whether I have succeeded in sustaining the charge, and whether Judge
Douglas has at all succeeded in rebutting it? You all heard me call upon
him to say which of these pieces of evidence was a forgery. Does he
say that what 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 transcript from the Globe
of the quotations from Bigler's speech is a forgery? Does he say the
quotations from his own speech are forgeries? Does he say this transcript
from Trumbull's speech is a forgery?
["He didn'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 cuttle-fish,
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. Ain't the Judge playing the
cuttle-fish?
Now, I would ask very special attention to the consideration 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
testimony, every one of which he says is a forgery, he has shown to
be such. Not one of them has he shown to 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 Trumbull's charge that he [Douglas] inserted a provision into
the bill to prevent the constitution being submitted to the people, what
was his answer? He comes here and reads from the Congressional Globe to
show that on his motion that provision 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
afterwards took it out. Both are perhaps true. It was in regard to that
thing precisely that I told him he had dropped the cub. Trumbull shows you
that by his introducing the bill 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
yesterday. 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 Douglas 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, by 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 say 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. Although 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 knows 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 account 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 were 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 himself 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 alterations 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 the right to infer that Judge
Douglas understood it was the purpose of his party, in engineering that
bill through, to make a constitution, and have Kansas come into the Union
with that constitution, 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
Trumbull's speech that depends on Trumbull's veracity at all. He has only
arrayed the evidence and told you what follows as a matter of reasoning.
There is not a statement in the whole speech that depends on Trumbull's
word. If you have ever studied geometry, you remember 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.
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE, AT GALESBURGH, OCTOBER 7, 1858
Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.
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
published. There has been an opportunity afforded to the public to see
our respective views upon the topics discussed 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
backwards upon some notes which I have taken, reversing the order, by
beginning where he concluded.
The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, 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 language 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 Declaration 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 Douglas 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 Republican meetings; and he instances Tazewell County 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 Democracy." 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 inconsistency in them, if there
is any conflict in them, the public 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 assumes 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 intelligent men in the community would see them and know
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
happiness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior 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 an intelligent and
reading community, who will peruse what I say, weigh it, and then judge
whether I advanced improper or unsound views, or whether I advanced
hypocritical, 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 cannot claim that I am entirely free from all error
in the opinions I advance.
The Judge has also detained us awhile 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 Republican party. He assumes
that our party is altogether sectional, that the party to which he
adheres is national; and the argument is, that no party can be a rightful
party--and 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 emperors 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 democracy, because
there is a section so directly opposed to it that they will 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 understood 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 attention 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 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
evidence 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 Douglas and
I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we have now for the fifth
time met face to face in debate, and up to this day I have not found
either Judge Douglas or any friend of his taking hold of the Republican
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 wrong, 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 Democrats of the free States are agreeing with
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 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 principles 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 organizing 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 existence, and that these old Mexican laws excluded slavery.
How can that be used as a principle for declaring 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 of establishing a general principle. The acts to
which I have referred were a part of a general system of Compromises.
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, because in another way it was paid
for, considering that as a part of that system of measures called the
Compromise 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
farther 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 system 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 principle, for all future Territories. And I have the
evidence 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 framing new Territories, did not attempt to follow these bills
of New Mexico and Utah; and even when he introduced this Nebraska Bill, I
think you will discover that he did not exactly follow them. But I do not
wish to dwell at great length upon this branch of the discussion. My own
opinion is, that a thorough investigation 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, in proceeding, that he is opposed to making any odious
distinctions between free and slave States. I am altogether unaware that
the Republicans are in favor of making any odious distinctions between the
free and slave States. But there is still a difference, I think, between
Judge Douglas and the Republicans in this. I suppose that the real
difference 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 liberty; 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
anything 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 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 institution 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 the wrong from growing larger,
and looks to there never being an end to 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 country who contemplate 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, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention
of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may
come to an end.