out for myself, that I shall not have to dwell at very great length upon
this subject.
As this was done in the judge's opening speech at Galesburg, I
had an opportunity, as I had the middle speech then, of saying some-
thing in answer to it. He brought forward a quotation or two from
a speech of mine, delivered at Chicago, and then, to contrast with it,
he brought forward an extract from a speech of mine at Charleston,
in which he insisted that I was greatly inconsistent, and insisted that
his conclusion followed that I was playing a double part, and speak-
ing in one region one way, and in another region another way. I have
not time now to dwell on this as long as I would like, and wish only
now to requote that portion of my speech at Charleston, which the
judge quoted, and then make some comments upon it. This he quotes
from me as being delivered at Charleston, and I believe correctly :
I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing
about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black
races ā that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors
of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with
white people ; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical diff er-
Ience between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races
living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as
they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the posi-
tion of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor
of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
ai
This, I believe, is the entire quotation from the Charleston speech,
as Judge Douglas made it. His comments are as follows :
458 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Yes, here you find men who hurrah for Lincoln, and say he is right when
he discards all distinction between races, or when he declares that he discards
the doctrine that there is such a thing as a superior and inferior race ; and
Abolitionists are required and expected to vote for Mr. Lincoln because he
goes for the equality of races, holding that in the Declaration of Independence
the white man and negro were declared equal, and endowed by divine law
with equality. And down South with the old-line Whigs, with the Ken-
tuckians, the Virginians, and the Tennesseeans, he tells you that there is
a physical difference between the races, making the one superior, the other
inferior, and he is in favor of maintaining the superiority of the white race
over the negro.
Those are the judge's comments. Now I wish to show you, thai a
month, or only lacking three days of a month, before I made tin-
speech at Charleston which the judge quotes from, he had himself
heard me say substantially the same thing. It was in our first meet-
ing, at Ottawa, and I will say a word about where it was, and the
atmosphere it was in, after a while ā but at our first meeting, at Ot-
tawa, I read an extract from an old speech of mine, made nearly four
years ago, not merely to show my sentiments, but to show that my
sentiments were long entertained and openly expressed; in which
extract I expressly declared that my own feelings would not admit
of a social and political equality between the white and black races,
and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I still knew that
the public sentiment of the country would not, and that such a thing
was an utter impossibility, or substantially that. That extract from
my old speech, the reporters, by some sort of accident, passed over,
and it was not reported. I lay no blame upon anybody. I suppose
they thought that I would hand it over to them, and dropped report-
ing while I was reading it, but afterward went away without getting
it from me. At the end of that quotation from my old speech, which
I read at Ottawa, I made the comments which were reported at that
time, and which I will now read, and ask you to notice how very
nearly they are the same as Judge Douglas says were delivered by
me, down in Egypt. After reading I added these words :
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, or the black race, and this is the whole of it; and anything that ar-
gues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is
but a specious and fantastical arrangement of words by which a man can
prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I wdl 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 black races.
There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will
probably forever forbid their living together on the footing of perfect equal-
ity, and, inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference,
T, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong hav-
ing 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 ā the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I
hold that he is as much entitled to these as the wlnte man. I agree with
ADDEESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 459
Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in
color ā perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; 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.
I have chiefly introduced this for the purpose of meeting the judge's
charge that the quotation he took from my Charleston speech was
what I would say down south among the Kentuckians, the Virginians,
etc., but would not say in the regions in which was supposed to be
more of the Abolition element. I now make this comment : that
speech from which I have now read the quotation, and which is there
given correctly, perhaps too much so for good taste, was made away
up north in the Abolition district of this State par excellence ā in
the Love joy district ā in the personal presence of Love joy ; for he
was on the stand with us when I made it. It had been made and
put in print in that region only three days less than a month before
the speech made at Charleston, the like of which Judge Douglas
thinks I would not make where there was any Abolition element.
I only refer to this matter to say that I am altogether unconscious
of having attempted any double-dealing anywhere; that upon one
occasion I may say one thing and leave other things unsaid, and vice
versa ; but that I have said anything on one occasion that is incon-
sistent with what I have said elsewhere, I deny ā at least, I deny it
so far as the intention is concerned. I fin,d that I have devoted to
this topic a larger portion of my time than I had intended. I wished
to show ā but I will pass it upon this occasion ā that in the sentiment
I have occasionally advanced upon the Declaration of Independence,
I am entirely borne out by the sentiments advanced by our old Whig
leader, Henry Clay, and I have the book here to show it from ; but
because I have already occupied more time than I intended to do on
that topic, I pass over it.
