FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA,

AUGUST 21, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented,

it provokes him, at least, I find it so with myself; but when

misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse

him. The first thing I see fit to notice is the fact that Judge Douglas

alleges, after running through the history of the old Democratic and the

old Whig parties, that Judge Trumbull and myself made an arrangement in

1854, by which I was to have the place of General Shields in the United

States Senate, and Judge Trumbull was to have the place of Judge Douglas.

Now, all I have to say upon that subject is that I think no man not even

Judge Douglas can prove it, because it is not true. I have no doubt he is

"conscientious" in saying it. As to those resolutions that he took such a

length of time to read, as being the platform of the Republican party in

1854, I say I never had anything to do with them, and I think Trumbull

never had. Judge Douglas cannot show that either of us ever did have

anything to do with them.

I believe this is true about those resolutions: There was a call for a

convention to form a Republican party at Springfield, and I think that my

friend Mr. Lovejoy, who is here upon this stand, had a hand in it. I think

this is true, and I think if he will remember accurately he will be able

to recollect that he tried to get me into it, and I would not go in.

I believe it is also true that I went away from Springfield when the

convention was in session, to attend court in Tazewell county. It is true

they did place my name, though without authority, upon the committee, and

afterward wrote me to attend the meeting of the committee; but I refused

to do so, and I never had anything to do with that organization. This is

the plain truth about all that matter of the resolutions.

Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells of Trumbull bargaining to

sell out the old Democratic party, and Lincoln agreeing to sell out the

old Whig party, I have the means of knowing about that: Judge Douglas

cannot have; and I know there is no substance to it whatever. Yet I have

no doubt he is "conscientious" about it. I know that after Mr. Lovejoy got

into the Legislature that winter, he complained of me that I had told all

the old Whigs of his district that the old Whig party was good enough for

them, and some of them voted against him because I told them so. Now, I

have no means of totally disproving such charges as this which the Judge

makes. A man cannot prove a negative; but he has a right to claim that

when a man makes an affirmative charge, he must offer some proof to show

the truth of what he says. I certainly cannot introduce testimony to show

the negative about things, but I have a right to claim that if a man says

he knows a thing, then he must show how he knows it. I always have a

right to claim this, and it is not satisfactory to me that he may be

"conscientious" on the subject.

Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things; but in regard to

that general Abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes, when he says that

I was engaged at that time in selling out and Abolitionizing the old Whig

party, I hope you will permit me to read a part of a printed speech that

I made then at Peoria, which will show altogether a different view of the

position I took in that contest of 1854.

[Voice: "Put on your specs."]

Mr. LINCOLN: Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer a young man.

"This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history

may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I am sure it is

sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in

it we have before us the chief materials enabling us to correctly judge

whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.

"I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its direct

effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its

prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the

wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.

"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal

for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the

monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives

our republican example of its just influence in the world,--enables

the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as

hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity,

and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves

into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,

criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is

no right principle of action but self-interest.

"Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the

Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If

slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it

did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe

of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals on both

sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who

would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know

that some Southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top

Abolitionists; while some Northern ones go south and become most cruel

slave-masters.

"When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin

of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the

institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any

satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I will not

blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If

all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the

existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and

send them to Liberia,--to their own native land. But a moment's reflection

would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there

may be in this in the long term, its sudden execution is impossible. If

they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten

days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the

world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them

all and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this

betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any

rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon.

What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?

My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know

that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this

feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question,

if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill

founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals.

It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted;

but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren

of the South.

"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge

them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any

legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in

its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than Our

ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.

"But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting

slavery to go into our own free territory than it would for reviving the

African slave-trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves

from Africa, and that which has so long forbid the taking of them to

Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the

repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the

latter."

I have reason to know that Judge Douglas knows that I said this. I think

he has the answer here to one of the questions he put to me. I do not mean

to allow him to catechize me unless he pays back for it in kind. I will

not answer questions one after another, unless he reciprocates; but as

he has made this inquiry, and I have answered it before, he has got

it without my getting anything in return. He has got my answer on the

Fugitive Slave law.

Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length; but this is

the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution

of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it; and anything that

argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the

negro is but a specious and fantastic 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 of slavery in the States where it exists.

I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do

so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between

the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between

the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living

together upon 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 natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the

right to 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 he

is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not

in moral or intellectual endowment. 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 living man.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies.

The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a

"grocery-keeper." I don't know as it would be a great sin, if I had been;

but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.

It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little

stillhouse, up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my friend the Judge

is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress

of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war. The

Judge did not make his charge very distinctly, but I can tell you what he

can prove, by referring to the record. You remember I was an old Whig,

and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had

been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But whenever

they asked for any money, or landwarrants, or anything to pay the soldiers

there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did.

You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent. Such is the

truth, and the Judge has the right to make all he can out of it. But when

he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from

the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war, or did anything else

to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether

mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.

As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I will dwell

a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics upon which the Judge

has spoken. He has read from my speech in Springfield, in which I say that

"a house divided against itself cannot stand" Does the Judge say it can

stand? I don't know whether he does or not. The Judge does not seem to be

attending to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion

that a house divided against itself can stand. If he does, then there is a

question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an

Authority of a somewhat higher character.

Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the purpose of

saying something seriously. I know that the Judge may readily enough agree

with me that the maxim which was put forth by the Savior is true, but he

may allege that I misapply it; and the Judge has a right to urge that, in

my application, I do misapply it, and then I have a right to show that I

do not misapply it, When he undertakes to say that because I think this

nation, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, will all become

one thing or all the other, I am in favor of bringing about a dead

uniformity in the various States, in all their institutions, he argues

erroneously. The great variety of the local institutions in the States,

springing from differences in the soil, differences in the face of the

country, and in the climate, are bonds of Union. They do not make "a house

divided against itself," but they make a house united. If they produce

in one section of the country what is called for, by the wants of another

section, and this other section can supply the wants of the first, they

are not matters of discord, but bonds of union, true bonds of union. But

can this question of slavery be considered as among these varieties in

the institutions of the country? I leave it to you to say whether, in

the history of our government, this institution of slavery has not always

failed to be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been an apple of

discord and an element of division in the house. I ask you to consider

whether, so long as the moral constitution of men's minds shall continue

to be the same, after this generation and assemblage shall sink into the

grave, and another race shall arise, with the same moral and intellectual

development we have, whether, if that institution is standing in the same

irritating position in which it now is, it will not continue an element

of division? If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this

question, the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge

reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery

has existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in

some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at the

position in which our fathers originally placed it--restricting it from

the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off

its source by the abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the seal

of legislation against its spread. The public mind did rest in the belief

that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But lately, I think--and

in this I charge nothing on the Judge's motives--lately, I think that he,

and those acting with him, have placed that institution on a new basis,

which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. And while it

is placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I believe

we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery

arrest 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; or,

on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall

become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well

as South. Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it where

Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course

of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years

past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis

would be past, and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years,

if it should live so long, in the States where it exists; yet it would be

going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white

races.

[A voice: "Then do you repudiate popular sovereignty?"]

Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty! what is popular

sovereignty? Is it the right of the people to have slavery or not have it,

as they see fit, in the Territories? I will state--and I have an able man

to watch me--my understanding is that popular sovereignty, as now applied

to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have

slavery if they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do

not want it. I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people were in a

Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged to have a

slave if he did not want one; but I do say that, as I understand the Dred

Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way of

keeping that one man from holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge complains, and

from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he

ascribes to me at all. I had no thought in the world that I was doing

anything to bring about a war between the free and slave states. I had no

thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a political

and social equality of the black and white races. It never occurred to

me that I was doing anything or favoring anything to reduce to a dead

uniformity all the local institutions of the various States. But I must

say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads

to these bad results, it is none the better that I did not mean it. It

is just as fatal to the country, if I have any influence in producing

it, whether I intend it or not. But can it be true that placing this

institution upon the original basis--the basis upon which our fathers

placed it--can have any tendency to set the Northern and the Southern

States at war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to

make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane, because they raise it in

Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut pine logs

on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because they cut pine

logs in Maine, where they do grow? The Judge says this is a new principle

started in regard to this question. Does the Judge claim that he is

working on the plan of the founders of government? I think he says in some

of his speeches indeed, I have one here now--that he saw evidence of a

policy to allow slavery to be south of a certain line, while north of

it it should be excluded, and he saw an indisposition on the part of the

country to stand upon that policy, and therefore he set about studying the

subject upon original principles, and upon original principles he got

up the Nebraska Bill! I am fighting it upon these "original principles,"

fighting it in the Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, and Madisonian fashion.

Now, my friends, I wish you to attend for a little while to one or two

other things in that Springfield speech. My main object was to show, so

far as my humble ability was capable of showing, to the people of this

country what I believed was the truth,--that there was a tendency, if not

a conspiracy, among those who have engineered this slavery question for

the last four or five years, to make slavery perpetual and universal in

this nation. Having made that speech principally for that object, after

arranging the evidences that I thought tended to prove my proposition, I

concluded with this bit of comment:

"We cannot absolutely know that these exact adaptations are the result of

preconcert; but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of

which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by

different workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,--and

when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the

frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting,

and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly

adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too

few,--not omitting even the scaffolding,--or if a single piece be lacking,

we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring

such piece in,--in such a case we feel it impossible not to believe that

Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from

the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the

first blow was struck."

When my friend Judge Douglas came to Chicago on the 9th of July, this

speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an harangue

there, in which he took hold of this speech of mine, showing that he had

carefully read it; and while he paid no attention to this matter at all,

but complimented me as being a "kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman,"

notwithstanding I had said this, he goes on and eliminates, or draws out,

from my speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one

another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the niggers and

white people to marrying together. Then, as the Judge had complimented me

with these pleasant titles (I must confess to my weakness), I was a little

"taken," for it came from a great man. I was not very much accustomed to

flattery, and it came the sweeter to me. I was rather like the Hoosier,

with the gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better than any

other man, and got less of it. As the Judge had so flattered me, I could

not make up my mind that he meant to deal unfairly with me; so I went to

work to show him that he misunderstood the whole scope of my speech, and

that I really never intended to set the people at war with one another. As

an illustration, the next time I met him, which was at Springfield, I used

this expression, that I claimed no right under the Constitution, nor had

I any inclination, to enter into the slave States and interfere with the

institutions of slavery. He says upon that: Lincoln will not enter into

the slave States, but will go to the banks of the Ohio, on this side,

and shoot over! He runs on, step by step, in the horse-chestnut style of

argument, until in the Springfield speech he says: "Unless he shall

be successful in firing his batteries until he shall have extinguished

slavery in all the States the Union shall be dissolved." Now, I don't

think that was exactly the way to treat "a kind, amiable, intelligent

gentleman." I know if I had asked the Judge to show when or where it was

I had said that, if I didn't succeed in firing into the slave States until

slavery should be extinguished, the Union should be dissolved, he could

not have shown it. I understand what he would do. He would say: I don't

mean to quote from you, but this was the result of what you say. But I

have the right to ask, and I do ask now, Did you not put it in such a form

that an ordinary reader or listener would take it as an expression from

me?

