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 The Lincoln-Douglas 
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THE EXCELSIOR LITERATURE SERIES 
 
 /OX'/ 
 
 THE 
 
 Lincoln-Douglas Debates 
 
 Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by 
 EDWIN ERLE '-,PARKS, Ph. D., LL. D. 
 
 President of The Pennsylvania State College; formerly Professor 
 
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 of "The Expansion of the American People;" "The 
 
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 Debates," in Illinois Historical Library. 
 
 PUBLISHED JOINTLY BY 
 
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£4^7 
 
 Copyright, 1918 
 F. A. OWEN PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 
 
 »?9<?«2/f 
 
 7 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 From a Photograph taken in 
 
THE 
 LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Stump Speaking— As the American people pushed 
 their way across the continent from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, the thin edge of advancing civilization was 
 known as the * 'frontier." It was made up of coura- 
 geous spirits who subdued the Indians, drove the French 
 and Spanish from their pathway, slew the wild beasts, 
 felled the forests, built their log cabins, and planted 
 their fields. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett belonged 
 to these hardy people. Cut off from the comforts and 
 privileges which they had enjoyed before migrating to 
 "the West," these people resorted to various make- 
 shifts to supply their needs. They used Indian moc- 
 casins on their feet, and coonskin caps on their heads. 
 Lacking newspapers, they learned the issues of the 
 political campaigns by assembling to hear the candi- 
 dates who, in turn, mounted the stump of a felled tree 
 in the streets of the frontier town and from that forum 
 addressed the voters. A good "stump speaker" could 
 always attract a crowd, and a wit combat between two 
 speakers representing opposite parties was a real holi- 
 day of sport. It is true that the jokes and counter- 
 strokes were often feeble attempts, and sometimes not 
 
6 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 very far removed from vulgarity; but the stronger the 
 blows the better they were liked, and the more per- 
 sonal, the more enjoyable they were. 
 
 The spirit of democracy was strong in these pioneers 
 and made them intensely interested in politics. Their 
 fondness for hearing political speeches, their attend- 
 ance upon political meetings, their parades, floats, 
 banners, and bands remained even after the first frontier 
 stage of progress had passed and the country was well 
 settled. In Illinois, stump speaking was popular as 
 late as 1858, although the frontier had passed on into 
 Kansas and Nebraska, just ready for statehood. 
 
 Political Parties — The slavery question was always 
 a festering thorn in the side of the body politic, fre- 
 quently poulticed by compromises, but manifesting it- 
 self whenever a new national issue arose. The Aboli- 
 tionists, headed by William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell 
 Phillips, and others, opposed all compromises and stood 
 for the unconditional and immediate emancipation of 
 the slaves. They were bitterly condemned by both the 
 Whig and Democrat parties as wild and dangerous re- 
 formers, who were likely to bring about a dissolution 
 of the Union through their agitation. Each party 
 denied any sympathy for or connection with the 
 Abolitionists. 
 
 The contention of the Abolitionists that slavery was 
 wrong ethically, made little progress until it became 
 an economic and political matter through the proposed 
 statehood for Kansas and Nebraska. The prairies were 
 not fitted climatically for cotton raising, which made 
 slaveholding profitable; but if two new States came in 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 free, as they must do under the Compromise of 1820/ 
 they would add four free Senators and many free Con- 
 gressmen to the Northern strength, thereby further 
 curbing the slaveholding power in national affairs. 
 
 The demand of the South for an adjustment led, in 
 1854, to the substitution for the Missouri Compromise 
 of 1820 of a new remedy (the Kansas-Nebraska meas- 
 ure) which, by permitting the people of the proposed 
 states to determine whether they would be free or 
 slave, was thought to be the very essence of democ- 
 racy or home rule. As usual, in temporizing with the 
 evil the remedy became worse than the disease. 
 
 The Republican Party — This setting aside of the 
 Missouri Compromise for * 'squatter sovereignty'* 
 banded together Northern Whigs and Northern Demo- 
 crats on an anti-slavery platform; and they speedily 
 formed a new party, calling themselves Republicans. 
 In 1856 the new party had a candidate for the presi- 
 dency, Fremont, and parties were now known politi- 
 cally as Democrats, Old Line Whigs, and Republicans. 
 The first two refused to recognize the Republican 
 movement as more than a conspiracy or corrupt bargain 
 between leaders to break up the old parties and bring 
 themselves into political power. In the debates it will 
 be noticed that Douglas assails the corrupt bargain be- 
 tween Lincoln, an Old Line Whig, and Trumbull, a 
 Democrat, both of whom deserted the old parties to 
 join the new Republican party. 
 
 1. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 provided that Missouri should come into 
 the Union as a slave State, but that thereafter in the territory acquired by 
 the Louisiana Purchase, slavery should be forever prohibited north of lati- 
 tude 36° 30', which was the line of the southern boundary of Missouri. 
 
8 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 The Little Giant — Stephen A. Douglas, a Senator 
 from Illinois and a Northern Democrat, was chairman 
 of the Senate Committee on Territories. As such he 
 pushed the Kansas-Nebraska bill of 1854 through both 
 Houses, and incurred the criticism of the free soil ad- 
 vocates of both parties in the North. He said later that 
 he could have traveled from Washington to his home 
 in Chicago, when Congress adjourned, by the light 
 of himself being burned in effigy. For three hours in 
 his home town he tried in vain to get his constituents 
 to listen to his explanations. 
 
 Douglas was born in Vermont, migrated to Illinois, 
 and had advanced rapidly through the offices of pros- 
 ecuting attorney. State legislator. Registrar of Public 
 Lands, candidate for Congress, State Supreme Court 
 Judge, Congressman for two terms, and linally, in 1845, 
 member of the United States Senate. He had served 
 two terms in the Senate, and in 1858 was a candidate 
 for a third election by the State legislature. He had 
 a most winning personality, a fearless spirit, a quick 
 temper, and an unlimited energy of physical force and 
 will power. He was short and heavy in figure, but 
 possessed a far-reaching voice, and early acquired the 
 nickname of *The Little Giant." In stump speaking 
 he was considered the champion of the Middle West. 
 
 Honest Old Abe — Among those who watched with 
 interest the course of The Little Giant was Abraham 
 Lincoln, a member of the Whig party, who wrote to a 
 friend in 1854 that Douglas's action miglit have created 
 an opening for a Whig Senator from Illinois, and **if 
 so, I want the chance of being that man;" but it v;as 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 thought best to nominate Lyman Trumbull. Four 
 years later Lincoln had the opportunity. 
 
 Lincoln started even lower in life than Douglas, and 
 progressed more slowly. He lacked Douglas's personal 
 magnetism and suffered still more by comparison of 
 appearance. He was tall, ungainly, and careless in his 
 dress. He was also hampered all his life by poverty. 
 On the other hand, he possessed more natural shrewd- 
 ness than Douglas, and always kept his temper, even 
 under the flings of Douglas. His habits of life were 
 extremely temperate and formed a marked contrast to 
 other men in public life at that time. 
 
 Lincoln and Douglas knew each other at the State 
 Capital, and in the Courts where both practiced law. 
 Lincoln had taken little part in politics except to serve 
 a term in Congress, 1847-9. He was a candidate for 
 the Senate in 1854, as has been said, but withdrew in fa- 
 vor of Trumbull. Small wonder that many thought him 
 presumptuous in aspiring to the United States Senate 
 in 1858, and especially when that meant to oppose the 
 great Douglas. The task seemed doubly hard because 
 Lincoln was the candidate of a new party, the Republi- 
 can or *' Black Republican," as the Democrats dubbed 
 it because of its espousal of the rights of the negro. 
 
 Political Conditions — It was customary at that time 
 to hold nominating conventions some months before 
 elections. The State Legislatures elected the United 
 States Senators, and so the choice of members of the 
 Legislature in senatorial election years was a matter of 
 vital importance. Illinois had always been Democratic, 
 and Douglas felt no apprehension in the senatorial 
 
10 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 election of 1857 except so far as the Kansas-Nebraska 
 turmoil should disturb normal conditions. Late in 1857 
 some of the residents of the Territory of Kansas had 
 formed, at Lecompton, a pro-slavery constitution for 
 the proposed State. President Buchanan favored the 
 adoption of the "Lecompton Constitution," but Doug- 
 las opposed it on the ground that it was not a fair test 
 of the theory of "squatter sovereignty;" all the people 
 of the Territory had not taken part. The Democratic 
 party in Illinois was therefore in a divided condition, 
 and there might besomeshiftingto the new Republican 
 party if it came out with a strong Free-Soil platform. 
 The fears of the Democratic party leaders were realized, 
 April 21, 1858, when the Democratic State Committee 
 met at Springfield and nominated Douglas on an anti- 
 Lecompton platform, which caused a number of the dele- 
 gates to "bolt" the convention, and, six weeks later, 
 to hold another convention and nominate another ticket. 
 Consequently, it was with high hopes that the new 
 Republican party met in convention at Springfield in 
 June, and resolved that Abraham Lincoln was the first 
 and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the 
 United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. 
 Douglas. The speech which Lincoln had prepared for 
 the convention he read from manuscript, a thing which 
 he rarely did, and he also carefully read the proof in 
 the printing ofRce before the speech was published. 
 He was stating the principles of the new party and, as 
 it chanced, of a new era in American politics. Douglas 
 would make every use of the platform, and Lincoln must 
 be careful to see that it was so plain that its statements 
 co^ld not be twisted or misconstrued bythe wily debater. 
 ^ The two strong factors in the campaign were the sit- 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 uation in the Kansas-Nebraska territory, and a recent 
 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 This held in the case of Dred Scott/ a fugitive slave, that 
 no negro slave or his descendant can ever be a citizen of 
 a State, that neither Congress nor a State Legislature 
 can exclude slavery from a State or Territory, and that 
 the decision whether a slave can be held in a free State 
 depends upon the. courts of that State. Douglas saw 
 how inconsistent this decision was with his squatter sov- 
 ereignty theory, and was driven to say that he * 'cared 
 not whether slavery was voted up or voted down," pro- 
 vided the people had a fair vote on the question. Lin- 
 coln in his speech at the Republican nominating con- 
 vention seized the opportunity to point out where the 
 development of events had put Douglas. * *His friends, ' ' 
 he said, "remind us that he is a great man and that 
 the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be 
 granted. But *a living dog is better than a dead lion.' 
 Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work is at 
 least a caged and toothless one." 
 
 In opening the speech, Lincoln used a paraphrase of 
 Mark 3:25 which was prophetic and destined to be- 
 come immortal, although Douglas later declared it se- 
 ditious. Lincoln said: 
 
 **A/r. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: 
 If we could know where we are, and whither we are 
 tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to 
 
 1. Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri, a slave State ; his owner took him in 
 1834 to Illinois, a free State ; then, in 1834, to Minnesota, a free Territory. 
 Later his owner took him back to Missouri, when he sued for his freedom, on 
 the ground that he had resided, for a while at least, on free soil. His owner 
 claimed that having been born of slave parentage and never having been set 
 free, he was still a slave, notwithstanding his places of temporary residence. 
 In 1857 the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of the owner. 
 
12 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a pol- 
 icy was initiated with the avowed object and confident 
 , promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Un- 
 t^ der the operation of that policy, that agitation has not 
 I only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my 
 ) opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been 
 i reached and passed. *A house divided against itself 
 ) cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot en- 
 dure permanently half slave and half free. I do not 
 , expect the Union to be dissolved; I' do not expect the 
 ; house to fall; butldo expect it will cease to be di- 
 * vi ded. ^ It will be come all one thing or all the other. 
 Either' the opponents~of slavery will 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 its advocates will push it forward till it 
 shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well 
 as new, North as well as South." 
 
 Such was the condition of affairs at the opening of 
 the campaign between Douglas and Lincoln for the 
 senatorship of Illinois in 1858. 
 
 The Challenge — Douglas at once gave out a list of 
 his speaking appointments for July, and closing on 
 August 21 at Ottawa. The Republicans also prepared 
 a list of Republican meetings at which Lincoln was 
 scheduled to speak, in some cases coinciding with the 
 Democratic dates and in others following a day later. 
 At the meetings the crowd sometimes called upon Lin- 
 coln to reply to Douglas and the Democratic papers 
 complained that Lincoln was showing bad taste in fol- 
 lowing Douglas about and taking advantage of his large 
 audiences. Douglas devoted a larger part of his time 
 to Trumbull, his co-senator from Illinois, whom he ac- 
 cused of making a compact with Lincoln to dissolve 
 both the old Whig and old Democratic parties and 
 
INTRODUCTION 18 
 
 to unite with the Abolitionists in forming the new 
 * 'Black" Republican party. Trumbull, in turn, charged 
 Douglas with making a corrupt bargain in favoring 
 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise measure. 
 
 It appeared as if the campaign would resolve itself 
 into a contest between Douglas and Trumbull, while 
 Lincoln, who was the actual candidate for Douglas's 
 place, would be lost sight of. Consequently, after con- 
 sulting his friends, Lincoln wrote to Douglas, July 24, 
 1858, inquiring whether it would be agreeable **to di- 
 vide time and address the same audiences in the pres- 
 ent canvass." Douglas replied the same day that his 
 schedule had been made out, that the Democratic can- 
 didates for other offices on the State ticket must be 
 given a hearing at his meetings; but that he would 
 arrange seven extra meetings at which he would dis- 
 cuss the issues of the day with Lincoln. He further 
 named the places, one in each of the seven Congres- 
 sional districts of the State, omitting the Springfield 
 and Chicago districts, in which both had already spoken 
 through Lincoln's '*follow-up" method. 
 
 Lincoln accepted the seven places and the following 
 letters closed the arrangements: 
 
 Bement, Piatt Co., 111., July 30, 1858 
 Dear Sir: — 
 
 Your letter dated yesterday, accepting my proposition 
 for a joint discussion at one prominent point in each Con- 
 gressional District, as stated in my previous letter, was 
 received this morning. 
 
 The times and places designated are as follows: 
 
 Ottawa, LaSalle County - - - August 21, 1858. 
 
 Freeport, Stephenson County - - " 27, " 
 
14 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 Jonesboro, Union County - - September 15, 
 Charleston, Coles County - - " 18, 
 
 Galesburg, Knox County - - - October 7, 
 
 Quincy, Adams County " 13, 
 
 Alton, Madison County " 15, 
 
 I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately 
 open and close the discussion. I will speak at Ottawa for 
 one hour, you can reply, occupying an hour and a half, and 
 I will then follow for half an hour. At Freeport you shall 
 open the discussion and speak for one hour. We will alter- 
 nate in like manner in each successive place. 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 S. A. Douglas 
 Hon. A. Lincoln, Springfield, 111. 
 
 Springfield, July 31, 1858. 
 Hon. S. A. Douglas. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Yours of yesterday, naming places, times, and terms, 
 for joint discussions between us, was received this morning. 
 Although, by the terms, as you propose, you take /oi(r open- 
 ings and closings, to my three, I accede, and thus close the 
 arrangement. I direct this to you at Hillsboro and shall 
 try to have both your letter and this appear in the Journal 
 and Register of Monday morning. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 A. Lincoln. 
 
 The newspapers of the State approved of this ar- 
 rangement to *'let the people judge for themselves who 
 shall be their choice after a fair hearing of them both 
 in person'' and to "submit the whole case to such pop- 
 ular jurors, called together by the joint efforts of the 
 two parties." The Douglas papers made flings at the 
 egotism and the presumption of the upstart to try to 
 thrust himself upon the public by using the crowds 
 which would come to hear The Little Giant. 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 The Course of the Debates — The series began 
 August 21 and closed October 15, covering a period of 
 nearly eight weeks. Douglas began immediately an 
 attack on the new Republican party, of which his op- 
 ponent was one of the founders, and claimed that a bar- 
 gain had been made between his former fellow Demo- 
 crat, Judge Trumbull, and Abraham Lincoln, to unite 
 with the Abolitionists in a sectional revolt against slav- 
 ery; a course which would endanger the Union. He 
 used Lincoln's "house divided against itself" as proof 
 of this disloyalty. Lincoln denied the charge of Abo- 
 litionism and stated in simple language his opinion of 
 the rights of the negro; and then opened up the record 
 of Douglas on the territorial extension of slavery and 
 the Dred Scott case. 
 
 It was customary for a debater to ask his opponent 
 a series of questions intended to compromise him or to 
 put him in an embarrassing position. Douglas did this 
 in the very first debate, hoping to set a trap for Lin- 
 coln; but in the second debate Lincoln answered these 
 questions and then countered with four sequential 
 questions which some historians think caught Douglas 
 in his own trap. 
 
 This second (Freeport) debate is considered the most 
 important of the series. The second question of Lin- 
 coln, as to the right of a people of a Territory to ex- 
 clude slavery before becoming a State, made Douglas 
 reaffirm what he had said **a hundred times from every 
 stump in Illinois." He had to choose between an 
 affirmative answer, which would please Northern Dem- 
 ocrats and gain him the Senatorship, but bar all hopes 
 of the presidency through alienating the South; or re- 
 
16 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 turning a negative answer, which would cost him his 
 Northern favor and the Senatorship. Also, an affirma- 
 tive reply would be wholly at variance with the Dred 
 Scott decision. Neverthless he answered affirmatively. 
 
 It is Gaid that Lincoln saw the result of the affirma- 
 tive reply which Douglas would probably give and 
 which would cost Lincoln the senatorship, but that he 
 looked forward to the presidential election of 1860, and 
 in his homely vernacular said, **I am after larger 
 game." Admirers of Douglas doubt this story, and 
 deny that Lincoln drove Douglas into a corner, because 
 Douglas had on several prior occasions declared that 
 the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude 
 slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a 
 State Constitution. 
 
 In the next debate Douglas reiterated his "bargain" 
 claim, and expressed his unconcern whether slavery was 
 * 'voted up or voted down" in a Territorial legislature. 
 This involved the idea that matters should go on as 
 they had been, but Lincoln showed that Douglas by his 
 own action had made this impossible. Lincoln also ex- 
 ploded Douglas' theory of squatter sovereignty by say- 
 ing that it simply amounted to this: "That if any one 
 man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be 
 allowed to object." The compact with Trumbull and 
 many items of local Illinois politics were frequently 
 tossed back and forth between the two. These are 
 omitted from this volume because they had no bearing 
 on the national situation. 
 
 At Jonesboro, Douglas took a fling at negroes ming- 
 ling with whites, and insinuated that Lincoln and the 
 Republicans were in favor of the equality of the two 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 races. To this Lincoln said tlie final word at Charleston 
 in regard to the possibility of a white man marrying 
 a colored woman. 
 
 There were several passages at arms between the de- 
 baters, and some crude banter which would scarcely be 
 considered in good taste at present. The least justifi- 
 able was D.ouglas reviving the old falsehood that while 
 in Congress in 1847 Lincoln had voted against sending 
 supplies to our troops fighting in Mexico. Lincoln 
 was manifestly aroused to anger, as his reply shows. 
 But he was even more angered when Douglas poked 
 fun at him about his powers of physical endurance, 
 suggesting that Lincoln was so exhausted at Ottawa 
 that he had to be carried from the platform, when in 
 truth he had been carried away, despite his protests, 
 on the shoulders of his enthusiastic followers. 
 
 Douglas frequently lost his temper when interrupted, 
 as he was at Freeport by his hearers who took excep- 
 tion to his constant use of the term "Black" Rebpuli- 
 can. To his complaint that no Democrat had been vul- 
 gar and blackguard enough to interrupt Lincoln while 
 he had the platform, Lincoln replied that while he was 
 speaking he has used no vulgarity or blackguardism 
 toward the Democrats in the crowd. 
 
 The Results of the Debates — Extracts from the 
 debates were printed in the leading newspapers from 
 New York to St. Louis. Douglas's ''Freeport doctrine^' 
 was strongly denounced by the Southern people. It made 
 him impossible to them as a candidate for the presi- 
 dency in 1860 and this caused a split in the Democratic 
 party and the election of Lincoln. Lincoln lost the sen- 
 
18 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 atorship, as his friends had predicted.-^ He borrowed 
 enough money to pay all obligations incurred during 
 the campaign, and expressed himself as satisfied be- 
 cause he had *'got a hearing/' Only two debates have 
 come down by name in American history: one is the 
 Hayne-Webster and the other is the Lincoln- Douglas. 
 The former established the standing of the Constitution ; 
 the latter paved the way for the thirteenth, fourteenth, 
 and fifteenth amendments. 
 
 1. Lincoln received a majority of 4,085 in the popular vote. In spite of this, 
 the arrangement of the Legislative districts, together with hold-over 
 Senators, was such that the Democrats secured 14 seats in the Senate to 11 
 for the Republicans, and 40 in the House to 35 Republicans. 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 19 
 
 FIRST JOINT DEBATE 
 
 Ottawa, August 21, 1858 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : I appear before you to-day 
 for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics 
 which now agitate the public mind. By an arrange- 
 ment between Mr. Lincoln and myself, we are present 
 here to-day for the purpose of having a joint discus- 
 sion, as the representatives of the two great political 
 parties of the State and Union, upon the principles in 
 issue between those parties; and this vast concourse of 
 people shows the deep feeling which pervades the pub- 
 lic mind in regard to the questions dividing us. 
 
 Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two 
 great political parties, known as the Whig^ and Dem- 
 ocratic parties. Both were national and patriotic, ad- 
 vocating principles that were universal in their ap- 
 plication. .. . The Whig party and the Democratic 
 party jointly adopted the compromise measures of 
 1850^ as the basis of a proper and just solution of this 
 slavery question in all its forms. 
 
 1. The Whig party arose about 1825, although the name was not used until 
 some years later. Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster 
 were the great leaders. The Democratic party came into existence about 
 the same time, under Andrew Jackson's leadership. 
 
 2. The Compromise of 1850 involved the admission of California, the organi- 
 zation of New Mexico and Utah as territories, to be free or slave States as 
 their inhabitants might decide (squatter sovereignty), the payment of a 
 money indemnity to Texas, a more rigid Fugitive Slave law, and the abolition 
 of the slave trade, but not of slavery, in the District of Columbia. 
 
20 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 Up to 1853-54, the Whig party and the Democratic 
 party both stood on the same platform with regard to 
 the slavery question. That platform was the right of 
 the people of each State and each Territory to decide 
 their local and domestic institutions for themselves, 
 subject only to the Federal Constitution. 
 
 During the session of Congress of 1853-54, I intro- 
 duced into the Senate of the United States a bill to 
 organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that 
 principle which had been adopted in the Compromise 
 measures of 1850. ... I put forth the true intent and 
 meaning of the Act in these words: **It is the true 
 intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery 
 into any State or Territory, or to exclude it there- 
 from, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to 
 form and regulate their domestic institutions in their 
 own way, subject only to the Federal Constitution." 
 Thus, you see, that up to 1854, when the Kansas and 
 Nebraska bill was brought into Congress for the pur- 
 pose of carrying out the principles which both parties 
 had up to that time indorsed and approved, there had 
 been no division in this country in regard to that prin- 
 ciple except the opposition of the Abolitionists!. . . . 
 
 In 1854, Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Mr. Trumbull^ 
 entered into an arrangement, one with the other, and 
 each with his respective friends, to dissolve the old 
 Whig party on the one hand, and to dissolve the old 
 
 1. The Abolitionists wished to free all slaves by an amendment to the Con- 
 stitution, without compensation to the owners. 
 
 2. Lyman Trumbull, lawyer, was born in Connecticut in 1813. settled in 
 Illinois, and became Secretary of State of Illinois in 1841, Justice of the State 
 Supreme Court in 1848, and U. S. Senator in 1855. He was a Democrat, but 
 joined the new Republican party in 1855. 
 
 I 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 21 
 
 Democratic party on the other, and to connect the mem- 
 bers of both into an Abolition party, under the name 
 and disguise of a Republican party. . . . Lincoln went 
 to work to Abolitionize the old Whig party all over the 
 State, pretending that he was then as good a Whig as 
 ever; and Trumbull went to work in his part of the 
 State preaching Abolitionism in its milder and lighter 
 form, and trying to Abolitionize the Democratic party, 
 and bring old Democrats handcuffed and bound hand 
 and foot into the Abolition camp. In pursuance of the 
 arrangement, the parties met at Springfield in October, 
 1854, and proclaimed their new platform .... I have the 
 resolutions of their State Convention then held, which 
 was the first mass State Convention ever held in Illinois 
 by the Black Republican party, and I now hold them in 
 my hands and will read a part of them, and cause the 
 others to be printed. Here are the most important and 
 material resolutions of this Abolition platform: — 
 
 1. Resolved, That we believe this truth to be self-evi- 
 dent, that when parties become subversive of the ends for 
 which they are established, or incapable of restoring the 
 Government to the true principles of the Constitution, it is 
 the right and duty of the people to dissolve the political 
 bands by which they may have been connected therewith, 
 and to organize new parties upon such principles and with 
 such views as the circumstances and exigencies of the na- 
 tion may demand. 
 
 2. Resolved, That the times imperatively demand the re- 
 organization of parties, and, repudiating all previous party 
 attachments, names, and predilections, we unite ourselves 
 together in defense of the liberty and Constitution of the 
 country, and will hereafter cooperate as the Republican 
 party, pledged to the accomplishment of the following pur- 
 poses; To bring the administration of the Government back 
 
22 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 to the control of first principles; to restore Nebraska and 
 Kansas to the position of free Territories; that, as the Con- 
 stitution of the United States vests in the States, and not 
 in Congress, the power to legislate for the extradition of 
 fugitives from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the 
 Fugitive Slave Law; ^ to restrict slavery to those States in 
 which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more Slave 
 States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of 
 Columbia; to exclude slavery from all the Territories over 
 which the General Government has exclusive jurisdiction ; 
 and to resist the acquirement of any more Territories unless 
 the practice of slavery therein forever shall have been pro- 
 hibited. 
 