At G-alesburg I tried to show that by the Dred Scott decision,
pushed to its legitimate consequences, slavery would be established
in all the States as well as in the Territories. I did this because,
upon a former occasion, I had asked Judge Douglas whether, if the
Supreme Court should make a decision declaring that the States had
not the power to exclude slavery from their limits, he would adopt
and follow that decision as a rule of political action ; and because he
had not directly answered that question, but had merely contented
himself with sneering at it, I again introduced it, and tried to show
that the conclusion that I stated followed inevitably and logically
from the proposition already decided by the court. Judge Douglas
had the privilege of replying to me at Galesburg, and again he
gave me no direct answer as to whether he would or would not sus-
tain such decision if made. I give him this third chance to say
yes or no. He is not obliged to do either, ā probably he will not do
either, ā but I give him the third chance. I tried to show then that
this result, this conclusion, inevitably followed from the point already
decided by the court. The judge, in his reply, again sneers at the
thought of the court making any such decision, and in the course of
his remarks upon this subject, uses the language which I will now
460 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
read. Speaking of me, the judge says: "He goes on and insists
that the Dred Beotl decision would cany slavery into tin- free
States, notwithstanding the decision itself says the contrary. " And
he adds: "Mr. Lincoln knows that there is no member or the Su-
preme Court that holds that doctrine. He knows that every one of
them in their opinions held the reverse."
I especially introduce this subject again for the purpose of saying
that I have the Dred Scott decision here, and I will thank Judge
Douglas to lay his finger upon the place in the entire opinions of the
court where any one of them " says the contrary." It is very hard to
affirm a negative with entire confidence. I say, however, that I have
examined that decision with a good deal of care, as a lawyer ex-
amines a decision, and so far as I have been able to do so, the court
has nowhere in its opinions said that the States have the power to
exclude slavery, nor have they used other language substantially that.
I also say, so far as I can find, not one of the concurring judges has
said that the States can exclude slavery, nor said anything that was
substantially that. The nearest approach that any one of them has
made to it, so far as I can find, was by Judge Nelson, and the appr< inch
he made to it was exactly, in substance, the Nebraska bill ā that
the States had the exclusive power over the question of slavery, so
far as they are not limited by the Constitution of the United States.
I ask the question, therefore, if the non-concurring judges, McLean
or Curtis, had asked to get an express declaration that the States
could absolutely exclude slavery from their limits, w r hat reason
have we to believe that it would not have been voted down by the
majority of the judges, just as Chase's amendment was voted down
by Judge Douglas and his compeers when it was offered to the
Nebraska bill?
Also at Galesburg I said something in regard to those Springfield
resolutions that Judge Douglas had attempted to use upon me at
Ottawa, and commented at some length upon the fact that they were,
as presented, not genuine. Judge Douglas in his reply to me seemed
to be somewhat exasperated. He said Tie never would have believed
that Abraham Lincoln, as he kindly called me, w r ould have attempted
such a thing as I had attempted upon that occasion ; and among
other expressions which he used toward me. was that I dared to say
forgery ā that I had dared to say forgery [turning to Judge Doug-
las]. Yes, judge, I did dare to say forgeiy. But in this political
canvass the judge ought to remember that I was not the first who
dared to say forgery. At Jacksonville Judge Douglas made a speech
in answer to something said by Judge Trumbull, and at the close of
what he said upon that subject, he dared to say that Trumbull had
forged his evidence. He said, too, that he should not concern him-
self with Trumbull anymore, but thereafter he should hold Lincoln
responsible for the slanders upon him. When I met him at Charles-
ton after that, although I think that I should not have noticed the
subject if he had not said he would hold me responsible for it, I
spread out before him the statements of the evidence that Judge
Trumbull had used, and I asked Judge Douglas, piece by piece, to put
his finger upon one piece of all that evidence that he would say was
ADDKESSES AND LETTEKS OF ABKAHAM LINCOLN 461
a forgery. When I went through with each and every piece, Judge
Douglas did not dare then to say that any piece of it was a forgery.
So it seems that there are some things that Judge Douglas dares to
do, and some that he dares not to do. [A voice: "It 's the same thing
with you." J Yes, sir, it 's the same thing with me.