In a speech at Springfield, on the night of the 17th, I thought I might as

well attend to my own business a little, and I recalled his attention as

well as I could to this charge of conspiracy to nationalize slavery. I

called his attention to the fact that he had acknowledged in my hearing

twice that he had carefully read the speech, and, in the language of the

lawyers, as he had twice read the speech, and still had put in no plea

or answer, I took a default on him. I insisted that I had a right then

to renew that charge of conspiracy. Ten days afterward I met the Judge

at Clinton,--that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the

discussion,--and heard him make a speech. Then he comes in with his plea

to this charge, for the first time; and his plea when put in, as well as I

can recollect it, amounted to this: that he never had any talk with Judge

Taney or the President of the United States with regard to the Dred Scott

decision before it was made. I (Lincoln) ought to know that the man who

makes a charge without knowing it to be true falsifies as much as he who

knowingly tells a falsehood; and, lastly, that he would pronounce the

whole thing a falsehood; but, he would make no personal application of

the charge of falsehood, not because of any regard for the "kind, amiable,

intelligent gentleman," but because of his own personal self-respect! I

have understood since then (but [turning to Judge Douglas] will not hold

the Judge to it if he is not willing) that he has broken through the

"self-respect," and has got to saying the thing out. The Judge nods to me

that it is so. It is fortunate for me that I can keep as good-humored as I

do, when the Judge acknowledges that he has been trying to make a question

of veracity with me. I know the Judge is a great man, while I am only a

small man, but I feel that I have got him. I demur to that plea. I waive

all objections that it was not filed till after default was taken, and

demur to it upon the merits. What if Judge Douglas never did talk with

Chief Justice Taney and the President before the Dred Scott decision

was made, does it follow that he could not have had as perfect an

understanding without talking as with it? I am not disposed to stand upon

my legal advantage. I am disposed to take his denial as being like an

answer in chancery, that he neither had any knowledge, information, or

belief in the existence of such a conspiracy. I am disposed to take his

answer as being as broad as though he had put it in these words. And now,

I ask, even if he had done so, have not I a right to prove it on him, and

to offer the evidence of more than two witnesses, by whom to prove it; and

if the evidence proves the existence of the conspiracy, does his broader

answer denying all knowledge, information, or belief, disturb the fact?

It can only show that he was used by conspirators, and was not a leader of

them.

Now, in regard to his reminding me of the moral rule that persons who tell

what they do not know to be true falsify as much as those who knowingly

tell falsehoods. I remember the rule, and it must be borne in mind that

in what I have read to you, I do not say that I know such a conspiracy

to exist. To that I reply, I believe it. If the Judge says that I do not

believe it, then he says what he does not know, and falls within his

own rule, that he who asserts a thing which he does not know to be true,

falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood. I want to call

your attention to a little discussion on that branch of the case, and the

evidence which brought my mind to the conclusion which I expressed as

my belief. If, in arraying that evidence I had stated anything which was

false or erroneous, it needed but that Judge Douglas should point it out,

and I would have taken it back, with all the kindness in the world. I do

not deal in that way. If I have brought forward anything not a fact, if he

will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take it back. But if he

will not point out anything erroneous in the evidence, is it not rather

for him to show, by a comparison of the evidence, that I have reasoned

falsely, than to call the "kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar?

If I have reasoned to a false conclusion, it is the vocation of an

able debater to show by argument that I have wandered to an erroneous

conclusion. I want to ask your attention to a portion of the Nebraska

Bill, which Judge Douglas has quoted:

"It being the true intent and meaning of this Act, not to

legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it

therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and

regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the

Constitution of the United States."

Thereupon Judge Douglas and others began to argue in favor of "popular

sovereignty," the right of the people to have slaves if they wanted

them, and to exclude slavery if they did not want them. "But," said,

in substance, a Senator from Ohio (Mr. Chase, I believe), "we more than

suspect that you do not mean to allow the people to exclude slavery if

they wish to; and if you do mean it, accept an amendment which I propose,

expressly authorizing the people to exclude slavery."

