous; that the necessity under which it was to be done would not be fully understood; that by many it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy; that at home it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to insure to the latter a recognition abroad; that, in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated. This could not be allowed. Starvation was not yet upon the garrison, and ere it would be reached Fort Pickens might be reinforced. This last would be a clear indi cation of policy, and would better enable the country to accept the evacuation of Fort Sumter as a military necessity. An order was at once directed to be sent for the landing of the troops from the steamship BrooJc- lijn into Fort Pickens. This order could not go by land, but must take the longer and slower route by sea. The first return news from the order was received just one week before the fall of Fort Sumter. The news it self was that the officer commanding the Sabine, to which vessel the troops had been transferred from the Brooklyn, acting upon some quasi armistice of the late administration (and of the existence of which the present administration, up to the time the order was despatched, had only too vague and uncertain rumors to fix attention), had refused to land the troops. To now reinforce Fort Pickens before a crisis would be reached at Fort Sumter was impossible rendered so by the near exhaustion of provisions in the latter- named fort. In precaution against such a conjuncture, the government had, a few days before, commenced preparing an expedition as well adapted as might be to relieve Fort Sumter, which expedition was intended to be ultimately used, or not, according to circum stances. The strongest anticipated case for using it 324 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. was now presented, and it was resolved to send it forward. As had been intended in this contingency, it was also resolved to notify the governor of South Carolina that he might expect an attempt would be made to provision the fort; and that, if the attempt should not be resisted, there would be no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort. This notice was accordingly given; whereupon the fort was attacked and bombarded to its fall, without even awaiting the arrival of the provisioning expedition. It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-de fense on the part of the assailants. They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They knew they were expressly notified that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which w r ould on that occasion be attempted, unless them selves, by resisting so much, should provoke more. They knew that this government desired to keep the garrison in the fort, not to assail them, but merely to maintain visible possession, and thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate dissolution trust ing, as hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion, and the ballot-box for final adjustment; and they assailed and reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object to drive out the visible authority of the Federal Union, and thus force it to immediate dissolution. That this was their object the executive well understood; and having said to them in the inaugural address, " You can have no conflict without being yourselves the ag gressors," he took pains not only to keep this declara tion good, but also to keep the case so free from the power of ingenious sophistry that the world should not be able to misunderstand it. By the affair at Fort Sum- ter, with its surrounding circumstances, that point was reached. Then and thereby the assailants of the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 335 government began the conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or in expectancy to return their fire, save only the few in the fort sent to that harbor years before for their own protection, and still ready to give that protection in whatever was lawful. In this act, dis carding all else, they have forced upon the country the distinct issue, " immediate dissolution or blood." And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy a government of the people by the same people can or cannot maintain its territorial integ rity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask : " Is there, in all re publics, this inherent and fatal weakness?" "Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liber ties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence? " So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the government ; and so to resist force employed for its destruction, by force for its preservation. The call was made, and the response of the country was most gratifying, surpassing in unanimity and spirit the most sanguine expectation. Yet none of the States commonly called slave States, except Delaware, gave a regiment through regular State organization. A few regiments have been organized within some others of those States by individual enterprise, and received into the government service. Of course the seceded States, so called (and to which Texas had been joined about the time of the inauguration), gave no 326 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. troops to the cause of the Union. The border States, so called, were not uniform in their action, some of them being almost for the Union, while in others as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas the Union sentiment was nearly repressed and silenced. The course taken in Virginia was the most remarkable perhaps the most important. A convention elected by the people of that State to consider this very ques tion of disrupting the Federal Union was in session at the capital of Virginia when Fort Sumter fell. To this body the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men. Almost immediately after the fall of Sumter, many members of that majority went over to the original disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance for withdrawing the State from the Union. Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter, or their great resentment at the government s resistance to that assault, is not definitely known. Although they submitted the ordinance for ratification to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day then somewhat more than a month distant, the convention and the legis lature (which was also in session at the same time and place), with leading men of the State not members of either, immediately commenced acting as if the State were already out of the Union. They pushed military preparations vigorously forward all over the State. They seized the United States armory at Harper s Ferry, and the navy-yard at Gosport, near Norfolk. They received perhaps invited into their State large bodies of troops, with their warlike appointments, from the so-called seceded States. They formally entered into a treaty of temporary alliance and co operation with the so-called " Confederate States," and sent members to their congress at Montgomery. And, finally, they permitted the insurrectionary government to be transferred to their capital nt Richmond. The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. insurrection to make its nest within her borders; and this government has no choice left but to deal with it where it finds it. And it has the less regret as the loyal citizens have, in due form, claimed its protection. Those loyal citizens this government is bound to recog nize and protect, as being Virginia. In the border States, so called, in fact, the Middle States, there are those who favor a policy which they call "armed neutrality"; that is, an arming of those States to prevent the Union forces passing one way, or the disunion the other, over their soil. This would be disunion completed. Figuratively speaking, it would be the building of an impassable wall along the line of separation and yet not quite an impassable one, for under the guise of neutrality it would tie the hands of Union men and freely pass supplies from among them to the insurrectionists, which it could not do as an open enemy. At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade. It would do for the disunionists that which, of all things, they most desire feed them well, and give them disunion without a struggle of their own. It recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution, no obligation to maintain the Union ; and while very many who have favored it are doubtless loyal citizens, it is, nevertheless, very in jurious in effect. Recurring to the action of the government, it may be stated that at first a call was made for 75,000 militia ; and, rapidly following this, a proclamation was issued for closing the ports of the insurrectionary districts by proceedings in the nature of blockade. So far all was believed to be strictly legal. At this point the insurrectionists announced their purpose to enter upon the practice of privateering. Other calls were made for volunteers to serve for three years, unless sooner discharged, and also for large additions to the regular army and navy. These $28 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity; trusting then, as now, that Congress would readily ratify them. It is believed that nothing has been done beyond the constitutional competency of Congress. Soon after the first call for militia, it was considered a duty to authorize the commanding general in proper cases, according to his discretion, to suspend the priv ilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or, in other words, to arrest and detain, without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety. This authority has purposely been exercised but very spar ingly. Nevertheless, the legality and propriety of what has been done under it are questioned, and the attention of the country has been called to the proposi tion that one who has sworn to " take care that the laws be faithfully executed " should not himself vio late them. Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power and propriety before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execu tion, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen s liberty that, practically, it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the govern ment itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it? But it was not believed that this ques tion was presented. It was not believed that any law SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 399 was violated. The provision of the Constitution that " the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or in vasion, the public safety may require it," is equivalent to a provision is a provision that such privilege may be suspended when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety does require it. It was decided that w r e have a case of rebellion, and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of the privilege of the writ which was authorized to be made. Now it is insisted that Congress, and not the executive, is vested with this power. But the Constitution itself is silent as to which or who is to exercise the power; and as the provision was plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it cannot be believed the framers of the in strument intended that in every case the danger should run its course until Congress could be called together, the very assembling of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case, by the rebellion. No more extended argument is now offered, as an opinion at some length will probably be presented by the attorney -general. Whether there shall be any legis lation upon the subject, and if any, what, is submitted entirely to the better judgment of Congress. The forbearance of this government had been so extraordinary and so long continued as to lead some foreign nations to shape their action as if they sup posed the early destruction of our National Union was probable. While this, on discovery, gave the executive some concern, he is now happy to say that the sov ereignty and rights of the United States are now every where practically respected by foreign powers; and a general sympathy with the country is manifested throughout the world. The reports of the Secretaries of the Treasury, War, and the Navy will give the information in detail deemed necessary and convenient for your deliberation and action; while the executive and all the departments 330 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. will stand ready to supply omissions, or to communi cate new facts considered important for you to know. It is now recommended that you give the legal means for making this contest a short and decisive one: that you place at the control of the government for the work at least four hundred thousand men and $400,000,000. That number of men is about one tenth of those of proper ages within the regions where, apparently, all are willing to engage; and the sum is less than a twenty-third part of the money value owned by the men who seem ready to devote the whole. A debt of $600,000,000 now is a less sum per head than was the debt of our Revolution when we came out of that strug gle ; and the money value in the country now bears even a greater proportion to what it was then than does the population. Surely each man has as strong a motive now to preserve our liberties as each had then to establish them. A right result at this time will be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money. The evidence reaching us from the country leaves no doubt that the material for the w r ork is abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it legal sanction, and the hand of the executive to give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the greatest perplexities of the government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their government if the government itself will do its part only indifferently well. It might seem, at first thought, to be of little dif ference whether the present movement at the South be called " secession " or " rebellion." The movers, how ever, well understand the difference. At the beginning they knew they could never raise their treason to any respectable magnitude by any name which implies viola tion of law. They knew their people possessed as much of moral sense, as much of devotion to law and ordor, and as much pride in and reverence for the history and SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 33 ^ government of their common country as any other civi lized and patriotic people. They knew they could make no advancement directly in the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments. Accordingly, they com menced by an insidious debauching of the public mind. They invented an ingenious sophism which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is that any State of the Union may consistently with the National Constitution, and there fore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judges of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice. With rebellion thus sugar-coated they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than thirty years, and until at length they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government the day after some assemblage of men have enacted the farcical pretense of taking their State out of the Union, who could have been brought to no such thing the day before. This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from the assumption that there is some omni potent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State to each State of our Federal Union. Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence; and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a con dition of dependence, excepting Texas. And even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never desig nated a State. The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the Union, while that name was first adopted for the old ones in and by the Declara- 332 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. tion of Independence. Therein the " United Colonies " were declared to be " free and independent States " ; but even then the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another or of the Union, but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge and their mutual action before, at the time, and afterward, abundantly show. The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. Having never been States either in substance or in name outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of " State Eights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sov ereignty " of the States ; but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions. What is " sovereignty " in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it " a political community without a political superior "? Tested by this, no one of our States except Texas ever was a sovereignty. And even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union ; by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States, and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution, to be for her the supreme law of the land. The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence or liberty it has. The Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact, it created them as States. Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and, in turn, the Union threw off their old dependence for them, and made them States, such as they are. Not one of them ever had a State constitution independent of the Union. Of SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 333 course, it is not forgotten that all the new States framed their constitutions before they entered the Union nevertheless, dependent upon and preparatory to coming into the Union. Unquestionably the States have the powers and rights reserved to them in and by the National Constitution ; but among these surely are not included all conceivable powers, however mischievous or destructive, but, at most, such only as were known in the world at the time as governmental powers; and certainly a power to destroy the government itself had never been known as a governmental, as a merely administrative power. This relative matter of national power and State rights, as a principle, is no other than the principle of generality and locality. Whatever concerns the whole should be confided to the whole to the General Govern ment; while whatever concerns only the State should be left exclusively to the State. This is all there is of original principle about it. Whether the National Constitution in defining boundaries between the two has applied the principle with exact accuracy, is not to be questioned. We are all bound by that defining, without question. What is now combated is the position that secession is consistent with the Constitution is lawful and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be implied as law which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased with money the countries out of which several of these States were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave and without re funding? The nation paid very large sums (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to re lieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent or without mak ing any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called seceding States in common with the rest. Is it just either that credi- 334: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. tors shall go unpaid or the remaining States pay the whole? A part of the present national debt was con tracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave and pay no part of this herself? Again, if one State may secede, so may another; ana when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allow ing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain. The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession. They have assumed to make a national con stitution of their own, in which of necessity they have either discarded or retained the right of secession as they insist it exists in ours. If they have discarded it, they thereby admit that on principle it ought not to be in ours. If they have retained it by their own con struction of ours, they show that to be consistent they must secede from one another whenever they shall find it the easiest way of settling their debts, or effecting any other selfish or unjust object. The principle itself is one of disintegration, and upon w r hich no government can possibly endure. If all the States save one should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power and denounce the act as the greatest out rage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called " driving the one out," should be called " the seceding of the others from that one," it would be exactly what the seceders claim to do, unless, indeed, they make the point that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle and profound on the rights of minorities. They are not partial to that SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 335 power which made the Constitution and speaks from the preamble calling itself " We, the People." It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except perhaps South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States. The contrary has not been demonstrated in any one of them. It is ventured to affirm this even of Virginia and Tennessee; for the result of an election held in military camps, where the bayonets are all on one side of the question voted upon, can scarcely be considered as demonstrating popular sentiment. At such an election, all that large class who are at once for the Union and against coercion would be coerced to vote against the Union. It may be affirmed without extravagance that the free institutions we enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking and an impressive illustration. So large an army as the government has now on foot was never before known, without a soldier in it but who has taken his place there of his own free choice. But more than this, there are many single regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, is known in the world ; and there is scarcely one from which there could not be selected a President, a cabinet, a congress, and perhaps a court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself. Nor do I say this is not true also in the army of our late friends, now adversaries in this contest ; but if it is, so much better the reason why the government which has conferred such benefits on both them and us should not be broken up. Whoever in any section proposes to abandon such a government would do well to consider in deference to what principle it is 336 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. that he does it what better he is likely to get in its stead whether the substitute will give, or be in tended to give, so much of good to the people? There are some foreshadowings on this subject. Our adver saries have adopted some declarations of independence in which, unlike the good old one, penned by Jefferson, they omit the words " all men are created equal. " Why? They have adopted a temporary national con stitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one, signed by Washington, they omit " We, the People," and substitute, " We, the deputies of the sov ereign and independent States." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people? This is essentially a people s contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men to lift arti ficial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all ; to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend. I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note that while in this, the government s hour of trial, large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag. Great honor is due to those officers who remained true, despite the example of their treacherous asso ciates; but the greatest honor, and most important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 337 of those whose commands, but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of the plain people. They understand, without an argu ment, that the destroying of the government which was made by Washington means no good to them. Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion ; that ballots are the right ful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets ; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots them selves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war. Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course of the government toward the Southern States after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the executive deems it proper to say it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided by the Constitution and the laws; and that he probably will have no different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively to the rights of the States and the people, under the Constitu tion, than that expressed in the inaugural address. He desires to preserve the government, that it may be administered for all as it was administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere have the right to claim this of their government, and the govern ment has no right to withhold or neglect it. It is not perceived that in giving it there is any coercion, any 22 338 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. conquest, or any subjugation, in any just sense of those terms. The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision, that " the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government." But if a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so, it may also discard the republican form of government ; so that to prevent its going out is an indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guarantee mentioned ; and when an end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory. It was with the deepest regret that the executive found the duty of employing the war power in defense of the government forced upon him. He could but per form this duty or surrender the existence of the govern ment. No compromise by public servants could, in this case, be a cure; not that compromises are not often proper, but that no popular government can long survive a marked precedent that those who carry an election can only save the government from immediate destruction by giving up the main point upon which the people gave the election. The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions. As a private citizen the executive could not have consented that these institutions shall perish; much less could he, in betrayal of so vast and so sacred a trust as the free people have confided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, nor even to count the chances of his own life in what might follow. In full view of his great responsibility he has, so far, done what he has deemed his duty. You will now, accord ing to your own judgment, perform yours. He sincerely hopes that your views and your actions may so accord with his, as to assure all faithful citizens who have been disturbed in their rights of a certain and speedy res toration to them, under the Constitution and the laws. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 339 And having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. July 4, 1861. PROCLAMATION OF A NATIONAL FAST-DAY, AUG. 12, 1861. WHEREAS a joint committee of both Houses of Con gress has waited on the President of the United States and requested him to " recommend a day of public prayer, humiliation, and fasting, to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnities, and the offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of these States, his blessings on their arms, and a speedy restoration of peace " : And whereas it is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the supreme government of God; to bow in humble submission to his chastisements; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions, in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ; and to pray with all fervency and contrition for the pardon of their past offenses, and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action : And whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous, and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before him and to pray for his mercy 340 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the reestablishment of law, order, and peace throughout the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned under his guidance and bless ing by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence: Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do appoint the last Thursday in Sep tember next as a day of humiliation, prayer, and fast ing for all the people of the nation. And I do earnestly recommend to all the people, and especially to all ministers and teachers of religion, of all denominations, and to all heads of families, to observe and keep that day, according to their several creeds and modes of worship, in all humility and with all religious solem nity, to the end that the united prayer of the nation may ascend to the Throne of Grace, and bring down plentiful blessings upon our country. (Signed) ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By the President : WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State. {SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, DEC. 3, 1861. [In this message addressed to Congress, the substance of which is here given, President Lincoln contends that the War of the Rebellion is one waged " upon the first principle of popular government the rights of the people." Be this as it may, the period was a dark and perplexing one at the North, for the Trent affair had just happened, and there was danger of war with England, which nation had, with France, recognized the Confederates as belligerents. The South, moreover, was jubilant over Bull Run and the panic that ensued, and actively aggressive in other sections where its forces were operating; while the Northern capital, it was then feared, was not safe from Southern attack. Thanks to Lincoln s wisdom and courage, and to the patriotic backing of the people of the North, the ominous out look passed for the time being and the country breathed more freely, as it was assured by the President that the cause of the Union was steadily and surely advancing. The war, however, though few comparatively as yet thought so or admitted, was to be a long and disastrous one, particularly until the coming of General Grant, whose military genius was to crown Northern armies with well-won laurels and do much to restore and reunite the riven Republic]. Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Represen tatives: In the midst of unprecedented political troubles we have cause of great gratitude to God for unusual good health and most abundant harvests. You will not be surprised to learn that, in the pecu liar exigencies of the times, our intercourse with for eign nations has been attended with profound solici tude, chiefly turning upon our own domestic affairs. A disloyal portion of the American people have, dur ing the whole year, been engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union. A nation which endures factious domestic division is exposed to disrespect abroad; and one party, if not both, is sure, sooner or later, to invoke foreign intervention. Nations thus tempted to interfere are not always able to resist the- 342 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambi tion, although measures adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and injurious to those adopting them. The disloyal citizens of the United States who have offered the ruin of our country in return for the aid and comfort which they have invoked abroad, have received less patronage and encouragement than they probably expected. If it were just to suppose, as the insurgents have seemed to assume, that foreign nations in this case, discarding all moral, social, and treaty obliga tions, would act solely and selfishly for the most speedy restoration of commerce, including, especially, the acquisition of cotton, those nations appear as yet not to have seen their way to their object more directly or clearly through the destruction than through the preservation of the Union. If we could dare to believe that foreign nations are actuated by no higher prin ciple than this, I am quite sure a sound argument could be made to show them that they can reach their aim more readily and easily by aiding to crush this rebellion than by giving encouragement to it. ... The inaugural address at the beginning of the ad ministration, and the message to Congress at the late special session, were both mainly devoted to the do mestic controversy out of which the insurrection and consequent war have sprung. Nothing now occurs to add or subtract, to or from, the principles or general purposes stated and expressed in those documents. The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peace ably expired at the assault upon Fort Sumter; and a general review of what has occurred since may not be unprofitable. What was painfully uncertain then is much better defined and more distinct now; and the progress of events is plainly in the right direction. The insurgents confidently claimed a strong support from north of Mason and Dixon s line ; and the friends of the Union were not free from apprehension on SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 343 point. This, however, was soon settled definitely, and on the right side. South of the line, noble little Dela ware led off right from the first. Maryland was made to seem against the Union. Our soldiers were as saulted, bridges were burned, and railroads torn up within her limits, and we were many days, at one time, without the ability to bring a single regiment over her soil to the capital. Now her bridges and rail roads are repaired and open to the government; she already gives seven regiments to the cause of the Union and none to the enemy; and her people, at a regular election, have sustained the Union by a larger majority and a larger aggregate vote than they ever before gave to any candidate or any question. Kentucky, too, for some time in doubt, is now decidedly, and, I think, un changeably, ranged on the side of the Union. Missouri is comparatively quiet, and, I believe, cannot again be overrun by the insurrectionists. These three States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, neither of which would promise a single soldier at first, have now an aggregate of not less than forty thousand in the field for the Union, while of their citizens certainly not more than a third of that number, and they of doubt ful whereabouts and doubtful existence, are in arms against it. After a somewhat bloody struggle of months, winter closes on the Union people of western Virginia, leaving them masters of their own country. An insurgent force of about 1500, for months domi nating the narrow peninsular region constituting the counties of Accomac and Northampton, and known as the eastern shore of Virginia, together with some con tiguous parts of Maryland, have laid down their arms, and the people there have renewed their allegiance to and accepted the protection of the old flag. This leaves no armed insurrectionist north of the Potomac or east of the Chesapeake. Also we have obtained a footing at each of the iso lated points, on the southern coast, of Hatteras, Port 344 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Royal, Tybee Island, near Savannah, and Ship Island; and we likewise have some general accounts of popular movements in behalf of the Union in North Carolina and Tennessee. These things demonstrate that the cause of the Union is advancing steadily and certainly southward. Since your last adjournment Lieutenant-General Scott has retired from the head of the army. During his long life the nation has not been unmindful of his merit; yet, on calling to mind how faithfully, ably, and brilliantly he has served the country from a time far back in our history when few of the now living had been born, and thenceforward continually, I cannot but think we are still his debtors. I submit, therefore, for your consideration what further mark of recognition is due to him and to ourselves as a grateful people. With the retirement of General Scott came the exe cutive duty of appointing in his stead a geueral-in- chief of the army. It is a fortunate circumstance that neither in council nor country was there, so far as I know, any difference of opinion as to the proper person to be selected. The retiring chief repeatedly expressed his judgment in favor of General McClellan for the position, and in this the nation seemed to give a un animous concurrence. The designation of General Mc Clellan is, therefore, in considerable degree the selec tion of the country as well as of the executive, and hence there is better reason to hope there will be given him the confidence and cordial support thus by fair implication promised, and without which he cannot with so full efficiency serve the country. It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones ; and the saying is true, if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other. And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 345 and can differ only as to the choice of means. In a storm at sea no one on board can wish the ship to sink; and yet not infrequently all go down together because too many will direct, and no single mind can be allowed to control. It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first princi ple of popular government the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most grave and maturely considered public documents as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those docu ments we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative, boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil. Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people. In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argu ment should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief at tention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital ; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next con sidered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And, further, it is assumed 346 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that con dition for life. Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all in ferences from them are groundless. Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher con sideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation be tween labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of the community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people, of all colors, are neither slaves nor masters; while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men with their families wives, sons, and daughters work for themselves, on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a consider able number of persons mingle their own labor with capital that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them ; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class. Again, as has already been said, there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many inde- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 347 pendent men everywhere in these States, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and pros perous system which opens the way to all gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and im provement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost. From the first taking of our national census to the last are seventy years; and w r e find our population at the end of the period eight times as great as it was at the beginning. The increase of those other things which men deem desirable has been even greater. We thus have, at one view, what the popular principle, applied to government, through the machinery of the States and the Union, has produced in a given time; and also what, if firmly maintained, it promises for the future. There are already among us those who, if the Union be preserved, will live to see it contain 250,000,- 000. The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to day it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence all the more firm and earnest, let us pro ceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us. 348 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. MESSAGE TO CONGRESS RECOMMENDING COM PENSATED EMANCIPATION, MARCH 6, 1862. Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Repre sentatives: I recommend the adoption of a joint resolu tion by your honorable bodies, which shall be substan tially as follows: Resolved, That the United States ought to cooperate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system. If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the approval of Congress and the country, there is the end; but if it does command such approval, I deem it of importance that the States and people immediately interested should be at once distinctly notified of the fact, so that they may begin to consider whether to accept or reject it. The Federal Govern ment would find its highest interest in such a measure, as one of the most efficient means of self-preservation. The leaders of the existing insurrection entertain the hope that this government will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaf fected region, and that all the slave States north of such part will then say, " The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section." To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the rebellion ; and the initiation of emancipation completely deprives them of it as to all the States initiating it. The point is not that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 349 initiate emancipation; but that while the offer is equally made to all, the more Northern shall, by such initiation, make it certain to the more Southern that in no event will the former ever join the latter in their proposed confederacy. I say " initiation " because, in my judgment, gradual and not sudden emancipation is better for all. In the mere financial or pecuniary view, any member of Congress, with the census tables and treasury reports before him, can readily see for him self how very soon the current expenditures of this war would purchase, at fair valuation, all the slaves in any named State. Such a proposition on the part of the General Government sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them. In the annual message, last December, I thought fit to say, " The Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed." I said this not hastily, but deliberately. War has been made, and continues to be, an indispensable means to this end. A practical reacknowledgment of the national author ity would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease. If, however, resistance continues, the war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the ruin which may follow it. Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency, toward ending the struggle, must and will come. The proposition now made, though an offer only, I hope it may be esteemed no offense to ask whether the pecuniary consideration tendered would not be of more value to the States and private persons concerned than are the institution and property in it, in the present aspect of affairs? While it is true that the adoption of the proposed 350 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. resolution would be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical measure, it is recommended in the hope that it would soon lead to important practical re sults. In full view of my great responsibility to my God and to my country, I earnestly beg the attention of Congress and the people to the subject. [It should be noted that the South paid no heed to this proposal and took no advantage of it. On the Northern side, on the other hand, Congress, on April 16, 1862, purchased at the cost of close upon a million dollars the slaves in the District of Columbia and gave them their freedom] . THE EDITOR. PROCLAMATION RECOMMENDING THANKS GIVING FOR VICTORIES, APRIL 10, 1862. IT has pleased Almighty God to vouchsafe signal victories to the land and naval forces engaged in sup pressing an internal rebellion, and at the same time to avert from our country the dangers of foreign inter vention and invasion : It is therefore recommended to the people of the United States that, at their next weekly assemblages in their accustomed places of public worship which shall occur after notice of this proclamation shall have been received, they especially acknowledge and render thanks to our Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings; that they then and there implore spiritual consolation in behalf of all who have been brought in to affliction by the casualties and calamities of sedi tion and civil war; and that they reverently invoke the divine guidance for our national counsels, to the end that they may speedily result in the restoration of peace, harmony, and unity throughout our borders, and hasten the establishment of fraternal relations among all the countries of the earth. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 35 } PRELIMINARY EMANCIPATION, PROCLAMA TION, SEPTEMBER 22, 1862. I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and commander-in-chief of the army and navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that here after, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States that re lation is or may be suspended or disturbed. That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a prac tical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free ac ceptance or rejection of all slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent with their consent upon this continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the government existing there, will be continued. That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in re bellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward, and forever free; and the Executive Govern ment of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. 352 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, re spectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testi mony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States. That attention is hereby called to an act of Congress entitled " An act to make an additional article of war," approved March 13, 1862, and which act is in the words and figure following: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That here after the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war, for the government of the army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such: ARTICLE . All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have es caped from any persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due; and any officer who shall be found guilty by a court martial of violating this article shall be dismissed from the service. SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from and after its passage. Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an act en titled " An act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved July 17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures following : SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persona SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 353 who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the Govern ment of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them, and coming under the control of the Government of the United States; and all slaves of such persona found on [or] being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves. SEC. 10. And be it further enacted. That no slave escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some ofTense against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shnll first make oath that the person to whom the labor or service of such fugi tive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto ; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretense whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain, of being dismissed from the service. And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their re spective spheres of service, the act and sections above recited. And the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who shall have re mained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion shall (upon the restoration of the constitutional relation between the United States and their respective States and people, if that relation shall have been suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves. 23 354 SPEECHES OF ABKAHAM LINCOLN. EXTRACTS FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, DEC. 1, 1862. [In this Message, the President touches upon the progress of events in the Civil War and on the relations of the Republic with foreign governments at the critical era. The condition of the finances is then dealt with and the return to specie payments is recommended, as speedily as conditions will permit. He then remarks upon the inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the differences between North and South, commenting on the in ability to find or locate a line of division separating the two warring sections of the country, were it practicable or patriotic to consider any such proposal as the line by which to separate slave and free. The President closes with a reference once more to his idea of compensated emancipation as a means of restoring peace and saving the Union in its integrity from the continuance of the fiery trial through which the nation has been called upon to pass]. Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Repre sentatives: Since your last annual assembling another year of health and bountiful harvests has passed; and while it has not pleased the Almighty to bless us with a return of peace, we can but press on, guided by the best light he gives us, trusting that in his own good time and wise way all will yet be well. The correspondence touching foreign affairs which has taken place during the last year is herewith sub mitted, in virtual compliance with a request to that effect, made by the House of Representatives near the close of the last session of Congress. If the condition of our relations with other nations is less gratifying than it has usually been at former periods, it is certainly more satisfactory than a nation so unhappily distracted as we are might reasonably have apprehended. In the month of June last there L were some grounds to expect that the maritime powers SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLN. 355 which, at the beginning of our domestic difficulties, so unwisely and unnecessarily, as we think, recognized the insurgents as a belligerent, would soon recede from that position, which has proved only less injurious to themselves than to our own country. But the tem porary reverses which afterward befell the national arms, and which were exaggerated by our own dis loyal citizens abroad, have hitherto delayed that act of simple justice. The civil war, which has so radically changed, for the moment, the occupations and habits of the Ameri can people, has necessarily disturbed the social con dition, and affected very deeply the prosperity of the nations with which we have carried on a commerce that has been steadily increasing throughout a period of half a century. It has, at the same time, excited political ambitions and apprehensions which have pro duced a profound agitation throughout the civilized world. In this unusual agitation we have forborne from taking part in any controversy between foreign states, and between parties or factions in such states. We have attempted no propagandisrn, and acknowl edge no revolution. But we have left to every nation the exclusive conduct and management of its own affairs. Our struggle has been, of course, contemplated by foreign nations with reference less to its own merits than to its supposed and often exaggerated effects and consequences resulting to those nations themselves. Nevertheless, complaint on the part of this govern ment, even if it were just, would certainly be unwise. The treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave-trade has been put into operation with a good prospect of complete success. It is an occasion of special pleasure to acknowledge that the execution of it on the part of her Majesty s government has been marked with a jealous respect for the authority of the United States, and the rights of their moral and loyal citizens. , 356 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. A blockade of three thousand miles of sea-coast could not be established and vigorously enforced, in a season of great commercial activity like the present, without committing occasional mistakes, and inflicting unin tentional injuries upon foreign nations and their sub jects. A civil war occurring in a country where foreigners reside and carry on trade under treaty stipulations, is necessarily fruitful of complaints of the violation of neutral rights. All such collisions tend to excite mis apprehensions, and possibly to produce mutual recla mations between nations which have a common interest in preserving peace and friendship. In clear cases of these kinds I have, so far as possible, heard and re dressed complaints which have been presented by friendly powers. There is still, however, a large and an augmenting number of doubtful cases upon which the government is unable to agree with the governments whose protection is demanded by the claimants. There are, moreover, many cases in which the United States or their citizens suffer wrongs from the naval or mili tary authorities of foreign nations, which the govern ments of those states are not at once prepared to re dress. I have proposed to some of the foreign states thus interested mutual conventions to examine and adjust such complaints. This proposition has been made especially to Great Britain, to France, to Spain, and to Prussia. In each case it has been kindly re ceived, but has not yet been formally adopted. . . . I have favored the project for connecting the United States with Europe by an Atlantic telegraph, and a similar project to extend the telegraph from San Fran cisco, to connect by a Pacific telegraph with the line which is being extended across the Russian empire. The Territories of the United States, with unimpor tant exceptions, have remained undisturbed by the civil war, and they are exhibiting such evidence of pros perity as justifies an expectation that some of them will SPEECHES OP ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 357 soon be in a condition to be organized as States and be constitutionally admitted into the Federal Union. The immense mineral resources of some of those Ter ritories ought to be developed as rapidly as possible. Every step in that direction would have a tendency