Speeches of Abraham Lincoln 1854 - Reply To Senator Douglas--Peoria Speech
by Abraham Lincoln
SPEECH AT PEORIA, ILLINOIS, IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS,
OCTOBER 16, 1854.
I do not rise to speak now, if I can stipulate with the audience to meet
me here at half-past six or at seven o'clock. It is now several minutes
past five, and Judge Douglas has spoken over three hours. If you hear me
at all, I wish you to hear me through. It will take me as long as it has
taken him. That will carry us beyond eight o'clock at night. Now, every
one of you who can remain that long can just as well get his supper, meet
me at seven, and remain an hour or two later. The Judge has already
informed you that he is to have an hour to reply to me. I doubt not but
you have been a little surprised to learn that I have consented to give
one of his high reputation and known ability this advantage of me.
Indeed, my consenting to it, though reluctant, was not wholly unselfish,
for I suspected, if it were understood that the Judge was entirely done,
you Democrats would leave and not hear me; but by giving him the close, I
felt confident you would stay for the fun of hearing him skin me.
The audience signified their assent to the arrangement, and adjourned to
seven o'clock P.M., at which time they reassembled, and Mr. Lincoln spoke
substantially as follows:
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its
restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say. As I
desire to present my own connected view of this subject, my remarks will
not be specifically an answer to Judge Douglas; yet, as I proceed, the
main points he has presented will arise, and will receive such respectful
attention as I may be able to give them. I wish further to say that I do
not propose to question the patriotism or to assail the motives of any
man or class of men, but rather to confine myself strictly to the naked
merits of the question. I also wish to be no less than national in all
the positions I may take, and whenever I take ground which others have
thought, or may think, narrow, sectional, and dangerous to the Union, I
hope to give a reason which will appear sufficient, at least to some, why
I think differently.
And as this subject is no other than part and parcel of the larger
general question of domestic slavery, I wish to make and to keep the
distinction between the existing institution and the extension of it so
broad and so clear that no honest man can misunderstand me, and no
dishonest one successfully misrepresent me.
In order to a clear understanding of what the Missouri Compromise is, a
short history of the preceding kindred subjects will perhaps be proper.
When we established our independence, we did not own or claim the country
to which this compromise applies. Indeed, strictly speaking, the
Confederacy then owned no country at all; the States respectively owned
the country within their limits, and some of them owned territory beyond
their strict State limits. Virginia thus owned the Northwestern
Territory--the country out of which the principal part of Ohio, all
Indiana, all Illinois, all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been
formed. She also owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since
been formed into the State of Kentucky. North Carolina thus owned what is
now the State of Tennessee; and South Carolina and Georgia owned, in
separate parts, what are now Mississippi and Alabama. Connecticut, I
think, owned the little remaining part of Ohio, being the same where they
now send Giddings to Congress and beat all creation in making cheese.
These territories, together with the States themselves, constitute all
the country over which the Confederacy then claimed any sort of
jurisdiction. We were then living under the Articles of Confederation,
which were superseded by the Constitution several years afterward. The
question of ceding the territories to the General Government was set on
foot. Mr. Jefferson,--the author of the Declaration of Independence, and
otherwise a chief actor in the Revolution; then a delegate in Congress;
afterward, twice President; who was, is, and perhaps will continue to be,
the most distinguished politician of our history; a Virginian by birth
and continued residence, and withal a slaveholder,--conceived the idea of
taking that occasion to prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern
Territory. He prevailed on the Virginia Legislature to adopt his views,
and to cede the Territory, making the prohibition of slavery therein a
condition of the deed. (Jefferson got only an understanding, not a
condition of the deed to this wish.) Congress accepted the cession with
the condition; and the first ordinance (which the acts of Congress were
then called) for the government of the Territory provided that slavery
should never be permitted therein. This is the famed "Ordinance of '87,"
so often spoken of.