I believe I have the amendment here before me, which was offered, and

under which the people of the Territory, through their representatives,

might, if they saw fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein. And now

I state it as a fact, to be taken back if there is any mistake about it,

that Judge Douglas and those acting with him voted that amendment down. I

now think that those men who voted it down had a real reason for doing

so. They know what that reason was. It looks to us, since we have seen the

Dred Scott decision pronounced, holding that "under the Constitution" the

people cannot exclude slavery, I say it looks to outsiders, poor, simple,

"amiable, intelligent gentlemen," as though the niche was left as a place

to put that Dred Scott decision in,--a niche which would have been spoiled

by adopting the amendment. And now, I say again, if this was not the

reason, it will avail the Judge much more to calmly and good-humoredly

point out to these people what that other reason was for voting the

amendment down, than, swelling himself up, to vociferate that he may be

provoked to call somebody a liar.

Again: There is in that same quotation from the Nebraska Bill this clause:

"It being the true intent and meaning of this bill not to legislate

slavery into any Territory or State." I have always been puzzled to know

what business the word "State" had in that connection. Judge Douglas

knows. He put it there. He knows what he put it there for. We outsiders

cannot say what he put it there for. The law they were passing was not

about States, and was not making provisions for States. What was it placed

there for? After seeing the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the

people cannot exclude slavery from a Territory, if another Dred Scott

decision shall come, holding that they cannot exclude it from a State, we

shall discover that when the word was originally put there, it was in view

of something which was to come in due time, we shall see that it was the

other half of something. I now say again, if there is any different

reason for putting it there, Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without

calling anybody a liar, can tell what the reason was.

When the Judge spoke at Clinton, he came very near making a charge of

falsehood against me. He used, as I found it printed in a newspaper,

which, I remember, was very nearly like the real speech, the following

language:

"I did not answer the charge [of conspiracy] before, for the reason that

I did not suppose there was a man in America with a heart so corrupt as

to believe such a charge could be true. I have too much respect for Mr.

Lincoln to suppose he is serious in making the charge."

I confess this is rather a curious view, that out of respect for me he

should consider I was making what I deemed rather a grave charge in fun.

I confess it strikes me rather strangely. But I let it pass. As the Judge

did not for a moment believe that there was a man in America whose heart

was so "corrupt" as to make such a charge, and as he places me among the

"men in America" who have hearts base enough to make such a charge, I hope

he will excuse me if I hunt out another charge very like this; and if it

should turn out that in hunting I should find that other, and it

should turn out to be Judge Douglas himself who made it, I hope he will

reconsider this question of the deep corruption of heart he has thought

fit to ascribe to me. In Judge Douglas's speech of March 22, 1858, which I

hold in my hand, he says:

"In this connection there is another topic to which I desire to allude.

I seldom refer to the course of newspapers, or notice the articles which

they publish in regard to myself; but the course of the Washington Union

has been so extraordinary for the last two or three months, that I think

it well enough to make some allusion to it. It has read me out of the

Democratic party every other day, at least for two or three months, and

keeps reading me out, and, as if it had not succeeded, still continues to

read me out, using such terms as 'traitor,' 'renegade,' 'deserter,' and

other kind and polite epithets of that nature. Sir, I have no vindication

to make of my Democracy against the Washington Union, or any other

newspapers. I am willing to allow my history and action for the last

twenty years to speak for themselves as to my political principles and

my fidelity to political obligations. The Washington Union has a personal

grievance. When its editor was nominated for public printer, I declined

to vote for him, and stated that at some time I might give my reasons for

doing so. Since I declined to give that vote, this scurrilous abuse, these

vindictive and constant attacks have been repeated almost daily on me.

Will any friend from Michigan read the article to which I allude?"

This is a part of the speech. You must excuse me from reading the entire

article of the Washington Union, as Mr. Stuart read it for Mr. Douglas.

The Judge goes on and sums up, as I think, correctly:

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions

advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and apparently

authoritatively; and any man who questions any of them is denounced as an

Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first, that

the primary object of all government at its original institution is the

protection of person and property; second, that the Constitution of the

United States declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled

to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States;

and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether organic or

otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State from settling in

another with their slave property, and especially declaring it forfeited,

are direct violations of the original intention of the government and

Constitution of the United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of

the slaves of the Northern States was a gross outrage of the rights of

property, inasmuch as it was involuntarily done on the part of the owner.