to improve the revenues of the government, and diminish the burdens of the people. It is worthy of your serious consideration whether some extraordinary measures to promote that end cannot be adopted. The means which suggests itself as most likely to be effective is a scien tific exploration of the mineral regions in those Terri tories, with a view to the publication of its results at home and in foreign countries results which cannot fail to be auspicious. The condition of the finances will claim your most diligent consideration. The vast expenditures incident to the military and naval operations required for the suppression of the rebellion have hitherto been met with a promptitude and certainty unusual in similar circumstances, and the public credit has been fully maintained. The continuance of the war, however, and the increased disbursements made necessary by the augmented forces now in the field, demand your best reflections as to the best modes of providing the neces sary revenue without injury to business and with the least possible burdens upon labor. The suspension of specie payments by the banks, soon after the commencement of your last session, made large issues of United States notes unavoidable. In no other way could the payment of the troops, and the satisfaction of other just demands, be so economically or so well provided for. The judicious legislation of Congress, securing the receivability of these notes for loans and internal duties, and making them a legal tender for other debts, has made them a universal currency, and has satisfied, partially at least, and for the time, the long-felt want of a uniform circulating 358 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". medium, saving thereby to the people immense sums in discounts and exchanges. A return to specie payments, however, at the earliest period compatible with due regard to all interests con cerned, should ever be kept in view. Fluctuations in the value of currency are always injurious, and to re duce these fluctuations to the lowest possible point will always be a leading purpose in wise legislation. Convertibility prompt and certain convertibility into coin is generally acknowledged to be the best and surest safeguard against them; and it is extremely doubtful whether a circulation of United States notes, payable in coin, and sufficiently large for the wants of the people, can be permanently, usefully, and safely maintained. . . . A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. " One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever." It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part. That portion of the earth s surface w r hich is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is w y ell adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is not well adapted for two or more. Its vast extent and its variety of climate and productions are of ad vantage in this age for one people, whatever they might have been in former ages. Steam, telegraphs, and in telligence have brought these to be an advantageous combination for one united people. In the inaugural address I briefly pointed out the total inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the dif ferences between the people of the two sections. I did so in language which I cannot improve and which, therefore, I beg to repeat : One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugi- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 359 tive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppres sion of the foreign slave-trade are each as well enforced, per haps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be per fectly cured; and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassible wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separ ation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced be tween aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always ; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you. There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary upon which to divide. Trace through, from east to west, upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a little more than one third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides ; while nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors lines, over which people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their presence. No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass by writing it down on paper or parchment as a national boundary. The fact of separa tion, if it comes, gives up on the part of the seceding section the fugitive-slave clause along with all other constitutional obligations upon the section seceded from, while I should expect no treaty stipulation would be ever made to take its place. 360 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLK. But there is another difficulty. The great interior region, bounded east by the Alleghanies, north by the British dominions, west by the Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part of Tennessee, all of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of Dakota, Nebraska, and part of Colorado, already has above ten millions of people, and will have fifty millions within fifty years if not prevented by any political folly or mistake. It contains more than one third of the country owned by the United States certainly more than one million of square miles. Once half as populous as Massachusetts already is, it would have more than seventy-five millions of people. A glance at the map shows that, terri torially speaking, it is the great body of the republic. The other parts are but marginal borders to it, the magnificent region sloping west from the Rocky Moun tains to the Pacific being the deepest and also the rich est in undeveloped resources. In the production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all which proceed from them, this great interior region is naturally one of the most important in the world. Ascertain from the statistics the small proportion of the region which has, as yet, been brought into cultivation, and also the large and rapidly increasing amount of its products, and we shall be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the prospect presented ; and yet this region has no sea- coast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco. But separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets not, perhaps, by a phy- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. sical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations. And this is true wherever a dividing or boundary line may be fixed. Place it between the now free and slave country, or place it south of Kentucky or north of Ohio, and still the truth remains that none south of it can trade to any port or place north of it, and none north of it can trade to any port or place south of it, except upon terms dictated by a government foreign to them. These outlets, east, west, and south, are in dispensable to the well-being of the people inhabiting, and to inhabit, this vast interior region. Which of the three may be the best, is no proper question. All are better than either; and all of right belong to that peo ple and to their successors forever. True to themselves, they will not ask where a line of separation shall be, but will vow rather that there shall be no such line. Xor are the marginal regions less interested in these communications to and through them to the great out side world. They, too, and each of them, must have ac cess to this Egypt of the West without paying toll at the crossing of any national boundary. Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from the land we inhabit, not from our national homestead. There is no possible severing of this but would multiply, and not mitigate, evils among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost. Our strife pertains to ourselves to the passing gen erations of men; and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation. . . . I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility 362 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. resting upon me, you will perceive no want of respect to yourselves in any undue earnestness I may seem to display. Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and na tional prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here Congress and Executive can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means so certainly or so speedily assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not " Can any of us imagine better?" but, " Can we all do better ?"" Object what soever is possible, still the question occurs, " Can we do better?" The dogmas of the quiet past are inade quate to the stormy present. The occasion is plied high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occas ion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remem bered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We even we here hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may suc ceed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peace ful, generous, just a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless. s 1 I SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 353 FINAL EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, JANUARY 1, 18G3. WHEREAS, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: " That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion _ against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the mili tary and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. " That the Executive will, on the first day of Jan uary aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the peo ple thereof, shall on that day be in good faith repre sented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall in the absence of strong countervailing testi mony be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States," 364: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppres sing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of 100 days from the day first above mentioned, order and desig nate as the States and parts of States wherein the peo ple thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit : Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Ala bama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Caro lina, and Virginia (except the forty -eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the countries of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclama tion were not issued. And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, in cluding the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 3(55 cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reason able wages. And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon mili tary necessity, T invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. 3GG SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION, JULY 15, 1863. [The reasons for this earnest summons of the President to give thanks, were, happily, at this period both abundant and gratify ing to the North. Emancipation had been a stroke of the first magnitude, as Lincoln, with his usual foresight, had divined it would be, and it was astutely timed, so that, though termed " a war measure/ it was not the resort of the President and Cabinet at an era of disaster, but after Antietam had been fought and won by Northern prowess, followed by the bloody but de cisive battle of Gettysburg, which forced Lee to return to the Virginia side of the Potomac. Further triumphs were the capture and occupation by Grant of Vicksburg; the surrender of Port Hudson to Banks; and the opening of the Mississippi to its mouth, with the occupation of New Orleans by Union troops. These victories brought the internecine strife nearer to a close, and inspired the North with new hopes of restoring the riven Union. At this period the result was no longer doubtful, and hence the dutifulness and especial fitness of the call for thanks giving]. IT has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the sup plications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the army and navy of the United States victories on land and on the sea so signal and so effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for aug mented confidence that the union of these States will be maintained, their Constitution preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently restored. But these victories have been accorded not without sacrifices of life, limb, health, and liberty, incurred by brave, loyal, and patriotic citizens. Domestic affliction in every part of the country follows in the train of these fearful bereavements. It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father, and the power of his hand equally in these triumphs and in these sorrows. , therefore, be it known that I do set apart SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Thursday, the 6th day of August next, to be observed as a day for national thanksgiving, praise, and prayer, and I invite the people of the United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and, in the forms approved by their own consciences, render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things he has done in the nation s behalf, and invoke the influence of his Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion, to change the hearts of the insurgents, to guide the counsels of the government with wisdom adequate to so great a national emerg ency, and to visit with tender care and consolation throughout the length and breadth of our land all those who, through the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges have been brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate, and finally to lead the whole nation through the paths of repentance and submission to the Divine Will back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal peace. 368 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, NOV. 19, 1863. [This Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, brief though it is, is immortal, and has taken its place among the most treasured of the world s orations. Short and unstudied as it is, there is nothing to surpass it in simple, un adorned eloquence, in the literatures of either the Old or the New World. This is the judgment of the best and most competent of critics]. FOURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate we can not consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or de tract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devo tion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. PROCLAMATION OF AMNESTY AND RECON STRUCTION, DEC. 8, 1863. [With the most assuring outlook and justified hope of the re turn of peace, the President turns his attention to the subject of amnesty and pardon for those who had taken active part in the rebellion, with the view of restoring them to the status of citizens. In the following proclamation, the persons who may claim the benefit of the pardoning grace, and the conditio- on which such pardon was to be granted, may be learned, as well as the offer made to the States that have been in rebellion and the conditions on which such may be readmitted to the Union, on the lines of the policy so far determined upon of restoration and recon struction]. WHEREAS, in and by the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that the President " shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeach ment " ; and Whereas a rebellion now exists whereby the loyal State governments of several States have for a long time been subverted, and many persons have committed, and are now guilty of, treason against the United States; and Whereas, with reference to said rebellion and trea son, laws have been enacted by Congress, declaring forfeitures and confiscation of property and liberation of slaves, all upon terms and conditions therein stated, and also declaring that the President was thereby au thorized at an}^ time thereafter, by proclamation, to extend to persons who may have participated in the existing rebellion, in any State or part thereof, pardon and amnesty, with such exceptions and at such times and on such conditions as he may deem expedient for the public welfare; and Whereas the congressional declaration for limited 24 370 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. and conditional pardon accords with well-established judicial exposition of the pardoning power; and Whereas, with reference to said rebellion, the Presi dent of the United States has issued several proclama tions, with provisions in regard to the liberation of slaves; and Whereas it is now desired by some persons hereto fore engaged in said rebellion to resume their allegiance to the United States, and to reinaugurate loyal State governments within and for their respective States; therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known to all persons who have, directly or by implication, participated in the existing rebellion, except as hereinafter excepted, that a full pardon is hereby granted to them and each of them, with restoration of all rights of property, ex cept as to slaves, and in property cases where rights of third parties shall have intervened, and upon the condition that every such person shall take and sub scribe an oath, and thenceforward keep and maintain said oath inviolate ; and which oath shall be registered for permanent preservation, and shall be of the tenor and effect, to wit: I, , do solemnly swear, in presence of almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the union of the States thereunder; and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faith fully support all acts of Congress passed during the existing re bellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not re pealed, modified, or held void by Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court; and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court. So help me God. The persons exempted from the benefits of the fore going provisions are all who are, or shall have been, civil or diplomatic officers or agents of the so-called SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 37} Confederate Government; all who have left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion ; all who are or shall have been military or naval officers of said so-called Confederate Government above