[Fragment of a speech of Abraham Lincoln at the Republican banquet in
Chicago, December 10, 1856. The rest of this speech, if it was ever
reported, is presumably no longer extant, as it is not published in
any collection of Lincoln's speeches.]
GENTLEMEN:--We have another annual presidential message. Like a
rejected lover making merry at the wedding of his rival, the President
felicitates himself hugely over the late presidential election. He
considers the result a signal triumph of good principles and good men,
and a very pointed rebuke of bad ones. He says the people did it. He
forgets that the "people," as he complacently calls only those who voted
for Buchanan, are in a minority of the whole people by about four
hundred thousand votes--one full tenth of all the votes. Remembering
this, he might perceive that the "rebuke" may not be quite as durable as
he seems to think--that the majority may not choose to remain
permanently rebuked by that minority.
The President thinks the great body of us Fremonters, being ardently
attached to liberty, in the abstract, were duped by a few wicked and
designing men. There is a slight difference of opinion on this. We think
he, being ardently attached to the hope of a second term, in the
concrete, was duped by men who hate liberty every way. He is the
cat's-paw. By much dragging of chestnuts from the fire for others to
eat, his claws are burnt off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as
unfit for further use. As the fool said of King Lear, when his daughters
had turned him out of doors, "He's a shelled peascod."
So far as the President charges us with a desire to "change the
domestic institutions of existing States," and of "doing everything in
our power to deprive the Constitution and the laws of moral authority,"
for the whole party on belief, and for myself on knowledge, I pronounce
the charge an unmixed and unmitigated falsehood.
Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public
opinion can change the government practically just so much. Public
opinion, on any subject, always has a central idea, from which all its
minor thoughts radiate. That central idea in our political public
opinion at the beginning was, and until recently has continued to be,
the equality of men. And although it has always submitted patiently to
whatever of inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual necessity,
its constant working has been a steady progress toward the practical
equality of all men. The late presidential election was a struggle by
one party to discard that central idea and to substitute for it the
opposite idea that slavery is right in the abstract, the workings of
which as a central idea may be the perpetuity of human slavery and its
extension to all countries and colors. Less than a year ago the Richmond
"Enquirer," an avowed advocate of slavery regardless of color, in order
to favor his views, invented the phrase "State equality," and now the
President, in his message, adopts the "Enquirer's" catch-phrase, telling
us the people "have asserted the constitutional equality of each and all
the States of the Union as States." The President flatters himself that
the new central idea is completely inaugurated; and so indeed it is, so
far as the mere fact of a presidential election can inaugurate it. To us
it is left to know that the majority of the people have not yet declared
for it, and to hope that they never will. All of us who did not vote for
Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are a majority of four hundred thousand.
But in the late contest we were divided between Fremont and Fillmore.
Can we not come together for the future? Let every one who really
believes, and is resolved, that free society is not and shall not be a
failure, and who can conscientiously declare that in the past contest he
has done only what he thought best--let every such one have charity to
believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be
bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and with steady eye on the
real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old central ideas of the
Republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us: God is with us. We
shall again be able not to declare that "all States as States are
equal," nor yet that "all citizens as citizens are equal," but to renew
the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more,
"that all men are created equal." [Applause.]
[Illustration: _FANEUIL HALL_
_Photogravure after a photograph_
This historic "Cradle of Liberty" yields to no building in America, save
perhaps Independence Hall, in interest. Faneuil Hall, in Boston, was
built in 1740, by Peter Faneuil, a wealthy merchant, and presented to
the town for a town-hall and market uses, to which it has been devoted
ever since. In 1761 it was injured by fire, but was rebuilt by the town
in the following year. In 1805 it was considerably enlarged and
improved. During the troublous times which preceded the Revolution, it
was the scene of most exciting public meetings; and the great patriot
orators of that day sounded from this platform the stirring notes that
gave the chief impulse of patriotism to the whole country.]