territory is a power confided to the President and the Senate of the
United States. It is a 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, composed of the immediate
representatives of the people, all the time insisted that the territory
thus to be acquired 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 Representatives 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 representatives of the
people being called upon to say anything about it, and 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 due 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,
according 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 fast it is needed. We have no clear and certain
way of determining or demonstrating how fast territory is needed by the
necessities of the country. Whoever wants to go out filibustering, then,
thinks that 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 necessity of additional slave-territory
as it is to assert anything 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 question, 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 disturbance that is existing amongst 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.
And now, my friends, having said the little I wish to say upon this head,
whether I have occupied the whole of the remnant of my time or not, I
believe I could not enter upon any new topic so as to treat it fully,
without transcending my time, which I would not for a moment think of
doing. I give way to Judge Douglas.
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE, AT QUINCY, OCTOBER 13, 1858.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have had no immediate conference with Judge
Douglas, but I will venture to say that he and I will perfectly agree that
your entire silence, both when I speak and when he speaks, will be most
agreeable to us.
In the month of May, 1856, the elements in the State of Illinois which
have since been consolidated into the Republican party assembled together
in a State Convention at Bloomington. They adopted at that time what, in
political language, is called a platform. In June of the same year the
elements of the Republican party in the nation assembled together in
a National Convention at Philadelphia. They adopted what is called the
National Platform. In June, 1858,--the present year,--the Republicans
of Illinois reassembled at Springfield, in State Convention, and adopted
again their platform, as I suppose not differing in any essential
particular from either of the former ones, but perhaps adding something in
relation to the new developments of political progress in the country.
The Convention that assembled in June last did me the honor, if it be one,
and I esteem it such, to nominate me as their candidate for the United
States Senate. I have supposed that, in entering upon this canvass, I
stood generally upon these platforms. We are now met together on the 13th
of October of the same year, only four months from the adoption of the
last platform, and I am unaware that in this canvass, from the beginning
until to-day, any one of our adversaries has taken hold of our platforms,
or laid his finger upon anything that he calls wrong in them.
In the very first one of these joint discussions between Senator Douglas
and myself, Senator Douglas, without alluding at all to these platforms,
or any one of them, of which I have spoken, attempted to hold me
responsible for a set of resolutions passed long before the meeting of
either one of these conventions of which I have spoken. And as a ground
for holding me responsible for these resolutions, he assumed that they had
been passed at a State Convention of the Republican party, and that I
took part in that Convention. It was discovered afterward that this was
erroneous, that the resolutions which he endeavored to hold me responsible
for had not been passed by any State Convention anywhere, had not been
passed at Springfield, where he supposed they had, or assumed that they
had, and that they had been passed in no convention in which I had taken
part. The Judge, nevertheless, was not willing to give up the point that
he was endeavoring to make upon me, and he therefore thought to still
hold me to the point that he was endeavoring to make, by showing that
the resolutions that he read had been passed at a local convention in the
northern part of the State, although it was not a local convention that
embraced my residence at all, nor one that reached, as I suppose, nearer
than one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles of where I was when it
met, nor one in which I took any part at all. He also introduced other
resolutions, passed at other meetings, and by combining the whole,
although they were all antecedent to the two State Conventions and the one
National Convention I have mentioned, still he insisted, and now insists,
as I understand, that I am in some way responsible for them.
At Jonesboro, on our third meeting, I insisted to the Judge that I was
in no way rightfully held responsible for the proceedings of this local
meeting or convention, in which I had taken no part, and in which I was
in no way embraced; but I insisted to him that if he thought I was
responsible for every man or every set of men everywhere, who happen to
be my friends, the rule ought to work both ways, and he ought to be
responsible for the acts and resolutions of all men or sets of men who
were or are now his supporters and friends, and gave him a pretty
long string of resolutions, passed by men who are now his friends, and
announcing doctrines for which he does not desire to be held responsible.