the rank of colonel in the army or of lieutenant in the navy ; all who left seats in the United States Congress to aid the rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the army or navy of the United States and afterward aided the rebellion; and all who have engaged in any way in treating colored persons, or white persons in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war, and which persons may have been found in the United States service as soldiers, seamen, or in any other capacity. And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that whenever, in any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, a number of persons, not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such State at the presidential election of the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty, each having taken the oath aforesaid and not having since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election law of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of secession, and excluding all others, shall reestablish a State government which shall be republican, and in no wise contravening said oath, such shall be recognized as the true government of the State, and the State shall receive thereunder the bene fits of the constitutional provision which declares that " the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion ; and, on applica tion of the legislature, or the executive (when the legis lature cannot be convened), against domestic violence." And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known, that any provision which may be adopted by such State government in relation to the freed people of such 372 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. State, which shall recognize and declare their per manent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent as a temporary arrange ment with their present condition as a laboring, land less, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the national executive. And it is suggested as not improper that, in con structing a loyal State government in any State, the name of the State, the boundary, the subdivisions, the constitution, and the general code of laws, as before the rebellion, be maintained, subject only to the modi fications made necessary by the conditions hereinbe fore stated, and such others, if any, not contravening said conditions, and which may be deemed expedient by those framing the new State government. To avoid misunderstanding, it may be proper to say that this proclamation, so far as it relates to State governments, has no reference to States, wherein loyal State governments have all the while been maintained. And, for the same reason, it may be proper to further say, that whether members sent to Congress from any State shall be admitted to seats, constitutionally rests exclusively with the respective houses, and not to any extent with the executive. And still further, that this proclamation is intended to present the people of the States wherein the national authority has been sus pended, and loyal State governments have been sub verted, a mode in and by which the national authority and loyal State governments may be reestablished with in said States, or in any of them ; and while the mode presented is the best the executive can suggest, with his present impressions, it must not be understood that no other possible mode would be acceptable. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 373 ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, DEC. 8, 1863. [Only the important parts of this Message are here given, which review, to some extent, the progress ^mad j within the past year toward peace, with allusion to the practical features of the Governmental policy of reconstruction and the offer made to any State or States that desired to return to their allegiance to the Federal power and submit to the national authority. The Message, as usual, bears on its face the evidences of having bedii carefully and thoughtfully prepared, and that by a grateful heart, still fervently hoping for a speedy and happy ending to the calamitous and protracted period of strife]. Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Represen tatives: Another year of health, and of sufficiently abundant harvest, has passed. For these, and especially for the improved condition of our national affairs, our renewed and profoundest gratitude to God is due. We remain in peace and friendship with foreign powers. The efforts of disloyal citizens of the United States to involve us in foreign wars, to aid an inexcusable in surrection, have been unavailing. Her Britannic Majesty s government, as was justly expected, have exercised their authority to prevent the departure of new hostile expeditions from British ports. The Em peror of France has, by a like proceeding, promptly vindicated the neutrality which he proclaimed at the beginning of the contest. Questions of great intricacy and importance have arisen out of the blockade, and other belligerent operations, between the government and several of the maritime powers, but they have been discussed, and, as far as was possible, accommodated, in a spirit of frankness, justice, and mutual good-will. It is especially gratifying that our prize courts by the impartiality of their adjudications, have commanded the respect and confidence of maritime powers. 374 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. The supplemental treaty between the United States and Great Britain for the suppression of the African slave-trade, made on the 17th day of February last, has been duly ratified and carried into execution. It is believed that, so far as American ports and American citizens are concerned, that inhuman and odious traffic has been brought to an end. I shall submit, for the consideration of the Senate, a convention for the adjustment of possessory claims in Washington Territory, arising out of the treaty of the 15th of June, 1846, between the United States and Great Britain, and w T hich have been the source of some disquiet among the citizens of that now rapidly im proving part of the country. A novel and important question, involving the extent of the maritime jurisdiction of Spain in the waters which surround the island of Cuba, has been debated without reaching an agreement, and it is proposed, in an amicable spirit, to refer it to the arbitrament of a friendly power. A convention for that purpose will be submitted to the Senate. I have thought it proper, subject to the approval of the Senate, to concur with the interested commercial powers in an arrangement for the liquidation of the Scheldt dues upon the principles which have been here tofore adopted in regard to the imposts upon naviga tion in the waters of Denmark. The long-pending controversy between this govern ment and that of Chile, touching the seizure at Sitana, in Peru, by Chilian officers, of a large amount in treasure belonging to citizens of the United States, has been brought to a close by the award of his Majesty the King of the Belgians, to whose arbitration the ques tion was referred by the parties. The subject was thoroughly and patiently examined by that justly re spected magistrate, and although the sum awarded to the claimants may not have been as large as they ex pected, there is no reason to distrust the wisdom of his SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 375 Majesty s decision. That decision was promptly com plied with by Chile, when intelligence in regard to it reached that country. The joint commission, under the act of the last ses sion, for carrying into effect the convention with Peru, on the subject of claims, has been organized at Lima, and is engaged in the business intrusted to it. Difficulties concerning inter-oceanic transit through Nicaragua are in course of amicable adjustment. In conformity with principles set forth in my last annual message, I have received a representative from the United States of Coloumbia, and have accredited a minister to that republic. Incidents occurring in the progress of our civil war have forced upon my attention the uncertain state of international questions touching the rights of for eigners in this country and of United States citizens abroad. In regard to some governments, these rights are at least partially defined by treaties. In no in stance, however, is it expressly stipulated that, in the event of civil war, a foreigner residing in this country, within the lines of the insurgents, is to be exempted from the rule which classes him as a belli gerent, in whose behalf the government of his country cannot expect any privileges or immunities distinct from that character. I regret to say, however, that such claims have been put forward, and, in some in stances, in behalf of foreigners who have lived in the United States the greater part of their lives. There is reason to believe that many persons born in foreign countries, who have declared their inten tion to become citizens, or who have been fully natura lized, have evaded the military duty required of them by denying the fact, and thereby throwing upon the government the burden of proof. It has been found difficult or impracticable to obtain this proof, from the want of guides to the proper sources of information. These might be supplied by requiring clerks of courts, 376 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. where declarations of intention may be made, or naturalizations effected, to send, periodically, lists of the names of the persons naturalized, or declaring their intention to become citizens, to the Secretary of the In terior, in whose department those names might be arranged and printed for general information. There is also reason to believe that foreigners fre quently become citizens of the United States for the sole purpose of evading duties imposed by the laws of their native countries, to which, on becoming natura lized here, they at once repair, and, though never re turning to the United States, they still claim the inter position of this government as citizens. Many alter cations and great prejudices have heretofore arisen out of this abuse. It is, therefore, submitted to your serious consideration. It might be advisable to fix a limit, beyond which no citizen of the United States residing abroad may claim the interposition of his government. The right of suffrage has often been assumed and exercised by aliens, under pretenses of naturalization, which they have disavowed when drafted into the military service. I submit the expediency of such an amendment of the law as will make the fact of voting an estoppel against any plea of exemption from mili tary service, or other civil obligation, on the ground of alienage. In common with other Western powers, our relations with Japan have been brought into serious jeopardy, through the perverse opposition of the hereditary aris tocracy of the empire to the enlightened and liberal policy of the Tycoon, designed to bring the country into the society of nations. It is hoped, although not with entire confidence, that these difficulties may be peacefully overcome. I ask your attention to the claim of the minister residing there for the damages he sus tained in the destruction by fire of the residence of the legation at Yeddo. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 377 Satisfactory arrangements have been made with the Emperor of Russia, which, it is believed, will result in effecting a continuous line of telegraph through that empire from our Pacific coast. I recommend to your favorable consideration the subject of an international telegraph across the At lantic Ocean; and also of a telegraph between this capital and the national forts along the Atlantic sea board and the Gulf of Mexico. Such communications, established with any reasonable outlay, would be eco nomical as well as effective aids to the diplomatic, military, and naval service. The consular system of the United States, under the enactments of the last Congress, begins to be self-sus taining; and there is reason to hope that it may become entirely so, with the increase of trade which will ensue whenever peace is restored. Our ministers abroad have been faithful in defending American rights. In protecting commercial interests, our consuls have necessarily had to encounter increased labors and responsibilities, growing out of the war. These they have, for the most part, met and discharged with zeal and efficiency. This acknowledgment justly includes those consuls who, residing in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, China, and other Oriental countries, are charged with complex functions and extraordinary powers. The condition of the several organized Territories is generally satisfactory, although Indian disturbances in New Mexico have not been entirely suppressed. The mineral resources of Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona are proving far richer than has been heretofore understood. I lay before you a com munication on this subject from the governor of New Mexico. I again submit to your consideration the ex pediency of establishing a system for the encourage ment of immigration. Although this source of national wealth and strength is again flowing with greater free- 378 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. dom than for several years before the insurrection oc curred, there is still a great deficiency of laborers in every field of industry, especially in agriculture, and in our mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals. While the demand for labor is thus increased here, tens of thousands of persons, destitute of re munerative occupation, are thronging our foreign con sulates, and offering to emigrate to the United States if essential, but very cheap, assistance can be afforded them. It is easy to see that, under the sharp discipline of civil war, the nation is beginning a new life. This noble effort demands the aid, and ought to receive the attention and support of the government. Injuries, unforeseen by the government and unin tended, may, in some cases, have been inflicted on the subjects or citizens of foreign countries, both at sea and on land, by persons in the service of the United States. As this government expects redress from other powers when similar injuries are inflicted by persons in their service upon citizens of the United States, we must be prepared to do justice to foreigners. If the existing judicial tribunals are inadequate to this pur pose, a special court may be authorized, with power to hear and decide such claims of the character re ferred to as may have arisen under treaties and the public law. Conventions for adjusting the claims by joint commission have been proposed to some govern ments, but no definitive answer to the proposition has yet been received from any. In the course of the session I shall probably have oc casion to request you to provide indemnification to claimants where decrees of restitution have been ren dered, and damages awarded by admiralty courts; and in other cases, where this government may be acknowl edged to be liable in principle, and where the amount of that liability has been ascertained by an informal arbitration. The proper officers of the treasury have deemed them- SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 379 selves required by the law of the United States upon the subject to demand a tax upon the incomes of foreign consuls in this country. While such a demand may not, in strictness, be in derogation of public law, or perhaps of any existing treaty between the United States and a foreign country, the expediency of so far modifying the act as to exempt from tax the income of such consuls as are not citizens of the United States, derived from the emoluments of their office, or from property not situated in the United States, is sub mitted to your serious consideration. I make this suggestion upon the ground that a comity which ought to be reciprocated exempts our consuls, in all other countries, from taxation to the extent thus indicated. The United States, I think, ought not to be exception ally illiberal to international trade and commerce. The operations of the treasury during the last year have been successfully conducted. The enactment by Congress of a national banking law has proved a valuable support of the public credit; and the general legislation in relation to loans has fully answered the expectations of its favorers. Some amendments may be required to perfect existing laws, but no change in their principles or general scope is believed to be needed. Since these measures have been in operation, all de mands on the treasury, including the pay of the army and navy, have been promptly met and fully satisfied. No considerable body of troops, it is believed, were ever more amply provided, and more liberally and punctu ally paid; and it may be added, that by no people were the burdens incident to a great war ever more cheer fully borne. The receipts during the year from all sources, in cluding loans and the balance in the treasury at its commencement, were 1901,125,674.86, and the aggregate disbursements $895,796,630.65, leaving a balance on the 1st of July, 1863, of $5,329,044.21 Of the receipts there 380 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. were derived from customs $69,059,642.40; from in ternal revenue, f 37,640,787.95 ; from direct tax, $1,- 485,103.61; from lands, $167,617.17; from miscellane ous sources, $3,046,615.35; and from loans, $776,682, 361.57; making the aggregate, $901,125,674.86. Of the disbursements there were for the civil service, $23,- 253,922.08; for pensions and Indians, $4,216,520.79; for interest on public debt, $24,729,846.51 ; for the War De partment, $599,298,600.83 ; for the Navy Department, $63,211,105.27; for payment of funded and temporary debt, $181,086, 635.07; making the aggregate, $895- 796,630.65, and leaving the balance of $5,329,044.21. But the payments of funded and temporary debt, hav ing been made from moneys borrowed during the year, must be regarded as merely nominal payments, and the moneys borrowed to make them as merely nominal receipts; and their amount, $181,086,635.07, should therefore be deducted both from receipts and disbursements. This being done, there remain as actual receipts, $720,039,039.79, and the actual dis bursements, $714,709,995.58, leaving the balance as already stated. The actual receipts and disbursements for the first quarter, and the estimated receipts and disbursements for the remaining three quarters, of the current fiscal year, 1864, will be shown in detail by the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, to which I invite your at tention. It is sufficient to say here that it is not believed that actual results will exhibit a state of the finances less favorable to the country than the esti mates of that officer heretofore submitted; while it is confidently expected that at the close of the year both disbursements and debt will be found very considerably less than has been anticipated. The report of the Secretary of War is a document of great interest. It consists of 1. The military operations of the year, detailed in the report of the General-in-Chief. