insisted on the same principle as Judge Douglas; but his mode of applying
it, in fact, was wrong. It is enough for my purpose to ask this crowd
whenever a Republican said anything against it. They never said anything
against it, but they have constantly spoken for it; and whoever will
undertake to examine the platform, and the speeches of responsible men of
the party, and of irresponsible men, too, if you please, will be unable to
find one word from anybody in the Republican ranks opposed to that popular
sovereignty which Judge Douglas thinks that he has invented. I suppose
that Judge Douglas will claim, in a little while, that he is the inventor
of the idea that the people should govern themselves; that nobody ever
thought of such a thing until he brought it forward. We do not remember
that in that old Declaration of Independence it is said that:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed."
There is the origin of popular sovereignty. Who, then, shall come in at
this day and claim that he invented it?
The Lecompton Constitution connects itself with this question, for it is
in this matter of the Lecompton Constitution that our friend Judge
Douglas claims such vast credit. I agree that in opposing the Lecompton
Constitution, so far as I can perceive, he was right. I do not deny that
at all; and, gentlemen, you will readily see why I could not deny it,
even if I wanted to. But I do not wish to; for all the Republicans in the
nation opposed it, and they would have opposed it just as much without
Judge Douglas's aid as with it. They had all taken ground against it long
before he did. Why, the reason that he urges against that constitution I
urged against him a year before. I have the printed speech in my hand. The
argument that he makes, why that constitution should not be adopted, that
the people were not fairly represented nor allowed to vote, I pointed out
in a speech a year ago, which I hold in my hand now, that no fair chance
was to be given to the people. ["Read it, Read it."] I shall not waste
your time by trying to read it. ["Read it, Read it."] Gentlemen, reading
from speeches is a very tedious business, particularly for an old man that
has to put on spectacles, and more so if the man be so tall that he has to
bend over to the light.
A little more, now, as to this matter of popular sovereignty and the
Lecompton Constitution. The Lecompton Constitution, as the Judge tells us,
was defeated. The defeat of it was a good thing or it was not. He thinks
the defeat of it was a good thing, and so do I, and we agree in that. Who
defeated it?
[A voice: Judge Douglas.]
Yes, he furnished himself, and if you suppose he controlled the other
Democrats that went with him, he furnished three votes; while the
Republicans furnished twenty.
That is what he did to defeat it. In the House of Representatives he and
his friends furnished some twenty votes, and the Republicans furnished
ninety odd. Now, who was it that did the work?
[A voice: Douglas.]
Why, yes, Douglas did it! To be sure he did.
Let us, however, put that proposition another way. The Republicans could
not have done it without Judge Douglas. Could he have done it without
them? Which could have come the nearest to doing it without the other?
[A voice: Who killed the bill?]
[Another voice: Douglas.]
Ground was taken against it by the Republicans long before Douglas did it.
The proportion of opposition to that measure is about five to one.
[A voice: Why don't they come out on it?]
You don't know what you are talking about, my friend. I am quite willing
to answer any gentleman in the crowd who asks an intelligent question.
Now, who in all this country has ever found any of our friends of Judge
Douglas's way of thinking, and who have acted upon this main question,
that has ever thought of uttering a word in behalf of Judge Trumbull?
[A voice: We have.]
I defy you to show a printed resolution passed in a Democratic meeting--I
take it upon myself to defy any man to show a printed resolution of a
Democratic meeting, large or small--in favor of Judge Trumbull, or any of
the five to one Republicans who beat that bill. Everything must be for the
Democrats! They did everything, and the five to the one that really did
the thing they snub over, and they do not seem to remember that they have
an existence upon the face of the earth.
Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious. I leave this branch of the
subject to take hold of another. I take up that part of Judge Douglas's
speech in which he respectfully attended to me.
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 delivered at
Springfield, which I believe I can quote correctly 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 operation 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. '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 cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of
slavery will arrest the 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, north as well as south."
What 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 particularly 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 uniform.
He draws this inference from the language I have quoted to you. He says
that I am in favor of making 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 singular 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.
I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can
explain it to them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph.
I am not, in the first place, unaware that this government has endured
eighty-two years half slave and half free. I know that. I am tolerably
well acquainted 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 extinction. [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? Why 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, 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 with 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
government originally placed it.
I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination 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 efficiency in advocating it. I
think that I have said it in your hearing, that I believe each individual
is naturally 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 Government, 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 laws 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 extinction, 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 suppose 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 population 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 something 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 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 us the blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and that they
so looked upon it, and not as an evil merely confining itself 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; and 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 domestic 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
implied 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 Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, would arise. But
I am doing no such thing as that, but 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 should 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 property 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 decision, 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 sacredness 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
world. It is based upon falsehood in the main as to the facts; allegations
of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in many instances, and
no decision made on any question--the first instance of a decision 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
lawyers regarded it as settled law. But Judge Douglas will have it
that all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these
extraordinary circumstances, 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 remember 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 constitutional? Such is the truth, whether it be
remembered or not. The Bank charter ran out, and a recharter was granted
by Congress. That recharter was laid before 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 understood it. I will venture here to say that I have
heard Judge Douglas say that he approved of General Jackson for that act.
What has now become of all his tirade about "resistance of 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 cautious to say that that warfare of his is to fall
upon the leaders of the Republican party. Almost every word he utters,
and every distinction he makes, has its significance. 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
intolerant, and that require extermination at his hands. As this is dearly
and unquestionably the light in which he presents that matter, I want to
ask your attention, addressing myself to the 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
re-election? 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
something 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 when he first introduced the bill, he never thought of it; but
still he fights furiously for the proposition, 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 substantially in a former speech, that he cares not if
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. Is that what you mean? [Cries of "No," one voice "Yes."] Yes, I have
no doubt you who have always been for him, if you mean that. No doubt of
that, soberly I have said, and I repeat it. 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 Cincinnati platform. Now, I could ask the Republican
party, after all the hard names that Judge Douglas has called them by all
his repeated charges of their inclination to marry with and hug negroes;
all his declarations of Black Republicanism,--by the way, we are
improving, 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
Republican men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they
had better not do it; but I think that the Republican 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
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.