(_Speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854_)
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert zeal, for the
spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
monstrous injustice of slavery itself; I hate it because it deprives
our republic of an example of its just influence in the world; enables
the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as
hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity;
and, especially, because it forces so many really good men among
ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of
civil liberty, criticising the Declaration of Independence and
insisting that there is no right principle of action but
self-interest.
The doctrine of self-government is right,--absolutely and eternally
right,--but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or,
perhaps, I should rather say, that whether it has such just
application depends upon whether a negro is not, or is, a man. If he
is not a man, in that case he who is a man may, as a matter of
self-government, do just what he pleases with him. But if the negro is
a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government
to say that he, too, shall not govern himself?
When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when
he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than
self-government--that is despotism.
What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man
without that other's consent.
The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he
governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he
prescribes for himself. Allow all the governed an equal voice in the
government; that, and that only, is self-government.
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 when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery
extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must
ceaselessly follow.
Repeal the Missouri Compromise--repeal all compromise--and repeal the
Declaration of Independence--repeal all past history--still you cannot
repeal human nature.
I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principles
of the 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 dalliance for a
free people,--a sad evidence that feeling prosperity, we forget
right,--that liberty as a principle we have ceased to revere.
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 declaration 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.
Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us purify
it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not in 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 re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and 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 shall have
so saved it, as to make and to keep it forever worthy of 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.