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 331 2. The organization of colored persons into the war service. 3. The exchange of prisoners, fully set forth in the letter of General Hitchcock. 4. The operations under the act for enrolling and calling out the national forces, detailed in the re port of the Provost-Marshal-General. 5. The organization of the invalid corps; and G. The operation of the several departments of the Quartermaster-General, Commissary-General, Pay master-General, Chief of Engineers, Chief of Ordnance, and Surgeon-General. It has appeared impossible to make a valuable sum mary of this report except such as would be too ex tended for this place, and hence I content myself by asking your careful attention to the report itself. The duties devolving on the naval branch of the service during the year, and throughout the whole of this unhappy contest, have been discharged with fidelity and eminent success. The extensive blockade has been constantly increasing in efficiency, as the navy has ex panded; yet on so long a line it has so far been im possible to entirely suppress illicit trade. From re turns received at the Navy Department, it appears that more than one thousand vessels have been cap tured since the blockade was instituted, and that the value of prizes already sent in for adjudication amounts to over thirteen millions of dollars. The naval force of the United States consists at this time of five hundred and eighty-eight vessels, com pleted and in the course of completion, and of these, seventy-five are iron-clad or armored steamers. The events of the war give an increased interest and impor tance to the navy which will probably extend beyond the war itself. The armored vessels in our navy, completed and in service, or which are under contract and approaching completion, are believed to exceed in number those of 382 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. any other power. But while these may be relied upon for harbor defense and coast service, others of greater strength and capacity will be necessary for cruising purposes, and to maintain our rightful position on the ocean. The change that has taken place in naval vessels and naval warfare since the introduction of steam as a motive power for ships of war demands either a cor responding change in some of our existing navy-yards, or the establishment of new ones, for the construction and necessary repair of modern naval vessels. No inconsiderable embarrassment, delay, and public in jury have been experienced from the want of such governmental establishments. The necessity of such a navy-yard, so furnished, at some suitable place upon the Atlantic seaboard, has on repeated occasions been brought to the attention of Congress by the Navy De partment, and is again presented in the report of the Secretary which accompanies this communication. I think it my duty to invite your special attention to this subject, and also to that of establishing a yard and de pot for naval purposes upon one of the western rivers. A naval force has been created on those interior waters, and under many disadvantages, within little more than two years, exceeding in numbers the whole naval force of the country at the commencement of the present ad ministration. Satisfactory and important as have been the performances of the heroic men of the navy at this interesting period, they are scarcely more wonderful than the success of our mechanics and artisans in the production of war vessels which has created a new form of naval power. Our country has advantages superior to any other nation in our resources of iron and timber, with inex haustible quantities of fuel in the immediate vicinity of both, all available, and in close proximity to navi gable waters. Without the advantage of public works the resources of the nation have been developed, and its SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 353 power displayed, in the construction of a navy of such magnitude, which has, at the very period of its creation, rendered signal service to the Union. The increase of the number of seamen in the public service, from seven thousand five hundred men, in the spring of 1861, to about thirty-four thousand at the present time, has been accomplished without special legislation, or extraordinary bounties to promote that increase. It has been found, however, that the opera tion of the draft, with the high bounties paid for army recruits, is beginning to affect injuriously the naval service, and will, if not corrected, be likely to impair its efficiency, by detaching seamen from their proper vocation and inducing them to enter the army. I therefore respectfully suggest that Congress might aid both the army and naval services by a definite provis ion on this subject, which would at the same time be equitable to the communities more especially inter ested. I commend to your consideration the suggestion of the Secretary of the Navy in regard to the policy of fostering and training seamen, and also the education of officers and engineers for the naval service. The Naval Academy is rendering signal service in prepar ing midshipmen for the highly responsible duties which in after life they will be required to perform. In order that the country should not be deprived of the proper quota of educated officers, for which legal pro vision has been made at the naval school, the vacan cies caused by the neglect or omission to make nomi nations from the State in insurrection have been filled by the Secretary of the Navy. The school is now more full and complete than at any former period, and in every respect entitled to the favorable consideration of Congress. During the past fiscal year the financial condition of the Post Office Department has been one of in creasing prosperity, and I am gratified in being able 384 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to state that the actual postal revenue has nearly equaled the entire expenditures; the latter amounting to $11,314,206.84, and the former to $11,163,789.59, leaving a deficiency of but $150,417.25. In 1860, the year immediately preceding the rebellion, the deficiency amounted to $5,656,705.49, the postal receipts of that year being $2,645,722.19 less than those of 1863. The decrease since 1860 in the annual amount of transpor tation has been only about 25 per cent., but the annual expenditure on account of the same has been reduced 35 per cent. It is manifest, therefore, that the Post Office Department may become self-sustaining in a few years even with the restoration of the whole service. The international conference of postal delegates from the principal countries of Europe and America, which was called at the suggestion of the Postmaster- General, met at Paris on the llth of May last, and con cluded its deliberations on the 8th of June. The prin ciples established by the conference as best adapted to facilitate postal intercourse between nations, and as the basis of future postal conventions, inaugurate a general system of uniform international charges, at reduced rates of postage, and cannot fail to produce beneficial results. I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the In terior, which is herewith laid before you, for useful and varied information in relation to the public lands, Indian affairs, patents, pensions, and other matters of public concern pertaining to his department. The quantity of land disposed of during the last and the first quarter of the present fiscal year was three million eight hundred and forty-one thousand five hun dred and forty-nine acres, of which one hundred and sixty-one thousand nine hundred and eleven acres were sold for cash, one million four hundred and fifty-six thousand five hundred and fourteen acres were taken up under the homestead law, and the residue disposed of under laws granting lands for military bounties, for SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 355 railroad and other purposes. It also appears that the sale of the public lands is largely on the increase. It has long been a cherished opinion of some of our wisest statesmen that the people of the United States had a higher and more enduring interest in the early settlement and substantial cultivation of the public lands than in the amount of direct revenue to be de rived from the sale of them. This opinion has had a controlling influence in shaping legislation upon the subject of our national domain. I may cite, as evi dence of this, the liberal measures adopted in refer ence to actual settlers; the grant to the States of the overflowed lands within their limits in order to their being reclaimed and rendered fit for cultivation; the grants to railway companies of alternate sections of land upon the contemplated lines of their roads, which, when completed, will so largely multiply the facilities for reaching our distant possessions. This policy has received its most signal and beneficent illustration in the recent enactment granting homesteads to actual settlers. Since the first day of January last the before- mentioned quantity of one million four hundred and fifty-six thousand five hundred and fourteen acres of land have been taken up under its provisions. This fact, and the amount of sales, furnish gratifying evi dence of increasing settlement upon the public lands notwithstanding the great struggle in which the ener gies of the nation have been engaged, and which has required so large a withdrawal of our citizens from their accustomed pursuits. I cordially concur in the recommendation of the Secretary of the Interior, sug gesting a modification of the act in favor of those en gaged in the military and naval service of the United States. I doubt not that Congress will cheerfully adopt such measures as will, without essentially chang ing the general features of the system, secure, to the greatest practicable extent, its benefits to those who 25 386 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. have left their homes in defense of the country in this arduous crisis. I invite your attention to the views of the Secretary as to the propriety of raising, by appropriate legisla tion, a revenue from the mineral lands of the United States. The measures provided at your last session for the removal of certain Indian tribes have been carried into effect. Sundry treaties have been negotiated, which will, in due time, be submitted for the constitutional action of the Senate. They contain stipulations for extinguishing the possessory rights of the Indians to large and valuable tracts of land. It is hoped that the effect of these treaties will result in the establishment of permanent friendly relations with such of these tribes as have been brought into frequent and bloody collision with our outlying settlements and emigrants. Sound policy, and our imperative duty to these wards of the government, demand our anxious and constant attention to their material well-being, to their progress in the arts of civilization, and, above all, to that moral training which, under the blessing of Divine Provi dence, will confer upon them the elevated and sancti fying influences, the hopes and consolations, of the Christian faith. I suggested in my last annual message the propriety of remodeling our Indian system. Subsequent events have satisfied me of its necessity. The details set forth in the report of the Secretary evince the urgent need for immediate legislative action. I commend the benevolent institutions established or patronized by the government in this District to your generous and fostering care. The attention of Congress, during the last session, was engaged to some extent with a proposition for en larging the water communication between the Missis sippi River and the northeastern seaboard, which prop osition, however, failed for the time. Since then, upon SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLK. 337 a call of the greatest respectability, a convention has been held at Chicago upon the same subject, a sum mary of whose views is contained in a memorial ad dressed to the President and Congress, and which I now have the honor to lay before you. That this in terest is one which, ere long, will force its own way, I do not entertain a doubt, while it is submitted en tirely to your wisdom as to what can be done now. Augmented interest is given to this subject by the actual commencement of work upon the Pacific rail road, under auspices so favorable to rapid progress and completion. The enlarged navigation becomes a palpable need to the great road. I transmit the second annual report of the Commis sioner of the Department of Agriculture, asking your attention to the developments in that vital interest of the nation. When Congress assembled a year ago the war had already lasted nearly twenty months, and there had been many conflicts on both land and sea with varying results. The rebellion had been pressed back into re duced limits; yet the tone of public feeling and opinion, at home and abroad, was not satisfactory. With other signs, the popular elections, then just past, indicated uneasiness among ourselves, while, amid much that was cold and menacing, the kindest words coming from Europe were uttered in accents of pity that we were too blind to surrender a hopeless cause. Our com merce was suffering greatly by a few armed vessels built upon, and furnished from, foreign shores, and we were threatened with such additions from the same quarter as would sweep our trade from the sea and raise our blockade. We had failed to elicit from Euro pean governments anything hopeful upon this subject. The preliminary emancipation proclamation, issued in September, was running its assigned period to the be ginning of the new year. A month later the final procla mation came, including the announcement that colored 388 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. men of suitable condition would be received into the war service. The policy of emancipation, and of em ploying black soldiers, gave to the future a new aspect, about which hope, and fear, and doubt contended in uncertain conflict. According to our political system, as a matter of civil administration, the General Government had no lawful power to effect emanci pation in any State, and for a long time it had been* hoped that the rebellion could be suppressed without resorting to it as a military measure. It was all the while deemed possible that the necessity for it might come, and that if it should, the crisis of the contest would then be presented. It came, and, as was antici pated, it was followed by dark and doubtful days. Eleven months having now passed, we are permitted to take another review. The rebel borders are pressed still further back, and, by the complete opening of the Mississippi, the country dominated by the rebellion is divided into distinct parts, with no practical communi cation between them. Tennessee and Arkansas have been substantially cleared of insurgent control, and influential citizens in each, owners of slaves and ad vocates of slavery at the beginning of the rebellion, now declare openly for emancipation in their respective States. Of those States not included in the Emancipa tion Proclamation, Maryland and Missouri, neither of which three years ago would tolerate any restraint up on the extension of slavery into new Territories, only dispute now as to the best mode of removing it within their own limits. Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the re bellion, full one hundred thousand are now in the United States military service, about one half of which number actually bear arms in the ranks; thus giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause, and supplying the places which other wise must be filled with so many white men. So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 339 as any. No servile insurrection, or tendency to violence or cruelty, has marked the measures of emancipation and arming the blacks. The measures have been much discussed in foreign countries, and contemporary with such discussion the tone of public sentiment there is much improved. At home the same measures have been fully discussed, supported, criticized, and denounced, and the annual elections following are highly encourag ing to those whose official duty it is to bear the country through this great trial. Thus we have the new reckon ing. The crisis which threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past. Looking now to the present and future, and with ref erence to a resumption of the national authority with in the States wherein that authority has been sus pended, I have thought fit to issue a proclamation, a copy of which is herewith transmitted. On examina tion of this proclamation it will appear, as is believed, that nothing is attempted beyond what is amply justi fied by the Constitution. True, the form of an oath is given, but no man is coerced to take it. The man is only promised a pardon in case he voluntarily takes the oath. The Constitution authorizes the executive to grant or withhold the pardon at his own absolute discretion; and this includes the power to grant on terms, as is fully established by judicial and other authorities. It is also proffered that if, in any of the States named, a State government shall be, in the mode pre scribed, set up, such government shall be recognized and guaranteed by the United States, and that under it the State shall, on the constitutional conditions, be protected against invasion and domestic violence. The constitutional obligation of the United States to guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and to protect the State in the cases stated, is explicit and full. But why tender the benefits of this provision only to a State government 390 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. set up in this particular way? This section of the Con- stitution contemplates a case wherein the element within a State favorable to republican government in the Union may be too feeble for an opposite and hostile element external to, or even within, the State; and such are precisely the cases with which we are now dealing. An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived State government, constructed in whole, or in preponderating part, from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to separate the oppos ing elements, so as to build only from the sound; and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness. But if it be proper to require, as a test of admission to the political body, an oath of allegiance to the Con stitution of the United States, and to the Union under it, why also to the laws and proclamations in regard to slavery? Those laws and proclamations were en acted and put forth for the purpose of aiding in the suppression of the rebellion. To give them their fullest effect, there had to be a pledge for their maintenance. In my judgment they have aided, and will further aid, the cause for which they were intended. To now abandon them would be not only to relinquish a lever of power, but would also be a cruel and an astounding breach of faith. I may add, at this point, that while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation ; nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress. For these and other reasons it is thought best that support of these measures shall be included in the oath; and it is believed the executive may law fully claim it in return for pardon and restoration of forfeited rights, which he has clear constitutional SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. power to withhold altogether, or grant upon the terms which he shall deem wisest for the public interest. It should be observed, also, that this part of the oath is subject to the modifying and abrogating power of legislation and supreme judicial decision. The proposed acquiescence of the national executive in any reasonable temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must at best attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout whole States. It is hoped that the already deeply afflicted people in those States may be some what more ready to give up the cause of their affliction, if, to this extent, this vital matter be left to them selves; while no power of the national executive to prevent an abuse is abridged by the proposition. The suggestion in the proclamation as to maintain ing the political framework of the States on what is called reconstruction is made in the hope that it may do good without danger of harm. It will save labor, and avoid great confusion. But why any proclamation now upon this subject? This question is beset with the conflicting views that the step might be delayed too long or be taken too soon. In some States the elements for resumption seem ready for action, but remain inactive apparently for want of a rallying-point a plan of action. Why shall A adopt the plan of B, rather than B that of A? And if A and B should agree, how can they know but that the General Government here will reject their plan? By the proclamation a plan is presented which may be accepted by them as a rallying-point, and which they are assured in advance will not be rejected here. This may bring them to act sooner than they otherwise would. The objection to a premature presentation of a plan by the national executive consists in the danger of committals on points which could be more safely left 392 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. to further developments. Care has been taken to so shape the document as to avoid embarrassments from this source. Saying that, on certain terms, certain classes will be pardoned, with rights restored, it is not said that other classes, or other terms, will never be included. Saying that reconstruction will be accepted if presented in a specified way, it is not said it will never be accepted in any other way. The movements, by State action, for emancipation in several of the States not included in the Emancipation Proclamation, are matters of profound gratulation. And while I do not repeat in detail what I have here tofore so earnestly urged upon this subject, my general views and feelings remain unchanged ; and I trust that Congress will omit no fair opportunity of aiding these important steps to a great consummation. In the midst of other cares, however important, we must not lose sight of the fact that the war power is still our main reliance. To that power alone can we look, yet for a time, to give confidence to the people in the contested regions that the insurgent power will not again overrun them. Until that confidence shall be estab lished, little can be done anywhere for what is called reconstruction. Hence our chiefest care must still be directed to the army and navy, who have thus far borne their harder part so nobly and well. And it may be esteemed fortunate that in giving the greatest efficiency to these indispensable arms, we do also honorably recognize the gallant men, from commander to sentinel, who compose them, and to whom, more than to others, the world must stand indebted for the home of freedom disenthralled, regenerated, enlarged, and perpetuated. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 393 ADDRESS AT SANITARY FAIR IN BALTIMORE, APRIL 18, 1864. Ladies and Gentlemen: Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we cannot fail to note that the world moves. Looking upon these many people assembled here to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the Union, it occurs at once that three years ago the same soldiers could not so much as pass through Baltimore. The change from then till now is both great and gratify ing. Blessings on the brave men who have wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for it ! But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore. The change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change. When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now. Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere to-day. Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war. But here we are; the war has not ended, and slavery has been much affected how much needs not now to be recounted. So true is it that man proposes and God disposes. But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it; and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for the future. The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word 394 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep s throat, for w r hich the sheep thanks the shepherd as his libera tor, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and pre cisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty, and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolfs dictionary has been repudiated. It is not very becoming for one in my position to make speeches at great length; but there is another subject upon which I feel that I ought to say a word. A painful rumor true, I fear has reached us of the massacre by the rebel forces at Fort Pillow, in the west end of Tennessee, on the Mississippi River, of some three hundred colored soldiers and white officers, who had just been overpowered by their assailants. There seems to be some anxiety in the public mind whether the government is doing its duty to the colored soldier, and to the service, at this point. At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated ; and how the change of purpose was wrought I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 395 for it to the American people, to the Christian world, to history, and in my final account to God. Having determined to use the negro as a soldier, there is no way but to give him all the protection given to any other soldier. The difficulty is not in stating the principle, but in practically applying it. It is a mis take to suppose the government is indifferent to this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it. We do not to-day know that a colored soldier, or white officer commanding colored soldiers, has been massacred by the rebels when made a prisoner. We fear it, believe it, I may say, but we do not know it. To take the life of one of their prisoners on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel, a mistake. We are having the Fort Pillow affair thoroughly investigated; and such investigation will probably show conclusively how the truth is. If after all that has been said it shall turn out that there has been no massacre at Fort Pillow, it will be almost safe to say there has been none, and will be none, elsewhere. If there has been the massacre of three hundred there, or even the tenth part of three hundred, it will be conclusively proved ; and being so proved, the retribution shall as surely come. It will be matter of grave consideration in what exact course to apply the retribution; but in the supposed case it must come. 396 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SPEECH AT A SANITARY FAIR IN PHILADEL- PHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, JUNE 16, 1864. I SUPPOSE that this toast was intended to open the way for me to say something. War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible. It has deranged business, totally in many localities, and partially in all localities. It has de stroyed property and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented, at least in this country ; it has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the " heavens are hung in black." Yet the war continues, and several relieving coinci dents have accompanied it from the very beginning which have not been known, as I understand, or have any knowledge of, in any former wars in the history of the world. The Sanitary Commission, with all its benevolent labors; the Christian Commission, with all its Christian and benevolent labors; and the various places, arrangements, so to speak, and institutions, have contributed to the comfort and relief of the soldiers. You have two of these places in this city the Cooper Shop and Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloons. And lastly, these fairs, which, I believe, began only last August, if I mistake not, in Chicago, then at Boston, at Cincinnati, Brooklyn, New York, and Baltimore, and those at present held at St. Louis, Pittsburg, and Philadelphia. The motive and object that lie at the bottom of all these are most worthy ; for, say what you will, after all, the most is due to the soldier who takes his life in his hands and goes to fight SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 397 the battles of his country. In what is contributed to his comfort when he passes to and fro, and in what is contributed to him when he is sick and wounded, in whatever shape it comes, whether from the fair and tender hand of woman, or from any other source, it is much, very much. But I think that there is still that which is of as much value to him in the continual reminders he sees in the newspapers that while he is absent he is yet remembered by the loved ones at home. Another view of these various institutions, if I may so call them, is worthy of consideration, I think. They are voluntary contributions, given zealously and earnestly, on top of all the disturbances of business, of all the disorders, of all the taxation, and of all the burdens that the war has imposed upon us, giving proof that the national resources are not at all ex hausted, and that the national spirit of patriotism is even firmer and stronger than at the commencement of the war. It is a pertinent question, often asked in the mind privately, and from one to the other, when is the war to end? Surely I feel as deep an interest in this question as any other can ; but I do not wish to name a day, a month, or a year, when it is to end. I do not wish to run any risk of seeing the time come without our being ready for the end, for fear of disappointment because the time had come and not the end. We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will end until that time. Speaking of the present campaign, General Grant is reported to have said, " I am going through on this line if it takes all summer." This war has taken three years; it was begun or accepted upon the line of restoring the na tional authority over the whole national domain, and for the American people, as far as my knowledge enables me to speak, I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more. SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. My friends, I did not know but that I might be called upon to say a few words before I got away from here, but I did not know it was coming just here. I have never been in the habit of making predictions in regard to the war, but I am almost tempted to make one. If I were to hazard it, it is this : That Grant is this evening, with General Meade and General Hancock, and the brave officers and soldiers with him, in a posi tion from whence he will never be dislodged until Richmond is taken; and I have but one single proposi tion to put now, and perhaps I can best put it in the form of an interrogative. If I shall discover that General Grant and the noble officers and men under him can be greatly facilitated in their work by a sudden pouring forward of men and assistance, will you give them to me? Are you ready to march? [Cries of " Yes."] Then I say, Stand ready, for I am watching for the chance. I thank you, gentlemen. ADDRESS TO THE 166TH OHIO REGIMENT, AUG. 22, 1864. Soldiers: I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the services you have done in this great struggle in which we are all engaged, I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country. I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them, in a few brief remarks, the importance of success in this con test. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come, that we should perpetuate for our children s children that great and free government which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 399 temporarily, to occupy this White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father s child has. It is in order that each one of you may have, through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelli gence ; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright not only for one, but for two or three years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel. ADDRESS TO THE 148TH OHIO REGIMENT, AUGUST 31, 1864. SOLDIERS OF THE 148TH OHIO : I am most happy to meet you on this occasion. I understand that it has been your honorable privilege to stand, for a brief period, in the defense of your country, and that now you are on your way to your homes. I congratulate you, and those who are waiting to bid you welcome home from the war; and permit me in the name of the people to thank you for the part you have taken in this struggle for the life of the na tion. You are soldiers of the republic, everywhere honored and respected. Whenever I appear before a body of soldiers, I feel tempted to talk to them of the nature of the struggle in which we are engaged. I look upon it as an attempt on the one hand to over whelm and destroy the national existence, while on our part we are striving to maintain the government and institutions of our fathers, to enjoy them our selves, and transmit them to our children and our children s children forever. 400 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. To do this the constitutional administration of our government must be sustained, and I beg of you not to allow your minds or your hearts to be diverted from the support of all necessary measures for that pur pose, by any miserable picayune arguments addressed to your pockets, or inflammatory appeals made to your passions and your prejudices. It is vain and foolish to arraign this man or that for the part he has taken or has not taken, and to hold the government responsible for his acts. In no administra tion can there be perfect equality of action and uniform satisfaction rendered by all. But this government must be preserved in spite of the acts of any man or set of men. It is worthy of your every effort. Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father s. Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending our beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but to stand fast for the Union and the old flag. Soldiers, I bid you God-speed to your homes. PROCLAMATION OF THANKSGIVING, OCTOBER 20, 1864. IT has pleased almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouch safing to us in his mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. also pleased our heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps, and our sailors on the rivers and seas, with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while he has opened to us new sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working-men in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, he has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution suffi cient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reason able hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions. Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday of November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations. 