 3. Resolved, That in furtherance of these principles we 
 will use such Constitutional and lawful means as shall seem 
 best adapted to their accomplishment, and that we will sup- 
 port no man for office, under the General or State Govern- 
 ment, who is not positively and fully committed to the sup- 
 port of these principles, and whose personal character and 
 conduct is not a guarantee that he is reliable, and who shall 
 not have abjured old party allegiance and ties.^ 
 
 Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered 
 every one of those propositions, and yet I venture to 
 say that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln to come out and 
 say that he is now in favor of each one of them. That 
 these propositions, one and all, constitute the platform 
 of the Black Republican party of this day, 1 have no 
 doubt; and when you were not aware for what pur- 
 pose I was reading them, your Black Republicans cheered 
 them as good Black Republican doctrines. My object 
 in reading these resolutions was to put the question to 
 
 1. The Fugitive Slave law was part of the Compromise of 1850. It placed 
 the duty of returning runaway slaves in the hands of United States Marshals 
 instead of State officers. 
 
 2. These resolutions, as it later was understood, were adopted at a local 
 convention, preceding the first regular Republican convention by two years. 
 See note on page 28, 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 23 
 
 Abraham Lincoln this day, whether he now stands and 
 will stand by each article in that creed and carry it 
 out. I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln to-day 
 stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional 
 repeal of the Fugitive Slave law. I desire him to an- 
 swer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 
 1854, against the admission of any more Slave States 
 into the Union, even if the people want them. I want 
 to know whether he stands pledged against the admis- 
 sion of a new State into the Union with such a Consti- 
 tution as the people of that State may see fit to make. 
 I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the 
 abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. I de- 
 sire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the 
 prohibition of the slave trade between the different 
 States. I desire to know whether he stands pledged to 
 prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United 
 States, north as well as south of the Missouri Com- 
 promise line. I desire him to answer whether he is 
 opposed to the acquisition of any more territory, un- 
 less slavery is prohibited therein. . . . 
 
 I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions, in 
 order that, when I trot him down to lower Egypt, ^ I 
 may put the same questions to him.... In the re- 
 marks I have made on this platform, and the position 
 of Mr. Lincoln upon it, I mean nothing personally 
 disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I have 
 known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were 
 many points of sympathy between us when we first got 
 acquainted. We were both comparatively boys, and 
 
 1. The lower part of Illinois was known as "Egypt." Some say it was' so 
 called because the people lived in darkness. 
 
24 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 both struggling with poverty in a strange land. 1 was 
 a school-teacher in the town of "Winchester, and he a 
 flourishing grocery keeper in the town of Salem. He 
 was more successful in his occupation than I was in 
 mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods. 
 Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with 
 admirable skill everything which they undertake. I 
 made as good a school-teacher as 1 could, and when a 
 cabinet-maker I made a good bedstead and tables, al- 
 though my old boss said I succeeded better with bu- 
 reaus and secretaries than with anything else; but I 
 believe that Lincoln was always more successful' in 
 business than I, for his business enabled him to get 
 into the Legislature. I met him there, however,, and 
 had a sympathy with him, because of the up-hill strug- 
 gle we both had in life. He was then just as good at 
 telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the 
 boys wrestling, or running a foot-race, in pitching 
 quoits or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor 
 than all of the boys of the town together; and the dig- 
 nity and impartiality with which he presided at a 
 horse-race or fist-fight excited the admiration and won 
 the praise of everybody that was present and partici- 
 pated. I sympathized with him because he was strug- 
 gling with difficulties, and so was L . . . 
 
 Having formed this new party for the oenefit of de- 
 serters from Whiggery, and deserters from Democracy, 
 and having laid down the Abolition platform which I 
 have read, Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims 
 his Abolition doctrines. Let me read a part of them. 
 In his speech at Springfield to the Convention which 
 nominated him for the Senate, he said: — 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE' 25 
 
 *'In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall 
 have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against 
 itself cannot stand.' I believe this government can- 
 not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do 
 not expect the Union to be dissolved,— I do not expect 
 the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be 
 divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. 
 Either the opponents of slavery will 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 its advocates will push it forward till it 
 shall become alike lawful in all the States,— old as 
 well as new, North as well as South." 
 ["Good," "Good," and cheers.] 
 I am delighted to hear you Black Republicans say 
 "good." I have no doubt that doctrine expresses your 
 sentiments, and I will prove to you now, if you will 
 listen to me, that it is revolutionary and destructive 
 
 of the existence of this Government 1 assert that 
 
 uniformity in the local laws and institutions of the dif- 
 ferent States is neither possible nor desirable. If uni- 
 formity had been adopted when the Government was 
 established, it must inevitably have been the uniformity 
 of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity of negro 
 citizenship and negro equality everywhere. 
 
 We are told by Lincoln that he is utterly opposed to 
 the Dred Scott decision, or will not submit to it, for 
 the reason that he says it deprives the negro of the 
 rights and privileges of citizenship. That is the first 
 and main reason which he assigns for his warfare on 
 the Supreme Court of the United States and its de- 
 cision. I ask you, are you in favor of conferring upon 
 
26 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship? Do 
 you desire to strike out of our State Constitution that 
 clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the 
 State, and allow the free negroes to flow in, and cover 
 your prairies with black settlements? Do you desire 
 to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony, 
 in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can 
 send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into 
 Illinois, to become citizens and voters, on an equality 
 with yourselves? If you desire negro citizenship, if 
 you desire to allow them to come into the State and 
 settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote 
 on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligi- 
 ble to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your 
 rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Repub- 
 lican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the 
 negro. For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in 
 any and every form. I believe this Government was 
 made on the white basis. I believe it was made by 
 white men, for the benefit of white men and their pos- 
 terity forever, and I am in favor of confining citizen- 
 ship to white men, men of European birth and descent, 
 instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and 
 other inferior races. . . . 
 
 The question then arises. What rights and privileges 
 are consistent with the public good? This is a ques- 
 tion which each State and each Territory must decide 
 for itself; Illinois has decided it for herself. We have 
 provided that the negro shall not be a slave, and we 
 have also provided that he shall not be a citizen, but 
 protect him in his civil rights, in his life, his person, 
 and his property, only depriving him of all political 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 27 
 
 rights whatsoever, and refusing to put him on an 
 equality with the white man. . . . But the Republi- 
 cans say that he ought to be made a citizen, and when 
 he becomes a citizen he becomes your equal, with all 
 your rights and privileges. They assert the Dred Scott 
 decision to be monstrous, because it denies that the 
 negro is or can be a citizen under the Constitution. . . . 
 Our fathers intended that our Constitutions should 
 differ. They knew that the North and the South, 
 having different climates, productions, and interests, 
 required different institutions. This doctrine of Mr. 
 Lincoln, of uniformity among the institutions of the 
 different States, is a new doctrine, never dreamed of 
 by Washington, Madison, or the framers of this Gov- 
 ernment. Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party set 
 themselves up as wiser than these men who made this 
 Government, which has flourished for seventy years 
 under the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing 
 the right of each State to do as it pleased .... I be- 
 lieve that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln 
 and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. 
 They are trying to array all the Northern States in one 
 body against the South, to excite a sectional war be- 
 tween the Free States and the Slave States, in order 
 that the one or the other may be driven to the wall. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S REPLY 
 
 My Fellow Citizens : When a man hears himself some- 
 what 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. 
 
28 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 The first thing I see lit 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. ..." 
 
 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. 
 
 ['Tut on your specs."] 
 
 Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer a 
 young man. . . . 
 
 When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible 
 
 1. Gen. James Shields was U. S. Senator from Illinois, 1848-1854, 
 
 2. Lincoln next explained that he was not in the Convention in 1854 which 
 adopted these resolutions, although his name was signed as one of the com- 
 mittee, without consent. At the time he was attending court in Tazewell 
 County and was not even in Springfield where the Convention was held. 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 29 
 
 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 surely 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 re- 
 flection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as 
 I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, 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? 1 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 po- 
 litically 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 dis- 
 regarded. 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 
 
 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 Ne- 
 braska, 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. 
 
30 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 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 catechise 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 get- 
 ting 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 slav- 
 ery 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 equal- 
 ity between the white and the black races. There is a 
 physical difference between the two which, in my judg- 
 ment, will probably forever forbid their living together 
 upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch 
 as it becomes a necessity 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 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 31 
 
 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 
 
 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. . . . 
 
 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 
 
 1. The theory that the citizens of a territory should decide at the time of 
 forming a state constitution whether they would be free or slave was known 
 as "popular sovereignty," or "squatter sovereignty"; that is, home rule for 
 the settlers. 
 
32 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 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? .... 
 
 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 ten- 
 dencies 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 coun- 
 try! To my thinking. Judge Douglas is, by his ex- 
 ample 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 an- 
 nual joyous return. When he invites any people, will- 
 ing 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 voted up," — 
 that it is a sacred right of self-government — he is, in 
 my judgment, penetrating the human soul and eradi- 
 cating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this 
 American people. And now I will only say that when, 
 
 1. A large prairie tract in central Illinois was known as the "Grand Prairie." 
 
 2. Henry Clay, of Kentucky, (1777-1852) advocated a protective tariff, a free 
 interpretation of the Constitution, and development of means of internal 
 transportation. These were Whig principles, and he was the idol of the party. 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 33 
 
 by all these means and appliances, Judge Douglas shall 
 succeed in bringing public sentiment to an exact ac- 
 cordance with his own views; when these vast assem- 
 blages shall echo back all these sentiments; when they 
 shall come to repeat his views, and to avow his prin- 
 ciples, and to say all that he says on these mighty ques- 
 tions, — 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. 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S REPLY 
 
 Fellow Citizens : I will now occupy the half-hour al- 
 lotted to me in replying to Mr. Lincoln. . . . 
 
 This denial^ of his that he did not act on the commit- 
 tee, is a miserable quibble to avoid the main issue, 
 which is, that this Republican platform declares in 
 favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave 
 law. Has Lincoln answered whether he indorsed that 
 or not? I called his attention to it when I first ad- 
 dressed you, and asked him for an answer, and I then 
 predicted that he would not answer. How does he 
 answer? Why, that he was not on the committee that 
 wrote the resolutions. I then repeated the next prop- 
 osition contained in the resolutions, which was to re- 
 strict slavery in those States in which it exists, and 
 asked him whether he indorsed it. Does he answer 
 
 1. Referring to the denial made by Lincoln that he was in the Springfield 
 "Abolition" convention of 1854. 
 
34 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 yes, or no? He says in reply, "I was not on the com- 
 mittee at the time; I was up in Tazewell." 
 
 The next question I put to him was, whether he was 
 in favor of prohibiting the admission of any more Slave 
 States into the Union. I put the question to him dis- 
 tinctly, whether, if the people of the Territory, when 
 they had sufficient population to make a State, should 
 form their Constitution recognizing slavery, he would 
 vote for or against its admission. He is a candidate 
 for the United States Senate, and it is possible, if he 
 should be elected, that he would have to vote directly 
 on that question. I asked him to answer me and you, 
 whether he would vote to admit a State into the Union, 
 with slavery or without it, as its own people might 
 choose. He did not answer that question. He dodges 
 that question also, under the cover that he was not on 
 the Committee at the time; that he was not present 
 when the platform was made. I want to know if he 
 should happen to be in the Senate when a State applied 
 for admission, with a Constitution acceptable to her 
 own people, would he vote to admit that State, if slav- 
 ery was one of its institutions. He avoids the answer. 
 
 It is true he gives the Abolitionists to understand by 
 a hint that he would not vote to admit such a State. 
 And why? He goes on to say that the man who would 
 talk about giving each State the right to have slavery 
 or not, as it pleased, was akin to the man who would 
 muzzle the guns which thundered forth the annual joyous 
 return of the day of our Independence. He says that 
 that kind of talk is casting a blight on the glory of this 
 country. What is the meaning of that? That he is 
 not in favor of each State to have the right of doing 
 
FIRST JOINT DEBATE 35 
 
 as it pleases on the slavery question? I will put the 
 question to him again and again, and I intend to force 
 it out of him. . . . 
 
 Now you see that upon these very points I am as far 
 from bringing Mr. Lincoln up to the line as I ever was 
 before. He does not want to avow his principles. I 
 do want to avow mine, as clear as sunlight in midday. 
 Democracy is founded upon the eternal principles of 
 right. The plainer these principles are avowed before 
 the people, the stronger will be the support which they 
 will receive. I only wish I had the power to make 
 them so clear that they would shine in the heavens for 
 every man, woman, and child to read. The first of 
 these principles that I would proclaim would be in op- 
 position to Mr. Lincoln's doctrine of uniformity be- 
 tween the different States, and I would declare instead 
 the sovereign right of each State to decide the slavery 
 question as well as all other domestic questions for 
 themselves, without interference from any other State 
 or power whatsoever. 
 
 When that principle is recognized, you will have 
 peace and harmony and fraternal feeling between all 
 the States of this Union; until you do recognize that 
 doctrine, there will be sectional warfare agitating and 
 distracting the country. What does Mr. Lincoln pro- 
 pose? He says that the Union cannot exist divided 
 into Free and Slave States. If it cannot endure thus 
 divided, then he must strive to make them all Free or 
 all Slave, which will inevitably bring about a dissolu- 
 tion of the Union. 
 
 Gentlemen, I am told that my time is out, and I am 
 obliged to stop. 
 
Senator Stephen A. Douglas 
 
SECOND JOINT DEBATE 37 
 
 SECOND JOINT DEBATE 
 
 Freeport, August 27, 1858 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: On Saturday last, Judge 
 Douglas and myself first met in public discussion. He 
 spoke one hour, I an hour and a half, and he replied 
 for half an hour. The order is now reversed. I am 
 to speak an hour, he an hour and a half, and then I am 
 to reply for half an hour. I propose to devote myself 
 during the first hour to the scope of what \vas brought 
 within the range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa. . . . 
 
 I will take up the Judge's interrogatories as I find 
 them printed in the Chicago Times, and answer them 
 seriatim. In order that there may be no mistake 
 about it, I have copied the interrogatories in writing, 
 and also my answers to them .... 
 
 As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive Slave 
 law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now 
 hesitate to say, that I think, under the Constitution of 
 the United States, the people of the Southern States 
 are entitled to a. Congressional Fugitive Slave Law. 
 Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard 
 to the existing Fugitive Slave Law, further than that I 
 think it should have been framed so as to be free from 
 some of the objections that pertain to it, without les- 
 sening its efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now 
 
88 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 in an agitation in regard to an alteration or modifica- 
 tion of that law, I would not be the man to introduce 
 it as a new subject of agitation upon the general ques- 
 tion of slavery. 
 
 In regard to the other question, of whether I am 
 pledged to the admission of any more Slave States into 
 the Union, I state to you very frankly that 1 would be 
 exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of hav- 
 ing to pass upon that question. 1 should be exceed- 
 ingly glad to know that there would never be another 
 Slave State admitted into the Union; but 1 must add, 
 that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories dur- 
 ing the territorial existence of any one given Territory, 
 and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a 
 clear field, when they come to adopt the constitution, 
 do such an .extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave con- 
 stitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the 
 institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own 
 the country, but to admit them into the Union. 
 
 The third interrogatory is answered by the answer 
 to the second, it being, as I conceive, the same as the 
 second. 
 
 The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slav- 
 ery in the District of Columbia. In relation to that, 
 I have my mind very distinctly made up. I should be 
 exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia. I believe that Congress possesses 
 the constitutional power to abolish it. Yet as a mem- 
 ber of Congress, I should not, with my present views, 
 be in favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the 
 District of Columbia, unless it would be upon these 
 conditions: first, that the abolition should be gradual; 
 
SECOND JOINT DEBATE 39 
 
 second, that it should be on a vote of the majority of 
 qualified voters in the District; and third, that compen- 
 sation should be made to unwilling owners. With these 
 three conditions, I confess I would be exceedingly glad 
 to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Col- 
 umbia, and, in the language of Henry Clay, "sweep 
 from our Capitol that foul blot upon our nation/' 
 
 In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must say here, 
 that as to the question of the abolition of the slave 
 trade between the different States, I can truly answer, 
 as I have, that I am pledged to nothing about it. It 
 is a subject to which I have not given that mature con- 
 sideration that would make me feel authorized to state 
 a position so as to hold myself entirely bound by it. 
 In other words, that question has never beei;i promi- 
 nently enough before me to induce me to investigate 
 whether we really have the constitutional power to do 
 it. I could investigate it if I had sufficient time to 
 bring myself to a conclusion upon that subject; but I 
 have not done so, and I say so frankly to you here, and 
 to Judge Douglas. I must say, however, that if I 
 should be of opinion that Congress does possess the 
 constitutional power to abolish the slave trade among 
 the different States, I should still not be in favor of 
 the exercise of that power unless upon some conserva- 
 tive principle, as I conceive it, akin to what I have said 
 in relation to the abolition of slavery in the District 
 of Columbia. 
 
 My answer as to whether I desire that slavery should 
 be prohibited in all the Territories of the United States, 
 is full and explicit within itself, and cannot be made 
 clearer by any comments of mine. So I suppose in re- 
 
40 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 gard to the question whether I am opposed to the ac- 
 quisition of any more territory unless slavery is first 
 prohibited therein, my answer is such that I could add 
 nothing by way of illustration, or making myself better 
 understood, than the answer which I have placed in 
 writing. . . . 
 
 I now proceed to propound to the Judge the interrog- 
 atories, so far as I have framed them. I will bring for- 
 ward a new installment when I get them ready. 1 will 
 bring them forward now only reaching to number four. 
 
 The first one is: — 
 
 Question 1. — If the people of Kansas shall, by means 
 entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a 
 ^ate Constitution, and ask admission into the Union 
 under it, before they have the requisite number of in- 
 habitants according to the English bill, — some ninety- 
 three thousand, — will you vote to admit them? 
 
 Question 2. Can the people of a United States Ter- 
 ritory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citi- 
 zen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits 
 prior to the formation of a State Constitution?^ 
 
 Question 3. If the Supreme Court of the United 
 States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery 
 from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, 
 adopting, and following such decision as a rule of polit- 
 ical action? 
 
 Question 4. Are you in favor of acquiring addi- 
 tional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition 
 may affect the nation on the slavery question? .... 
 
 Go on, Judge Douglas. . 
 
 13. This is thought to be the most important of all questions put to 
 Douirlas by Lincoln. 
 
SECOND JOINT DEBATE 41 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: The silence with which you 
 have listened to Mr. Lincoln during his hour is credit- 
 able to this vast audience, composed of men of various 
 political parties. Nothing is more honorable to any 
 large mass of people assembled for the purpose of a 
 fair discussion, than that kind and respectful attention 
 that is yielded not only to your political friends, but to 
 those who are opposed to you in politics. 
 
 I am glad that at last I have brought Mr. Lincoln to 
 the conclusion that he had better define his position on 
 certain political questions to which I called his atten- 
 tion at Ottawa. He there showed no disposition, no 
 inclination, to answer them. I did not present idle 
 questions for him to answer merely for my gratifica- 
 tion. I laid the foundation for those interrogatories 
 by showing that they constituted the platform of the 
 party whose nominee he is for the Senate. I did not 
 presume that I had the right to catechise him as I saw 
 proper, unless I showed that his party, or a majority 
 of it, stood upon the platform and were in favor of the 
 propositions upon which my questions were based. I 
 desired simply to know, inasmuch as he had been nom- 
 inated as the first, last, and only choice of his party, 
 whether he concurred in the platform which that party 
 had adopted for its government. In a few moments 1 
 will proceed to review the answers which he has given 
 to these interrogatories; but, in order to relieve his 
 anxiety, I will first respond to these which he has pre- 
 sented to me. Mark you, he has not presented inter- 
 rogatories which have ever received the sanction of the 
 party with which I am acting, and hence he has no 
 
42 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 other foundation for them than his own curiosity. 
 First, he desires to know, if the people of Kansas 
 shall form a constitution by means entirely proper and 
 unobjectionable, and ask admission into the Union as 
 a State, before they have the requisite population for 
 a member of Congress, whether I will vote for that ad- 
 mission. I will answer his question. In reference to 
 Kansas, it is my opinion that as she has population 
 enough to constitute a Slave State, she has people 
 enough for a Free State. I will not make Kansas an 
 exceptional case to the other States of the Union. I 
 hold it to be a sound rule, of universal application, to 
 require a Territory to contain the requisite popula- 
 tion. ... On another occasion I proposed that neither 
 Kansas nor any other Territory should be admitted un- 
 til it had the requisite population. Congress did not 
 adopt any of my propositions containing this general 
 rule, but did make an exception of Kansas. I will 
 stand by that exception. Either Kansas must come in 
 as a Free State, with whatever population she may 
 have, or the rule must be applied to all the other Ter- 
 ritories alike. I therefore answer at once, that, it hav- 
 ing been decided that Kansas has people enough for a 
 Slave State, I hold that she has enough for a Free State. 
 I hope Mr. Lincoln is satisfied with my answer; and 
 now I would like to get his answer to his own interrog- 
 atory, — whether or not he will vote to admit Kansas 
 befoie she has the requisite population. I want to 
 know whether he will vote to admit Oregon before that 
 Territory has the requisite population. I would like 
 Mr. Lincoln to answer this question. 1 would like him 
 to take his own medicine. 
 
SECOND JOINT DEBATE 43 
 
 The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln 
 is, Can the people of a Territory, in any lawful way, 
 against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, 
 exclude slavery from their limits prior to the forma- 
 tion of a State Constitution? I answer emphatically, 
 as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times 
 from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the 
 people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude 
 slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a 
 State Constitution^ .... It matters not what way the 
 Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the ab- 
 stract question whether slavery may or may not go into 
 a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the 
 lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they 
 please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day 
 or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local 
 police regulations. Those police regulations can only 
 be established by the local legislature; and if the peo- 
 ple are opposed to slavery, they will elect representa- 
 tives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation 
 effectually prevent the introduction of it into their 
 midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their leg- 
 islature will favor its extension. Hence, no matter 
 what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on 
 that abstract question, still the right of the people to 
 make a Slave Territory or a Free Territory is perfect 
 and complete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. 
 Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point. 
 
 The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is. 
 If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide 
 
 1. This is the affirmative reply of Douglas to the important question of 
 Lincoln. 
 
'44 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 that a State of this Union cannot exclude slavery from 
 its own limits, will I submit to it? I am amazed that 
 Lincoln should ask such a question. 
 
 [**A school-boy knows better."] 
 
 Yes, a school-boy does know better. Mr. Lincoln's 
 object is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. 
 He might as well ask me, Suppose Mr. Lincoln should 
 steal a horse, would I sanction it; and it would be as 
 genteel in me to ask him, in the event he stole a horse, 
 what ought to be done with him. He casts an imputa- 
 tion upon the Supreme Court of the United States, by 
 supposing that they would violate the Constitution of 
 the United States. I tell him that such a thing is not 
 possible. It would be an act of moral treason that no 
 man on the bench could ever descend to. Mr. Lincoln 
 himself would never in his partial feelings so far forget 
 what was right as to be guilty of such an act. 
 
 The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is. Are you in 
 favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard 
 as to how such acquisition may affect the Union on the 
 slavery question? This question is very ingeniously 
 and cunningly put. 
 
 The Black Republican creed lays it down expressly, 
 that under no circumstances shall we acquire any more 
 territory, unless slavery is first prohibited in the coun- 
 try. I ask Mr. Lincoln whether he is in favor of that 
 proposition. Are you (addressing Mr. Lincoln) op- 
 posed to the acquisition of any more territory, under 
 any circumstances, unless slavery Is prohibited in it? 
 That he does not like to answer. When I ask him 
 whether he stands up to that article in the platform of 
 his party, he turns, Yankee-fashion, and without an- 
 
SECOND JOINT DEBATE 45 
 
 swering it, asks me whether I am in favor of acquir- 
 ing territory without regard to how it may affect the 
 Union on the slavery question. I answer, that when- 
 ever it becomes necessary, in our growth and progress, 
 to acquire more territory, that I am in favor of it, 
 without reference to the question of slavery; and when 
 we have acquired it, I will leave the people free to do 
 as they please, either to make it slave or free terri- 
 tory, as they prefer. ... 
 
 I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem himself an- 
 swered on his four points. He racked his brain so 
 much in devising these four questions that he ex- 
 hausted himself, and had not strength enough to in- 
 vent the others. As soon as he is able to hold a coun- 
 cil with his advisers, Lovejoy, Farnsworth, and Fred 
 Douglass,^ he will frame and propound others. 
 
 [**Good, Good."] 
 
 You Black Republicans who say *'good," I have no 
 doubt think that they are all good men. I have reason 
 to recollect that some people in this country think that 
 Fred Douglass is a very good man. The last time I came 
 here to make a speech, while talking from the stand to 
 you people of Freeport, as I am doing to-day, I saw a 
 carriage — and a magnificent one it was — ^drive up and 
 take a position on the outside of the crowd; a beauti- 
 ful young lady was sitting on the box-seat, while Fred 
 Douglass and her mother reclined inside and the owner 
 of the carriage acted as driver. I saw this in your own 
 town. 
 
 15. Lovejoy and Farnsworth were Abolitionist leaders of Illinois. Fred 
 Douglass was a free negro of unusual ability. In citing these men as 
 Lincoln's advisers, Douglas is emphasizing Lincoln's supposed connection 
 with the obnoxious Abolitionists. 
 
46 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 [**Whatof it?"] 
 
 All I have to say of it is this, that if you Black Repub- 
 licans think that the negro ought to be on a social equal- 
 ity with your wives and daughters, and ride in a car- 
 riage with your wife, whilst you drive the team, you 
 have perfect right to do so. I am told that one of Fred 
 Douglass' kinsmen, another rich black negro, is now 
 traveling in this part of the State making speeches for 
 his friend Lincoln as the champion of the black men. 
 
 ["What have you to say against it?"] 
 