I do dare to say forgery when it 's true, and don't dare to say for-
gery when it 's false. Now, I will say here to this audience and to
Judge Douglas, I have not dared to say he committed a forgery, and
I never shall until I know it ; but I did dare to say ā just to suggest
to the judge ā that a forgery had been committed, which by his own
showing had been traced to Mm and two of his friends. I dared to
suggest to him that he had expressly promised in one of his public
speeches to investigate that matter, and I dared to suggest to him
that there was an implied promise that when he investigated it he
would make known the result. I dared to suggest to the judge that
he could not expect to be quite clear of suspicion of that fraud, for
since the time that promise was made he had been with those friends,
and had not kept his promise in regard to the investigation and the
report upon it. I am not a very daring man, but I dared that much,
judge, and I am not much scared about it yet. "When the judge says
he would n't have believed of Abraham Lincoln that he would have
made such an attempt as that, he reminds me of the fact that he en-
tered upon this canvass with the purpose to treat me courteously ;
that touched me somewhat. It set me to thinking. I was aware,
when it was first agreed that Judge Douglas and I were to have
these seven joint discussions, that they were the successive acts of a
drama ā perhaps I should say, to be enacted not merely in the face
of audiences bike this, but in the face of the nation, and to some ex-
tent, by my relation to him, and not from anything in myself, in the
face of the world; and I am anxious that they should be conducted
with dignity and in the good temper which would be befitting the
vast audience before which it was conducted. But when Judge
Douglas got home from Washington and made his first speech in
Chicago, the evening afterward I made some sort of a reply to it.
His second speech was made at Bloomington, in which he commented
upon my speech at Chicago, and said that I had used language in-
geniously contrived to conceal my intentions, or words to that effect.
Now I understand that this is an imputation upon my veracity and
my candor. I do not know what the judge understood by it, but in
our first discussion at Ottawa, he led off by charging a bargain,
somewhat corrupt in its character, upon Trumbull and myself ā that
we had entered into a bargain, one of the terms of which was that
Trumbull was to Abolitionize the old Democratic party, and I, Lin-
coln, was to Abolitionize the Old Whig party ā I pretending to be
as good an old-line Whig as ever. Judge Douglas may not under-
stand that he implicated my truthfulness and my honor when he said
I was doing one thing and pretending another ; and I misunderstood
him if he thought he was treating me in a dignified way, as a man of
honor and truth, as he now claims he was disposed to treat me. Even
after that time, at Galesburg, when he brings forward an extract
from a speech made at Chicago, and an extract from a speech made
462 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
at Charleston, to prove that I was trying to play a double part, ā that
I was trying to cheat the public, and get votes upon one set of prin-
ciples at one place and upon another set of principles at another
place, ā I do not understand but what he impeaches my honor, my
veracity, and my candor; and because he does this, I do not under-
stand that I am bound, if I see a truthful ground for it, to keep my
hands off of him. As soon as I learned that Judge Douglas was dis-
posed to treat me in this way, I signified in one of my speeches that.
I should be driven to draw upon whatever of humble resources I
might have ā to adopt a new course with him. I was not entirely
sure that I should be able to hold my own with him, but I at least had
the purpose made to do as well as 1 could upon him; and now I say
that I will not be the first to cry " Hold!" I think it originated with
the judge, and when he quits, I probably will. But I shall not ask
any favors at all. He asks me, or he asks the audience, if I wish to
push this matter to the point of personal difficulty. I tell him, No.
He did not make a mistake, in one of his early speeches, when he
called me an " amiable " man, though perhaps he did when he called
me an " intelligent" man. It really hurts me very much to suppose
that I have wronged anybody on earth. I again tell him. No ! I
very much prefer, when this canvass shall be over, however it may
residt, that we at least part without any bitter recollections of per-
sonal difficulties.
The judge, in his concluding speech at Galesburg, says that I
was pushing this matter to a personal difficulty to avoid the respon-
sibility for the enormity of my principles. I say to the judge and this
audience now, that I will again state onr principles as well as I hastily
can in all their enormity, and if the judge hereafter chooses to con-
fine himself to a war upon these principles, he will probably not find
me departing from the same course.