"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the 17th of

November, and on the 18th appeared the first article giving the adhesion

of the Union, to the Lecompton Constitution. It was in these words:

"KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled. The problem

is saved. The dead point of danger is passed. All serious trouble to

Kansas affairs is over and gone..."

And a column nearly of the same sort. Then, when you come to look into

the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine incorporated in it

which was put forth editorially in the Union. What is it?

"ARTICLE 7, Section I. The right of property is before and higher than

any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to such

slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right of the

owner of any property whatever."

Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be amended

after 1864 by a two-thirds vote:

"But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property in the

ownership of slaves."

"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution that they

are identical in spirit with the authoritative article in the Washington

Union of the day previous to its indorsement of this Constitution."

I pass over some portions of the speech, and I hope that any one who feels

interested in this matter will read the entire section of the speech, and

see whether I do the Judge injustice. He proceeds:

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed by

the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on the 10th of November,

and this clause in the Constitution asserting the doctrine that a State

has no right to prohibit slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a

fatal blow being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."

I stop the quotation there, again requesting that it may all be read. I

have read all of the portion I desire to comment upon. What is this charge

that the Judge thinks I must have a very corrupt heart to make? It was a

purpose on the part of certain high functionaries to make it impossible

for the people of one State to prohibit the people of any other State from

entering it with their "property," so called, and making it a slave State.

In other words, it was a charge implying a design to make the institution

of slavery national. And now I ask your attention to what Judge Douglas

has himself done here. I know he made that part of the speech as a reason

why he had refused to vote for a certain man for public printer; but when

we get at it, the charge itself is the very one I made against him, that

he thinks I am so corrupt for uttering. Now, whom does he make that charge

against? Does he make it against that newspaper editor merely? No; he

says it is identical in spirit with the Lecompton Constitution, and so

the framers of that Constitution are brought in with the editor of

the newspaper in that "fatal blow being struck." He did not call it a

"conspiracy." In his language, it is a "fatal blow being struck." And if

the words carry the meaning better when changed from a "conspiracy" into a

"fatal blow being struck," I will change my expression, and call it "fatal

blow being struck." We see the charge made not merely against the editor

of the Union, but all the framers of the Lecompton Constitution; and not

only so, but the article was an authoritative article. By whose authority?

Is there any question but he means it was by the authority of the

President and his Cabinet,--the Administration?

Is there any sort of question but he means to make that charge? Then there

are the editors of the Union, the framers of the Lecompton Constitution,

the President of the United States and his Cabinet, and all the supporters

of the Lecompton Constitution, in Congress and out of Congress, who

are all involved in this "fatal blow being struck." I commend to Judge

Douglas's consideration the question of how corrupt a man's heart must be

to make such a charge!

Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the subject, in the little time

I have left, to which to call your attention; and as I shall come to a

close at the end of that branch, it is probable that I shall not occupy

quite all the time allotted to me. Although on these questions I would

like to talk twice as long as I have, I could not enter upon another head

and discuss it properly without running over my time. I ask the attention

of the people here assembled and elsewhere to the course that Judge

Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of making

slavery national. Not going back to the records, but taking the speeches

he makes, the speeches he made yesterday and day before, and makes

constantly all over the country, I ask your attention to them. In the

first place, what is necessary to make the institution national? Not

war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their

muskets, and, with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into

Illinois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going

over there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the

nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision.

It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the

Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under

the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do

it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done. This

being true, and this being the way, as I think, that slavery is to be made

national, let us consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that

end. In the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on

public sentiment. In this and like communities, public sentiment is

everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing

can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper

than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes

and decisions possible or impossible to be executed. This must be borne

in mind, as also the additional fact that Judge Douglas is a man of vast

influence, so great that it is enough for many men to profess to believe

anything when they once find out Judge Douglas professes to believe it.

Consider also the attitude he occupies at the head of a large party,--a

party which he claims has a majority of all the voters in the country.