26 402 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. RESPONSE TO A SERENADE, NOVEMBER 10, 1864. IT has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. On this point the present re bellion brought our republic to a severe test, and a presidential election occurring in regular course dur ing the rebellion, added not a little to the strain. If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as phil osophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged. But the election, along with its incidental and undesirable strife, has done good too. It has demonstrated that a people s government can sustain a national election in the midst of a great civil war. Until now, it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility. It shows, also, how sound and how strong we still are. It shows that, even among candidates of the same party, he who is SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 40$ most devoted to the Union and most opposed to treason can receive most of the people s votes. It shows, also, to the extent yet known, that we have more men now than we had when the war began. Gold is good in its place, but living, brave, patriotic men are better than gold. But the rebellion continues, and now that the elec tion is over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man s bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a reelection, and duly grate ful, as I trust, to almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result. May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have? And now let me close by asking three hearty cheers for our brave soldiers and seamen and their gallant and skilful commanders. 404: SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, DEC. 6, 1864. [In this Message, the extracts from which are confined to the portions of vital interest, the evidences are multiplied of the ap proaching end of the war, with the maintenance of the Union. Just before the Message was delivered, the military events in dicated that the power of the Confederacy was on the wane. Sherman had begun his famous March to the Sea, which was to bring the President his Christmas gift, in the capture of Savannah : Grant was doggedly hammering away, keeping skilful watch on Lee s terrible Army of Northern Virginia; while in August, Farragut had captured Mobile, and other successes on land and sea were now speedily to follow, which brought the un natural strife to a final close. Lincoln, moreover, in spite of the unpopular draft, of 500,000 men, in July, and a summer and autumn of severe fighting, both East and West, had been re- elected to the Presidency ; while he was soon to be gratified by the final passing of the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution by which slavery was to be maue forever impossible in the United States. These were among the happy events which give interest to the present Congressional Message]. IN a great national crisis like ours, unanimity of action among those seeking a common end is very desirable almost indispensable. And yet no ap proach to such unanimity is attainable unless some deference shall be paid to the will of the majority, simply because it is the will of the majority. In this case the common end is the maintenance of the Union, and among the means to secure that end, such will, through the election, is most clearly declared in favor of such constitutional amendment. The most reliable indication of public purpose in this country is derived through our popular elections. Judging by the recent canvass and its result, the pur pose of the people within the loyal States to maintain the integrity of the Union, was never more firm nor more nearly unanimous than now. The extraordinary SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 495 calmness and good order with which the millions of voters met and mingled at the polls give strong assur ance of this. Not only all those who supported the Union ticket, so called, but a great majority of the opposing party also, may be fairly claimed to enter tain, and to be actuated by, the same purpose. It is an unanswerable argument to this effect, that no candi date for any office whatever, high or low, has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union. There has been much impugning of mo tives, and much heated controversy as to the proper means and best mode of advancing the Union cause; but on the distinct issue of Union or no Union the politicians have shown their instinctive knowledge that there is no diversity among the people. In afford ing the people the fair opportunity of showing one to another and to the world this firmness and unanimity of purpose, the election has been of vast value to the national cause. The election has exhibited another fact, not less valuable to be known the fact that we do not ap proach exhaustion in the most important branch of national resources that of living men. While it is melancholy to reflect that the war has filled so many graves, and carried mourning to so many hearts, it is some relief to know that compared with the surviving, the fallen have been so few. While corps, and di visions, and brigades, and regiments have formed, and fought, and dwindled, and gone out of existence, a great majority of the men who composed them are still living. The same is true of the naval service. The election returns prove this. So many voters could not else be found. The States regularly holding elections, both now and four years ago to wit : Cali fornia, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, 406 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin cast 3,982,011 votes now, against 3,870,222 cast then; show ing an aggregate now of 3,982,011. To this is to be added 33,762 cast now in the new States of Kansas and Nevada, which States did not vote in 1860; thus swelling the aggregate to 4,015,773, and the net in crease during the three years and a half of war, to 145,551. A table is appended, showing particulars. To this again should be added the number of all sol diers in the field from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, and Cali fornia, who by the laws of those States could not vote away from their homes, and which number cannot be less than 90,000. Nor yet is this all. The number in organized Territories is triple now what it w r as four years ago, while thousands, white and black, join us as the national arms press back the insurgent lines. So much is shown, affirmatively and negatively, by the election. It is not material to inquire how the increase has been produced, or to show that it would have been greater but for the war, which is probably true. The important fact remains demonstrated that we have more men now than we had when the war began ; that we are not exhausted, nor in process of exhaustion; that we are gaining strength, and may, if need be, maintain the contest indefinitely. This as to men. Material resources are now more complete and abun dant than ever. The national resources, then, are unexhausted, and, as we believe, inexhaustible. The public purpose to re establish and maintain the national authority is un changed, and, as we believe, unchangeable. The manner of continuing the effort remains to choose. On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible, it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the Union SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. precisely what we will not and cannot give. His de clarations to this effect are explicit and oft repeated. He does not attempt to deceive us. He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves. He cannot voluntarily re-accept the Union; we cannot voluntarily yield it. Between him and us the issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. If we yield, we are beaten; if the Southern people fail him, he is beaten. Either way it would be the victory and defeat follow ing war. What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause, is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot re-accept the Union, they can. Some of them, we know, already desire peace and reunion. The number of such may increase. They can at any moment have peace simply by lay ing down their arms and submitting to the national authority under the Constitution. After so much the government could not, if it would, maintain war against them. The loyal people would not sustain or allow it. If questions should remain, we would ad just them by the peaceful means of legislation, con ference, courts, and votes, operating only in constitu tional and lawful channels. Some certain, and other possible, questions are, and would be, beyond the ex ecutive power to adjust; as, for instance, the admission of members into Congress, and whatever might require the appropriation of money. The executive power itself would be greatly diminished by the cessation of actual war. Pardons and remissions of forfeitures, however, would still be within executive control. In what spirit and temper this control would be exercised, can be fairly judged of by the past. A year ago general pardon and amnesty, upon specified terms, were offered to all except certain desig nated classes, and it was at the same time made known that the excepted classes were still within contempla tion of special clemency. During the year many 4Q8 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. availed themselves of the general provision, and many more would only that the signs of bad faith in some led to such precautionary measures as rendered the practical process less easy and certain. During the same time, also, special pardons have been granted to individuals of the excepted classes, and no voluntary application has been denied. Thus, practically, the door has been for a full year open to all, except such as were not in condition to make free choice that is, such as were in custody or under constraint. It is still so open to all; but the time may come probably will come when public duty shall demand that it be closed; and that in lieu more rigorous measures than heretofore shall be adopted. In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the national authority on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the government, I retract nothing hereto fore said as to slavery. I repeat the declaration made a year ago, that " while I remain in my present posi tion I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress." If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to per form it. In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say, that the war will cease on the part of the government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it. Assassination of Lincoln SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 409 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 18G5. [With this Second Inaugural the great work was nearly done which Lincoln was providentially raised up to do, in guiding the nation through the tempestuous scenes of the terrible Civil War, in ridding the land of the blighting curse of slavery, and in restoring the sorely distracted, dissevered, but now about to be reunited, Union. Precisely two months later, at the cemetery in Springfield, 111., Lincoln s home, the Inaugural was read over the martyred President s grave. It is a masterly production, and is perhaps the most characteristic embodiment of Lincoln s genius, filled as it is with lofty sentiment, and reaching the highwater mark of the political wisdom of the age. Well may the London Times speak of it at the era as " the most sublime State paper of the century."]. Fellow-countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an im pending civil war. All dreaded it all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seek- 410 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ing to destroy it without war seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive ; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves con stituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial en largement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. " Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense coineth." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope fer vently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, " The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation s wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and last ing peace among ourselves, and with all nations. 412 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. LAST PUBLIC ADDRESS, APRIL 11, 1865. [This, the final public utterance we have of Lincoln s, was de livered in Washington just three days before his martyred death. The close of the great war had by this time practically come, for earlier in the month the Confederates had evacuated Rich mond, and two days before the speech was spoken Lee had sur rendered with his army to Grant at Appomattox. The Address, it will be seen, rejoices over these events and gratefully an nounces the President s intention of calling for a national thanks giving. In other respects, the Address deals with the problem of reconstruction and the reinauguration, in the late seceded States, of the national authority]. WE meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Rich mond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace, whose joyous expression cannot, be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part give us the cause of re joicing be overlooked. Their honors must not be par celed out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor for plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers and brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part. By these recent successes the reinauguration of the national authority reconstruction which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between in dependent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with no one man has authority to give up the SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with and mold from disorganized and discordant ele ments. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowl edge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows. In the annual message of December, 1863, and in the accompanying proclama tion, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to and sustained by the executive govern ment of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable, and I also distinctly protested that the executive claimed no right to say when or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was in advance submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then and in that connection apply the Emancipation Proclama tion to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power in regard to the admission of members to Congress. But even he ap proved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emanci pation for the whole State, practically applies the proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does 414; SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. not adopt apprenticeship for freed people, and it is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member of the cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Con gress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single objection to it from any professed emancipationist came to my knowl edge until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July, 1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be interested [in] seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident that the people, with his military cooperation, would reconstruct substan tially on that plan. I wrote to him and some of them to try it. They tried it, and the result is known. Such has been my only agency in getting up the Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest; but I have not yet been so con vinced. I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer ex presses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps add astonishment to his regret were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have pur posely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me, that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion Of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may here after become, that question is bad as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all a merely pernicious abstraction. We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government, civil and militar} 7 , in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it. The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfactory to all if it contained 50,000, or 30,000, or even 20,000, instead of only about 12,000, as it does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, will it be wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it? Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government? Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave State of Louisiana have 416 SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the right ful political power of the State, held elections, or ganized a State government, adopted a free-State constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their legislature has already voted to ratify the con stitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These 12,000 persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom in the State committed to the very things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants and they ask the nation s recognition and its assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white man : You are worthless or worse ; we will neither help you, nor be helped by you. To the blacks we say: This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of the 12,000 to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man, too, in seeing all united for him, is in spired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective fran chise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it than by running backward over them? Concede that, the new government of SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. Again, if we reject Louisiana we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the na tional Constitution. To meet this proposition it has been argued that no more than three-fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are neces sary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be per- .sistently questioned, while a ratification by three- fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question : Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government? What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and withal so new and unprecedented is the whole case that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such ex clusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible. In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announce ment to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper. ; 14 DAY USE , 14 DAY USE ">W r } 14 UAl J^ - ^ RBTOKN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. ^ Renewed books are subject to PEP l i Qr n Q Pi V ;-TSKtr2 :^ V LD 2lA-60m-3. 65 (F2336slO)476B y C 59486