put it out of the Territory. It is to force it across the line, or change
its character so that, as property, it is out of existence. But what is
the controlling of it "as other property"? Is controlling it as other
property the same thing as destroying it, or driving it away? I should
think not. I should think the controlling of it as other property would be
just about what you in Kentucky should want. I understand the controlling
of property means the controlling of it for the benefit of the owner of
it. While I have no doubt the Supreme Court of the United States would
say "God speed" to any of the Territorial Legislatures that should thus
control slave property, they would sing quite a different tune if, by
the pretence of controlling it, they were to undertake to pass laws which
virtually excluded it,--and that upon a very well known principle to
all lawyers, that what a Legislature cannot directly do, it cannot do by
indirection; that as the Legislature has not the power to drive slaves
out, they have no power, by indirection, by tax, or by imposing burdens in
any way on that property, to effect the same end, and that any attempt to
do so would be held by the Dred Scott court unconstitutional.
Douglas is not willing to stand by his first proposition that they can
exclude it, because we have seen that that proposition amounts to nothing
more nor less than the naked absurdity that you may lawfully drive out
that which has a lawful right to remain. He admitted at first that the
slave might be lawfully taken into the Territories under the Constitution
of the United States, and yet asserted that he might be lawfully driven
out. That being the proposition, it is the absurdity I have stated. He
is not willing to stand in the face of that direct, naked, and impudent
absurdity; he has, therefore, modified his language into that of being
"controlled as other property."
The Kentuckians don't like this in Douglas! I will tell you where it will
go. He now swears by the court. He was once a leading man in Illinois to
break down a court, because it had made a decision he did not like. But
he now not only swears by the court, the courts having got to working
for you, but he denounces all men that do not swear by the courts,
as unpatriotic, as bad citizens. When one of these acts of unfriendly
legislation shall impose such heavy burdens as to, in effect, destroy
property in slaves in a Territory, and show plainly enough that there
can be no mistake in the purpose of the Legislature to make them
so burdensome, this same Supreme Court will decide that law to be
unconstitutional, and he will be ready to say for your benefit "I swear by
the court; I give it up"; and while that is going on he has been getting
all his men to swear by the courts, and to give it up with him. In this
again he serves you faithfully, and, as I say, more wisely than you serve
yourselves.
Again: I have alluded in the beginning of these remarks to the fact that
Judge Douglas has made great complaint of my having expressed the opinion
that this government "cannot endure permanently, half slave and half
free." He has complained of Seward for using different language, and
declaring that there is an "irrepressible conflict" between the principles
of free and slave labor. [A voice: "He says it is not original with
Seward. That it is original with Lincoln."] I will attend to that
immediately, sir. Since that time, Hickman of Pennsylvania expressed the
same sentiment. He has never denounced Mr. Hickman: why? There is a little
chance, notwithstanding that opinion in the mouth of Hickman, that he may
yet be a Douglas man. That is the difference! It is not unpatriotic to
hold that opinion if a man is a Douglas man.
But neither I, nor Seward, nor Hickman is entitled to the enviable or
unenviable distinction of having first expressed that idea. That same idea
was expressed by the Richmond Enquirer, in Virginia, in 1856,--quite two
years before it was expressed by the first of us. And while Douglas was
pluming himself that in his conflict with my humble self, last year, he
had "squelched out" that fatal heresy, as he delighted to call it, and
had suggested that if he only had had a chance to be in New York and meet
Seward he would have "squelched" it there also, it never occurred to him
to breathe a word against Pryor. I don't think that you can discover that
Douglas ever talked of going to Virginia to "squelch" out that idea there.
No. More than that. That same Roger A. Pryor was brought to Washington
City and made the editor of the par excellence Douglas paper, after making
use of that expression, which, in us, is so unpatriotic and heretical.
From all this, my Kentucky friends may see that this opinion is heretical
in his view only when it is expressed by men suspected of a desire that
the country shall all become free, and not when expressed by those fairly
known to entertain the desire that the whole country shall become slave.
When expressed by that class of men, it is in nowise offensive to him. In
this again, my friends of Kentucky, you have Judge Douglas with you.