This still does not satisfy Judge Douglas. He still adheres to his
proposition, that I am responsible for what some of my friends in
different parts of the State have done, but that he is not responsible
for what his have done. At least, so I understand him. But in addition to
that, the Judge, at our meeting in Galesburgh, last week, undertakes to
establish that I am guilty of a species of double dealing with the
public; that I make speeches of a certain sort in the north, among the
Abolitionists, which I would not make in the south, and that I make
speeches of a certain sort in the south which I would not make in the
north. I apprehend, in the course I have marked out for myself, that I
shall not have to dwell at very great length upon this subject.
As this was done in the Judge's opening speech at Galesburgh, I had an
opportunity, as I had the middle speech then, of saying something in
answer to it. He brought forward a quotation or two from a speech of mine
delivered at Chicago, and then, to contrast with it, he brought forward an
extract from a speech of mine at Charleston, in which he insisted that I
was greatly inconsistent, and insisted that his conclusion followed, that
I was playing a double part, and speaking in one region one way, and in
another region another way. I have not time now to dwell on this as long
as I would like, and wish only now to requote that portion of my speech
at Charleston which the Judge quoted, and then make some comments upon
it. This he quotes from me as being delivered at Charleston, and I believe
correctly:
"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing
about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black
races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters
or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to
intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which
will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and
political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live while they do
remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. I am
as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned
to the white race."
This, I believe, is the entire quotation from Charleston speech, as Judge
Douglas made it his comments are as follows:
"Yes, here you find men who hurrah for Lincoln, and say he is right when
he discards all distinction between races, or when he declares that
he discards the doctrine that there is such a thing as a superior and
inferior race; and Abolitionists are required and expected to vote for
Mr. Lincoln because he goes for the equality of races, holding that in the
Declaration of Independence the white man and negro were declared equal,
and endowed by divine law with equality. And down South, with the old-line
Whigs, with the Kentuckians, the Virginians and the Tennesseeans, he tells
you that there is a physical difference between the races, making the
one superior, the other inferior, and he is in favor of maintaining the
superiority of the white race over the negro."
Those are the Judges comments. Now, I wish to show you that a month,
or only lacking three days of a month, before I made the speech at
Charleston, which the Judge quotes from, he had himself heard me say
substantially the same thing It was in our first meeting, at Ottawa--and I
will say a word about where it was, and the atmosphere it was in, after a
while--but at our first meeting, at Ottawa, I read an extract from an
old speech of mine, made nearly four years ago, not merely to show my
sentiments, but to show that my sentiments were long entertained and
openly expressed; in which extract I expressly declared that my own
feelings would not admit a social and political equality between the white
and black races, and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I
still knew that the public sentiment of the country would not, and that
such a thing was an utter impossibility, or substantially that. That
extract from my old speech the reporters by some sort of accident passed
over, and it was not reported. I lay no blame upon anybody. I suppose they
thought that I would hand it over to them, and dropped reporting while I
was giving it, but afterward went away without getting it from me. At the
end of that quotation from my old speech, which I read at Ottawa, I made
the comments which were reported at that time, and which I will now read,
and ask you to notice how very nearly they are the same as Judge Douglas
says were delivered by me down in Egypt. After reading, I added these
words:
"Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any great length; but this is the
true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of
slavery or the black race, and this is the whole of it: anything that
argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the
negro, is but a specious and fantastical arrangement of words by which a
man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here,
while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly,
to interfere with the institution in the States where it exists. I believe
I have no right to do so. I have no inclination to do so. I have no
purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and
black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in
my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together on 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 position. 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
rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence,--the right of 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 that he is not
my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not in
intellectual and moral endowments; 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 other man."
I have chiefly introduced this for the purpose of meeting the Judge's
charge that the quotation he took from my Charleston speech was what I
would say down South among the Kentuckians, the Virginians, etc., but
would not say in the regions in which was supposed to be more of the
Abolition element. I now make this comment: That speech from which I have
now read the quotation, and which is there given correctly--perhaps too
much so for good taste--was made away up North in the Abolition District
of this State par excellence, in the Lovejoy District, in the personal
presence of Lovejoy, for he was on the stand with us when I made it. It
had been made and put in print in that region only three days less than
a month before the speech made at Charleston, the like of which Judge
Douglas thinks I would not make where there was any Abolition element.