We nave in this nation the element of domestic slavery. It is a
matter of absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. It is the
opinion of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it,
that it is a dangerous element. We keep up a controversy in regard
to it. That controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion,
and if we can learn exactly ā can reduce to the lowest elements ā
what that difference of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better pre-
pared for discussing the different systems of policy that we would
propose in regard to that disturbing element. I suggest that the
difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than
the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those
who do not think it wrong. The Republican party think it wrong
ā we think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong. We think
it is a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States
where it exists, but that it is a wrong which in its tendency, to
say the least, affects the existence of the whole nation. Because we
think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it
as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as
we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in
the run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have
a due regard to the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficul-
ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 463
ties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the consti-
tutional obligations thrown about it. I suppose that in reference
both to its actual existence in the nation, and to our constitutional
obligations, we have no right at all to disturb it in the States where
it exists, and we profess that we have no more inclination to disturb
it than we have the right to do it. We go further than that : we
don't propose to disturb it where, in one instance, we think the Con-
stitution would permit us. "We think the Constitution would permit
us to disturb it in the District of Columbia. Still we do not propose
to do that, unless it should be in terms which I don't suppose the
nation is very Likely soon to agree to ā the terms of making the
emancipation gradual and compensating the unwilling owners.
Where we suppose we have the constitutional right, we restrain our-
selves in reference to the actual existence of the institution and
the difficulties thrown about it. We also oppose it as an evil so far as
it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall restrict
it to its present limits. We don't suppose that in doing this we vio-
late anything due to the actual presence of the institution, or any-
thing due to the constitutional guaranties thrown around it.
We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way, upon which
I ought perhaps to address you a few words. We do not propose that
when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as
a mob, will decide him to be free. We do not propose that, when
any other one, or one thousand, shall be decided by that court to be
slaves, we will in any violent way disturb the rights of property thus
settled ; but we nevertheless do oppose that decision as a political
rule, which shall be binding on the voter to vote for nobody who
thinks it wrong, which shall be binding on the members of Con-
gress or the President to favor no measure that does not actually
concur with the principles of that decision. We do not propose to
be bound by it as a political ride in that way, because we think
it lays the foundation not merely of enlarging and spreading out
what we consider an evil, but it lays the foundation for spreading
that evil into the States themselves. We propose so resisting it as
to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established
upon this subject.
I will add this, that if there be any man who does not believe that
slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in
any one of them, that man is misplaced and ought to leave us.
While, on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican
party who is impatient over the necessity springing from its actual
presence, and is impatient of the constitutional guaranties thrown
around it, and would act in disregard of these, he too is misplaced,
standing with us. He will find his place somewhere else ; for we
have a due regard, so far as we are capable of understanding them,
for all these things. This, gentlemen, as well as I can give it, is a
plain statement of our principles in all their enormity.
I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country contrary to
me ā a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, and there-
fore it goes for the policy that does not propose dealing with it as a
wrong. That policy is the Democratic policy, and that sentiment is
464 ADDRESSES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
the Democratic sentiment. If there be a doubt in the mind of anj
one of this vast audience that this is really the central idea of the
Democratic party, in relation to this subject, I ask him to bear with
nit- while I state a few things tending, as I think, to prove that prop-
osition. In the lirst place, the leading man ā I think I may do my
friend Judge Douglas the honor of calling him such ā advocating the
present Democratic policy never himself says it is wrong. He has
the high distinction, so far as I know, of never having said slavery is
either right or wrong. Almost everybody else says one or the other,
but the judge never does. If there be a man in the Democratic party
who thinks it is wrong, and yet clings to that party, I suggest to him
in the first place that his leader don't talk as he does, for he never
says that it is wrong. In the second place, I suggest to him that if he
will examine the policy proposed to be carried forward, he will find
that he carefully excludes tine idea that there is anything wrong in
it. If you will examine the arguments that are made on it, you will
find that every one carefully excludes the idea that there is anything
wrong in slavery. Perhaps that Democrat who says he is as much
opposed to slavery as I am, will tell me that I am wrong about this.
I wish him to examine his own course in regard to this matter a
moment, and then see if his opinion will not lie changed a little.
You say it is wrong ; but don't you constantly object to anybody else
saying so? Do you not constantly argue that this is not the right
place to oppose it? You say it must not be opposed in the tree
States, because slavery is not there; it must not be opposed in the
slave States, because it is there; it must not be opposed in polities.
because that will make a fuss ; it must not be opposed in the pulpit,