 All I have to say on that subject is, that those of you 
 who believe that the negro is your equal and ought to 
 be on an equality with you socially, politically, and 
 legally, have a right to entertain those opinions, and of 
 course will vote for Mr. Lincoln. . . . 
 
 Now, there are a great many Black Republicans of 
 you who do not know this thing was done. 
 
 [* 'White, white," and great clamor.] 
 
 I wish to remind you that while Mr. Lincoln was 
 speaking there was not a Democrat vulgar and black- 
 guard enough to interrupt him. But I know that the 
 shoe is pinching you. I am clinching Lincoln now, and 
 you are scared to death for the result. I have seen this 
 thing before. I have seen men make appointments for 
 joint discussions, and the moment their man has been 
 heard, try to interrupt and prevent a fair hearing of 
 the other side. 1 have seen your mobs before, and 
 defy your wrath. [Tremendous applause.] 
 
 My friends, do not cheer, for I need my whole time 
 
 Mr. Lincoln lays down the doctrine that this Union 
 cannot endure divided as our fathers made it, with 
 
SECOND JOINT DEBATE 47 
 
 Free and Slave States. He says they must all become 
 one thing, or all the other; that they must all be free 
 or all slave, or else the Union cannot continue to exist; 
 it being his opinion that to admit any more Slave 
 States, to continue to divide the Union into Free and 
 Slave States, will dissolve it. I want to know of Mr. 
 Lincoln whether he will vote for the admission of an- 
 other Slave State. 
 
 He tells you the Union cannot exist unless the States 
 are all free or all slave; he tells you that he is opposed 
 to making them all slave, and hence he is for making 
 them all free, in order that the Union may exist; and 
 yet he will not say that he will not vote against another 
 Slave State, knowing that the Union must be dissolved 
 if he votes for it. I ask you if that is fair dealing. 
 .... Show me that it is my duty, in order to save 
 the Union, to do a particular act, and I will do it if 
 the Constitution does not prohibit it. I am not for 
 the dissolution of the Union under any circumstances. 
 I will pursue no course of conduct that will give just 
 cause for the dissolution of the Union. The hope of 
 the friends of freedom throughout the world rests upon 
 the perpetuity of this Union. The down-trodden and 
 oppressed people who are suffering under European 
 despotism all look with hope and anxiety to the Amer- 
 ican Union as the only resting place and permanent 
 home of freedom and self-government. . . . 
 
 I know Mr. Lincoln's object; he wants to divide the 
 Democratic party, in order that he may defeat me and 
 get to the Senate. . . . 
 
48 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 MR. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER 
 
 My Friends: It will readily occur to you that I can- 
 not, in half an hour, notice all the things that so able 
 a man as Judge Douglas can say in an hour and a half; 
 and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has 
 said upon which you would like to hear something from 
 me, but which I omit to comment upon, you will bear 
 in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility 
 for me to go over his whole ground. I can but take 
 up some of the points that he has dwelt upon, and em- 
 ploy my half-hour specially on them. 
 
 The first thing I have to say to you is a word in re- 
 gard to Judge Douglas's declaration about the "vul- 
 garity and blackguardism'' in the audience, — that no 
 such thing, as he says, was shown by any Democrat 
 while I was speaking. Now, I only wish, by way of 
 reply on this subject, to say that while I was speaking, 
 I used no * 'vulgarity or blackguardism" toward any 
 Democrat. . . . 
 
 He says I do not declare I would in any event vote 
 for the admission of a Slave State into the Union. If 
 I have been fairly reported, he will see that I did give 
 an explicit answer to his interrogatories; I did not 
 merely say that I would dislike to be put to the test, 
 but I said clearly, if I were put to the test, and a Ter- 
 ritory from which slavery had been excluded should 
 present herself with a State Constitution sanctioning 
 slavery, — a most extraordinary thing and wholly un- 
 likely to happen, — I did not see how I could avoid vot- 
 ing for her admission. But he refuses to understand 
 that I said so, and he wants this audience to under- 
 stand that I did not say so. Yet it will be so reported 
 
SECOND JOINT DEBATE 49 
 
 in the printed speech that he cannot help seeing it. 
 
 He says if I should vote for the admission of a Slave 
 State I would be voting for a dissolution of the Union, 
 because I hold that the Union cannot permanently ex- 
 ist half slave and half free. I repeat that I do not be- 
 lieve this Government can endure permanently half 
 slave and half free; yet I do not admit, nor does it at 
 all follow, that the admission of a single Slave State 
 will permanently fix the character and establish this 
 as a universal slave nation. The Judge is very happy 
 indeed at working up these quibbles. . . . 
 
 His hope rested on the idea of enlisting the great 
 "Black Republican" party, and making it the tail of 
 his new kite. He l^nows he was expecting from day 
 to day to turn Republican and place himself at the 
 head of our organization. He has found that these 
 despised ''Black Republicans" estimate him by a stand- 
 ard which he has taught them none too well. Hence 
 he is crawling back into his old camp, and you will 
 find him eventually installed in full fellowship among 
 those whom he was then battling, and with whom he 
 now pretends to be at such fearful variance. 
 
 [Loud applause and cries of *'Go on, Go on."] 
 
 I cannot, gentlemen, my time has expired. 
 
50 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 THIRD JOINT DEBATE 
 
 Jonesboro, September 15, 1858 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I appear before you to-day 
 in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made ar- 
 rangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and dis- 
 cuss with him the leading political topics that now 
 agitate the country. 
 
 Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great 
 political parties known as Whig and Democratic. Since 
 that period, a great revolution has taken place in the 
 formation of parties, by which they now seem to be 
 divided by a geographical line, a large party in the 
 North being arrayed under the Abolition or Republi- 
 can banner, in hostility to the Southern States, South- 
 ern people, and Southern institutions. . . . 
 
 They were Republicans or Abolitionists in the North, 
 anti-Nebraska men down about Springfield, and in this 
 neighborhood they contented themselves with talking 
 about the inexpediency of the repeal of the Missouri 
 Compromise. In the extreme northern counties they 
 brought out men to canvass the State whose complexion 
 suited their political creed; and hence Fred Douglass, 
 the negro, was to be found there, following General 
 Cass,^ and attempting to speak on behalf of Lincoln, 
 
 1. Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, a Democratic candidate for the presi- 
 dency in 1848, was defeated by Gen. Zachary Taylor, a Whig. 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 51 
 
 Trumbull, and Abolitionism, against that illustrious 
 Senator. Why, they brought Fred Douglass to Free- 
 port, when I was addressing a meeting there, in a car- 
 riage driven by the white owner, the negro sitting in- 
 side with the white lady and her daughter. . . . 
 
 Mr. Lincoln likens that bond of the Federal Consti- 
 tution, joining Free and Slave States together, to a 
 house divided against itself, and says that it is con- 
 trary to the law of God, and cannot stand. When did 
 he learn, and by what authority does he proclaim, that 
 this Government is contrary to the law of God and can- 
 not stand? It has stood thus divided into Free and 
 Slave States from its organization up to this day. Dur- 
 ing that period we have increased from four millions 
 to thirty millions of people; we have extended our 
 territory from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean; we 
 have acquired the Floridas and Texas, and other ter- 
 ritory sufficient to double our geographical extent; we 
 have increased in population, in wealth, and in power 
 beyond any example on earth; we have risen from a 
 weak and feeble power to become the terror and ad- 
 miration of the civilized world; and all this has been 
 done under a Constitution which Mr. Lincoln, in sub- 
 stance, says is in violation of the law of God; and under 
 a Union divided into Free and Slave States, which Mr. 
 Lincoln thinks, because of such division, cannot stand. 
 Surely, Mr. Lincoln is a wiser man than those who 
 framed the Government. . . . 
 
 I hold that a negro is not and never ought to be a citi- 
 zen of the United States. I hold that this Government 
 was made on the white basis, by white men, for the ben- 
 efit of white men and their posterity forever, and should 
 
52 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 be administered by white men and none others. I do not 
 believe that the Almighty made the negro capable of 
 self-government. I am aware' that all the Abolition 
 lecturers that you find traveling about through the 
 country are in the habit of reading the Declaration of 
 Independence to prove that all men were created equal 
 and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
 rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness. Mr. Lincoln is very much in the habit 
 of following in the track of Lovejoy in this particular, 
 by reading that part of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence to prove that the negro was endowed by the Al- 
 mighty with inalienable right of equality with white 
 men. Now, I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in 
 my opinion, the signers of the Declaration had no ref- 
 erence to the negro whatever, when they declared all 
 men to be created equal. They desired to express by 
 that phrase white men, men of European birth and 
 European descent, and had no reference either to the 
 negro, the savage Indians, the Fiji, the Malay, or 
 any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke 
 of the equality of men. One great evidence that such 
 was their understanding, is to be found in the fact that 
 at that time every one of the thirteen colonies was a 
 slaveholding colony, every signer of the Declaration 
 represented a slaveholding constituency, and we know 
 that not one of them emancipated his slaves, much less 
 offered citizenship to them, when they signed the Dec- 
 laration; and yet, if they intended to declare that the 
 negro was the equal of the white man, and entitled by 
 divine right to an equality with him, they were bound, 
 as honest men, that day and hour to have put their ne- 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 53 
 
 groes on an equality with themselves. Instead of do- 
 ing so, with uplifted eyes to Heaven they implored the 
 divine blessing upon them, during the seven years* 
 bloody war they had to fight to maintain that Declar- 
 ation, never dreaming that they were violating divine 
 law by still holding the negroes in bondage and depriv- 
 ing them of equality. 
 
 My friends, I am in favor of preserving this Govern- 
 ment as our fathers made it. It does not follow by 
 any means that because a negro is not your equal or 
 mine, that hence he must necessarily be a slave. On 
 the contrary, it does follow that we ought to extend 
 to the negro every right, every privilege, every im- 
 munity, which he is capable of enjoying, consistent 
 with the good of society. When you ask me what 
 these rights are, what their nature and extent is, I tell 
 you that is a question which each State of this Union 
 must decide for itself. . . . 
 
 I now come back to the question, why cannot this 
 Union exist forever, divided into Free and Slave States, 
 as our fathers made it? It can thus exist if each State 
 will carry out the principles upon which our institu- 
 tions were founded ; to wit, the rights of each State to 
 do as it pleases, without meddling with its neighbors. 
 Just act upon that great principle, and this Union will 
 not only live forever, but it will extend and expand 
 until it covers the whole continent, and makes this con- 
 federacy one grand, ocean-bound Republic. We must 
 bear in mind that we are yet a young nation, growing 
 with a rapidity unequalled in the history of the world, 
 that our national increase is great, and that the emi- 
 gration from the old world is increasing, requiring us 
 
54 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 to expand and acquire new territory from time to time, 
 in order to give our people land to live upon. If we 
 live upon the principle of State rights and State sover- 
 eignity, each State regulating its own affairs and mind- 
 ing its own business, we can go on and extend indefin- 
 itely, just as fast and as far as we need the territory .... 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S REPLY 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : There is very much in the 
 principles that Judge Douglas has here enunciated that 
 I must cordially approve, and over which I shall have 
 no controversy with him. In so far as he has insisted 
 that all the States have the right to do exactly as they 
 please about all their domestic relations, including that 
 of slavery, I agree entirely with him. He places me 
 wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I repeat it 
 again and again, insisting that I have no difference 
 with him upon this subject. I have made a great many 
 speeches, some of which have been printed, and it will 
 be utterly impossible for him to find anything that I 
 have ever put in print contrary to what I now say upon 
 this subject. I hold myself under constitutional obli- 
 gations to allow the people in all the States, without 
 interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as they 
 please; and I deny that I have any inclination to inter- 
 fere with them, even if there were no such constitu- 
 tional obligation. I can only say again that I am placed 
 improperly — altogether improperly, in spite of all I 
 can say — when it is insisted that I entertain any other 
 view or purposes in regard to that matter. 
 
 While I am upon this subject, I will make some an- 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 55 
 
 swers briefly to certain propositions that Judge Doug- 
 las has put. He says, **Why can't this Union endure 
 permanently, half slave and half free?" I have said 
 that I supposed it could not, and I will try, before this 
 new audience, to give briefly some of the reasons for 
 entertaining that opinion. Another form of his ques- 
 tion is, "Why can't we let it stand as our fathers 
 placed it?" That is the exact difficulty between us. 
 I say that Judge Douglas and his friends have changed 
 it from the position in which our fathers originally 
 placed it. I say, in the way our fathers originally 
 left the slavery question, the institution was in the 
 course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind 
 rested in the belief that it was in the course of ulti- 
 mate extinction. I say, when this Government was first 
 established, it was the policy of its founders to pro- 
 hibit the spread of slavery into the new Territories of 
 the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge 
 Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, 
 and placed it upon a new basis, by which it is to be- 
 come national and perpetual. All I have asked or de- 
 sired anywhere is that it should be placed back again 
 upon the basis that the fathers of our Government orig- 
 inally placed it upon. I have no doubt that it would 
 become extinct, for all time to come, if we but re- 
 adopted the policy of the fathers, by restricting it to 
 the limits it has already covered, — restricting it from 
 the new Territories. . . . 
 
 He also says that the Whig party in National Con- 
 vention agreed to abide by and regard as a finality the 
 Compromise of 1850. . . . 
 
 When that Compromise was made it did not repeal 
 
56 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 the old Missouri Compromise. It left a region of United 
 States territory half as large as the present territory 
 of the United States, north of the line of 36 degrees 30 
 minutes, in which slavery was prohibted by act of Con- 
 gress. This Compromise did not repeal that one. It 
 did not affect or propose to repeal it. But at last it 
 became Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought (and I 
 find no fault with him), as Chairman of the Commit- 
 tee on Territories, to bring in a bill for the organiza- 
 tion of a Territorial Government, — first of one, then 
 of two Territories^ north of that line. When he did so 
 it ended in his inserting a provision substantially re- 
 pealing the Missouri Compromise. That was because 
 the Compromise of 1850 had not repealed it. And now 
 I ask why he could not have let that Compromise alone? 
 We were quiet from the agitation of the slavery ques- 
 tion. We were making no fuss about it. All had ac- 
 quiesced in the Compromise measures of 1850. We 
 never had been seriously disturbed by an Abolition 
 agitation before that period. When he came to form 
 governments for the Territories north of the line of 
 36 degrees, 30 minutes, why could he not have let that 
 matter stand as it was standing? Was it necessary to 
 the organization of a Territory? Not at all. Iowa 
 lay north of the line, and had been organized as a Terri- 
 tory, and come into the Union as a State, without dis- 
 turbing that Compromise. There was no sort of neces- 
 sity for destroying it to organize these Territories. 
 But, gentlemen, it would take up all my time to meet 
 all the little quibbling arguments of Judge Douglas to 
 show that the Missouri Compromise was repealed by 
 
 1, Kansas and Nebraska, 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 57 
 
 the Compromise of 1850. My own opinion is, that a 
 careful investigation of all the arguments to sustain 
 the position that that Compromise was virtually re- 
 pealed by the Compromise of 1850 would show that 
 they are the merest fallacies. . . . 
 
 In complaining of what I said in my speech at 
 Springfield, in which he says I accepted my nomina- 
 tion for the Senatorship (where, by the way, he is at 
 fault, for if he will examine it,' he will find no accept- 
 ance in it), he again quotes that portion in which I 
 said that **a house divided against itself cannot stand." 
 Let me say a word in regard to that matter. He tries 
 to persuade us that there must be a variety in the dif- 
 ferent institutions of the States of the Union; that 
 that variety necessarily proceeds from the variety of 
 soil, climate, of the face of the country, and the dif- 
 ference in the natural features of the States. I agree 
 to all that. Have these very matters ever produced 
 any difficulty amongst us? Not at all. Have we ever 
 had any quarrel over the fact that they have laws in 
 Louisiana designed to regulate the commerce that 
 springs from the production of sugar? Or because we 
 have a different class relative to the production of 
 flour in this State? Have they produced any differ- 
 ences? Not at all. They are the very cements of this 
 Union. They don't make the house a ''house divided 
 against itself." They are the props that hold up the 
 house and sustain the Union. 
 
 But has it been so with this element of slavery? 
 Have we not always had quarrels and difficulties over 
 it? And when will we cease to have quarrels over it? 
 Like causes produce like effects. It is worth while to 
 
58 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 observe that we have generally had comparative peace 
 upon the slavery question, and that there has been no 
 cause for alarm until it was excited by the effort to 
 spread it into new territory. Whenever it has been 
 limited to its present bounds, and there has been no 
 effort to spread it, there has been peace. All the 
 trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to 
 spread it over more territory. It was thus at the date 
 of the Missouri Compromise. It was so again with 
 the annexation of Texas; so with the territory ac- 
 quired by the Mexican War; and it is so now. When- 
 ever there has been an effort to spread it there has 
 been agitation and resistance. Now, I appeal to this 
 audience (very few of whom are my political friends), 
 as national men, whether we have reason to expect 
 that the agitation in regard to this subject will cease 
 while the causes that tend to reproduce agitation are 
 actively at work? Will not the same cause that pro- 
 duced agitation in 1820, when the Missouri Compro- 
 mise was formed, — that which produced the agitation 
 upon the annexation of Texas, and at other times, — 
 work out the same results always? Do you think that 
 the nature of man will be changed, that the same 
 causes that produced agitation at one time will not 
 have the same effect at another? 
 
 This has been the result so far as my observation of 
 the slavery question and my reading in history ex- 
 tends. What right have we, then, to hope that the 
 trouble will cease, that the agitation will come to an 
 end, until it shall either be placed back where it orig- 
 inally stood, and where the fathers originally placed 
 it, or, on the other hand, until it shall entirely master 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 59 
 
 all opposition? This is the view I entertain, and this 
 is the reason why I entertained it, as Judge Douglas 
 has read from my Springfield speech. . . . 
 
 At Freeport I answered several interrogatories that 
 had been propounded to me by Judge Douglas at the 
 Ottawa meeting. The Judge has not yet seen fit to 
 find any fault with the position that I took in regard 
 to those seven interrogatories, which were certainly 
 broad enough, in all conscience, to cover the entire 
 ground. In my answers, which have been printed, and 
 all have had the opportunity of seeing, I take the 
 ground that those who elect me must expect that I will 
 do nothing which will not be in accordance with those 
 answers. I have some right to assert that Judge Doug- 
 las has no fault to find with them. But he chooses to 
 still try to thrust me upon different ground, without 
 paying any attention to my answers, the obtaining of 
 which from me cost him so much trouble and concern. 
 At the same time I propounded four interrogatories to 
 him, claiming it as a right that he should answer as 
 many interrogatories for me as I did for him, and I 
 would reserve myself for a future installment when I 
 got them ready. The Judge, in answering me upon 
 that occasion, put in what I suppose he intends as an- 
 swers to all four of my interrogatories. . . . 
 
 The second interrogatory that I propounded to him 
 was this: — 
 
 Question 2. Can the people of a United States Ter- 
 ritory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citi- 
 zen of the United States, exclude slavery from its lim- 
 its prior to the formation of a State Constitution? 
 
 To this Judge Douglas answered that they can law- 
 
60 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 fully exclude slavery from the Territory prior to the 
 formation of a Constitution. He goes on to tell us 
 how it can be done. As I understand him, he holds 
 that it can be done by the Territorial Legislature re- 
 fusing to make any enactments for the protection of 
 slavery in the Territory, and especially by adopting 
 unfriendly legislation to it. For the sake of clearness, 
 I state it again: that they can exclude slavery from 
 the Territory, 1st, by witholding what he assumes to 
 be an indispensable assistance to it in the way of leg- 
 islation; and, 2nd, by unfriendly legislation. If I 
 rightly understood him, I wish to ask your attention 
 for a while to his position. 
 
 In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United 
 States has decided that any Congressional prohibition 
 of slavery in the Territories is unconstitutional, that 
 they have reached this proposition as a conclusion from 
 their former proposition, that the Constitution of the 
 United States expressly recognizes property in slaves, 
 and from that other Constitutional provision, that no 
 person shall be deprived of property without due proc- 
 ess of law. Hence, they reach the conclusion that as 
 the Constitution of the United States expressly recog- 
 nizes property in slaves, and prohibits any person from 
 being deprived of property without due process of law, 
 to pass an Act of Congress by which a man who owned 
 a slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him 
 if he took him on the other side, is depriving him of 
 that property without due process of law. That I 
 understand to be the decision of the Supreme Court. 
 I understand also that Judge Douglas adheres most 
 firmly to that decision; and the difficulty is, how is it 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 61 
 
 possible for any power to exclude slavery from the Ter- 
 ritory, unless in violation of that decision? That is 
 the difficulty. ... 
 
 I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter 
 a new country without police regulations is historically 
 false. It is not true at all. I hold that the history of 
 this country shows that the institution of slavery was 
 originally planted upon this continent without these 
 '^police regulations" which the Judge now thinks nec- 
 essary for the actual establishment of it. Not only so, 
 but is there not another fact: how came this Dred Scott 
 decision to be made? It was made upon the case of a 
 negro being taken and actually held in slavery in Min- 
 nesota Territory, claiming his freedom because the act 
 of Congress prohibited his being so held there. Will 
 the Judge pretend that Dred Scott was not held there 
 without police regulations? There is at least one mat- 
 ter of record as to his having been held in slavery in 
 the Territory, not only without police regulations, but 
 in the teeth of Congressional legislation supposed to 
 be valid at the time. This shows that there is vigor 
 enough in slavery to plant itself in a new country even 
 against unfriendly legislation. It takes not only law, 
 but the enforcement of law, to keep it out. . . . 
 
 My fifth interrogatory is this: 
 
 If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Ter- 
 ritory should need and demand Congressional legisla- 
 tion for the protection of their slave property in such 
 Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote 
 for or against such legislation? 
 
 Judge Douglas: Will you repeat that? I want to 
 answer that question. 
 
62 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 Mr. Lincoln: If the slaveholding citizens of a United 
 States Territory should need and demand Congressional 
 legislation for the protection of their slave proi)erty in 
 such Territory, would you, as a memb r of Congress, 
 vote for or against such legislation? 
 
 I am aware that in some of the speeches Judgi 
 Douglas has made he has spoken as if he did not knot 
 or think that the Supreme Court had decided that \ 
 Territorial Legislature cannot exclude slavery. Fn 
 cisely what the Judge would say upon the subject 
 whether he would say definitely that he does not un 
 derstand they have so decided, or whether he wouli 
 say he does understand that the court have so decided 
 — I do not know; but I know that in his speech a 
 Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not de- 
 cided yet; and in his answer to me at F'reeport he 
 spoke of it, so far, again, as I can comprehend it, 
 as a thing that had not yet been decided. Now I hold 
 that if the Judge does entertain that view, I think that 
 he is not mistaken in so far as it can be said that the 
 court has not decided anything save the mere question 
 of jurisdiction. I know the legal arguments that can 
 be made, — that after a court has decided that it can- 
 not take jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all 
 that is before it, and that is the end of it. A plausible 
 argument can be made in favor of that proposition; 
 but 1 know that Judge Douglas has said in one of his 
 speeches that the court went forward, like honest men 
 as they were, and decided all the points in the case. 
 If any points are really extra-judicially decided, be- 
 cause not necessarily before them, then this one as to 
 the power of the Territorial Legislature to exclude 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 63 
 
 slavery is one of them, as also the one that the Missouri 
 Compromise was null and void. They are both extra- 
 judicial, or neither is, according as the court held that 
 they had no jurisdiction in the case between the parties, 
 because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a 
 suit in that court. I want, if I have sufficient time, 
 to show that the court did pass its opinion; but that is 
 the only thing actually done in the case. If they did 
 not decide, they .showed what they were ready to de- 
 cide whenever the matter was before them. What is 
 that opinion? After having argued that Congress had 
 no power to pass a law excluaing slavery from a United 
 States Territory, they then used language to this effect: 
 That inasmuch as Congress Itself could not exercise 
 such a power, it followed as a matter of course that it 
 could not authorize a Territorial Governinent to exer- 
 cise it; for the Territorial Lrgislature can do no more 
 than Congress could do. 7hus it expressed its opinion 
 emphatically against the power of a Territorial Legis- 
 lature to exclude slavery, leaving us in jurt as little 
 doubt on that point as upon any other point thay really 
 decided. 
 
 Now, my fellow-citizens, I will detain you only a 
 little while longer; my time is nearly out. I find a 
 report of a speech made by Judge Douglas at Joliet, 
 since we last met at Freeport— published, I believe, in 
 the Missouri Republican — on the 9th of this month, in 
 which Judge Douglas says: 
 
 You know at Ottawa, I read this platform, and asked him 
 if he concurred in each and all of the principles set forth in 
 it. He would not answer these questions. At last I said 
 frankly, I wish you to answer them, because when I get 
 them up here where the color of your principles are a little 
 
64 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 darker than in Egypt, I intend to trot you down to Jonesboro. 
 The very notice that I was going to take him down to Egypt 
 made him tremble in the knees so that he had to be carried 
 from the platform. He laid up seven days, and in the mean- 
 time held a consultation with all his political physicians; 
 they had Lovejoy, and Farnsworth, and all the leaders of 
 the Abolition party; they consulted it all over, and at last 
 Lincoln came to the conclusion that he would answer, so he 
 came up to Freeport last Friday. 
 
 Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject 
 for philosophical contemplation. I have been treat- 
 ing it in that way, and I have really come to the con- 
 clusion that I can explain it in no other way than by 
 believing the Judge is crazy. If he was in his right 
 mind, I cannot conceive how he would have risked dis- 
 gusting the four or five thousand of his own friends 
 who stood there, and knew, as to my having been car- 
 ried from the platform, that there was not a word of 
 truth in it. 
 
 Judge Douglas: Did n't they carry you off? 
 