This man sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a Territory

from excluding slavery, and he does so, not because he says it is right

in itself,--he does not give any opinion on that,--but because it has been

decided by the court; and being decided by the court, he is, and you are,

bound to take it in your political action as law, not that he judges at

all of its merits, but because a decision of the court is to him a "Thus

saith the Lord." He places it on that ground alone; and you will bear in

mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision commits

him to the next one just as firmly as to this. He did not commit himself

on account of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a "Thus

saith the Lord." The next decision, as much as this, will be a "Thus saith

the Lord." There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this

decision. It is nothing that I point out to him that his great prototype,

General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force of decisions. It is

nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe. I have said that I have

often heard him approve of Jackson's course in disregarding the decision

of the Supreme Court pronouncing a National Bank constitutional. He says I

did not hear him say so. He denies the accuracy of my recollection. I say

he ought to know better than I, but I will make no question about this

thing, though it still seems to me that I heard him say it twenty times.

I will tell him, though, that he now claims to stand on the Cincinnati

platform, which affirms that Congress cannot charter a National Bank, in

the teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a bank.

And I remind him of another piece of history on the question of respect

for judicial decisions, and it is a piece of Illinois history belonging

to a time when the large party to which Judge Douglas belonged were

displeased with a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois, because they

had decided that a Governor could not remove a Secretary of State. You

will find the whole story in Ford's History of Illinois, and I know that

Judge Douglas will not deny that he was then in favor of over-slaughing

that decision by the mode of adding five new judges, so as to vote down

the four old ones. Not only so, but it ended in the Judge's sitting down

on that very bench as one of the five new judges to break down the four

old ones It was in this way precisely that he got his title of judge. Now,

when the Judge tells me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members

of a court will have to be catechized beforehand upon some subject, I say,

"You know, Judge; you have tried it." When he says a court of this kind

will lose the confidence of all men, will be prostituted and disgraced by

such a proceeding, I say, "You know best, Judge; you have been through the

mill." But I cannot shake Judge Douglas's teeth loose from the Dred Scott

decision. Like some obstinate animal (I mean no disrespect) that will hang

on when he has once got his teeth fixed, you may cut off a leg, or you may

tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold. And so I may point out

to the Judge, and say that he is bespattered all over, from the beginning

of his political life to the present time, with attacks upon judicial

decisions; I may cut off limb after limb of his public record, and strive

to wrench him from a single dictum of the court,--yet I cannot divert him

from it. He hangs, to the last, to the Dred Scott decision. These things

show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he adheres

to this decision, and for which he will adhere to all other decisions of

the same court.

[A HIBERNIAN: "Give us something besides Dred Scott."]

Yes; no doubt you want to hear something that don't hurt. Now, having

spoken of the Dred Scott decision, one more word, and I am done. Henry

Clay, my beau-ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my

humble life, Henry Clay once said of a class of men who would repress all

tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation that they must, if they

would do this, go back to the era of our Independence, and muzzle the

cannon which thunders its annual joyous return; they must blow out the

moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate

there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, could they

perpetuate slavery in this country! To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by

his example and vast influence, doing that very thing in this

community, when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declaration of

Independence. Henry Clay plainly understood the contrary. Judge Douglas

is going back to the era of our Revolution, and, to the extent of his

ability, muzzling the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. When

he invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is

blowing out the moral lights around us. When he says he "cares not

whether slavery is voted down or up,"--that it is a sacred right of

self-government,--he is, in my judgment, penetrating the human soul and

eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American

people. And now I will only say that when, by all these means and

appliances, Judge Douglas shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to

an exact accordance with his own views; when these vast assemblages shall

echo back all these sentiments; when they shall come to repeat his views

and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says on these mighty

questions,--then it needs only the formality of the second Dred Scott

decision, which he indorses in advance, to make slavery alike lawful in

all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

My friends, that ends the chapter. The Judge can take his half-hour.