nor frightened from it by menaces 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.
SPEECH AT NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, MARCH 6, 1860
MR. PRESIDENT, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW HAVEN:--If the Republican
party of this nation shall ever have the national House entrusted to its
keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs
of national housekeeping. Whatever matters of importance may come up,
whatever difficulties may arise in its way of administration of the
Government, that party will then have to attend to. It will then be
compelled to attend to other questions, besides this question which now
assumes an overwhelming importance--the question of slavery. It is true
that in the organization of the Republican party this question of slavery
was more important than any other: indeed, so much more important has
it become that no more 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 house-keeping 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 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 control of
the Government. Yet, just now, they cannot even obtain a hearing, and I do
not propose 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 elsewhere--all of us wish this question settled, wish it out of the
way. It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the giving
of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping. 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
insisted, 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 forever from the politics of the country. Can you call to 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 abolition 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 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 made 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
resolutions declaring that the settlement made by the Compromise of 1850
was a finality that it would last forever. 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 faults about them. There must
be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose to which they were
designed. We can only speculate as to where that fault, that inadequacy,
is, but we may perhaps profit by past experiences.
I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures 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 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 property, 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 with the reply, "I can't see it so." He opened a Bible and
pointed him 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 it is, it is not for me to say, but if they
do, they see it as it is through two thousand millions 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 millions of dollars,
invested in this species of property, all so concentrated that the mind
can grasp it at once--this immense pecuniary interest--has its influence
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 Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say we
think, most of us, that this charter of freedom applies to the slaves 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 a 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 regard 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 existence 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 conflict.
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: Whatever endangers 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 some philosophical
opinion can be permanently maintained. And hence there are but two
policies in regard to slavery that can be at all maintained. 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 everything 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 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 possessed the
power to restrain it from going outside those limits. From the necessities
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 circumstances, it would
become me to let that particular mode 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 on 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 advocate [Douglas] has said, "I don't
care whether it be voted up or 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 in tobacco. All recognize this policy, the plausible
sugar-coated name of which is "popular sovereignty."
This policy chiefly stands in the way of a permanent settlement of the
question. I believe there is no danger of its becoming the permanent
policy of the country, for it is based on a public indifference. There is
nobody that "don't care." All the people do care one way or the other! I
do not charge that its author, when he says he "don't care," states his
individual opinion; he only expresses his policy for the government. I
understand that he has never said as an individual whether he thought
slavery right or wrong--and he is the only man in the nation that has not!
Now such a policy may have a temporary run; it may spring up as necessary
to the political prospects of some gentleman; but it is utterly baseless:
the people are not indifferent, and it can therefore have no durability or
permanence.
But suppose it could: Then it could be maintained only by a public opinion
that shall say, "We don't care." There must be a change in public opinion;
the public mind must be so far debauched as to square with this policy
of caring not at all. The people must come to consider this as "merely
a question of dollars and cents," and to believe that in some places the
Almighty has made slavery necessarily eternal. This policy can be brought
to prevail if the people can be brought round to say honestly, "We don't
care"; if not, it can never be maintained. It is for you to say whether
that can be done.
You are ready to say it cannot, but be not too fast! Remember what a long
stride has been taken since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise! Do you
know of any Democrat, of either branch of the party--do you know one who
declares that he believes that the Declaration of Independence has any
application to the negro? Judge Taney declares that it has not, and Judge
Douglas even vilifies me personally and scolds me roundly for saying that
the Declaration applies to all men, and that negroes are men. Is there a
Democrat here who does not deny that the Declaration applies to the
negro? Do any of you know of one? Well, I have tried before perhaps
fifty audiences, some larger and some smaller than this, to find one such
Democrat, and never yet have I found one who said I did not place him
right in that. I must assume that Democrats hold that, and now, not one
of these Democrats can show that he said that five years ago! I venture to
defy the whole party to produce one man that ever uttered the belief
that the Declaration did not apply to negroes, before the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise! Four or five years ago we all thought negroes were
men, and that when "all men" were named, negroes were included. But the
whole Democratic party has deliberately taken negroes from the class of
men and put them in the class of brutes. Turn it as you will it is simply
the truth! Don't be too hasty, then, in saying that the people cannot be
brought to this new doctrine, but note that long stride. One more as long
completes the journey from where negroes are estimated as men to where
they are estimated as mere brutes--as rightful property!
That saying "In the struggle between white men 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 statement. "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 the ingenious
falsehood to degrade 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, when 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 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 opinion 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 freemen 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 is wrong, but you denounce all
attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong that
you are not willing to deal with as wrong? Why are you 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 even allow it
to be 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 religion; we must not bring
it into the Tract Society or the 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 the slave States should
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
emancipation 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 sorrow
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, "Hooray 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 easy to demonstrate that "our fathers, who framed this Government
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 necessities arising from its existence permitted. In forming the
Constitution they found the slave trade existing, 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 afterwards adopted as their own the act by the first
Congress held under that Constitution, of which many of the framers were
members, that prohibited the spread of slavery into Territories. Thus
the same men, the framers of the Constitution, 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 wanted it can be found in the phraseology of the
Constitution. When men are framing 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 matters but this of slavery the framers of the
Constitution 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 establishing 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 return 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?
We cannot doubt that it was done on purpose. Only one reason is possible,
and that is supplied us by one of the framers of the Constitution--and
it is not possible for man to conceive of any other--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.