 Mr. Lincoln: There that question illustrates the 
 character of this man Douglas exactly. He smiles now 
 and says, **Didn't they carry you off?" But he said 
 then, **hehadto be carried off;" and he said it to 
 convince the country that he had so completely broken 
 me down by his speech that I had to be carried away.^ 
 Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, "Did n't they carry 
 you off?" Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, why 
 didn't you tell the truth? I would like to know why 
 you did n't tell the truth about it. And then again, 
 **He laid up seven days." He put this in print for 
 
 1. In truth, Lincoln's enthusiastic friends carried him on their shoulders at 
 the close of the Ottawa debate. 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 65 
 
 the people of the country to read as a serious docu- 
 ment.... There is another thing in that statement 
 that alarmed me very greatly as he states it, that he 
 was going to **trot me down to Egypt." Thereby he 
 would have you to infer that I would not come to Egypt 
 unless he forced me,' — that I could not be got here, 
 unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here. That 
 statement he makes, too, in the teeth of the knowledge 
 that I had made the stipulation to come down here, 
 and that he himself had been very reluctant to enter 
 into the stipulation. More than all this, Judge Doug- 
 las, when he made that statement, must have been 
 crazy, and wholly out of his sober senses, or else he 
 would have known that when he got me down here, 
 that promise — that windy promise — of his powers to 
 annihilate me, would n't amount to anything. Now, 
 how little do I look like being carried away trembling? 
 Let the Judge go on; and after he is done with his 
 half hour, I want you all, if I can't go home myself, 
 to let me stay and rot here; and if anything happens 
 to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel and 
 put him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, then, 
 there is something extraordinary in this statement. I 
 ask you if you know any other living man who would 
 make such a statement? I will ask my friend Casey, 
 over there, if he would do such a thing? Would he 
 send that out, and have his men take it as the truth? 
 Did the Judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt to 
 scare me to death? Why, I know this people better 
 than he does. I was raised just a little east of here. 
 I am a part of this people. But the Judge was raised 
 further north, and perhaps he has some horrid idea of 
 
66 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS'DEBATES 
 
 what this people might be induced to do. But really, 
 I have talked about this matter perhaps longer than I 
 ought, for it is no great thing; and yet the smallest 
 are often the most difficult things to deal with. The 
 Judge has set about seriously trying to make the im- 
 pression that when we meet at different places I am 
 literally in his clutches, — that I am a poor, helpless, 
 decrepit mouse, and that I can do nothing at all. This 
 is one of the ways he has taken to create that impres- 
 sion. I don't know any other way to meet it, except 
 this. I don't want to quarrel with him, — to call him 
 a liar; but when 1 come square up to him I don't know 
 what else to call him, if I must tell the truth out. I 
 want to be at peace and reserve all my fighting powers 
 for necessary occasions. My time, now, is very nearly 
 out, and I give up the trifle that is left to the Judge, 
 to let him set my knees trembling again, if he can. 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S REPLY 
 
 My friends, while I am very grateful to you for the 
 enthusiasm which you show for me, I will say in all 
 candor, that your quietness will be much more agree- 
 able than your applause, inasmuch as you deprive me 
 of some part of my time whenever you cheer. 
 
 I will commence where Mr. Lincoln left off, and make 
 a remark upon this serious complaint of his about my 
 speech at Joliet. I did say there in a playful manner 
 that when I put these questions to Mr. Lincoln at Ot- 
 tawa he failed to answer, and that he trembled and 
 had to be carried off the stand, and required seven 
 days to get up his reply. That he did not walk off 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 67 
 
 from that stand, he will not deny. That when the crowd 
 went away from the stand with me, a few persons carried 
 him home, on their shoulders and laid him down, he will 
 admit. I wish to say to you that whenever I degrade 
 my friends and myself by allowing them to carry me on 
 their backs along through the public streets, when I 
 am able to walk, I am willing to be deemed crazy. . . . 
 In the first place, Mr. Lincoln says he would be 
 exceedingly sorry to be put in a position where he 
 would have to vote on the question of the admission 
 of a Slave State. Why is he a candidate for the Sen- 
 ate if he would be sorry to be put in that position? I 
 trust the people of Illinois will not put him in a posi- 
 tion which he would be so sorry to occupy. The next 
 position he takes is that he would be glad to know that 
 there would never be another Slave State, yet in cer- 
 tain contingencies, he might have to vote for one. 
 What is that contingency? **If Congress keeps slavery 
 out by law while it is a Territory, and then the people 
 should have a fair chance and should adopt slavery, 
 uninfluenced by the presence of the institution," he 
 supposed he would have to admit the State. Suppose 
 Congress should not keep slavery out during their ter- 
 ritorial existence, then how would he vote when the 
 people applied for admission into the Union with a 
 slave constitution? That he does not answer; and that 
 is the condition of every Territory we have now got. 
 Slavery is not kept out of Kansas by act of Congress; 
 and when I put the question to Mr. Lincoln, whether 
 he will vote for the admission with or without slavery, 
 as her people may desire, he will not answer, and you 
 have not got an answer from him. In Nebraska, slav- 
 
68 THE. LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 ery is not prohibited by act of Congress, but the people 
 are allowed, under the Nebraska bill, to do as they 
 please on the subject; and when I ask him whether he 
 will vote to admit Nebraska with a slave constitution 
 if her people desire it, he will not answer. So with 
 New Mexico, Washington Territory, Arizona, and the 
 four new States to be admitted from Texas. ^ You 
 cannot get an answer from him to these questions. 
 His answer only applies to a given case, to a condition, 
 — things which he knows do not exist in any one Ter- 
 ritory in the Union. He tries to give you to under- 
 stand that he would allow the people to do as they 
 please, and yet he dodges the question as to every Ter- 
 ritory in the Union. I now ask why cannot Mr. Lin- 
 coln answer as to each of these Territories? He has not 
 done it, and he will not do it. The Abolitionists up 
 North understand that this answer is made with a view 
 of not committing himself on any one Territory now 
 in existence. It is so understood there, and you can- 
 not expect an answer from him on a case that applies 
 to any one Territory, or applies to the new States which 
 by compact we are pledged to admit out of Texas, 
 when they have the requisite population and desire ad- 
 mission. I submit to you whether he has made a frank 
 answer, so that you can tell how he would vote in any 
 one of these cases. "He would be sorry to be put in 
 the position." Why would he be sorry to be put in 
 this position, if his duty required him to give the vote? 
 If the people of a Territory ought to be permitted to 
 come into the Union as a State, with slavery or with- 
 
 1. When Texas was admitted to the Union in 1846, it was provided that ad- 
 ditional States, not exceeding four in number, might be formed from it, 
 with its consent. This condition was not jsivaiJed of. 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 69 
 
 out it, as they pleased, why not give the vote admit- 
 ting them, cheerfully? If in his opinion they ought 
 not to come in with slavery, even if they wanted to, 
 why not say that he would cheerfully vote against 
 their admission? His intimation is that conscience 
 would not let him vote "No," and he would be sorry 
 to do that which his conscience would compel him to 
 do as an honest man .... 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln does not want to be held responsible 
 for the Black Republican doctrine of no more Slave 
 States. Farnsworth is the candidate of his party to- 
 day in the Chicago District, and he made a speech in 
 the last Congress in which he called upon God to palsy 
 his right arm if he ever voted for the admission of an- 
 other Slave State, whether the people wanted it or not. 
 Lovejoy is making speeches all over the State for Lin- 
 coln now, and taking ground against any more Slave 
 States. Washburne, the Black Republican candidate 
 for Congress in the Galena District, is making speeches 
 in favor of this same Abolition platform, declaring no 
 more Slave States. Why are men running for Con- 
 gress in the northern districts, and taking that Aboli- 
 tion platform for their guide, when Mr. Lincoln does 
 not want to be held to it down here in Egypt and in 
 the center of the State, and objects to it so as to get 
 votes here? Let me tell Mr. Lincoln that his party in 
 the northern part of the State hold to that Abolition 
 platform, and that if they do not in the south and in 
 the center, they present the extraordinary spectacle of 
 a * 'house divided against itself," and hence * 'cannot 
 stand." I now bring do.wn upon him the vengeance 
 of his own Scriptural quotation, and give it a more 
 
70 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 appropriate application than he did, when I say to him 
 that his party, Abolition in one end of the State and 
 opposed to it in the other, is a house divided against 
 its^f , and cannot stand, and ought not to stand, for it 
 attempts to cheat the American people out of their 
 votes by disguising its sentiments. . . . 
 
 I was not born out West here. I was born away down 
 in Yankee land. I was born in a valley in Vermont, 
 with the high mountains around me. I love the old green 
 mountains and valleys of Vermont, where I was born, 
 and where I played in my childhood. I went up to 
 visit them some seven or eight years ago, for the first 
 time for twenty-odd years. When I got there they 
 treated me very kindly. They invited me to the com- 
 mencement of their college, placed me on the seats 
 with their distinguished guests, and conferred upon 
 me the degree of LL.D., in Latin (doctor of laws), — 
 the same as they did Old Hickory, at Cambridge, many 
 years ago; and I give you my word and honor I under- 
 stand just as much of Latin as he did. When they 
 got through conferring the honorary degree, they called 
 upon me for a speech; and I got up, with my heart 
 full and swelling with gratitude for their kindness, 
 and I said to them, *'My friends, Vermont is the most 
 glorious spot on the face of this globe for a man to be 
 born in, provided he emigrates when he is very young." 
 I emigrated when I was very young. I came out here 
 when I was a boy, and I found my mind liberalized, and 
 my opinions enlarged, when I got on these broad prair- 
 ies, with only the heavens to bound my vision, instead of 
 having them circumscribed by the little narrow ridges 
 that surrounded the valley where I was born. ., 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 71 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has framed another question, propounded 
 it to me, and desired my answer. ... It is as follows: 
 **If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Terri- 
 tory should need and demand Congressional legislation 
 for the protection of their slave property in such Ter- 
 ritory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for 
 or against such legislation?" I answer him that it is 
 a fundamental article in the Democratic creed that 
 there should be non-interference and non-intervention 
 by Congress with slavery in the States or Territories. 
 Mr. Lincoln could have found an answer to his ques- 
 tion in the Cincinnati platform, if he had desired it. 
 The Democratic party has always stood by that great 
 principle of non-interference and non-intervention by 
 Congress with slavery in the States and Territories 
 alike, and I stand on that platform now. 
 
 Now, I desire to call your attention to the fact that 
 Lincoln did not define his own position in his own ques- 
 tion. How does he stand on that question? He put 
 the question to me at Freeport whether or not I would 
 vote to admit Kansas into the Union before she had 
 93,420 inhabitants. I answered him at once that, it 
 having been decided that Kansas had now population 
 enough for a Slave State, she had population enough 
 for a Free State. 
 
 I answered the question unequivocally; and then I 
 asked him whether he would vote for or against the 
 admission of Kansas before she had 93,420 inhabitants, 
 and he would not answer me. To-day he has called at- 
 tention to the fact that, in his opinion, my answer on 
 that question was not quite plain enough, and yet he 
 has not answered it himself. He now puts a question 
 
72 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 in relation to the Congressional interference in the 
 Territories to me. I answer him direct, and he has 
 not answered the question himself. I ask you whether 
 a man has any right, in common decency, to put ques- 
 tions in these public discussions, to his opponent, which 
 he will not answer himself, when they are pressed 
 home to him. I have asked him three times whether 
 he would vote to admit Kansas whenever the people 
 applied with a Constitution of their own making, and 
 their own adoption, under circumstances that were fair, 
 just, and unexceptionable; but I cannot get an answer 
 from him. Nor will he answer the question which he 
 put to me, and which I have just answered, in relation 
 to Congressional interference in the Territories, by 
 making a slave code there. 
 
 It is true that he goes on to answer the question by 
 arguing that under the decision of the Supreme Court 
 it is the duty of a man to vote for a slave code in the 
 Territories. He says that it is his duty, under the de- 
 cision that the court has made; and if he believes in 
 that decision he would be a perjured man if he did not 
 give the vote. I want to know whether he is not bound 
 to a decision which is contrary to his opinions just as 
 much as to one in accordance with his opinions. If 
 the decision of the Supreme Court, the tribunal created 
 by the Constitution to decide the question, is final and 
 binding, is he not bound by it just as strongly as if he 
 was for it instead of against it, originally? Is every 
 man in this land allowed to resist decisions he does not 
 like, and only support those that meet his approval? 
 What are important courts worth, unless their decisions 
 are binding on all good citizens? It is the fundamental 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 73 
 
 principle of the judiciary that its decisions are final. 
 It is created for that purpose; so that when you can- 
 not agree among yourselves on a disputed point you 
 appeal to the judicial tribunal, which steps in and de- 
 cides for you, and that decision is then binding on ev- 
 ery good citizen. It is the law of the land just as 
 much with Mr. Lincoln against it as for it. And yet 
 he says that if that decision is binding he is a perjured 
 man if he does not vote for a slave code in the differ- 
 ent Territories of this Union. Well, if you (turning 
 to Mr. Lincoln) are not going to resist the decision, 
 if you obey it, and do not intend to array mob law 
 against the constituted authorities, then, according to 
 your own statement, you will be a perjured man if 
 you do not vote to establish slavery in these Territo- 
 ries. My doctrine is, that even taking Mr. Lincoln's 
 view that the decision recognizes the right of a man 
 to carry his slaves into the Territories of the United 
 States if he pleases, yet after he gets there he needs 
 affirmative law to make that right of any value. The 
 same doctrine not only applies to slave property, but 
 all other kinds of property. Chief Justice Taney^ 
 places it upon the ground that glave property is on an 
 equal footing with other property. Suppose one of 
 your merchants should move to Kansas and open a liquor 
 store; 'he has a right to take groceries and liquors 
 there; but the mode of selling them, and the circum- 
 stances under which they shall be sold, and all the 
 remedies, must be prescribed by local legislation; and 
 
 1. Roger B. Taney (pronounced Taw'ny) was the Chief Justice of the 
 United States Supreme Court who wrote the decision that Dred Scott con- 
 tinued to be a slave after having resided in free territory. 
 
74 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 if that is unfriendly it will drive him out just as effec- 
 tually as if there was a constitutional provision against 
 the sale of liquor. So the absence of local legislation 
 to encourage and support slave property in a Territory 
 excludes it practically just as effectually as if there 
 
 v^,#L¥^r^M; 
 
 Scene at One of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates 
 
 was a positive Constitutional provision against it. 
 Hence, I assert that under the Dred Scott decision you 
 cannot maintain slavery a day in a Territory where 
 there is an unwilling people and unfriendly legislation. 
 If the people are opposed to it, our right is a barren, 
 worthless, useless right; and if they are for it, they 
 
THIRD JOINT DEBATE 75 
 
 will support and encourage it. We come right back, 
 therefore, to the practical question, if the people of a 
 Territory want slavery they will have it, and if they 
 do not want it, you cannot force it on them. And this 
 is the practical question, the great principle, upon 
 which our institutions rest. I am willing to take the 
 decision of the Supreme Court as it was pronounced by 
 that august tribunal, without stopping to inquire 
 whether I would have decided that way or not. ... In 
 a government of laws, like ours, we must sustain the 
 Constitution as our fathers made it, and maintain the 
 rights of the States as they are guaranteed under the 
 Constitution; and then we will have peace and harmony 
 between the different States and sections of this glo- 
 rious Union. 
 
76 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 FOURTH JOINT DEBATE, 
 
 Charleston, September 18, 1858 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: It will be very difficult for 
 an audience so large as this to hear distinctly what a 
 speaker says, and consequently it is important that as 
 profound silence be preserved as possible. 
 
 While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentle- 
 man called upon me to know whether I was really in 
 favor of producing perfect equality between the negroes 
 and white people. While I had not proposed to myself 
 on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the 
 question was asked me, I thought I would occupy per- 
 haps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. 
 I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in 
 favor of bringing about in any way the social and po- 
 litical equality of the white and black races; 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 difference be- 
 tween the white and black races which I believe will 
 forever 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 position of superior and inferior, and I, as much 
 
FOURTH JOINT DEBATE 77 
 
 as any other man, am in favor of having the superior 
 position assigned to the white race. I say upon this 
 occasion I do not perceive that because the white man 
 is to have the superior position, the negro should be 
 denied everything. I do not understand that because 
 I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must neces- 
 sarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that 
 I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, 
 and I certainly never had a black woman for either a 
 slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for 
 us to get along without making either slaves or wives 
 of negroes. . . . But as Judge Douglas and his friends 
 seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if 
 there were no law to keep them from it, I give the 
 most solemn pledge that I will, to the very last, stand 
 by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying 
 of white people with negroes. I will add one further 
 word, which is this: that I do not understand that 
 there is any place where an alteration of the social and 
 political relations of the negro and the white man can 
 be made, except in the State Legislature, — not in the 
 Congress of the United States; and as I do not really 
 apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and 
 as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror that 
 some such danger is rapidly approaching, I propose as 
 the best means to prevent it, that the Judge be kept at 
 home and placed in the State Legislature to fight the 
 measure. I do not propose dwelling longer at this time 
 on this subject. 
 
78 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 SENATOR DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I had supposed that we as- 
 sembled here to-day for the purpose of a joint discus- 
 sion between Mr. Lincoln and myself, upon the polit- 
 ical questions that now agitate the whole country. 
 The rule of such discussions is, that the opening speaker 
 shall touch upon all the points he intends to discuss, in 
 order that his opponent, in reply, shall have the oppor- 
 tunity of answering them. Let me ask you, what ques- 
 tions of public policy, relating to the welfare of this 
 State or the Union, has Mr. Lincoln discussed before 
 you? Mr. Lincoln simply contented himself at the 
 outset by saying that he was not in favor of social and 
 political equality between the white man and the ne- 
 gro, and did not desire the law so changed as to make 
 the latter voters or eligible to office. I am glad that 
 I have at last succeeded in getting an answer out of 
 him upon this question of negro citizenship and eligi- 
 bility to office, for I have been trying to bring him to 
 the point on it ever since this canvass commenced. . . . 
 
 Fellow-citizens, I came here for the purpose of dis- 
 cussing tlie leading political topics which now agitate 
 the country. I have no charges to make against Mr. 
 Lincoln, none against Mr. Trumbull, and none against 
 any man who is a candidate, except in repelling their 
 assaults upon me. If Mr. Lincoln is a man of bad char- 
 acter, I leave you to find it out; if his votes in the past 
 are not satisfactory, I leave others to ascertain the fact; 
 if his course on the Mexican War was not in accordance 
 with your notions of patriotism and fidelity to our own 
 country as against a public enemy, I leave you to as- 
 certain the fact. I have no assaults to make upon him, 
 
FOURTH JOINT DEBATE 79 
 
 except to trace his course on the questions that now di- 
 vide the country and engross so much of the people's 
 attention. . . . 
 
 I canvassed the State that year from the time I re- 
 turned home until the election^ came off, and spoke in 
 every county that I could reach during that period. 
 In the northern part of the State I found Lincoln's ally, 
 in the person of Fred Douglass's, the negro, preaching 
 Abolition doctrines, while Lincoln was discussing the 
 same principles down here, and Trumbull, a little far- 
 ther down, was advocating the election of members to 
 the Legislature whowouldact in concert with Lincoln's 
 and Fred Douglass's friends. I witnessed an effort 
 made at Chicago by Lincoln's then associates, and 
 now supporters, to put Fred Douglass, the negro, on the 
 stand at a Democratic meeting, to reply to the illus- 
 trious General Cass,^ when he was addressing the peo- 
 ple there. They had the same negro hunting me down, 
 and they now have a negro traversing the northern 
 counties of the State and speaking in behalf of Lin- 
 coln. Lincoln knows that when we were at Freeport 
 in joint discussion there was a distinguished colored 
 friend of his there then, who was on the stump for him, 
 and who made a speech there the night before we 
 spoke, and another the night after, a short distance 
 from Freeport, in favor of Lincoln; and in order to 
 show how much interest the colored brethren felt in 
 the success of their brother Abe, I have with me here, 
 and would read it if it would not occupy too much of 
 
 1. The State Legislative election of 1834. 
 
 2. Lewis Cass, Michigan, Democrat, was Seci-etary of State under President 
 Buchanan, but resigned when Buchanan refused to reinforce Major Ander- 
 son at Fort Sumter. 
 
80 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 my time, a speech made by Fred Douglass in Pough- 
 keepsie, N. Y., a short time since, to a large conven- 
 tion, in which he conjures all the friends of negro 
 equality and negro citizenship to rally as one man 
 around Abraham Lincoln, the perfect embodiment of 
 their principles, and by all means to defeat Stephen 
 A. Douglas. . . . 
 
 And now I will explain to you what has been a mys- 
 tery all over the State and Union, — the reason why 
 Lincoln was nominated for the United States Senate by 
 the Black Republican Convention. You know it has 
 never been usual for any party, or any convention, to 
 nominate a candidate for United States Senator. Prob- 
 ably this was the first time that such a thing was ever 
 done. The Black Republican Convention had not been 
 called for that purpose, but to nominate a State ticket, 
 and every man was surprised, and many disgusted, when 
 Lincoln was nominated. . . . He received the nomina- 
 tion unanimously, by a resolution declaring that Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was *'the first, last, and only choice" of 
 the Republican party. How did this occur? Why, be- 
 cause they could not get Lincoln's friends to make an- 
 other bargain with "rogues," unless the whole party 
 would come up as one man and pledge their honor that 
 they would stand by Lincoln first, last, and all the time, 
 and that he should not be cheated by Lovejoy this time, 
 as he was by Trumbull before. Thus, by passing this 
 resolution, the Abolitionists are all for him, Lovejoy 
 and Farnsworth^ are canvassing for him, Giddings" is 
 
 1. John F. Farnsworth, a Republican member of Congress from Illinois. 
 
 2. Joshua R. Giddings, member of Congress from Ohio, and prominent as 
 an opponent of slavery. 
 
FOURTH JOINT DEBATE 81 
 
 ready to come here in his behalf, and the negro speak- 
 ers are already on the stump for him, and he is sure 
 not to be cheated this time. He would not go into the 
 arrangement until he got their bond for it, and Trum- 
 bull is compelled now to take the stump, get up false 
 charges against me, and travel all over the State to 
 try and elect Lincoln, in order to keep Lincoln's friends 
 quiet about the bargain in which Trumbull cheated 
 them four years ago. You see, now, why it is that 
 Lincoln and Trumbull are so mighty fond of each other. 
 They have entered into a conspiracy to break me down 
 by these assaults on my public character, in order to 
 draw my attention from a fair exposure of the mode 
 in which they attempted to Abolitionize the old Whig 
 and the old Democratic parties, and lead them captive 
 into the Abolition camp. . . . 
 
 ["The party does not call itself Black Republican in 
 the North.''] 
 
 Sir, if you will get a copy of the paper published at 
 Waukegan, fifty miles from Chicago, which advocates 
 the election of Mr. Lincoln, and has his name flying at its 
 masthead, you will find that it declares that "this paper 
 is devoted to the cause" of Black Republicanism. . . . 
 
 I am told that I have eight minutes more. I would 
 like to talk to you an hour and a half longer, but I will 
 make the best use I can of the remaining eight min- 
 utes. Mr. Lincoln said in his first remarks that he 
 was not in favor of the social and political equality of 
 the negro with the white man. Everywhere up north 
 he had declared that he was not in favor of the social 
 and political equality of the negro, but he would not 
 say whether or not he was opposed to negroes voting, 
 
82 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 and negro citizenship. I want to know whether he is 
 for or against negro citizenship. He declared his ut- 
 ter opposition to the Dred Scott decision, and advanced 
 as a reason that the court had decided that it was not 
 possible for a negro to be a citizen under the Consti- 
 tution of the United States. If he is opposed to the 
 Dred Scott decision for that reason, he must be in fa- 
 vor of conferring the right and privilege of citizenship 
 upon the negro. I have been trying to get an answer 
 from him on that point, but have never yet obtained 
 one. . . . 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER 
 
 Fellow-citizens : It follows as a matter of course that 
 a lialf-hour answer to a speech of an hour and a half 
 can be but a very hurried one. I shall only be able to 
 touch upon a few of the points suggested by Judge 
 Douglas, and give them a brief attention, while I shall 
 have to totally omit others for the want of time. 
 
 Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been 
 able to get from me an answer to the question whether 
 I am in favor of negro citizenship. So far as I know, 
 the Judge never asked me the question before. He 
 shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell 
 him very frankly that I am not in favor of negro citi- 
 zenship. This furnishes me an occasion for saying a 
 few words upon the subject. I mentioned, in a certain 
 speech of mine which has been printed, that the Su- 
 preme Court had decided that a negro could not possi- 
 bly be made a citizen; and without saying what was 
 my ground of complaint in regard to that, or whether 
 
FOURTH JOINT DEBATE 83 
 
 1 had any ground of complaint, Judge Douglas has 
 from that thing manufactured nearly everything that 
 he ever says about my disposition to produce an 
 equality between the negroes and the white people. If 
 anyone will read my speech, he will find I mentioned 
 that as one of .the points decided in the course of the 
 Supreme Court opinions, but I did not state what ob- 
 jection I had to it. But Judge Douglas tells the people 
 what my objection was, when I did not tell them my- 
 self. Now, my opinion is, that the different States 
 have the power to make a negro a citizen under the 
 Constitution of the United States, if they choose. The 
 Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that 
 power. If the State of Illinois had that power, I should 
 be opposed to the exercise of it. That is all I have to 
 say about it. 
 