There is another reason why you Southern people ought to nominate Douglas
at your convention at Charleston. That reason is the wonderful capacity of
the man,--the power he has of doing what would seem to be impossible. Let
me call your attention to one of these apparently impossible things:
Douglas had three or four very distinguished men of the most extreme
anti-slavery views of any men in the Republican party expressing their
desire for his re-election to the Senate last year. That would, of itself,
have seemed to be a little wonderful; but that wonder is heightened when
we see that Wise of Virginia, a man exactly opposed to them, a man who
believes in the divine right of slavery, was also expressing his desire
that Douglas should be reelected; that another man that may be said to
be kindred to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your
own State, was also agreeing with the anti-slavery men in the North that
Douglas ought to be re-elected. Still to heighten the wonder, a senator
from Kentucky, whom I have always loved with an affection as tender
and endearing as I have ever loved any man, who was opposed to the
anti-slavery men for reasons which seemed sufficient to him, and equally
opposed to Wise and Breckinridge, was writing letters into Illinois to
secure the reelection of Douglas. Now, that all these conflicting elements
should be brought, while at daggers' points with one another, to support
him, is a feat that is worthy for you to note and consider. It is quite
probable that each of these classes of men thought, by the re-election of
Douglas, their peculiar views would gain something: it is probable that
the anti-slavery men thought their views would gain something; that Wise
and Breckinridge thought so too, as regards their opinions; that Mr.
Crittenden thought that his views would gain something, although he was
opposed to both these other men. It is probable that each and all of them
thought that they were using Douglas; and it is yet an unsolved problem
whether he was not using them all. If he was, then it is for you to
consider whether that power to perform wonders is one for you lightly to
throw away.
There is one other thing that I will say to you, in this relation. It is
but my opinion, I give it to you without a fee. It is my opinion that it
is for you to take him or be defeated; and that if you do take him you
may be beaten. You will surely be beaten if you do not take him. We, the
Republicans and others forming the opposition of the country, intend to
"stand by our guns," to be patient and firm, and in the long run to beat
you, whether you take him or not. We know that before we fairly beat
you we have to beat you both together. We know that you are "all of a
feather," and that we have to beat you all together, and we expect to
do it. We don't intend to be very impatient about it. We mean to be as
deliberate and calm about it as it is possible to be, but as firm and
resolved as it is possible for men to be. When we do as we say,--beat
you,--you perhaps want to know what we will do with you.
I will tell you, so far as I am authorized to speak for the opposition,
what we mean to do with you. We mean to treat you, as near as we possibly
can, as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison treated you. We mean to leave
you alone, and in no way interfere with your institution; to abide by all
and every compromise of the Constitution, and, in a word, coming back to
the original proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerated men (if we
have degenerated) may, according to the examples of those noble fathers,
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. We mean to remember that you are
as good as we; that there is no difference between us other than the
difference of circumstances. We mean to recognize and bear in mind always
that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we
claim to have, and treat you accordingly. We mean to marry your girls when
we have a chance, the white ones I mean; and I have the honor to inform
you that I once did have a chance in that way.
I have told you what we mean to do. I want to know, now, when that thing
takes place, what do you mean to do? I often hear it intimated that you
mean to divide the Union whenever a Republican, or anything like it, is
elected President of the United States. [A voice: "That is so."] "That is
so," one of them says; I wonder if he is a Kentuckian? [A voice: "He is
a Douglas man."] Well, then, I want to know what you are going to do with
your half of it? Are you going to split the Ohio down through, and push
your half off a piece? Or are you going to keep it right alongside of us
outrageous fellows? Or are you going to build up a wall some way between
your country and ours, by which that movable property of yours can't come
over here any more, to the danger of your losing it? Do you think you can
better yourselves, on that subject, by leaving us here under no obligation
whatever to return those specimens of your movable property that come
hither? You have divided the Union because we would not do right with you,
as you think, upon that subject; when we cease to be under obligations to
do anything for you, how much better off do you think you will be? Will
you make war upon us and kill us all? Why, gentlemen, I think you are as
gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as bravely in a
good cause, man for man, as any other people living; that you have shown
yourselves capable of this upon various occasions: but, man for man, you
are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are
of us. You will never make much of a hand at whipping us. If we were fewer
in numbers than you, I think that you could whip us; if we were equal, it
would likely be a drawn battle; but being inferior in numbers, you will
make nothing by attempting to master us.
But perhaps I have addressed myself as long, or longer, to the Kentuckians
than I ought to have done, inasmuch as I have said that whatever course
you take we intend in the end to beat you. I propose to address a few
remarks to our friends, by way of discussing with them the best means of
keeping that promise that I have in good faith made.
It may appear a little episodical for me to mention the topic of which
I will speak now. It is a favorite position of Douglas's that the
interference of the General Government, through the Ordinance of '87, or
through any other act of the General Government never has made or ever can
make a free State; the Ordinance of '87 did not make free States of
Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois; that these States are free upon his "great
principle" of popular sovereignty, because the people of those several
States have chosen to make them so. At Columbus, and probably here, he
undertook to compliment the people that they themselves have made the
State of Ohio free, and that the Ordinance of '87 was not entitled in any
degree to divide the honor with them. I have no doubt that the people
of the State of Ohio did make her free according to their own will and
judgment, but let the facts be remembered.