I only refer to this matter to say that I am altogether unconscious of
having attempted any double-dealing anywhere; that upon one occasion I may
say one thing, and leave other things unsaid, and vice versa, but that I
have said anything on one occasion that is inconsistent with what I have
said elsewhere, I deny, at least I deny it so far as the intention is
concerned. I find that I have devoted to this topic a larger portion of my
time than I had intended. I wished to show, but I will pass it upon this
occasion, that in the sentiment I have occasionally advanced upon the
Declaration of Independence I am entirely borne out by the sentiments
advanced by our old Whig leader, Henry Clay, and I have the book here to
show it from but because I have already occupied more time than I intended
to do on that topic, I pass over it.
At Galesburgh, I tried to show that by the Dred Scott decision, pushed
to its legitimate consequences, slavery would be established in all the
States as well as in the Territories. I did this because, upon a former
occasion, I had asked Judge Douglas whether, if the Supreme Court should
make a decision declaring that the States had not the power to exclude
slavery from their limits, he would adopt and follow that decision as a
rule of political action; and because he had not directly answered that
question, but had merely contented himself with sneering at it, I again
introduced it, and tried to show that the conclusion that I stated
followed inevitably and logically from the proposition already decided
by the court. Judge Douglas had the privilege of replying to me at
Galesburgh, and again he gave me no direct answer as to whether he would
or would not sustain such a decision if made. I give him his third chance
to say yes or no. He is not obliged to do either, probably he will not do
either; but I give him the third chance. I tried to show then that this
result, this conclusion, inevitably followed from the point already
decided by the court. The Judge, in his reply, again sneers at the thought
of the court making any such decision, and in the course of his remarks
upon this subject uses the language which I will now read. Speaking of me,
the Judge says:
"He goes on and insists that the Dred Scott decision would carry slavery
into the free States, notwithstanding the decision itself says the
contrary." And he adds:
"Mr. Lincoln knows that there is no member of the Supreme Court that holds
that doctrine. He knows that every one of them in their opinions held the
reverse."
I especially introduce this subject again for the purpose of saying that
I have the Dred Scott decision here, and I will thank Judge Douglas to lay
his finger upon the place in the entire opinions of the court where any
one of them "says the contrary." It is very hard to affirm a negative with
entire confidence. I say, however, that I have examined that decision with
a good deal of care, as a lawyer examines a decision and, so far as I have
been able to do so, the court has nowhere in its opinions said that
the States have the power to exclude slavery, nor have they used other
language substantially that, I also say, so far as I can find, not one of
the concurring judges has said that the States can exclude slavery, nor
said anything that was substantially that. The nearest approach that any
one of them has made to it, so far as I can find, was by Judge Nelson,
and the approach he made to it was exactly, in substance, the Nebraska
Bill,--that the States had the exclusive power over the question of
slavery, so far as they are not limited by the Constitution of the United
States. I asked the question, therefore, if the non-concurring judges,
McLean or Curtis, had asked to get an express declaration that the States
could absolutely exclude slavery from their limits, what reason have we
to believe that it would not have been voted down by the majority of the
judges, just as Chase's amendment was voted down by Judge Douglas and his
compeers when it was offered to the Nebraska Bill.
Also, at Galesburgh, I said something in regard to those Springfield
resolutions that Judge Douglas had attempted to use upon me at Ottawa, and
commented at some length upon the fact that they were, as presented,
not genuine. Judge Douglas in his reply to me seemed to be somewhat
exasperated. He said he would never have believed that Abraham Lincoln, as
he kindly called me, would have attempted such a thing as I had attempted
upon that occasion; and among other expressions which he used toward me,
was that I dared to say forgery, that I had dared to say forgery [turning
to Judge Douglas]. Yes, Judge, I did dare to say forgery. But in this
political canvass the Judge ought to remember that I was not the first
who dared to say forgery. At Jacksonville, Judge Douglas made a speech in
answer to something said by Judge Trumbull, and at the close of what
he said upon that subject, he dared to say that Trumbull had forged his
evidence. He said, too, that he should not concern himself with Trumbull
any more, but thereafter he should hold Lincoln responsible for the
slanders upon him. When I met him at Charleston after that, although I
think that I should not have noticed the subject if he had not said he
would hold me responsible for it, I spread out before him the statements
of the evidence that Judge Trumbull had used, and I asked Judge Douglas,
piece by piece, to put his finger upon one piece of all that evidence that
he would say was a forgery! When I went through with each and every piece,
Judge Douglas did not dare then to say that any piece of it was a forgery.