 Judge Douglas has told me that he heard my speeches 
 north, and my speeches south; that he had heard me 
 at Ottawa and at Freeport in the north, and recently 
 at Jonesboro in the south, and there was a very differ- 
 ent cast of sentiment in the speeches made at the differ- 
 ent points. I will not charge upon Judge Douglas that 
 he wilfully misrepresents me, but I call upon every 
 fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, 
 and I dare him to point out any difference between my 
 speeches north and south. While I am here perhaps I 
 ought to say a word, if I have the time, in regard to 
 the latter portion of the Judge's speech, which was a 
 sort of declamation in reference to my having said I 
 entertained the belief that this Government would not 
 endure, half slave and half free. I have said so, and 
 I did not say it without what seemed to me to be good 
 
84 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 reasons. It perhaps would require more time than I 
 have now to set forth these reasons in detail; but let 
 me ask you a few questions. Have we ever had any 
 peace on this slavery question? When are we to have 
 peace upon it, if it is kept in the position it now occu- 
 pies? How are we ever to have peace .upon it? That 
 is an important question. To be sure, if we will all 
 stop, and allow Judge Douglas and his friends to 
 march on in their present career until they plant the 
 institution all over the nation, here, and wherever else 
 our flag waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be 
 peace. But let me ask Judge Douglas how he is going 
 to get the people to do that? They have been wran- 
 gling over this question for at least forty years. This 
 was the cause of the agitation resulting in the Missouri 
 Compromise; this produced the troubles at the annex- 
 ation of Texas, in the acquisition of the territory ac- 
 quired in the Mexican War. Again, this was the 
 trouble which was quieted by the Compromise of 1850, 
 when it was settled * 'forever," as both the great po- 
 litical parties declared in their National Conventions. 
 That "forever" turned out to be just four years, when 
 Judge Douglas himself reopened it. When is it likely 
 to come to an end? He introduced the Nebraska bill 
 in 1854 to put another end to the slavery agitation. 
 He promised that it would finish it all up immediately, 
 and he has never made a speech since, until he got into 
 a quarrel with the President about the Lecompton 
 Constitution,^ in which he has not declared that we 
 
 1. Some citizens of Kansas Territory, in 1857, held a convention at Lecomp- 
 ton and formed a constitution, upon which the anti-slavery people refused to 
 vote. Although adopted "with slavery," Congress accepted the Constitution ; 
 but it was not put into effect by the people of the territory. 
 
FOURTH JOINT DEBATE 85 
 
 are just at the end of the slavery agitation. But in 
 one speech, I think last winter, he did say that he 
 didn't quite see when the end of the slavery agitation 
 would come. Now he tells us again that it is all over, 
 and the people of Kansas have voted down the Lecomp- 
 ton Constitution. How is it over? That was only one 
 of the attempts at putting an end to the slavery agita- 
 tion, — one of those * 'final settlements." Is Kansas in 
 the Union? Has she formed a constitution that she is 
 likely to come in under? Is not the slavery agitation 
 still an open question in that Territory? Has the vot- 
 ing down of that constitution put an end to all the 
 trouble? Is that more likely to settle it than every 
 one of these previous attempts to settle the slavery 
 agitation? Now, at this day in the history of the 
 world, we can no more foretell where the end of this 
 slavery agitation will be than we can see the end of 
 the world itself. The Nebraska-Kansas bilH was in- 
 troduced four years and a half ago, and if the agita- 
 tion is ever to come to an end, we may say we are four 
 years and a half nearer the end. So, too, we can say 
 we are four years and a half nearer the end of the 
 world; and we can just as clearly see the end of the 
 world as we can see the end of this agitation. The 
 Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If Kansas 
 should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in 
 the earth's surface, this vexed question would still be 
 among us. I say, then, there is no way of putting an 
 end to the slavery agitation amongst us, but to put it 
 
 1. In 1854, Congress passed an act to divide Nebraska into two Territories, 
 leaving the people of each Territory to decide whether they would come into 
 the Union as a slave or a free State. This was "squatter sovereignty." 
 
86 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 back upon the basis where our fathers placed it; no 
 way but to keep it out of our new Territories, — to re- 
 strict it forever to the old States where it now exists. 
 Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is 
 in the course of ultimate extinction. That is one way 
 of putting an end to the slavery agitation. 
 
 The other way is for us to surrender, and let Judge 
 Douglas and his friends have their way and plant slav- 
 ery over all the States; cease speaking of it as in any 
 way a wrong; regard slavery as one of the common 
 matters of property, and speak of negroes as we do of 
 our horses and cattle. But while it drives on in its 
 state of progress as it is now driving, and as it has 
 driven for the last five years, I have ventured the opin- 
 ion, and I say to-day, that we will have no end to the 
 slavery agitation until it takes one turn or the other .... 
 
 My colleague says he is willing to stand on his pub- 
 lic record. By that he shall be tried; and if he had 
 been able to discriminate between the exposure of a 
 public act by the record, and a personal attack upon 
 the individual, he would have discovered that there 
 was nothing personal in my Chicago remarks, unless 
 the condemnation of himself by his own public record 
 is personal; and then you must judge who is most to 
 blame for the torture his public record inflicts upon 
 him: he for making, or I for reading it after it was 
 made. As an individual I care very little about Judge 
 Douglas one way or the other. It is his public acts 
 with which I have to do, and if they condemn, dis- 
 grace, and consign him to oblivion, he has only him- 
 self, not me, to blame. . . . 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 87 
 
 FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 
 
 Galesburg, October 7, 1858 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : Four years ago I appeared 
 before the people of Knox County^ for the purpose of 
 defending my political action upon the Compromise 
 measures of 1850 and the passage of the Kansas-Ne- 
 braska bill. Those of you before me who were pres- 
 ent then will remember that I vindicated myself for 
 supporting those two measures by the fact that they 
 rested upon the great fundamental principle that the 
 people of each State and each Territory of this Union 
 have the right, and ought to be permitted to exercise 
 the right, of regulating their own domestic concerns 
 in their own way, subject to no other limitation or 
 restriction than that which the Constitution of the 
 United States imposes upon them. I then called upon 
 the people of Illinois to decide whether that principle 
 of self-government was right or wrong. If it was and 
 is right, then the Compromise measures of 1850 were 
 right, and, consequently, the Kansas and Nebraska bill, 
 based upon the same prnciple must necessarily have 
 been right. . . . 
 
 [''Good for Lincoln."] 
 
 Fellow-citizens, here you find men hurrahing for Lin- 
 
 1. Galesburg is the county seat of Knox county, Illinois, 
 
88 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 coin, and saying that he did right, when in one part of 
 the State he stood up for negro equality, and in another 
 part, for political effect, discarded the doctrine, and de- 
 clared that there always must be a superior and in- 
 ferior race. ^ Abolitionists up north are expected and 
 required to vote for Lincoln, because he goes for the 
 equality of the races, holding that by the Declaration of 
 Independence the white man and the negro were created 
 equal, and endowed by the divine law with that equal- 
 ity; and down south he tells the old Whigs, the Ken- 
 tuckians, Virginians, and Tennesseans, that there is a 
 physical difference in the races, making one superior 
 and the other inferior, and that he is in favor of main- 
 taining the superiority of the white race over the ne- 
 gro. Now, how can you reconcile those two positions 
 of Mr. Lincoln? He is to be voted for in the south as 
 a pro-slavery man, and he is to be voted for in the 
 north as an Abolitionist. ' Up here he thinks it is all 
 nonsense to talk about a difference between the races, 
 and says that we must * 'discard all quibbling about 
 this race and that race and the other race being in- 
 ferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior 
 position.'* Down south he makes this "quibble" 
 about this race and that race and the other race being 
 inferior as the creed of his party, and declares that the 
 negro can never be elevated to the position of the 
 white man. ... 
 
 I tell you that this Chicago doctrine of Lincoln's — 
 declaring that the negro and the white man are made 
 equal by the Declaration of Independence and by Di- 
 vine Providence — is a monstrous heresy. The signers 
 of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 89 
 
 the negro when they were writing that document. 
 They referred to white men, to men of European birth 
 and European descent, when they declared the equality 
 of all men. I see a gentleman there in the crowd shak- 
 ing his head. Let me remind him that when Thomas 
 Jefferson wrote that document, he was the owner, and 
 so continued until his death, of a large number of 
 slaves. Did he intend to say in that Declaration, that 
 his negro slaves, which he held and treated as prop- 
 erty, were created his equals by divine law, and that 
 he was violating the law of God every day of his life 
 by holding them as slaves? It must be borne in mind 
 that when that Declaration was put forth, every one 
 of the thirteen Colonies were slaveholding Colonies, 
 and every man who signed that instrument represented 
 a slaveholding constituency. Recollect, also, that no 
 one of them emancipated his slaves, much less put them 
 on an equality with himself, after he signed the Dec- 
 laration. On the contrary, they all continued to hold 
 their negroes as slaves during the Revolutionary War. 
 Now, do you believe — are you willing to have it said — 
 that every man who signed the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence declared the negro his equal, and then was 
 hypocrite enough to continue to hold him as a slave, 
 in violation of what he believed to be the divine law? 
 And yet when you say that the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence includes the negro, you charge the signers of 
 it with hypocrisy. 
 
 I say to you, frankly, that in my opinion, this Gov- 
 ernment was made by our fathers on the white basis. 
 It was made by white men for the benefit of white men 
 and their posterity forever, and was intended to be ad- 
 
90 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 ministered by white men in all time to come. But 
 while I hold that under our Constitution and political 
 system the negro is not a citizen, cannot be a citizen, 
 and ought not to be a citizen, it does not follow by 
 any means that he should be a slave. On the contrary, 
 it does follow that the negro, as an inferior race, ought 
 to possess every right, every privilege, every immunity 
 which he can safely exercise, consistent with the safety 
 of the society in which he lives. Humanity requires, 
 and Christianity commands, that you shall extend to 
 every inferior being, and every dependent being, all 
 the privileges, immunities, and advantages which can 
 be granted to them, consistent with the safety of so- 
 ciety. If you ask me the nature and extent of these 
 privileges, I answer that that is a question which the 
 people of each State must decide for themselves. Il- 
 linois has decided that question for herself. We have 
 said that in this State the negro shall not be a slave, 
 nor shall he be a citizen. Kentucky holds a different 
 doctrine. New York holds one different from either, 
 and Maine one different from all. Virginia, in her 
 policy on this question, differs in many respects from 
 the others, and so on, until there are hardly two States 
 whose policy is exactly alike in regard to the relation 
 of the white man and the negro. Nor can you recon- 
 cile them and make them alike. Each State must do 
 as it pleases. Illinois had as much right to adopt the 
 policy which we have on that subject as Kentucky had 
 to adopt a different policy. The great principle of 
 this Government is, that each State has the right to do 
 as it pleases on all these questions, and no other State 
 or power on earth has the right to interfere with us, 
 
^IFTH JOINT DEBATE 91 
 
 or complain of us merely because our system differs 
 from theirs. In the Compromise measures of 1850, 
 Mr. Clay declared that this great principle ought to 
 exist in the Territories as well as in the States, and I 
 reasserted his doctrine in the Kansas and Nebraska 
 bill in 1854. 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln cannot be made to understand., and 
 those who are determined to vote for him, no matter 
 whether he is a pro-slavery man in the South and a ne- 
 gro equality advocate in the North, cannot be made to 
 understand how it is that in a Territory the people can 
 do as they please on the slavery question under the 
 Dred Scott decision. Let us see whether I cannot ex- 
 plain it to the satisfaction of all impartial men. Chief 
 Justice Taney has said in his opinion in the Dred Scott 
 case, that a negro slave being property, stands on an 
 equal footing with other property, and that the owner 
 may carry them into United States territory the same 
 as he does other property. Suppose any two of you, 
 neighbors, should conclude to go to Kansas, one carry- 
 ing $100,000 worth of negro slaves, and the other 
 $100,000 worth of mixed merchandise, including quan- 
 tities of liquors. You both agree that under that de- 
 cision you may carry your property to Kansas. But 
 when you get there, the merchant who is possessed of 
 the liquors is met by the Maine liquor law, which pro- 
 hibits the sale or use of his property, and the owner of 
 the slaves is met by equally unfriendly legislation, 
 which makes his property worthless after he gets it 
 there. What is the right to carry your property into 
 the Territory worth to either, when unfriendly legis- 
 lation in the Territory renders it worthless after you 
 
92 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 get it there. The slaveholder when he gets his slaves 
 there finds that there is no local law to protect him in 
 holding them, no slave code, no police regulation main- 
 taining and supporting him in his right; and he dis- 
 covers at once that the absence of such friendly legisla- 
 tion excludes his property from the Territory, just as 
 irresistibly as if there was a positive Constitutional 
 prohibtion excluding it. Thus you find it is with any 
 kind of property in a Territory, it depends for its pro- 
 tection on the local and municipal law. If the people 
 of a Territory want slavery, they make friendly legis- 
 lation to introduce it, but if they do not want it, they 
 withhold all protection from it, and then it cannot 
 exist there. Such was the view taken on the subject by 
 different Southern men when the Nebraska bill passed. 
 See the speech of Mr. Orr,^ of South Carolina, the 
 present Speaker of the House of Representatives of 
 Congress, made at that time, and there you will find 
 this whole doctrine argued out at full length. Read 
 the speeches of other Southern Congressmen, Senators 
 and Representatives, made in 1854, and you will find 
 that they took the same view of the subject as Mr. 
 Orr, — that slavery could never be forced on a people 
 who did not want it. I hold that in this country there 
 is no power on the face of the globe that can force any 
 institution on an unwilling people. The great funda- 
 mental principle of our Government is that the people 
 of each State and each Territory shall be left perfectly 
 free to decide for themselves what shall be the nature 
 and character of their institutions. When this Gov- 
 
 1. J. L. Orr, of South Carolina, a Democrat, was a devoted friend of the 
 Union and opposed to both nullification and secession. 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 93 
 
 ernment was made, it was based on that principle. At 
 the time of its formation there were twelve slavehold- 
 ing States and one Free State in this Union. Suppose 
 this doctrine of Mr. Lincoln and the Republicans, of 
 uniformity of laws of all the States on the subject of 
 slavery, had prevailed; suppose Mr. Lincoln himself 
 had been a member of the Convention which framed 
 the Constitution, and that he had risen in that august 
 body, and addressing the Father of his Country, had 
 said, as he did at Springfield: — 
 
 A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe 
 this Government cannot endure permanently, half slave and 
 half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do 
 not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to 
 be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. 
 
 What do you think would have been the result? Sup- 
 pose he had made that convention believe that doc- 
 trine, and they had acted upon it, what do you think 
 would have been the result? Do you believe that the 
 one Free State would have outvoted the twelve slave- 
 holding States, and thus abolish slavery? On the con- 
 trary, would not the twelve slaveholding States have 
 outvoted the one Free State, and under his doctrine 
 have fastened slavery by an irrevocable constitutional 
 provision upon every inch of the American Republic? 
 Thus you see that the doctrine he now advocates, if 
 proclaimed at the beginning of the Government, would 
 have established slavery everywhere throughout the 
 American Continent; and are you willing, now that 
 we have the majority section, to exercise a power 
 which we never would have submitted to when we were 
 in the minority? If the Southern States had attempted 
 
94 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 to control our institutions, and make the States all 
 slave when they had the power, I ask, would you have 
 submitted to it? If you would not, are you willing, 
 now that we have become the strongest, under that great 
 principle of self-government that allows each State to 
 do as it pleases, to attempt to control the Southern in- 
 stitutions? Then, my friends, I say to you that there 
 is but one path of peace in this Republic, and that is 
 to administer this Government as our fathers made it, 
 divided into Free and Slave States, allowing each State 
 to decide for itself whether it wants slavery or not. 
 If Illinois will settle the slavery question for herself, 
 and mind her own business, and let her neighbors alone, 
 we will be at peace with Kentucky and every other 
 Southern State. If every other State in the Union 
 will do the same, there will be peace between the North 
 and the South, and in the whole Union. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S REPLY 
 
 The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, and insisted that negroes are not included 
 in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the 
 framers of that instrument to suppose that negroes 
 were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to 
 believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal 
 paper, could have supposed himself applying the lan- 
 guage of that instrument to the negro race, and yet 
 held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not 
 at once have freed them? I only have to remark upon 
 this part of the Judge's speech (and that, too, very 
 briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 95 
 
 point for any great length of time), that I believe the 
 entire records of the world, from the date of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence up to within three years ago, 
 may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from 
 one single man, that the negro was not included in the 
 Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge 
 Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington 
 ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any 
 member of Congress ever said so, or that any living 
 man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the neces- 
 sities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in 
 regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And 
 I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that 
 while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as un- 
 doubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject 
 he used the strong language that *'he trembled for his 
 country when he remembered that God was just;" and 
 I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge 
 Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever 
 uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson .... 
 Now a few words in regard to these extracts from 
 speeches of mine, which Judge Douglas has read to 
 you, and which he supposes are in very great contrast 
 to each other. Those speeches have been before the 
 public for a considerable time, and if they have any 
 inconsistency in them, if there is any conflict in them, 
 the public have been able to detect it. When the 
 Judge says, in speaking on this subject, that I make 
 speeches of one sort for the people of the northern end 
 of the State, and of a different sort for the southern 
 people, he assumes that I do not understand that my 
 speeches will be put in print and read North and South. 
 
96 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 I knew all the while that the speech that I made at 
 Chicago, and the one I made at Jonesboro and the one 
 at Charleston, woul;i all be put in print, and all the 
 reading and intelligent men- in the community would 
 see them and know all about my opinions. And I have 
 not supposed, and do not now suppose, that there is 
 any conflict whatever between them. But the Judge 
 will have it that if we do not confess that there is a 
 sort of inequality between the white and black races, 
 which justifies us in making them slaves, we must then 
 insist that there is a degree of equality that requires 
 us to make them our wives. Now, I have all the while 
 taken a broad distinction in regard to that matter; and 
 that is all there is in these different speeches which 
 he arrays here; and the entire reading of either of the 
 speeches will show that that distinction was made. 
 Perhaps by taking two parts of the same speech he 
 could have got up as much of a conflict as the one he 
 has found. I have all the while maintained that in so 
 far as it should be insisted that there was an equality 
 between the white and black races that should produce 
 a perfect social and political equality, it was an im- 
 possibility. This you have seen in my printed speeches, 
 and with it I have said, that in their right to **life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as proclaimed in 
 that old Declaration, the inferior races are our equals. 
 And these declarations I have constantly made in refer- 
 ence to the abstract moral question, to contemplate and 
 consider when we are legislating about any new coun- 
 try which is not already cursed with the actual pres- 
 ence of the evil, — slavery. I have never manifested 
 any impatience with the necessities that spring from 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 97 
 
 the acLial existence of slavery amongst us where it 
 dpes already exist; but I have insisted that, in legis- 
 lating for new countries where it does not exist, there 
 is no just rule other than that of moral and abstract 
 right! With reference to those new countries, those 
 maxims as to the right of a people to *'life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness,'^ were the just rules to 
 be constantly referred to. There is no misunderstand- 
 ing this, except by men interested to misunderstand 
 it. I take it that I have to address an intelligent and 
 reading community, who will peruse what I say, weigh 
 it, and then judge whether I advance improper or un- 
 sound views, or whether I advance hypocritical, and 
 deceptive, and contrary views in different portions of 
 the country. I believe myself to be guilty of no such 
 thing as the latter, though of course, I cannot claim 
 that I am entirely free from all error in the opinions I 
 advance. 
 
 The Judge has also detained us a while in regard to 
 the distinction between his party and our party. His 
 he assumes to be a national party, — ours a sectional 
 one. He does this in asking the question whether this 
 country has any interest in the maintenance of the 
 Republican party. He assumes that our party is al- 
 together sectional, — that the party to which he adheres 
 is national; and the argument is, that no party can be 
 a rightful party — can be based upon rightful princi- 
 ples — unless it can announce its principles everywhere. 
 I presume that Judge Douglas could not go into Russia 
 and announce the doctrine of our national Democracy; 
 he could not denounce the doctrine of kings and em- 
 perors and monarchies in Russia; and it may be true 
 
98 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 of this country, that in some places we may not be able 
 to proclaim a doctrine as clearly true as the truth of 
 Democracy, because there is a section so directly op- 
 posed to it that they will not tolerate us in doing so. 
 Is it the true test of the soundness of a doctrine that in 
 some places people won't let you proclaim it? Is that 
 the way to test the tfuth of any doctrine? Why, I un- 
 derstood that one time the people of Chciago would not 
 let Judge Douglas preach a certain favorite doctrine 
 of his. I commend to his consideration the question, 
 whether he takes that as a test of the unsoundness of 
 what he wanted to preach .... 
 
 We have a Republican State platform, laid down in 
 Springfield, in June last, stating our position all the 
 way through on the questions before the country. We 
 are now far advanced in this canvass. Judge Douglas 
 and I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we 
 have now for the fifth time met face to face in debate, 
 and up to this day I have not found either Judge Doug- 
 las or any friend of his taking hold of the Republican 
 platform, or laying his finger upon anything in it that 
 is wrong. I ask you all to recollect that. Judge 
 Douglas turns away from the platform of principles to 
 the fact that he can find people somewhere who will 
 not allow us to announce those principles. If he had 
 great confidence that our principles were wrong, he 
 would take hold of them and demonstrate them to be 
 wrong. But he does not do so. The only evidence he 
 has of their being wrong is in the fact that there are 
 people who won't allow us to preach them. I ask 
 again, is that the way to test the soundness of a doctrine? 
 
 I ask his attention also to the fact that by the rule 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 99 
 
 of nationality he is himself fast becoming sectional. I 
 ask his attention to the fact that his speeches would 
 not go as current now south of the Ohio river as they 
 have formerly gone there. I ask his attention to the 
 fact that he felicitates him.self to-day that all the Dem- 
 ocrats of the Free States are agreeing with him, while 
 he omits to tell us that the Democrats of any Slave 
 State agree with him. If he has not thought of this, 
 I commend to his consideration the evidence in his own 
 declaration, on this day, of his becoming sectional too. 
 I see it rapidly approaching. Whatever may be the 
 result of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas 
 and myself, I see the day rapidly approaching when his 
 pill of sectionalism, which he has been thrusting down 
 the throats of Republicans for years past, will be 
 crowded down his own throat. ^ 
 
 Now, in regard to what Judge Douglas said (in the 
 beginning of his speech) about the Compromise of 1850 
 containing The principle of the Nebraska bill, although 
 I have often presented my views upon that subject, yet 
 as I have not done so in this canvass, I will, if you 
 please, detain you a little with them. I have always 
 maintained, so far as I was able, that there was nothing 
 of the principle of the Nebraska bill in the Compro- 
 mise of 1850 at all, — nothing whatever. Where can 
 you find the principle of the Nebraska bill in the Com- 
 promise? If anywhere, in the two pieces of the Com- 
 promise organizing the Territories of New Mexico and 
 Utah. It was expressly provided in these two Acts, 
 that, when they came to be admitted into the Union, 
 they should be admitted with or without slavery, as 
 they should choose by their own constitutions. Noth- 
 
100 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 ing was said in either of those Acts as to what was to 
 be done in relation to slavery during the territorial ex- 
 istence of those Territories, while Henry Clay constantly 
 made the declaration (Judge Douglas recognizing him 
 as a leader) that, in his opinion, the old Mexican laws 
 would control that question during the territorial ex- 
 istence, and that these old Mexican laws excluded 
 slavery. How can that be used as a principle for de- 
 claring that during the territorial existence as well as at 
 the time of framing the Constitution, the people, if you 
 please, might have slaves if they wanted them? I am 
 not discussing the question whether it is right or 
 wrong; but how are the New Mexican and Utah laws 
 patterns for the Nebraska bill? I maintain that the 
 organization of Utah and New Mexico did not estab- 
 lish a general principle at all. It had no feature of 
 establishing a general principle. The Acts to which I 
 have referred were a part of a general system of Com- 
 promises. They did not lay down what was proposed 
 as a regular policy for the Territories, only an agree- 
 ment in this particular case to do in that way, because 
 other things were done that were to be a compensation 
 for it. They were allowed to come in in that shape, 
 because in another way it was paid for, — considering 
 that as a part of that system of measures called the 
 Compromise of 1850, which finally included half a dozen 
 Acts. It included the admission of California as a Free 
 State, which was kept out of the Union for a half a 
 year because it had formed a free Constitution. It in- 
 cluded the settlement of the boundary of Texas, which 
 had been undefined before, which was in itself a slavery 
 question; for if you pushed the line farther west, you 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 101 
 
 made Texas larger, and made more slave territory; 
 while, if you drew the line toward the east, you nar- 
 rowed the boundary and diminished the domain of 
 slavery, and by so much increased free territory. It 
 included the abolition of the slave trade in the District 
 of Columbia. It included the passage of a new Fugi- 
 tive Slave law. All these things were put together, 
 and though passed in separate Acts, were nevertheless, 
 in legislation (as the speeches at the time will show), 
 made to depend upon each other. Each got votes, with 
 the understanding that the other measures were to 
 pass, and by this system of compromise in that series 
 of measures, those two bills — the New Mexico and Utah 
 bills — were passed ; and I say for that reason they could 
 not be taken as models, framed upon their own intrin- 
 sic principle, for all future Territories. And I have 
 the evidence of this in the fact that Judge Douglas, a 
 year afterward, or more than a year afterward, per- 
 haps, when he first introduced bills for the purpose of 
 framing new Territories, did not attempt to follow 
 these bills of New Mexico and Utah; and even when 
 he introduced this Nebraska bill, I think you will dis- 
 cover that he did not exactly follow them. But I do 
 not wish to dwell at great length upon this branch of 
 the discussion. My own opinion is, that a thorough 
 investigation will show most plainly that the New 
 Mexico and Utah bills were part of a system of com- 
 promise, and not designed as patterns for future Terri- 
 torial legislation; and that this Nebraska bill did not 
 follow them as a pattern at all. . . . 
 
 While we were at Freeport, in one of these joint 
 discussions, I answered certain interrogatories which 
 
102 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 Judge Douglas had propounded to me, and then in turn 
 propounded some to him which he in a sort of way 
 answered. The third one of these interrogatories 1 
 have with me and wish now to make some comments 
 upon it. It was in these words : " If the Supreme Court 
 of the United States shall decide that the States cannot 
 exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of 
 acquiescing in, adhering to, and following such deci- 
 sion, as a rule of political action?" 
 