In 1802, I believe, it was you who made your first constitution, with
the clause prohibiting slavery, and you did it, I suppose, very nearly
unanimously; but you should bear in mind that you--speaking of you as
one people--that you did so unembarrassed by the actual presence of
the institution amongst you; that you made it a free State not with the
embarrassment upon you of already having among you many slaves, which if
they had been here, and you had sought to make a free State, you would
not know what to do with. If they had been among you, embarrassing
difficulties, most probably, would have induced you to tolerate a slave
constitution instead of a free one, as indeed these very difficulties have
constrained every people on this continent who have adopted slavery.
Pray what was it that made you free? What kept you free? Did you not
find your country free when you came to decide that Ohio should be a free
State? It is important to inquire by what reason you found it so. Let us
take an illustration between the States of Ohio and Kentucky. Kentucky is
separated by this River Ohio, not a mile wide. A portion of Kentucky, by
reason of the course of the Ohio, is farther north than this portion of
Ohio, in which we now stand. Kentucky is entirely covered with slavery;
Ohio is entirely free from it: What made that difference? Was it climate?
No. A portion of Kentucky was farther north than this portion of Ohio.
Was it soil? No. There is nothing in the soil of the one more favorable
to slave than the other. It was not climate or soil that mused one side of
the line to be entirely covered with slavery, and the other side free of
it. What was it? Study over it. Tell us, if you can, in all the range
of conjecture, if there be anything you can conceive of that made that
difference, other than that there was no law of any sort keeping it out of
Kentucky, while the Ordinance of '87 kept it out of Ohio. If there is any
other reason than this, I confess that it is wholly beyond my power to
conceive of it. This, then, I offer to combat the idea that that Ordinance
has never made any State free.
I don't stop at this illustration. I come to the State of Indiana; and
what I have said as between Kentucky and Ohio, I repeat as between
Indiana and Kentucky: it is equally applicable. One additional argument
is applicable also to Indiana. In her Territorial condition she more than
once petitioned Congress to abrogate the Ordinance entirely, or at least
so far as to suspend its operation for a time, in order that they should
exercise the "popular sovereignty" of having slaves if they wanted them.
The men then controlling the General Government, imitating the men of the
Revolution, refused Indiana that privilege. And so we have the evidence
that Indiana supposed she could have slaves, if it were not for that
Ordinance; that she besought Congress to put that barrier out of the way;
that Congress refused to do so; and it all ended at last in Indiana being
a free State. Tell me not then that the Ordinance of '87 had nothing to do
with making Indiana a free State, when we find some men chafing against,
and only restrained by, that barrier.
Come down again to our State of Illinois. The great Northwest Territory,
including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was acquired
first, I believe, by the British Government, in part at least, from the
French. Before the establishment of our independence it became a part
of Virginia, enabling Virginia afterward to transfer it to the General
Government. There were French settlements in what is now Illinois, and at
the same time there were French settlements in what is now Missouri, in
the tract of country that was not purchased till about 1803. In these
French settlements negro slavery had existed for many years, perhaps more
than a hundred; if not as much as two hundred years,--at Kaskaskia, in
Illinois, and at St. Genevieve, or Cape Girardeau, perhaps, in Missouri.
The number of slaves was not very great, but there was about the same
number in each place. They were there when we acquired the Territory.
There was no effort made to break up the relation of master and slave, and
even the Ordinance of 1787 was not so enforced as to destroy that slavery
in Illinois; nor did the Ordinance apply to Missouri at all.
What I want to ask your attention to; at this point, is that Illinois and
Missouri came into the Union about the same time, Illinois in the latter
part of 1818, and Missouri, after a struggle, I believe sometime in 1820.
They had been filling up with American people about the same period of
time; their progress enabling them to come into the Union about the same
time. At the end of that ten years, in which they had been so preparing
(for it was about that period of time), the number of slaves in Illinois
had actually decreased; while in Missouri, beginning with very few, at the
end of that ten years there were about ten thousand. This being so, and it
being remembered that Missouri and Illinois are, to a certain extent, in
the same parallel of latitude, that the northern half of Missouri and the
southern half of Illinois are in the same parallel of latitude, so that
climate would have the same effect upon one as upon the other, and that in
the soil there is no material difference so far as bears upon the question
of slavery being settled upon one or the other,--there being none of those
natural causes to produce a difference in filling them, and yet there
being a broad difference to their filling up, we are led again to inquire
what was the cause of that difference.
It is most natural to say that in Missouri there was no law to keep that
country from filling up with slaves, while in Illinois there was the
Ordinance of The Ordinance being there, slavery decreased during that ten
years; the Ordinance not being in the other, it increased from a few to
ten thousand. Can anybody doubt the reason of the difference?
