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 favour of making all
the States of this Union uniform in all their internal regulations; that
in all their domestic concerns I am in favour of making them entirely
uniform. He draws this inference from the language I have quoted to you.
He says that I am in favour of making war by the North upon the South
for the extinction of slavery; that I am also in favour 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 favour 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.... 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 further spread of it, and place it
where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the 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. And when it is said that I am in
favour 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
favour 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 said.
Now, in relation to his inference that I am in favour of a general
consolidation of all the local institutions of the various States.... 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 labour, 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.
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 favour 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 unequalled 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 favour 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, we are both by 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 things which grow North grow in the South.
All this I suppose he understands I am in favour 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; 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 would 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. 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
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 unfavourable
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 re-charter was
granted by Congress. That re-charter 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 the 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
against "resistance to 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 require extermination at his hands. As this is clearly
and unquestionably the light in which he presents that matter, I want to
ask your attention, addressing myself to 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 pretence; 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 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. 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 Judge Douglas has called them
by, ... 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 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 labourers, 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 labour;
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 minds 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.
We were often,--more than once, at least,--in the course of Judge
Douglas's speech last night, reminded that this government was made for
white men,--that he believed it was made for white men. Well, that is
putting it into a shape in which no one wants to deny it; but the Judge
then goes into his passion for drawing inferences that are not
warranted. I protest, now and for ever, against that counterfeit logic
which presumes that, because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I
do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is, that I need not
have her for either; but, as God made us separate, we can leave one
another alone, and do one another much good thereby. There are white men
enough to marry all the white women, and enough black men to marry all
the black women; and in God's name let them be so married. The Judge
regales us with the terrible enormities that take place by the mixture
of races; that the inferior race bears the superior down. Why, Judge, if
we do not let them get together in the Territories, they won't mix
there. I should say at least that that was a self-evident truth.
Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, somewhere about
the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings,
I suppose, have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I
suppose to be some of them.
We are now a mighty nation: we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of
people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land
of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for
about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small
people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a
vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem
desirable among men. We look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous
to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away
back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of
prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as
our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the
principle that they were contending for, and we understand that by what
they then did, it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we
now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind
ourselves of all the good done in this process of time,--of how it was
done, and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and
we go from these meetings in better humour with ourselves,--we feel more
attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we
inhabit. In every way we are better men, in the age and race and country
in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all
this, we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else
connected with it. We have, besides these men--descended by blood from
our ancestors--among us, perhaps half our people who are not descendants
at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe,--German,
Irish, French, and Scandinavian,--men that have come from Europe
themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here,
finding themselves our equal in all things. If they look back through
this history, to trace their connection with those days by blood, they
find they have none: they cannot carry themselves back into that
glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us; but
when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find
that those old men say that "we hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral
sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that
it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a
right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of
the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That
is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of
patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those
patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of
men throughout the world.
Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of "don't
care if slavery is voted up or voted down"; for sustaining the Dred
Scott decision; for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not
mean anything at all,--we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of
what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that
the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to
his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now, I ask you
in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if
confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children and repeated to them,
do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to
transform this government into a government of some other form? Those
arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with
as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be
done for them as their condition will allow,--what are these arguments?
They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in
all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favour of
kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the
people,--not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were
better off for being ridden. That is their argument; and this argument
of the Judge is the same old serpent, that says, "You work, and I eat;
you toil, and I will enjoy the fruits of it." Turn in whatever way you
will,--whether it come from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving
the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a
reason for enslaving the men of another race,--it is all the same old
serpent; and I hold, if that course of argumentation that is made for
the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about
this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like
to know--taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares
that all men are equal, upon principle, and making exceptions to
it--where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why
not another say it does not mean some other man? If that Declaration is
not the truth, let us get the statute-book in which we find it, and tear
it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true, let us tear it
out. [Cries of "No! No!"] Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly
by it, then.
It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities
and impose them upon us, and to the extent that a necessity is imposed
upon a man, he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in
which we found ourselves when we established this government. We had
slaves among us; we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted
them to remain in slavery; we could not secure the good we did secure,
if we grasped for more; but, having by necessity submitted to that much,
it does not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties.
Let that charter stand as our standard.