 To this interrogatory Judge Douglas made no answer 
 in any just sense of the word. He contented himself 
 with sneering at the thought that it was possible for 
 the Supreine Court ever to make such a decision. He 
 sneered at me for propounding the interrogatory. I 
 had not propounded it without some reflection, and 1 
 wish now to address to this audience some remarks 
 upon it. 
 
 In the second clause of the sixth article, I believe it 
 is, of the Constitution of the United States, we find the 
 following language: *This Constitution and the laws 
 of the United States which shall be made in pursuance 
 thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, 
 under the authority of the United States, shall be the 
 supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State 
 shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or 
 laws of any State to the contrary, notwithstanding." 
 
 The essence of the Dred Scott case is compressed into 
 the sentence which I will now read: **Now, as we have 
 already said in an earlier part of this opinion, upon a 
 different point, the right of property in a slave is dis- 
 tinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution." I 
 repeat it; "The right of property in a slave is distinctly 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 103 
 
 and expressly affirmed in the Constitution!'* What is 
 it to be "affirmed** in the Constitution? Made firm in 
 the Constitution, — so made that it cannot be separated 
 from the Constitution without breaking the Constitu- 
 tion; durable as the Constitution, and part of the Con- 
 stitution. Now, remembering the provision of the 
 Constitution which I have read; affirming that that in- 
 strument is the supreme law of the land; that the 
 judges of every State shall be bound by it, any law or 
 Constitution of any State to the contrary, notwithstand- 
 ing; that the right of property in a slave is affirmed 
 in that Constitution, is made, formed into, and cannot 
 be separated from it without breaking it; durable as 
 the instrument; part of the instrument; — what follows 
 as a short and even syllogistic argument from it? I 
 think it follows, and I submit to the consideration of 
 men capable of arguing, whether as I state it in syl- 
 logistic form the argument has any fault in it: 
 
 Nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can 
 destroy a right distinctly and expressly affirmed in the 
 Constitution of the United States. 
 
 The right of property in a slave is distinctly and ex- 
 pressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 Therefore, nothing in the Constitution or laws of any 
 State can destroy the right of property in a slave. 
 
 I believe that no fault can be pointed out in that 
 argument; assuming the truth of the premises, the 
 conclusion, so far as I have capacity at all to under- 
 stand it, follows inevitably. There is a fault in it, as 
 I think, but the fault is not in the reasoning; but the 
 falsehood in fact is a fault of the premises. I believe 
 that the right of property in a slave is not distinctly 
 
104 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, and Judge 
 Douglas thinks it is. I believe that the Supreme Court 
 and the advocates of that decision may search in vain 
 for the place in the Constitution where the right of a 
 slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed. I say, there- 
 fore, that I think one of the premises is not true in 
 fact. But it is true with Judge Douglas. It is true 
 with the Supreme Court who pronounced it. They are 
 estopped from denying it, and being estopped from deny- 
 ing it the conclusion follows that, the Constitution of 
 the United States being the supreme law, no constitu- 
 tion or law can interfere with it. It being affirmed 
 in the decision that the right of property in a slave is 
 distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, 
 the conclusion inevitably follows that no State law or 
 constitution can destroy that right. I then say to Judge 
 Douglas and to all others, that I think it will take a 
 better answer than a sneer to show that those who have 
 said that the right of property in a slave is distinctly 
 and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, are not pre- 
 pared to show that no constitution or law can destroy 
 that right. . . . 
 
 I proposed to Judge Douglas another interrogatory, 
 which was correlative to that: "Are you in favor of ac- 
 quiring additional territory, in disregard of how it 
 may affect us upon the slavery question?'^ Judge 
 Douglas answered, — that is, in his own way he an- 
 swered it. I believe that, although he took a good 
 many words to answer it, it was a little more fully an- 
 swered than any other. The substance of his answer 
 was, that this country would continue to expand; that 
 it would need additional territory; that it was as ab- 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 105 
 
 surd to suppose that we could continue upon our present 
 territory, enlarging in population as we are, as it would 
 be to hoop a boy twelve years of age, and expect him 
 to grow to man's size without bursting the hoops. I 
 believe it was something like that. Consequently, he 
 was in favor of the acquisition of further territory, as 
 fast as we might need it, in disregard of how it might 
 affect the slavery question. I do not say this as giving 
 his exact language, but he said so substantially; and 
 he would leave the question of slavery where the terri- 
 tory was acquired to be settled by the people of the 
 acquired territory. [''That's the doctrine."] Maybe 
 it is; let us consider that for a while. This will prob- 
 ably, in the run of things, become one of the concrete 
 manifestations of this slavery question. If Judge 
 Douglas's policy upon this question succeeds, and gets 
 fairly settled down, until all opposition is crushed out, 
 the next thing will be a grab for the territory of poor 
 Mexico, an invasion of the rich lands of South America, 
 then the adjoining islands will follow, each one of 
 which promises additional slave-fields. And this ques- 
 tion is to be left to the people of those countries for 
 settlement. When we shall get Mexico, I don't know 
 whether the Judge will be in favor of the Mexican 
 people that we get with it settling that question for 
 themselves and all others; because we know the Judge 
 has a great horror for mongrels, and I understand that 
 the people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of 
 mongrels. I understand that there is not more than 
 one person there out of eight who is pure white, and I 
 suppose from the Judge's previous declaration that 
 when we get Mexico or any considerable portion of it. 
 
106 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 that he will be in favor of these mongrels settling the 
 question, which would bring him somewhat into collu- 
 sion with his horror of an inferior race. 
 
 It is to be remembered, though, that this power of 
 acquiring additional territory is a power confided to 
 the President and Senate of the United States. It is a 
 power not under the control of the representatives of 
 the people any further than they, the President and 
 the Senate, can be considered the representatives of 
 the people. Let me illustrate that by a case we have 
 in our history. When we acquired the territory from 
 Mexico in the Mexican War, the House of Representa- 
 tives, composed of the immediate representatives of 
 the people, all the time insisted that the territory thus 
 to be acquired should be brought in upon condition 
 that slavery should be forever prohibited therein, upon 
 the terms and in the language that slavery had been 
 prohibited from coming into this country. This was 
 insisted upon constantly and never failed to call forth 
 an assurance that any territory thus acquired should 
 have that prohibition in it, so far as the House of 
 Representatives was concerned. But at last the Presi- 
 dent and Senate acquired the territory without asking 
 the House of Representatives anything about it, and 
 took it without that prohibition. They have the power 
 of acquiring territory without the immediate represent- 
 atives of the people being called upon to say anything 
 about it and thus furnishing a very apt and powerful 
 means of bringing new territory into the Union, and, 
 when it is once brought into the country, involving us 
 anew in this slavery agitation. It is, therefore, as I 
 think, a very important question for the consideration 
 
FIFTH JOINT DEBATE 107 
 
 of the American people, whether the policy of bring- 
 ing in additional territory, without considering at all 
 how it will operate upon the safety of the Union in 
 reference to this one great disturbing element in our 
 national politics, shall be adopted as the policy of the 
 country. You will bear in mind that it is to be ac- 
 quired, according to the Judge's view, as fast as it is 
 needed, and the indefinite part of this proposition is 
 that we have only Judge Douglas and his class of men 
 to decide how fast it is needed. We have no clear and 
 certain way of determining or demonstrating how fast 
 territory is needed by the necessities of the country. 
 Whoever wants to go out filibustering, then, thinks 
 that more territory is needed. Whoever wants wider 
 slave-fields, feels sure that some additional territory is 
 needed as slave territory. Then it is as easy to show 
 the necessity of additional slave territory as it is to 
 assert anything that is incapable of absolute demon^ 
 stration. Whatever motive a man or a set of men may 
 have for making annexation of property or territory, 
 it is very easy to assert, but much less easy to disprove, 
 that it is necessary for the wants of the country. . . . 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S REPLY 
 
 Mr. Lincoln asserts to-day, as he did at Chicago, that 
 the negro was included in that clause of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence which says that all men were 
 created equal, and endowed by the Creator with cer- 
 tain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness. If the negro was made 
 his equal and mine, if that equality was established by 
 
108 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 divine law, and was the negro's inalienable right, how 
 came he to say at Charleston to the Kentuckians resid- 
 ing in that section of our State, that the negro was 
 physically inferior to the white man, belonged to an 
 inferior race, and he was for keeping him always in 
 that inferior condition. I wish you to bear these 
 things in mind. At Charleston he said that the negro 
 belonged to an inferior race, and that he was for keep- 
 ing him in that inferior condition. There he gave the 
 people to understand that there was no moral question 
 involved, because the inferiority being established it 
 was only a question of degree, and not a question of 
 right; here, to-day, instead of making it a question of 
 degree, he makes it a moral question, says that it is a 
 great crime to hold the negro in that inferior condi- 
 tion. [''He's right."] Is he right now, or was he 
 right in Charleston? [''Both."] He is right then, 
 sir, in your estimation, not because he is consistent, 
 but because he can trim his principles any way, in any 
 section, so as to secure voters. All I desire of him is 
 that he will declare the same principles in the South 
 that he does in the North. ... 
 
 He complains because I did not go into an argument 
 reviewing Chief Justice Taney's opinion, and the other 
 opinions of the different judges, to determine whether 
 their reasoning is right or wrong on the questions of 
 law. What use would that be? He wants to take an 
 appeal from the Supreme Court to this meeting, to de- 
 termine whether the questions of law were decided 
 properly. He is going to appeal from the Supreme 
 Court of the United States to every town meeting, in 
 the hope that he can excite a prejudice against that 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 109 
 
 court, and on the wave of that prejudice ride into the 
 Senate of the United States, when he could not get 
 there on his own principles or his own merits. Sup- 
 pose he should succeed in getting- into the Senate of 
 the United States, what then will he have to do with 
 the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott 
 case? Can he reverse that decision when he gets there? 
 Can he act upon it? Has the Senate any right to re- 
 verse it or revise it? He will not pretend that it has. 
 Then why drag the matter into this contest, unless for 
 the purpose of making a false issue, by which he can 
 direct public attention from the real issue. . . 
 
no THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 
 
 Quincy, October 13, 1858 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I have had no immediate 
 conference with Judge Douglas, but I will venture to 
 say that he and I will perfectly agree that your entire 
 silence, both when I speak and when he speaks, will be 
 most agreeable to us. . . . 
 
 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 sets 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, — perhaps I should say, to be enacted, not 
 merely in the face of audiences like this, but in the 
 face of the nation, and to some extent, 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 .... 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 111 
 
 We have in this nation this 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 — can 
 reduce to the lowest elements — what this difference of 
 opinion is, we shall perhaps be better prepared for dis- 
 cussing the different systems of policy that we would 
 propose in regard to that disturbing element. I sug- 
 gest that the dift'erence of opinion, reduced to its low- 
 est 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; 
 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 in its tendency, to say the least, that ex- 
 tends itself to the existence of the whole nation. Be- 
 cause 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 difficulties of getting rid of it in 
 any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obliga- 
 tions 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 
 
112 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 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 Constitution 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, — the terms 
 of making the emancipation gradual, and compensating 
 the unwilling owners. Where we suppose we have the 
 constitutional right, we restrain ourselves in reference 
 to the actual existence of the institution and the diffi- 
 culties 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 violate anything 
 due to the actual presence of the institution, or any- 
 thing due to the constitutional guarantees 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 de- 
 cided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will de- 
 cide 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 dis- 
 turb the rights of property thus settled; but we never- 
 theless 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 mem- 
 bers of Congress or the President to favor no measure 
 that does, not actually concur with the principles of 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 113 
 
 that aecision. We do not propose to be bound by it 
 as a political rule 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 founda- 
 tion for spreading that evil into the States themselves. 
 jWe propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if we 
 can, and a new judicial rule established upon this sub- 
 ject. I will add this, that if there be any man who 
 jdoes 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 Repub- 
 lican party who is impatient over the necessity spring- 
 ing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the 
 constitutional guarantees thrown around it, and would 
 act in disregard of these, he too is misplaced, stand- 
 ing 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, gen- 
 tlemen, as well as I can give it, is a plain statement of 
 our principles in their enormity. 
 
 I will say now that there is a sentiment in the coun- 
 try contrary to me, — a sentiment which holds that 
 
 avery is not wrong, and therefore it goes for the 
 policy that does not propose dealing with it as a wrong. 
 That policy is the Democratic policy, and that senti- 
 ment is the Democratic sentiment. If there be a doubt 
 in the mind of any 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 me 
 while I state a few things tending, as I think, to prove 
 [that proposition. In the first place, the leading man — ' 
 
114 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 I think I may do my friend Judge Douglas the honor 
 of calling him such — 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, 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 the 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 that 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 be 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 Free States, because slavery is 
 not here; it must not be opposed in the Slave States, 
 because it is there; it must not be opposed in politics, 
 because that will make a fuss; it must not be opposed 
 in the pulpit, because it is not religion. Then where 
 is the place to oppose it? There is no suitable place to 
 oppose it. There is no place in the country to oppose 
 this evil overspreading the continent, which you say 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 115 
 
 yourself is coming. Frank Blair^ and Gratz Brown^ 
 tried to get up a system of gradual emancipation in 
 Missouri! had an election in August, and got beat, and 
 you, Mr. Democrat, threw' up your hat and hallooed 
 "hurrah for Democracy." So I say again, that in re- 
 gard to the arguments that are made, when Judge 
 Douglas says he * 'don't care whether slavery is voted 
 up or voted down,'' whether he means that as an indi- 
 vidual expression of sentiment, or only as a sort of 
 statement of his views on national policy, it is alike 
 true to say that he can thus argue logically if he don't 
 see anything wrong in it; but he cannot say so logically 
 if he admits that slavery is wrong. He cannot say 
 that he would as soon see a wrong voted up as voted 
 down. When Judge Douglas says that whoever or 
 whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to 
 have them, he is perfectly logical, if there is nothing 
 wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is 
 wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right 
 to do wrong. When he says that slave property and 
 horse and hog property are alike to be allowed to go 
 into the Territories, upon the principles of equality, 
 he is reasoning truly, if there is no difference between 
 them as property; but if the one is property held right- 
 fully, and the other is wrong, then there is no equality 
 between the right and wrong; so that, turn it in any 
 way you can, in all the arguments sustaining the Demo- 
 
 1 Francis P. Blair, Jr.. of Missouri, was a member of Congress at this time. 
 He later was a Major General in the Union Army, and was the Democratic 
 candidate for Vice-President in 1868. 
 
 1 B Gratz Brown at this time was a member of the State Legislature of 
 Missouri. He served in the Union army in the civil war, was United States 
 Senator from Missouri 1863-7, became Governor of Missouri in 1871, and was 
 candidate for Vice-President on the ticket with Horace Greeley in 1872, 
 
116 'THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 cratic policy, and in that policy itself, there is a care^ 
 fully studied exclusion of the idea that there is anything 
 wrong in slavery. Let us understand this. I am not, 
 just here, trying to prove that we are right, and they 
 are wrong. I have been stating where we and they 
 stand, and trying to show what is the real difference 
 between us; and I now say that whenever we can get 
 the question distinctly stated, can get all these men 
 who believe that slavery is in some of these respects 
 wrong, to stand and act with us in treating it as a 
 wrong, — then, and not till then, I think we will in 
 some way come to an end of this slavery agitation. 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S REPLY 
 
 Mr. Lincoln pretends that after 1 had so quoted those 
 resolutions^ he discovered that they had never been 
 adopted at Springfield. . . . 
 
 I will now show you that I stated with entire fair- 
 ness, as soon as it was made known to me, that there 
 was a mistake about the spot where the resolutions had 
 been adopted, although their truthfulness, as a decla- 
 ration of the principles of the Republican party, had 
 not and could not be questioned. I did not wait for 
 Lincoln to point out the mistake, but the moment I dis- 
 covered it, I made a speech, and published it to the 
 world, correcting the error. I corrected it myself, as 
 a gentleman and an honest man, and as I always feel 
 proud to do when I have made a mistake. I wish Mr. 
 Lincoln could show that he has acted with equal fair- 
 ness, and truthfulness, when I have convinced him that 
 
 1. Referring to the Resolutions given on page 21. 
 
 
I 
 
 SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 117 
 
 he has been mistaken. I will give you an illustration 
 to show you how he acts in a similar case: In a speech 
 at Springfield, he charged Chief Justice Taney and his 
 associates, President Pierce, President Buchanan, and 
 myself, with having entered into a conspiracy at the 
 time the Nebraska bill was introduced, by which the 
 Dred Scott decision was to be made by the Supreme 
 Court, in order to carry slavery everywhere under the 
 Constitution. I called his attention to the fact that at 
 the time alluded to, to wit, the introduction of the 
 Nebraska bill, it was not possible that such a conspir- 
 acy could have been entered into, for the reason that 
 the Dred Scott case had never been taken before the 
 Supreme Court, and was not taken before it for a year 
 after; and I asked him to take back that charge. Did 
 he do it? I showed him that it was impossible that 
 the charge could be true; I proved it by the record: 
 and I then called upon him to retract his false charge. 
 What was his answer? Instead of coming out like an 
 honest man and doing so, he reiterated the charge, and 
 said that if the case had not gone up to the Supreme 
 Court from the courts of Missouri at the time he 
 charged that the Judges of the Supreme Court entered 
 into the conspiracy, yet that there was an understand- 
 ing with the Democratic owners of Dred Scott that 
 they would take it up. I have since asked him who 
 the Democratic owners of Dred Scott were, but he 
 could not tell, and why? Because there were no such 
 Democratic owners in existence. Dred Scott at the 
 time was owned by the Rev. Dr. Chaffee, an Abolition 
 member of Congress, of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 
 right of his wife. He was owned by one of Lincoln's 
 
118 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 friends, and not by Democrats at all; his case was 
 conducted in court by Abolition lawyers, so that both 
 the prosecution and the defense were in the hands of 
 the Abolition political friends of Mr. Lincoln. Not- 
 withstanding I thus proved by the record that his 
 charge against the Supreme Court was false, instead of 
 taking it back, he resorted to another false charge to 
 sustain the infamy of it. He also charged President 
 Buchanan with having been a party to the conspiracy. 
 I directed his attention to the fact that the charge 
 could not possibly be true, for the reason, that at the 
 time specified, Mr. Buchanan was not in America, but 
 was three thousand miles off, representing the United 
 States at the Court of St. James, ^ and had been there 
 for a year previous, and did not return until three 
 years afterward. Yet I never could get Mr. Lincoln to 
 take back his false charge, although I have called upon 
 him over and over again. He refuses to do it, and 
 either remains silent, or resorts to other tricks to try 
 and palm his slander off on the country. Therein you 
 will find the difference between Mr. Lincoln and my- 
 self. When I make a mistake, as an honest man I cor- 
 rect it without being asked to do so; but when he 
 makes a false charge, he sticks to it, and never cor- 
 rects it. One word more in regard to these resolu- 
 tions: I quoted them at Ottawa merely to ask Mr. 
 Lincoln whether he stood on that platform. That was 
 the purpose for which I quoted them. I did not think 
 that I had a right to put idle questions to him, and I 
 first laid a foundation for my questions by showing 
 that the principles which I wished him either to affirm 
 
 1. That is, Great Britain. 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 119 
 
 or deny had been adopted by some portion of his friends, 
 at least, as their creed. Hence, I read the resolutions 
 and put the questions to him; and he then refused to 
 answer them. Subsequently, one week afterward, he 
 did answer a part of them, but the others he has not 
 answered up to this day. . . . 
 
 The Dred Scott decision was pronounced by the high- 
 est tribunal on earth. From that decision there is no 
 appeal this side of Heaven. Yet, Mr. Lincoln says he 
 is going to reverse that decision. By what tribunal 
 will he reverse it? Will he appeal to a mob? Does 
 he intend to appeal to violence, to lynch law? Will 
 he stir up strife and rebellion in the land, and over- 
 throw the court by violence? He does not deign to tell 
 you how he will reverse the Dred Scott decision, but 
 keeps appealing each day from the Supreme Court of 
 the United States to political meetings in the country. 
 He wants me to argue with you the merits of each 
 point of that decision before this political meeting. I 
 say to you, with all due respect, that I choose to abide 
 by the decisions of the Supreme Court as they are pro- 
 nounced. It is not for me to inquire, after a decision 
 is made, whether I like it in all the points or not. 
 When I used to practice law with Lincoln, I never knew 
 him to be beat in a case that he did not get mad at the 
 judge, and talk about appealing; and when I got beat, 
 I generally thought the court was wrong, but I never 
 dreamed of going out of the court house and making a 
 stump speech to the people against the judge, merely 
 because I had found out that I did not know the law as 
 well as he did. If the decision did not suit me, I ap- 
 pealed until I got to the Supreme Court; and then if 
 
120 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAvS DEBATES 
 
 that court, the highest tribunal in the world, decided: 
 against me, I was satisfied, because it is the duty of] 
 every law-abiding man to obey the constitutions, the; 
 laws, and the constituted authorities. He who at- 
 tempts to stir up odium and rebellion in the country, 
 against the constituted authorities, is stimulating the 
 passions of men to resort to violence and to mobs in-- 
 stead of to the law. Hence, 1 tell you that 1 take the 
 decisions of the Supreme Court as the law of the land, 
 and I intend to obey them as such. 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln says that I will not answer his ques- 
 tion as to what I would do in the event of the court 
 making so ridiculous a decision as he imagines they 
 would by deciding that the free State of Illinois could 
 not prohibit slavery within her own limits. I told himi 
 at Freeport why I would not answer such a question.. 
 I told him that there was not a man possessing any| 
 brains in America, lawyer or not, who ever dreamed! 
 that such a thing could be done. I told him then, as li 
 do now, that by all the principles set forth in the Dred; 
 Scott decision, it is impossible. I told him then, as I( 
 do now, that it is an insult to men's understanding,, 
 and a gross calumny on the court, to presume in ad-l 
 vance that it was going to degrade itself so low as to 
 make a decision known to be in direct violation of the 
 Constitution. . . . 
 
 If each State will only agree to mind its own busi- 
 ness and let its neighbors alone, there will be peace 
 forever between us. We in Illinois tried slavery when 
 a Territory, and found it was not good for us in this 
 climate, and with our surroundings, and hence we abol- 
 ished it. We then adopted a Free State Constitution, 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 121 
 
 as we had a right to do. In this State we have de- 
 clared that a negro shall not be a citizen, and we have 
 also declared that he shall not be a slave. We had a 
 right to adopt that policy. Missouri has just as good 
 a right to adopt the other policy. I am now speaking 
 of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or 
 religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the 
 people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter for 
 themselves. I hold that the people of the slaveholding 
 States are civilized men as well as ourselves, and that 
 they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are 
 accountable to God and their posterity, and not to us. 
 It is for them to decide, therefore, the moral and reli- 
 gious right of the slavery question for themselves, 
 within their own limits. I assert that they had as 
 much right under the Constitution to adopt the system 
 of policy which they have as we had to adopt ours. So 
 it is with every other State in this Union. Let each 
 State stand firmly by that great constitutional right, 
 let each State mind its own business and let its neigh- 
 bors alone, and there will be no trouble on this ques- 
 tion. If we will stand by that principle, then Mr. Lin- 
 coln will find that this Republic can exist forever, di- 
 vided into Free and Slave States, as our fathers made 
 it and the people of each State have decided. Stand 
 by that great principle, and we can go on as we have 
 done, increasing in wealth, in population, in power, 
 and in all the elements of greatness, until we shall be 
 the admiration and terror of the world. We can go 
 on and enlarge as our population increases, require 
 more room, until we make this continent one ocean- 
 bound republic. Under that principle the United 
 
122 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 States can perform that great mission, that destiny, 
 which Providence has marked out for us. Under that 
 principle we can receive with entire safety that stream 
 of intelligence which is constantly flowing from the Old 
 World to the New, filling up our prairies, clearing our 
 wildernesses and building cities, towns, railroads, and 
 other internal improvements, and thus make this the 
 asylum of the oppressed of the whole earth. We have 
 this great mission to perform, and it can only be per- 
 formed by adhering faithfully to that principle of self- 
 government on which our institutions were all estab- 
 lished. I repeat that the principle is the right of each 
 State, each Territory, to decide this slavery question 
 for itself, to have slavery or not, as it chooses; and it 
 does not become Mr. Lincoln, or anybody else, to tell 
 the people of Kentucky that they have no consciences, 
 that they are living in a state of iniquity, and that 
 they are cherishing an institution to their bosoms in 
 violation of the law of God, Better for him to adopt 
 the doctrine of ** judge not, lest ye shall be judged." 
 Let him perform his own duty at home, and he will 
 have a better fate in the future. I think there are ob- 
 jects of charity enough in the Free States to excite the 
 sympathies and open the pockets of all the benevolence 
 we have amongst us, without going abroad in search of 
 negroes, of whose condition we know nothing. We 
 have enough objects of charity at home, and it is our 
 duty to take care of our own poor and our own suffer- 
 ing, before we go abroad to intermeddle with other 
 people's business. 
 
 My friends, I am told that my time is within two 
 minutes of expiring. I have omitted many topics that 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 123 
 
 I would like to have discussed before you at length. 
 There were many points touched by Mr. Lincoln that I 
 have not been able to take up for the want of time. I 
 have hurried over each subject that I have discussed as 
 rapidly as possible, so as to omit but few, but one hour 
 and a half is not time sufficient for a man to discuss at 
 length one half of the great questions which are now 
 dividing the public mind. 
 
 In conclusion, I desire to return to you my grateful 
 acknowledgements for the kindness and the courtesy 
 with which you have listened to me. It is something 
 remarkable that in an audience as vast as this, com- 
 posed of men of opposite politics and views, with their 
 passions highly excited, there should be so much cour- 
 tesy, kindness, and respect exhibited not only toward 
 one another, but toward the speakers; and I feel that 
 it is due to you that I should thus express my gratitude 
 for the kindness with which you have treated me. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER 
 
 My Friends: Since Judge Douglas has said to you in 
 his conclusion that he had not time in an hour and a 
 half to answer all I had said in an hour, it follows of 
 course that. I will not be able to answer in half an hour 
 all that he said in an hour and a half. 
 