I think all these facts most abundantly prove that my friend Judge
Douglas's proposition, that the Ordinance of '87, or the national
restriction of slavery, never had a tendency to make a free State, is a
fallacy,--a proposition without the shadow or substance of truth about it.
Douglas sometimes says that all the States (and it is part of this same
proposition I have been discussing) that have become free have become so
upon his "great principle"; that the State of Illinois itself came
into the Union as a slave State, and that the people, upon the "great
principle" of popular sovereignty, have since made it a free State. Allow
me but a little while to state to you what facts there are to justify him
in saying that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State.
I have mentioned to you that there were a few old French slaves there.
They numbered, I think, one or two hundred. Besides that, there had been
a Territorial law for indenturing black persons. Under that law, in
violation of the Ordinance of '87, but without any enforcement of the
Ordinance to overthrow the system, there had been a small number of
slaves introduced as indentured persons. Owing to this, the clause for
the prohibition of slavery was slightly modified. Instead of running like
yours, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime,
of which the party shall have been duly convicted, should exist in the
State, they said that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should
thereafter be introduced; and that the children of indentured servants
should be born free; and nothing was said about the few old French slaves.
Out of this fact, that the clause for prohibiting slavery was modified
because of the actual presence of it, Douglas asserts again and again that
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. How far the facts sustain
the conclusion that he draws, it is for intelligent and impartial men
to decide. I leave it with you, with these remarks, worthy of being
remembered, that that little thing, those few indentured servants being
there, was of itself sufficient to modify a constitution made by a people
ardently desiring to have a free constitution; showing the power of the
actual presence of the institution of slavery to prevent any people,
however anxious to make a free State, from making it perfectly so.
I have been detaining you longer, perhaps, than I ought to do.
I am in some doubt whether to introduce another topic upon which I could
talk a while. [Cries of "Go on," and "Give us it."] It is this, then:
Douglas's Popular sovereignty, as a principle, is simply this: If one man
chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that man nor anybody else
has a right to object. Apply it to government, as he seeks to apply
it, and it is this: If, in a new Territory into which a few people are
beginning to enter for the purpose of making their homes, they choose
to either exclude slavery from their limits, or to establish it there,
however one or the other may affect the persons to be enslaved, or the
infinitely greater number of persons who are afterward to inhabit that
Territory, or the other members of the family of communities of which they
are but an incipient member, or the general head of the family of States
as parent of all, however their action may affect one or the other of
these, there is no power or right to interfere. That is Douglas's popular
sovereignty applied. Now, I think that there is a real popular sovereignty
in the world. I think the definition of popular sovereignty, in the
abstract, would be about this: that each man shall do precisely as he
pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively concern
him. Applied in government, this principle would be that a general
government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and all the
local governments shall do precisely as they please in respect to those
matters which exclusively concern them.
Douglas looks upon slavery as so insignificant that the people must decide
that question for themselves; and yet they are not fit to decide who
shall be their governor, judge, or secretary, or who shall be any of
their officers. These are vast national matters in his estimation; but the
little matter in his estimation is that of planting slavery there. That
is purely of local interest, which nobody should be allowed to say a word
about.
Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human
comforts and necessities are drawn. There is a difference in opinion about
the elements of labor in society. Some men assume that there is necessary
connection between capital and labor, and that connection draws within
it the whole of the labor of the community. They assume that nobody works
unless capital excites them to work. They begin next to consider what is
the best way. They say there are but two ways: one is to hire men, and to
allure them to labor by their consent; the other is to buy the men, and
drive them, to it, and that is slavery. Having assumed that, they proceed
to discuss the question of whether the laborers themselves are better off
in the condition of slaves or of hired laborers, and they usually decide
that they are better off in the condition of slaves.
In the first place, I say that the whole thing is a mistake. That there is
a certain relation between capital and labor, I admit. That it does exist,
and rightfully exists, I think is true. That men who are industrious, and
sober, and honest in the pursuit of their own interests should after a
while accumulate capital, and after that should be allowed to enjoy it in
peace, and also, if they should choose, when they have accumulated it,
to use it to save themselves from actual labor, and hire other people
to labor for them, is right. In doing so they do not wrong the man they
employ, for they find men who have not of their own land to work upon,
or shops to work in, and who are benefited by working for others, hired
laborers, receiving their capital for it. Thus a few men, that own
capital, hire a few others, and these establish the relation of capital
and labor rightfully, a relation of which I make no complaint. But I
insist that that relation, after all, does not embrace more than one
eighth of the labor of the country.
[The speaker proceeded to argue that the hired laborer, with his ability
to become an employer, must have every precedence over him who labors
under the inducement of force. He continued:]