So it seems that there are some things that Judge Douglas dares to do, and
some that he dares not to do.
[A voice: It is the same thing with you.]
Yes, sir, it is the same thing with me. I do dare to say forgery when it
is true, and don't dare to say forgery when it is false. Now I will say
here to this audience and to Judge Douglas I have not dared to say he
committed a forgery, and I never shall until I know it; but I did dare
to say--just to suggest to the Judge--that a forgery had been committed,
which by his own showing had been traced to him and two of his friends.
I dared to suggest to him that he had expressly promised in one of his
public speeches to investigate that matter, and I dared to suggest to him
that there was an implied promise that when he investigated it he would
make known the result. I dared to suggest to the Judge that he could not
expect to be quite clear of suspicion of that fraud, for since the time
that promise was made he had been with those friends, and had not kept his
promise in regard to the investigation and the report upon it. I am not
a very daring man, but I dared that much, Judge, and I am not much scared
about it yet. When the Judge says he would n't have believed of Abraham
Lincoln that he would have made such an attempt as that he reminds me of
the fact that he entered upon this canvass with the purpose to treat
me courteously; that touched me somewhat. It sets me to thinking. I was
aware, when it was first agreed that Judge Douglas and I were to have
these seven joint discussions, that they were the successive acts of a
drama, perhaps I should say, to be enacted, not merely in the face of
audiences like this, but in the face of the nation, and to some extent,
by my relation to him, and not from anything in myself, in the face of the
world; and I am anxious that they should be conducted with dignity and in
the good temper which would be befitting the vast audiences before which
it was conducted. But when Judge Douglas got home from Washington and made
his first speech in Chicago, the evening afterward I made some sort of
a reply to it. His second speech was made at Bloomington, in which he
commented upon my speech at Chicago and said that I had used language
ingeniously contrived to conceal my intentions, or words to that effect.
Now, I understand that this is an imputation upon my veracity and my
candor. I do not know what the Judge understood by it, but in our first
discussion, at Ottawa, he led off by charging a bargain, somewhat corrupt
in its character, upon Trumbull and myself,--that we had entered into a
bargain, one of the terms of which was that Trumbull was to Abolitionize
the old Democratic party, and I (Lincoln) was to Abolitionize the old Whig
party; I pretending to be as good an old-line Whig as ever. Judge Douglas
may not understand that he implicated my truthfulness and my honor when he
said I was doing one thing and pretending another; and I misunderstood him
if he thought he was treating me in a dignified way, as a man of honor and
truth, as he now claims he was disposed to treat me. Even after that time,
at Galesburgh, when he brings forward an extract from a speech made at
Chicago and an extract from a speech made at Charleston, to prove that I
was trying to play a double part, that I was trying to cheat the public,
and get votes upon one set of principles at one place, and upon another
set of principles at another place,--I do not understand but what he
impeaches my honor, my veracity, and my candor; and because he does this,
I do not understand that I am bound, if I see a truthful ground for it,
to keep my hands off of him. As soon as I learned that Judge Douglas was
disposed to treat me in this way, I signified in one of my speeches that
I should be driven to draw upon whatever of humble resources I might
have,--to adopt a new course with him. I was not entirely sure that I
should be able to hold my own with him, but I at least had the purpose
made to do as well as I could upon him; and now I say that I will not be
the first to cry "Hold." I think it originated with the Judge, and when he
quits, I probably will. But I shall not ask any favors at all. He asks
me, or he asks the audience, if I wish to push this matter to the point of
personal difficulty. I tell him, no. He did not make a mistake, in one of
his early speeches, when he called me an "amiable" man, though perhaps he
did when he called me an "intelligent" man. It really hurts me very much
to suppose that I have wronged anybody on earth. I again tell him, no! I
very much prefer, when this canvass shall be over, however it may result,
that we at least part without any bitter recollections of personal
difficulties.