 I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound 
 thanks for his public annunciation here to-day, to be 
 put on record, that his system of policy in regard to 
 the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall last 
 forever. We are getting a little nearer the true issue 
 of this controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for 
 
124 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 this one sentence. Judge Douglas asks you, **Why can- 
 not the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot 
 the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our 
 fathers made it, forever?" In the first place, I insist 
 that our fathers did not make this nation half slave 
 and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist 
 that they found the institution of slavery existing here. 
 They did not make it so, but they left it so because 
 they knew no way to get rid of it at that time. When 
 Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of 
 choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation 
 part slave and part free, he assumes what is histori- 
 cally a falsehood. More than that, when the fathers 
 of the Government cut off the source of slavery by the 
 abolition of the slave trade, and adopted a system of 
 restricting it from the new Territories where it had not 
 existed, I maintain that they placed it where they un- 
 derstood, and all sensible men understood, it was in 
 the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge 
 Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers 
 made it, I ask him why he and his friends could not let 
 it remain as our fathers made it? 
 
 It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the in- 
 stitution of slavery, that it shall be placed upon the 
 basis that our fathers placed it upon. Mr. Brooks,^ 
 of South Carolina, once said, and truly said, that when 
 this Government was established, no one expected the 
 institution of slavery to last until this day, and that 
 the men who formed this Government were wiser and 
 better than the men of these days; but the men of 
 these days had experience which the fathers had not, 
 
 1. United States Senator P. W. Brooks, of South Carolina. 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 125 
 
 and that experience had taught them the invention of 
 the cotton-gin,^ and this had made the perpetuation of 
 the institution of slavery a necessity in this country. 
 Judge Douglas could not let it stand upon the basis upon 
 v^hich our fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it 
 upon the cotton-gin basis. It is a question, therefore, 
 for him and his friends to answer, why they could not 
 let it remain where the fathers of the Government orig- 
 inally placed it. . . . 
 
 The truth about the matter is this: Judge Douglas 
 has sung paeans to his * 'Popular Sovereignty" doctrine 
 until his Supreme Court, cooperating with him, has 
 squatted his Squatter Sovereignty out.^ But he will 
 keep up this species of humbuggery about Squatter 
 Sovereignty. He has at last invented this sort of do- 
 nothing Sovereignty, — that the people may exclude 
 slavery by a sort of "Sovereignty" that is exercised 
 by doing nothing at all. Is not that running his Pop- 
 ular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down 
 as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boil- 
 ing the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death? 
 But at last, when it is brought to the test of close rea- 
 soning, there is not even that thin decoction of it left. 
 It is a presumption impossible in the domain of thought. 
 It is precisely no other than the putting of that most 
 unphilosophical proposition, that two bodies can oc- 
 cupy the same space at the same time. The Dred Scott 
 decision covers the whole ground, and while it occu- 
 
 1. The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney in 1795 made slavery more 
 profitable and placed the opposition on an economic rather than an ethical 
 
 2. That is, the Dred Scott decision killed the theory of Squatter Sovereignty. 
 
126 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 pies it, there is no room even for the shadow of a 
 starved pigeon to occupy the same ground .... 
 
 The Judge wants to know why I won't withdraw the 
 charge in regard to a conspiracy to make slavery na- 
 tional, as he has withdrawn the one he made. May it 
 please his worship, I will withdraw it when it is proven 
 false on me as that was proven false on him. I will 
 add a little more than that. I will withdraw it when- 
 ever a reasonable man shall be brought to believe that 
 the charge is not true. 1 have asked Judge Douglas's 
 attention to certain matters of fact tending to prove 
 the charge of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery, and 
 he says he convinces me that this is all untrue because 
 Buchanan was not in the country at that time, and be- 
 cause the Dred Scott case had not then got into the 
 Supreme Court; and he says that I say the Democratic 
 owners of Dred Scott got up the case. I never did say 
 that. I defy Judge Douglas to show that I ever said 
 so, for I never uttered it. 
 
 [One of Mr. Douglas's reporters gesticulated affirm- 
 atively at Mr. Lincoln.] 
 
 1 don't care if your hireling does say I did, I tell you 
 myself that I never said the ''Democratic" owners of 
 Dred Scott got up the case. I have never pretended to 
 know whether Dred Scott's owners were Democrats, or 
 Abolitionists, or Free Soilers, or Border Ruffians.-^ I 
 have said that there is evidence about the case tending 
 to show that it was a made-up case, for the purpose of 
 getting that decision. I have said that that evidence 
 
 1. People who believed that the Territories should be admitted as free 
 states were known as Free Soilers, During the disturbances in Kansas Ter- 
 ritory, some emigrants came over from Missouri favoring slavery, and to 
 them the free soil residents gave the name of Border Ruffians. 
 
SIXTH JOINT DEBATE 127 
 
 was very strong in the fact that when Dred Scott was 
 declared to be a slave, the owner of him made him 
 free, showing that he had had the case tried and the 
 question settled for such use as could be made of that 
 decision; he cared nothing about the property thus de- 
 clared to be his by that decision. But my time is out, 
 and I can say no more. 
 
128 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 
 
 Alton, October 15, 1858 
 
 SENATOR DOUGLAS'S SPEECH 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : It is now nearly four months 
 since the canvass between Mr. Lincoln and myself 
 commenced.... 
 
 I hold that there is no power on earth, under our 
 system of Government, which has the right to force a 
 Constitution upon an unwilling people. . . . 
 
 Most of the men who denounced my course on the 
 Lecompton question objected to it, not because I was 
 not right, but because they thought it expedient at that 
 time, for the sake of keeping the party together, to 
 do wrong. . . . 
 
 But I am told that I would have been all right if I 
 had voted for the English bill^ after the Lecompton 
 measure was killed. You know a pardon was granted 
 to all political offenders on the Lecompton question, 
 provided they would only vote for the English bill. I 
 did not accept the benefits of that pardon, for the 
 reason that I had been right in the course I had pur- 
 sued, and hence did not require any forgiveness. Let 
 us see how the result has been worked out. English 
 brought in his bill referring the Lecompton Constitu- 
 
 1. The English bill for the admission of Kanse s, introduced in Congress by 
 Wm. H. English, of Indiana, is explained by Douglas in the lines which follow. 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 129 
 
 tion back to the people, with the provision that if it 
 was rejected, Kansas should be kept out of the Union 
 until she had the full ratio of population required for 
 a member of Congress,— thus in effect declaring that 
 if the people of Kansas would only consent to come 
 into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution, and 
 have a Slave State when they did not want it, they 
 should be admitted with a population of 35,000 ; but that 
 if they were so obstinate as to insist upon having just 
 such a constitution as they thought best, and to desire 
 admission as a Free State, then they should be kept out 
 until they had 93,420 inhabitants. I then said, and I 
 now repeat to you, that whenever Kansas has people 
 enough for a Slave State she has people enough for a 
 Free State. I was and am willing to adopt the rule 
 that no State shall ever come into the Union until she 
 has the full ratio of population for a member of Con- 
 gress, provided that rule is made uniform 
 
 Fellow-citizens, how have the supporters of the 
 English bill stood up to their pledges not to admit 
 Kansas until she obtained a population of 93,420 in 
 the event she rejected the Lecompton Constitution? 
 How? The newspapers inform us that English him- 
 self, whilst conducting his canvass for re-election, and 
 in order to secure it, pledged himself to his constit- 
 uents that if returned he would disregard his own bill, 
 and vote to admit Kansas into the Union with such popu- 
 lation as she might have when she made application. 
 We are informed that every Democratic candidate for 
 Congress in all the States where elections have recently 
 been held was pledged against the English bill, with 
 perhaps one or two exceptions. Now, if I had only 
 
130 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 done as these anti-Lecompton men who voted for the 
 English bill in Congress, pledging themselves to refuse 
 to admit Kansas if she refused to become a Slave State 
 until she had a population of 93,420, and then returned 
 to their people, forfeited their pledge, and made a new 
 pledge to admit Kansas at any time she applied, with- 
 out regard to population, I would have had no trouble. 
 You saw the whole power and patronage of the Federal 
 Government wielded in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsyl- 
 vania to re-elect anti-Lecompton men to Congress who 
 voted against Lecompton, then voted for the English 
 bill, and then denounced the English bill, and pledged 
 themselves to their people to disregard it. My sin con- 
 sists in not having given a pledge, and then in not 
 having afterward forfeited it. For that reason, in this 
 State, every postmaster, every route agent, every col- 
 lector of the ports, and every Federal office-holder, for- 
 feits his head the moment he expresses a preference 
 for the Democratic candidates against Lincoln and his 
 Abolition associates. A Democratic Administration^ 
 which we helped to bring into power, deems it consist- 
 ent with its fidelity to principle and its regard to duty 
 to wield its power in this State in behalf of the Re- 
 publican Abolition candidates, in every county and 
 every Congressional District against the Democratic 
 party. All I have to say in reference to the matter is, 
 that if that Administration have not regard enough 
 for principle, if they are not sufficiently attached to 
 the creed of the Democratic party, to bury forever 
 their personal hostilities in order to succeed in carry- 
 
 1. Douglas, a Democrat, had incurred the displeasure of Buchanan, a Dem- 
 ocratic president, on the Kansas question, because the senator refused to 
 support the Lecompton constitutor 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 131 
 
 ing out our glori9us principles, I have. I have no per- 
 sonal difficulty with Mr. Buchanan or his Cabinet. He 
 chose to make certain recommendations to Congress, 
 as he had a right to do, on the Lecompton question. I 
 could not vote in favor of them. I had as much right 
 to judge for myself how I should vote as he had how he 
 should recommend. He undertook to say to me, **If 
 you do not vote as I tell you, I will take off the heads 
 of your friends." I replied to him, **You did not 
 elect me; I represent Illinois, and I am accountable to 
 Illinois, as my constituency, and to God; but not to the 
 President or to any other power on earth.'' 
 
 And now this warfare is made on me because I would 
 not surrender my convictions of duty, because I would 
 not abandon my constituency, and receive the orders of 
 the executive authorities how I should vote in the Sen- 
 ate of the United States. I hold that an attempt to 
 control the Senate on the part of the Executive is sub- 
 versive of the principles of our Constitution. The Ex- 
 ecutive department is independent of the Senate, and 
 the Senate is independent of the President. In mat- 
 ters of legislation the President has a veto on the action 
 of the Senate, and in appointments and treaties the 
 Senate has a veto on the President. He has no more 
 right to tell me how I shall vote on his appointments 
 than I have to tell him whether he shall veto or ap- 
 prove a bill that the Senate has passed. Whenever you 
 recognize the right of the Executive to say to a Sen- 
 ator, **Do this, or I will take off the heads of your 
 friends," you convert this Government from a republic 
 into a despotism. Whenever you recognize the right 
 of a President to say to a member of Congress, ' *Vote 
 
132 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 as I tell you, or I will bring a power to bear against 
 you at home which will crush you,'' you destroy the 
 independence of the Representative, and convert him 
 into a tool of Executive power. I resisted this invasion 
 of the constitutional rights of a Senator, and I intend 
 to resist it as long as I have a voice to speak or a vote 
 to give. Yet, Mr. Buchanan cannot provoke me to 
 abandon one iota of Democratic principles out of re- 
 venge or hostility to his course. I stand by the plat- 
 form of the Democratic party, and by its organization, 
 and support its nominees. If there are any who choose 
 to bolt, the fact only shows that they are not as good. 
 Democrats as I am .... 
 
 I hold that this Government was established on the 
 white basis. It was established by white men for the 
 benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and 
 should be administered by white men, and none others. 
 But it does not follow, by any means, that merely be- 
 cause the negro is not a citizen, and merely because he 
 is not our equal, that, therefore, he should be a slave. 
 On the contrary, it does follow that we ought to extend 
 to the negro race, and to all other dependent races, all 
 the rights, all the privileges, and all the immunities 
 which they can exercise consistently with the safety of 
 society. Humanity requires that we should give them 
 all these privileges; Christianity commands that we 
 should extend those privileges to them. The question 
 then arises, what are those privileges, and what is the 
 nature and extent of them. My answer is that that is 
 a question which each State must answer for itself. . . . 
 If the people of all the States will act on that great 
 principle, and each State mind its own business, attend 
 
SEVENTH JCINT EEBAIE 133 
 
 to its own affairs, take care o' \tF own negroes, and not 
 meddle with its neighbors, ther there will be peace be- 
 tween the North and South, the East and the West, 
 throughout the whole Union. 
 
 Why can we not thus have peace? Why should we 
 thus allow a sectional party to agitate this country, to 
 array the North against the South, and convert us into 
 enemies instead of friends, merely that a few ambi- 
 tious men may ride into power on a sectional hobby? 
 How long is it since these ambitious Northern men 
 wished for a sectional organization? Did any one of 
 them dream of a sectional party as long as the North 
 was the weaker section and the South the stronger? 
 Then all were opposed to sectional parties; but the 
 moment the North obtained the majority in the House 
 and Senate by the admission of California, and could 
 elect a President without the aid of Southern votes, 
 that moment ambitious Northern men formed a scheme 
 to excite the North against the South, and make the 
 people be governed in their votes by geographical lines, 
 thinking that the North, being the stronger section, 
 would outvote the South, and consequently they, the 
 leaders, would ride into office on a sectional hobby. I 
 am told that my hour is out. It was very short. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S REPLY 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been somewhat, in 
 my own mind, complimented by a large portion of 
 Judge Douglas's speech, — I mean that portion which 
 he devotes to the controversy between himself and the 
 present Administration. This is the seventh time Judge 
 
134 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 Douglas and myself have met in these joint discussions, 
 and he has been gradually improving in regard to his 
 war with the Administration,. At Quincy, day before 
 yesterday, he was a little more severe upon the Ad- 
 ministration than I had heard him upon any occasion, 
 and I took pains to compliment him for it. I then told 
 him to "Give it to them with all the power he had;" 
 and as some of them were present, I told them I would 
 be very much obliged if they would give it to him in 
 about the same way. I take it he has now vastly im- 
 proved upon the attack he made then upon the Admin- 
 istration. I flatter myself he has really taken my ad- 
 vice on this subject. All I can say now is to recom- 
 mend to him and to them what I then commended, — to 
 prosecute the war against one another in the most vig- 
 orous manner. I say to them again: **Go it, husband! 
 —Go it, bear!"i 
 
 You have heard him frequently allude to my con- 
 troversy with him in regard to the Declaration of In- 
 dependence. . . . 
 
 At Galesburg, the other day, I said in answer to 
 Judge Douglas, that three years ago there never had 
 been a man, so far as I knew or believed, in the whole 
 world, who had said that the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence did not include negroes in the term "all men." I 
 reassert it to-day. I assert that Judge Douglas and all 
 his friends may search the whole records of the coun- 
 try, and it will be a matter of great astonishment to 
 me if they shall be able to find that one human being 
 
 1. A local story current at the time about a woman who saw her worth- 
 less husband attacked by a bear. She refused to help either man or bear, 
 trusting that each would kill the other. 
 
SEVFNTH JOINT DEBATE 135 
 
 three years ago had ever uttered the astounding senti- 
 ment, that the term "all men*' in the Declaration did 
 not include the negro. Do not let me be misunder- 
 stood. I know that more than three years ago there 
 were men who, finding this assertion constantly in the 
 way of their schemes to bring about the ascendency and 
 perpetuation of slavery, denied the truth of it. I know 
 that Mr. Calhoun and all the politicians of his school 
 denied the truth of the Declaration. I know that it 
 ran along in the mouth of some Southern men for a 
 period of years, ending at last in that shameful, though 
 rather forcible declaration of Pettit^ of Indiana, upon 
 the floor of the United States Senate, that the Declar- 
 ation of Independence was in that respect "a self-evi- 
 dent lie," rather than a self-evident truth. But I say, 
 with a perfect knowledge of all this hawking at the 
 Declaration without directly attacking it, that three 
 years ago there never had lived a man who had ven- 
 tured to assail it in the sneaking way of pretending to 
 believe it, and then asserting it did not include the 
 negro. I believe the first man who ever said it was 
 Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, and the next 
 to him was our friend Stephen A. Douglas. And now 
 it has become the catchword of the entire party. . . . 
 
 And when this new principle — this new proposition 
 that no human being ever thought of three years ago — 
 is brought forward, I combat it as having an evil tend- 
 ency, if not an evil design. I combat it as having a 
 tendency to dehumanize the negro, to take away from 
 him the right of ever striving to be a man. I combat 
 
 1. Hon. John Pettit, of Indiana, was U. S. Senator, 1853-5, and later was 
 appointed by President Buchanan chief justice of Kansas Territory. 
 
136 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 it as being one of the thousand things constantly done 
 in these days to prepare the public mind to make prop- 
 erty, and nothing but property, of the negro in all the 
 States of this Union. . . . 
 
 Judge Douglas has again referred to a Springfield 
 speech in which I said **a house divided against itself 
 cannot stand." The Judge has so often made the en- 
 tire quotation from that speech that I can make it from 
 memory. I used this language:— 
 
 We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was ini- 
 tiated with the avowed object and confident promise of put- 
 ting an end to the slavery agitation. Under the operation 
 of this policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but 
 has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will not cease 
 until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. *'A house 
 divided against itself cannot stand. " I believe this Govern- 
 ment cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. 
 I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will 
 cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the 
 other. Either the opponents of slavery will 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 its advocates will push it forward till it shall 
 become alike lawful in all the States, — old as well as new, 
 North as well as South. 
 
 That extract and the sentiments expresed in it have 
 been extremely offensive to Judge Douglas. He has 
 warred upon them as Satan wars upon the Bible. His 
 perversions upon it are endless. Here now are my 
 views upon it in brief. 
 
 I said we were now far into the fifth year since a 
 policy was initiated with the avowed object and con- 
 fident promise of putting an end to the slavery agita- 
 tion. Is it not so? When that Nebraska bill was 
 
I 
 
 SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 137 
 
 brought forward four years ago last January, was it 
 not for the * 'avowed object'' of putting an end to the 
 slavery agitation? We were to have no more agitation 
 in Congress; it was all to be banished to the Terri- 
 tories. By the way, I will remark here that, as Judge 
 Douglas is very fond of complimenting Mr. Crittenden^ 
 in these days, Mr. Crittenden has said there was a false- 
 hood in that whole business, for there was no slavery 
 agitation at that time to allay. We were for a little 
 while quiet on the troublesome thing, and that very 
 allaying plaster of Judge Douglas's stirred it up again. 
 But was it not understood or intimated, with the *'con- 
 fident promise" of putting an end to the slavery agita- 
 tion? Surely it was. In every speech you heard Judge 
 Douglas make, until he got into this 'Mmbroglio," as 
 they call it, with the Administration about the Lecomp- 
 ton Constitution, every speech on that Nebraska bill was 
 full of his felicitation that we were just at the end of 
 the slavery agitation. The last tip of the last joint of 
 the old serpent's tail was just drawing out of view. 
 But has it proved so? I have asserted that under that 
 policy that agitation **has not only not ceased, but has 
 constantly augmented.'' When was there ever a greater 
 agitation in Congress than last winter? When was it 
 as great in the country as to-day. 
 
 There was a collateral object in the introduction of 
 that Nebraska policy, which was to clothe the people 
 of the Territories with a superior degree of self-govern- 
 ment, beyond what they had ever had before. The first 
 object and the main one of conferring upon the people 
 a higher degree of * ^self-government" is a question of 
 
 1. Senator John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, 
 
138 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 fact, to be determined by you in answer to a single 
 question. Have you ever heard or known of a people 
 anywhere on earth who had as little to do as, in the 
 first instance of its use, the people of Kansas had with 
 this same right of "self-government?'' In its main 
 policy and in its collateral object, it has been nothing 
 but a living, creeping lie from the time of its intro- 
 duction till to-day. 
 
 I have intimated that I thought the agitation would 
 not cease until a crisis should have been reached and 
 passed. I have stated in what way I thought it would 
 be reached and passed. I have said that it might go 
 one way or the other. We might, by arresting the fur- 
 ther spread of it, and placing it where the fathers ori- 
 ginally placed it, put it where the public mind should 
 rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate 
 extinction. Thus the agitation may cease. It may be 
 pushed forward until it shall become alike lawful in all 
 the States, old as well as new. North as well as South. 
 I have said, and I repeat, my wish is that the further 
 spread of it may be arrested, and that it may be placed 
 where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is 
 in the course of ultimate extinction. I have expressed 
 that as my wish. I entertain the opinion, upon evidence 
 sufficient to my mind, that the fathers of this Govern- 
 ment placed ^hat institution where the public mind did 
 rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate 
 extinction. Let me ask why they made provision that 
 the source of slavery — the African slave trade — should 
 be cut off at the end of twenty years? Why did they 
 make provision that in all the new territory we owned 
 at that time slavery should be forever inhibited? Why 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 139 
 
 stop its spread in one direction, and cut off its source 
 in another, if they did not look to its being placed in 
 the course of ultimate extinction? 
 
 Again: the institution of slavery is only mentioned 
 in the Constitution of the United States two or three 
 times, and in neither of these cases does the word 
 "slavery" or **negro race" occur; but covert language 
 is used each time, and for a purpose full of signifi- 
 cance. What is the language in regard to the prohibition 
 of the African slave-trade? It runs in about this way: — 
 
 The migration or importation of such persons as any of 
 the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall 
 not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one 
 thousand eight hundred and eight. 
 
 The next allusion in the Constitution to the question 
 of slavery and the black race, is on the subject of the basis 
 of representation, and there the language used is: — 
 
 Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned 
 among the several States which may be included within this 
 Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall 
 be determined by adding to the whole number of free per- 
 sons, including those bound to service for a term of years, 
 and excluding Indians not taxed, — three-fifths of all other 
 persons. 
 
 It says "persons," not slaves, not negroes; but this 
 "three-fifths" can be applied to no other class among 
 us than the negroes. 
 
 Lastly, in the provision for the reclamation of fugi- 
 tive slaves, it is said: — 
 
 No person held to service or labor in one State, under the 
 laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of 
 any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such ser- 
 vice or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the 
 party to whom such service or labor may be due. 
 
140 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 There again there is no mention of the word "negro,'* 
 or of slavery. In all three of these places, being the only 
 allusions to slavery in the instrument, covert language 
 is used. Language is used not suggesting that slavery 
 existed or that the black race were among us. And I un- 
 derstand the contemporaneous history of those times to 
 be that covert language w^s used with a purpose, and 
 that purpose was that in our Constitution, which it was 
 hoped and is still hoped will endure forever, — when it 
 should be read by intelligent and patriotic men, after 
 the institution of slavery had passed from among us, 
 — there should be nothing on the face of the great 
 charter of liberty suggesting that such a thing as negro 
 slavery had ever existed among us. This is part of the 
 evidence that the fathers of the Government expected 
 and intended the institution of slavery to come to an 
 end. They expected and intended that it should be in 
 the course of ultimate extinction. And when I say 
 that I desire to see the further spread of it arrested, I 
 only say I desire to see that done which the fathers have 
 first done. When I say I desire to see it placed where 
 the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the 
 course of ultimate extinction, I only say I desire to see 
 it placed where they placed it. It is not true that our 
 fathers, as Judge Douglas assumes, made this Govern- 
 ment part slave and part free. Understand the sense 
 in which he puts it. He assumes that slavery is a 
 rightful thing within itself, — was introduced by the 
 framers of the Constitution. The exact truth is, that 
 they found the institution existing among us, and they 
 left it as they found it. But in making the Govern- 
 ment they left this institution with many clear marks 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 141 
 
 of disapprobation upon it. They found slavery among 
 them, and they left it among them because of the diffi- 
 culty — the absolute impossibility — of its immediate re- 
 moval. And when Judge Douglas asks me why we 
 cannot let it remain part slave and part free, as the 
 fathers of the Government made it, he asks a question 
 based upon an assumption which is itself a falsehood; 
 and I turn upon him and ask him the question, when 
 the policy that the fathers of the Government had 
 adopted in relation to this element among us was the 
 best policy in the world, the only wise policy, the only 
 policy that we can ever safely continue upon, that will 
 ever give us peace, unless this dangerous element mas- 
 ters us all and becomes a national institution, — I turn 
 upon him and ask him why he could not leave it alone. 
 I turn and ask him why he was driven to the necessity 
 of introducing a new policy in regard to it. He has 
 himself said he introduced a new policy. He said so in 
 his speech on the 22d of March of the present year, 1858. 
 1 ask him why he could not let it remain where our fa- 
 thers placed it. I ask, too, of Judge Douglas and his 
 friends, why we shall not again place this institution up- 
 on the basis on which the fathers left it. I ask you, when 
 he infers that I am in favor of setting the Free and Slave 
 States at war, when the institution was placed in that at- 
 titude by those who made the Constitution, did they 
 make any war? If we had no war out of it when thus 
 placed, wherein is the ground of belief that we shall 
 have war out of it if we return to that policy? Have we 
 had any peace upon this matter springing from any other 
 basis? I maintain that we have not. I have proposed 
 nothing more than a return to the policy of the fathers. 
 
142 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 I confess, when I propose a certain measure of policy, 
 it is not enough for me that I do not intend anything 
 evil in the result, but it is incumbent on me to show 
 that it has not a tendency to that result. I have met 
 Judge Douglas in that point of viev/. I have not only 
 made the declaration that I do not mean to produce a 
 conflict between the States, but I have tried to show 
 by fair reasoning, and I think I have shown to the 
 minds of fair men, that I propose nothing but what 
 has a most peaceful tendency. The quotation that I 
 happened to make in that Springfield speech, that **a 
 house divided against itself cannot stand,'' and which 
 has proved so offensive to the Judge, was part and par- 
 cel of the same thing. He tries to show that variety 
 in the domestic institutions of the different States is 
 necessary and indispensable. I do not dispute it. I 
 have no controversy with Judge Douglas about that. 
 I shall very readily agree with him that it would be 
 foolish for us to insist upon having a cranberry law 
 here in Illinois where we have no cranberries, because 
 they have a cranberry law in Indiana, where they have 
 cranberries. I should insist that it would be exceed- 
 ingly wrong in us to deny to Virginia the right to en- 
 act oyster laws, where they have oysters, because we 
 want no such laws here. I understand, I hope, quite 
 as well as Judge Douglas or anybody else, that the 
 variety in the soil and climate and face of the country, 
 and consequent variety in the industrial pursuits and 
 productions of a country, require systems of law con- 
 forming to this variety in the natural features of the 
 country. I understand quite as well as Judge Douglas, 
 that if we here raise a barrel of flour more than we 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 143* 
 
 want, and the Louisianians raise a barrel of sugar more 
 than they want, it is of mutual advantage to exchange. 
 That produces commerce, brings us together, and makes 
 us better friends. We like one another the more for 
 it. And I understand as well as Judge Douglas, or 
 anybody else, that these mutual accommodations are 
 the cements which bind together the different parts of 
 this Union; that instead of being a thing to "divide 
 the house,*' — figuratively expressing the Union, — they 
 tend to sustain it; they are the props of the house, 
 tending always to hold it up. 
 
 But when I have admitted all this, I ask if there is 
 any parallel between these things and this institution 
 of slavery. I do not see that there is any parallel at all 
 between them. Consider it. When have we had any 
 difficulty or quarrel amongst ourselves about the cran- 
 berry laws of Indiana, or the oyster laws of Virginia, 
 or the pine-lumber laws of Maine, or the fact that 
 Louisiana produces sugar, and Illinois flour? When 
 have we had any quarrels over these things? When 
 have we had perfect peace in regard to this thing which 
 I say is an element of discord in this Union. We have 
 sometimes had peace, but when was it? It was when 
 the institution of slavery remained quiet where it was. 
 We have had difficulty and turmoil whenever it has 
 made a struggle to spread itself where it was not. I 
 ask, then, if experience does not speak in thunder- 
 tones, telling us that the policy which has given peace 
 to the country heretofore, being returned to, gives the 
 greatest promise of peace again. You may say, and 
 Judge Douglas has intimated the same thing, that all 
 this difficulty in regard to the institution of slavery is 
 
144 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 the mere agitation of office-seekers and ambitious 
 northern politicians. He thinks we want to get **his 
 place,'* I suppose. I agree that there are office-seekers 
 amongst us. The Bible says somewhere that we are 
 desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered 
 that fact without the Bible. I do not claim that I am 
 any less so than the average of men, but I do claim that 
 I am not more selfish than Judge Douglas. 
 
 But is it true that all the difficulty and agitation we 
 have in regard to this institution of slavery springs 
 from office-seeking, from the mere ambition of politi- 
 cians? Is that the truth? How many times have we 
 had danger from this question? Go back to the day of 
 the Missouri Compromise. Go back to the Nullification 
 question, at the bottom of which lay this same slavery 
 question. Go back to the time of the annexation of 
 Texas. Go back to the troubles that led to the Com- 
 promise of 1850. You will find that every time, with 
 the single exception of the Nullification question, they 
 sprung from an endeavor to spread this institution. 
 There never was a party in the history of this country, 
 and there probaoly never will be, of sufficient strength 
 to disturb the general peace of the country. Parties 
 themselves may be divided and quarrel on minor ques- 
 tions, yet it extends not beyond the parties themselves. 
 But does not this question make a disturbance outside 
 of political circles? Does it not enter into the churches 
 and rend them asunder? What divided the great 
 Methodist church into two parts. North and South? 
 What has raised this constant disturbance in every 
 Presbyterian General Assembly that meets? What dis- 
 turbed the Unitarian Church in this very city two years 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 145 
 
 ago? What has jarred and shaken the great American 
 Tract Society recently, not yet splitting it, but sure to 
 divide it in the end? Is it not this same mighty, deep- 
 seated power that somehow operates on the minds of 
 men, exciting and stirring them up in every avenue of 
 society, — in politics, in religion, in literature, in 
 morals, in all the manifold relations of life? Is this 
 the work of politicians? Is that irresistible power, 
 which for fifty years has shaken the Government and 
 agitated the people, to be stilled and subdued by pre- 
 tending that it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we 
 ought not to talk about it? If you will get everybody 
 else to stop talking about it, I assure you I will quit 
 before they have half done so. But where is the phi- 
 losophy or statesmanship which assumes that you can 
 quiet that disturbing element in our society which has 
 disturbed us for more than half a century, which has 
 been the only serious danger that has threatened our 
 institutions, — I say, where is the philosophy or the 
 statesmanship based on the assumption that we are to 
 quit talking about it, and that the public mind is all 
 at once to cease being agitated by it! Yet this is the 
 policy here in the North that Douglas is advocating, — 
 that we are to care nothing about it! I ask you if it 
 is not a false philosophy? Is it not a false statesman- 
 ship that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon 
 the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that 
 everybody does care the most about? — a thing which 
 all experience has shown we care a very great deal 
 about? 
 
 The Judge alludes very often in the course of his re- 
 marks to the exclusive right which the States have to 
 
146 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 decide the whole thing for themselves. I agree with 
 him very readily that the different States have that 
 right. . . . What I insist upon is, that the new Terri- 
 tories shall be kept free from it while in the Territorial 
 condition. Judge Douglas assumes that we have no 
 interest in them, — that we have no right whatever to 
 interfere. I think we have some interest. I think 
 that as white men we have. Do we not wish for an 
 outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express 
 myself? Do we not feel an interest in getting to that 
 outlet with such institutions as we would like to have 
 prevail there? If you go to a Territory opposed to 
 slavery, and another man comes upon the same ground 
 with his slave, upon the assumption that the things are 
 equal, it turns out that he has the equal right all his 
 way, and you have no part of it your way. If he goes 
 in and makes it a Slave Territory, and, by consequence, 
 a Slave State, is it not time that those who desire to 
 have it a Free State were on equal ground? Let me 
 suggest it in a different way. How many Democrats 
 are there about here [**A thousand."] who have left 
 Slave States and come into the Free State of Illinois to 
 get rid of the institution of slavery? [Another voice: 
 "A thousand and one."] I reckon there are a thou- 
 sand and one. I will ask you, if the policy you are 
 now advocating had prevailed when this country was in 
 a Territorial condition, where would you have gone to 
 get rid of it? Where would you have found your Free 
 State or Territory to go to? And when hereafter, for 
 any cause, the people in this place shall desire to find 
 new homes, if they wish to be rid of the institution, 
 where will they find the place to go to? 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 147 
 
 Now, irrespective of the moral aspect of this ques- 
 tion as to whether there is a right or wrong in enslav- 
 ing a negro, I am still in favor of our new Territories 
 being in such a condition that white men may find a 
 home, — may find some spot where they can better their 
 condition; where they can settle upon new soil and 
 better their condition in life. I am in favor of this, 
 not merely (I must say it here as I have elsewhere) for 
 our own people who are born amongst us, but as an 
 outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over, 
 — in which Hans, and Baptiste, and Patrick, and all 
 other men from all the world, may find new homes and 
 better their conditions in life. 
 
 I understand I have ten minutes yet. I will employ 
 it in saying something about this argument Judge 
 Douglas uses, while he sustains the Dred Scott decision, 
 that the people of the Territories can still somehow ex- 
 clude slavery. The first thing I ask attention to is the 
 fact that Judge Douglas constantly said, before the de- 
 cision, that whether they could or not was a question 
 for the Supreme Court. But after the court has made 
 the decision he virtually says it is not a question for 
 the Supreme Court, but for the people. And how is 
 it he tells us they can exclude it? He says it needs 
 "police regulations," and that it admits of "unfriendly 
 legislation." Although it is a right established by the 
 Constitution of the United States to take a slave into 
 a Territory of the United States and hold him as prop- 
 erty, yet unless the Territorial Legislature will give 
 friendly legislation, and, more especially, if they adopt 
 unfriendly legislation, they can practically exclude him. 
 Now, without meeting this proposition as a matter of 
 
148 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 fact, I pass to consider the real constitutional obliga- 
 tion. Let me take the gentleman who looks me in the 
 face before me, and let us suppose that he is a member 
 of the Territorial Legislature. The first thing he will 
 do will be to swear that he will support the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. His neighbor by his side 
 in the Territory has slaves and needs Territorial legis- 
 lation to enable him to enjoy that constitutional right. 
 Can he withhold the legislation which his neighbor 
 needs for the enjoyment of a right which is fixed in his 
 favor in the Constitution of the United States which 
 he has sworn to support? Can he withhold it without 
 violating his oath? And, more especially, can he pass 
 unfriendly legislation to violate his oath. Why, this 
 is a monstrous sort of talk about the Constitution of 
 the United States! There has never been as outlandish 
 or lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any respect- 
 able man on earth. I do not believe it is a constitu- 
 tional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United 
 States. I believe the decision was improperly made. I 
 go for reversing it. Judge Douglas is furious against 
 those who go for reversing a decision. But he is for 
 legislating it out of all force while the law itself stands. 
 I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doc- 
 trine uttered from the mouth of a respectable man. 
 
 I suppose most of us (I know it of myself) believe 
 that the people of the Southern States are entitled to a 
 Congressional Fugitive Slave law, — that is a right fixed 
 in the Constitution. But it cannot be made available 
 to them without Congressional legislation. In the 
 Judge's language, it is a "barren right, *' which needs 
 legislation before it can become eflicient and valuable 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 149 
 
 to the persons to whom it is guaranteed. And as the 
 right is constitutional, I agree that the legislation shall 
 be granted to it, — and that not that we like the insti- 
 tution of slavery. We profess we have no taste for 
 running and catching niggers, — at least, I profess no 
 taste for that job at all. Why then do I yield support 
 to a Fugitive Slave law? Because I do not understand 
 that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can 
 be supported without it. And if I believed that the 
 right to hold a slave in a Territory was equally fixed 
 in the Constitution with the right to reclaim fugitives, 
 I should be bound to give it the legislation necessary 
 to support it. I say that no man can deny his obliga- 
 tion to give the necessary legislation to support slavery 
 in a Territory, who believes it is a constitutional right 
 to have it there. No man can, who does not give the 
 Abolitionists an argument to deny the obligation en- 
 joined by the Constitution to enact a Fugitive Slave 
 law. Try it now. It is the strongest Abolition argu- 
 ment ever made. I say, if that Dred Scott decision is 
 correct, then the right to hold slaves in a Territory is 
 equally a constitutional right with the right of a slave- 
 holder to have his runaway returned. No one can show 
 the distinction between them. The one is express, so 
 that we cannot deny it. The other is construed to be 
 in the Constitution, so that he who believed the de- 
 cision to be correct believes in the right. And the man 
 who argues that by unfriendly legislation, in spite of 
 that constitutional right, slavery may be driven from 
 the Territories, cannot avoid furnishing an argument 
 by which Abolitionists may deny the obligation to re- 
 turn fugitives, and claim the power to pass laws un- 
 
150 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 friendly to the right of the slaveholder to reclaim his 
 fugitive. I do not know how such an argument may 
 strike a popular assembly like this, but I defy anybody 
 to go before a body of men whose minds are educated 
 to estimating evidence and reasoning, and show that 
 there is an iota of difference between the constitutional 
 right to reclaim a fugitive, and the constitutional right 
 to hold a slave, in a Territory, provided this Dred Scott 
 decision is correct. I defy any man to make an argu- 
 ment that will justify unfriendly legislation to de- 
 prive a slaveholder of his right to hold his slave in a 
 Territory, that will not equally, in all its length, 
 breadth, and thickness, furnish an argument for nulli- 
 fying the Fugitive Slave law. Why, there is not such 
 an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas, after all. 
 
 MR. DOUGLAS'S REPLY 
 
 Mr. Lincoln has concluded his remarks by saying that 
 there is not such an Abolitionist as I am in all America. 
 If he could make the Abolitionists of Illinois believe 
 that, he would not have much show for the Senate. 
 Let him make the Abolitionists believe the truth of 
 that statement, and his political back is broken. 
 
 His first criticism upon me is the expression of his 
 hope that the war of the Administration will be prose- 
 cuted against me and the Democratic party of this State 
 with vigor. He wants that war prosecuted with vigor; 
 I have no doubt of it. His hopes of success and the 
 hopes of his party depend solely upon it. They have 
 no chance of destroying the Democracy of this State 
 except by the aid of Federal patronage. He has all the 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 151 
 
 Federal officeholders here as his allies, running separate 
 tickets against the Democracy to divide the party, al- 
 though the leaders all intend to vote directly the Abo- 
 lition ticket, and only leave the greenhorns to vote this 
 separate ticket who refuse to go into the Abolition 
 camp. There is something really refreshing in the 
 thought that Mr. Lincoln is in favor of prosecuting 
 one war vigorously. It is the first war I ever knew 
 him to be in favor of prosecuting. It is the first war 
 I ever knew him to believe to be just or constitutional. 
 When the Mexican War was being waged, and the 
 American army was surrounded by the enemy in Mex- 
 ico, he thought that war was unconstitutional, un- 
 necessary, and unjust. He thought it was not com- 
 menced on the right spot. 
 
 When I made an incidental allusion of that kind in 
 the joint discussion over at Charleston some weeks ago, 
 Lincoln, in replying, said that I, Douglas, had charged 
 him with voting against supplies for the Mexican War, 
 and then reared up, full length, and swore that he 
 never voted against the supplies; that it was a slander, 
 and caught hold of Ficklin,^ who sat on the stand, and 
 said, **Here, Ficklin, tell the people that it is a lie." 
 Well, Ficklin, who had served in Congress with him, 
 stood up and told them all that he recollected about it. 
 It was that, when George Ashmun,'^ of Massachusetts, 
 brought forward a resolution declaring the war un- 
 constitutional, unnecessary, and unjust, that Lincoln 
 had voted for it. ''Yes,'' said Lincoln, "I did." Thus 
 
 1. Orlando B. Ficklin, of Coles county, Illinois, served with Lincoln in the 
 state Legislature and in Congress. 
 
 2, George Ashmun, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, 
 
152 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 he confessed that he voted that the war was wrong, 
 that our country was in the wrong, and consequently 
 that the Mexicans were in the right; but charged that 
 I had slandered him by saying that he voted against 
 the supplies. I never charged him with voting against 
 the supplies in my life, because I knew that he was not 
 in Congress when they were voted. The war was com- 
 menced on the 13th day of May, 1846, and on that day 
 we appropriated in Congress ten millions of dollars and 
 fifty thousand men to prosecute it. During the same 
 session we voted more men and more money, and at 
 the next session we voted more men and more money, 
 so that by the time Mr. Lincoln entered Congress we 
 had enough men and enough money to carry on the 
 war, and had no occasion to vote for any more. When 
 he got into the House, being opposed to the war, and 
 not being able to stop the supplies, because they had 
 all gone forward, all he could do was to follow the 
 lead of Corwin,* and prove that the war was not begun 
 on the right spot, and that it was unconstitutional, 
 unnecessary, and wrong. "^ Remember, too, that this 
 he did after the war had been begun. It is one thing 
 to be opposed to the declaration of a war, another and 
 very different thing to take sides with the enemy 
 against your own country after the war has been com- 
 menced. Our army was in Mexico at the time, many 
 battles had been fought; our citizens, who were de- 
 fending the honor of their country's flag, were sur- 
 
 1. Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, a member of Congress, was a Whig leader who 
 led the opposition to the Mexican War declared by a Democratic administra- 
 tion. 
 
 2, The doubt of these Whig leaders concerning the justification of the war 
 on Mexico has been gradually growing in the opinion of the American people 
 since that day. 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 153 
 
 rounded by the daggers, the guns, and the poison of 
 the enemy. Then it was that Corwin made his speech 
 in which he declared that the American soldiers ought 
 to be welcomed by the Mexicans with bloody hands to 
 hospitable graves; then it was that Ashmun and Lin- 
 coln voted in the House of Representatives that the war 
 was unconstitutional and unjust; and Ashmun's resolu- 
 tion, Corwin's speech, and Lincoln's vote were sent to 
 Mexico and read at the head of the Mexican army, to 
 prove to them that there was a Mexican party in the 
 Congress of the United States who were doing all in 
 their power to aid them. That a man takes sides with 
 the common enemy against his own country in time of 
 war should rejoice in a war being made on me now, is 
 very natural. And, in my opinion, no other kind of a 
 man would rejoice in it. . . . 
 
 Mr. Lincoln told you that the slavery question was 
 the only thing that ever disturbed the peace and har- 
 mony of the Union. Did not Nullification^ once raise 
 its head and disturb the peace of this Union in 1832? 
 Was that the slavery question, Mr. Lincoln? Did not 
 disunion raise its monster head during the last war 
 with Great Britain? Was that the slavery question, 
 Mr. Lincoln? The peace of this country has been dis- 
 turbed three times, once during the war with Great 
 Britain, once on the tariff question, and once on the 
 
 1 The theory so strongly advocated by Calhoun that any state has the 
 right to declare null and void within its boundaries any United States law 
 which the State thinks unconstitutional. In 1832 South Carolina declared 
 that the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were null and void, and that if the bed- 
 eralGoverment tried to enforce them in that State, the State would with- 
 draw from the Union. President Jackson declared that he would use force 
 to administer the law. but before this became necessary a new tariff act more 
 favorable to the South was enacted. 
 
154 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 slavery question. His argument, therefore, that slav- 
 ery is the only question that has ever created dissen- 
 sion in the Union falls to the ground. It is true that 
 agitators are enabled now to use this slavery question 
 for the purpose of sectional strife. He admits that in 
 regard to all things else, the principle that I advocate, 
 making each State and Territory free to decide for it- 
 self, ought to prevail. He instances the cranberry laws 
 and the oyster laws, and he might have gone through 
 the whole list with the same effect. I say that all these 
 laws are local and domestic, and that local and domes- 
 tic concerns should be left to each State and each Ter- 
 ritory to manage for itself. If agitators would ac- 
 quiesce in that principle, there never would be any 
 danger to the peace and harmony of the Union. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln tries to avoid the main issue by attack- 
 ing the truth of my proposition, that our fathers made 
 this Government divided into Free and Slave States, 
 recognizing the right of each to decide all its local 
 questions for itself. Did they not thus make it? It is 
 true that they did not establish slavery in any of the 
 States, or abolish it in any of them; but finding thir- 
 teen States, twelve of which were slave and one free, 
 they agreed to form a Government uniting them to- 
 gether as they stood, divided into Free and Slave 
 States, and to guarantee forever to each State the right 
 to do as it pleased on the slavery question. Having 
 thus made the Government, and conferred this right 
 upon each State forever, I assert that this Government 
 can exist as they made it, divided into Free and Slave 
 States, if any one State chooses to retain slavery. He 
 says that he looks forward to a time when slavery shall 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 155 
 
 be abolished everywhere. I look forward to a time 
 when each State shall be allowed to do as it pleases. 
 If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my busi- 
 ness, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is 
 its own business, — not mine. I care more for the 
 great principle of self-government, the right of the 
 people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Chris- 
 tendom. I would not endanger the perpetuity of this 
 Union, I would not blot out the great inalienable rights 
 of the white men, for all the negroes that ever existed. 
 Hence, I say, let us maintain this Government on the 
 principles that our fathers made it, recognizing the 
 right of each State to keep slavery as long as its people 
 determine, or to abolish it when they please. But Mr. 
 Lincoln says that when our fathers made this Govern- 
 ment they did not look forward to the state of things 
 now existing, and therefore he thinks the doctrine was 
 wrong; and he quotes Brooks, of South Carolina, to 
 prove that our fathers then thought that probably 
 slavery would be abolished by each State acting for 
 itself before this time. Suppose they did; suppose 
 they did not foresee what has occurred, — does that 
 change the principles of our Government? They did 
 not probably foresee the telegraph that transmits intel- 
 ligence by lightning, nor did they foresee the railroads 
 that now form the bonds of union between the different 
 States, or the thousand mechanical inventions that have 
 elevated mankind. But do these things change the 
 principles of the Government? Our fathers, I say, 
 made this Government on the principle of the right of 
 each State to do as it pleases in its own domestic 
 affairs, subject to the Constitution, and allowed the 
 
156 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 people of each to apply to every new change of circum- 
 stances such remedy as they may see fit to improve 
 their condition: This right they have for all time to 
 come. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln went on to tell you that he does not at 
 all desire to interfere with slavery in the States where 
 it exists, nor does his party. I expected him to say 
 that down here. Let me ask him, then, how he ex- 
 pects to put slavery in the course of ultimate extinction 
 everywhere, if he does not intend to interfere with it 
 in the States where it exists? He says that he will 
 prohibit it in all Territories, and the inference is, then, 
 that unless they make Free States out of them he will 
 keep them out of the Union; for, mark you, he did not 
 say whether or not he would vote to admit Kansas with 
 slavery or not, as her people might apply (he forgot 
 that, as usual, etc.); he did not say whether or not he 
 was in favor of bringing the Territories now in exist- 
 ence into the Union on the principle of Clay's Compro- 
 mise measures on the slavery question. I told you that 
 he would not. His idea is that he will prohibit slavery 
 in all the Territories, and thus force them all to be- 
 come Free States, surrounding the Slave States with a 
 cordon of Free States, and hemming them in, keeping 
 the slaves confined to their present limits whilst they 
 go- on multiplying, until the soil on which they live 
 will no longer feed them, and he will thus be able to 
 put slavery in a course of ultimate extinction by star- 
 vation. He will extinguish slavery in the Southern 
 States as the French general exterminated the Alge- 
 rines when he smoked them out. He is going to ex- 
 tinguish slavery by surrounding the Slave States, hem- 
 
SEVENTH JOINT DEBATE 157 
 
 ming in the slaves, and starving them out of existence, 
 as you smoke a fox out of his hole. He intends to do 
 that in the name of humanity and Christianity, in 
 order that we may get rid of the terrible crime and sin 
 entailed upon our fathers of holding slaves. Mr. Lin- 
 coln makes out that line of policy, and appeals to the 
 moral sense of justice and to the Christian feeling of 
 the community to sustain him. He says that any man 
 who holds to the contrary doctrine is in the position of 
 the king who claimed to govern by divine right. Let 
 us examine for a moment and see what principle it was 
 that overthrew the divine right of George the Third to 
 govern us. Did not these Colonies rebel because the 
 British Parliament had no right to pass laws concern- 
 ing our property and domestic and private institutions 
 without our consent! We demanded that the British 
 Government should not pass such laws unless they gave 
 us representation in the body passing them; and this 
 the British government insisting on doing, we went to 
 war, on the principle that the Home Government should 
 not control and govern distant colonies without giving 
 them a representation. Now, Mr Lincoln proposes to 
 govern the Territories without giving them a repre- 
 sentation, and calls on Congress to pass laws controlling 
 their property and domestic concerns without their 
 consent and against their will. Thus, he asserts for 
 his party the identical principle asserted by George HI 
 and the Tories of the Revolution. . . . 
 
 My friends, if, as I have said before, we will only 
 live up to this great fundamental principle, there will 
 be peace between the North and the South. Mr. Lin- 
 coln admits that, under the Constitution, on all domes- 
 
158 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 
 
 tic questions except slavery, we ought not to interfere 
 with the people of each State. What right have we to 
 interfere with slavery any more than we have to inter- 
 fere with any other question? He says that this slav- 
 ery question is now the bone of contention. Why? 
 Simply because agitators have combined in all the Free 
 States to make war upon it. Suppose the agitators in 
 the States should combine in one-half of the Union to 
 make war upon the railroad system of the other half? 
 They would thus be driven to the same sectional strife. 
 Suppose one section makes w^r upon any other peculiar 
 institution of the opposite section, and the same strife 
 is produced. The only remedy and safety is that we 
 shall stand by the Constitution as our fathers made it, 
 obey the laws as they are passed, while they stand the 
 proper test, and sustain the decisions of the Supreme 
 Court and the constituted authorities. 
 
EXCELSIOR LITERATURE SERIES-Continued 
 
 31. Idylls of the King. Alfred Tennyson. (The Comingr of Arthur, Gareth and 
 Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, The Passing: of Arthur. ) Edited by Cyrus Lauron 
 Hooper. Thomas C. Blaisdell, Ph.D., LL.D., Supervising Editor. Biographical 
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 nouncing: vocabulary. 160 pagres ISc. 
 
 33. Silas Mamer. George Eliot. Biographical sketch, notes, and questions for 
 study on each chapter ; critical comments, and biography. The most complete 
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 the reign and character of James V from "Tales of a Grandfather," pronouncing 
 v^ocabulary, and comprehensive notes, by Barbara A. MacLeod, teacher of English. 
 HighSchool, Dansville, N. Y 15c. 
 
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 familiar, and reverential treatment of the Bible, purely from a literary view-point. 
 A.8 the author says : "Whatever one's attitude is towards the Bible, he never can 
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 tion. Instructive and interesting 15c. 
 
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 notes by Edward A. Parker, Ph.B. Selections from the famous classic, covering 
 most of the essays used in school work, and including Rip Van Winkle and The 
 Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 216 pages 1 5c. 
 
 41. Julius Caesar. Shakespeare. With introduction, notes, and questions by 
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 questions by Thomas C. Blaisdell, Ph.D., LL.D. Uniform with No. 41 15c. 
 
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 Fall of the House of Usher, Ligeia, and the Assignation. 176 pages 15c. 
 
 61. A Message to Garcia, and Other Inspirational Readings. Edited, with 
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 Grades, designed to be a molder of character. Besides the famous story named in 
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SELECTED TITLES FROM 
 
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 SIXTH YEAR 
 
 Literature 
 
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 118 A Tale of the Wkite Hills and Other 
 
 Stories 
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 Kevere'sRide, Skeleton in Armor a,nd 
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 Nature 
 
 '278 Mars and Its Mysteries 
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 126 Rime of the Ancient Mariner* 
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