Thenceforward for sixty-one years, and until, in 1848, the last scrap of
this Territory came into the Union as the State of Wisconsin, all parties
acted in quiet obedience to this ordinance. It is now what Jefferson
foresaw and intended--the happy home of teeming millions of free, white,
prosperous people, and no slave among them.
Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the policy of
prohibiting slavery in new territory originated. Thus, away back to the
Constitution, in the pure, fresh, free breath of the Revolution, the
State of Virginia and the national Congress put that policy into
practice. Thus, through more than sixty of the best years of the
republic, did that policy steadily work to its great and beneficent end.
And thus, in those five States, and in five millions of free,
enterprising people, we have before us the rich fruits of this policy.
But now new light breaks upon us. Now Congress declares this ought never
to have been, and the like of it must never be again. The sacred right of
self-government is grossly violated by it. We even find some men who drew
their first breath--and every other breath of their lives--under this
very restriction, now live in dread of absolute suffocation if they
should be restricted in the "sacred right" of taking slaves to Nebraska.
That perfect liberty they sigh for--the liberty of making slaves of other
people, Jefferson never thought of, their own fathers never thought of,
they never thought of themselves, a year ago. How fortunate for them they
did not sooner become sensible of their great misery! Oh, how difficult
it is to treat with respect such assaults upon all we have ever really
held sacred!
But to return to history. In 1803 we purchased what was then called
Louisiana, of France. It included the present States of Louisiana,
Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa; also the Territory of Minnesota, and the
present bone of contention, Kansas and Nebraska. Slavery already existed
among the French at New Orleans, and to some extent at St. Louis. In 1812
Louisiana came into the Union as a slave State, without controversy. In
1818 or '19, Missouri showed signs of a wish to come in with slavery.
This was resisted by Northern members of Congress; and thus began the
first great slavery agitation in the nation. This controversy lasted
several months, and became very angry and exciting--the House of
Representatives voting steadily for the prohibition of slavery in
Missouri, and the Senate voting as steadily against it. Threats of the
breaking up of the Union were freely made, and the ablest public men of
the day became seriously alarmed. At length a compromise was made, in
which, as in all compromises, both sides yielded something. It was a law,
passed on the 6th of March, 1820, providing that Missouri might come into
the Union with slavery, but that in all the remaining part of the
territory purchased of France which lies north of thirty-six degrees and
thirty minutes north latitude, slavery should never be permitted. This
provision of law is the "Missouri Compromise." In excluding slavery north
of the line, the same language is employed as in the Ordinance of 1787.
It directly applied to Iowa, Minnesota, and to the present bone of
contention, Kansas and Nebraska. Whether there should or should not be
slavery south of that line, nothing was said in the law. But Arkansas
constituted the principal remaining part south of the line; and it has
since been admitted as a slave State, without serious controversy. More
recently, Iowa, north of the line, came in as a free State without
controversy. Still later, Minnesota, north of the line, had a territorial
organization without controversy. Texas, principally south of the line,
and west of Arkansas, though originally within the purchase from France,
had, in 1819, been traded off to Spain in our treaty for the acquisition
of Florida. It had thus become a part of Mexico. Mexico revolutionized
and became independent of Spain. American citizens began settling rapidly
with their slaves in the southern part of Texas. Soon they revolutionized
against Mexico, and established an independent government of their own,
adopting a constitution with slavery, strongly resembling the
constitutions of our slave States. By still another rapid move, Texas,
claiming a boundary much farther west than when we parted with her in
1819, was brought back to the United States, and admitted into the Union
as a slave State. Then there was little or no settlement in the northern
part of Texas, a considerable portion of which lay north of the Missouri
line; and in the resolutions admitting her into the Union, the Missouri
restriction was expressly extended westward across her territory. This
was in 1845, only nine years ago.
Thus originated the Missouri Compromise; and thus has it been respected
down to 1845. And even four years later, in 1849, our distinguished
Senator, in a public address, held the following language in relation to
it:
"The Missouri Compromise has been in practical operation for about a
quarter of a century, and has received the sanction and approbation of
men of all parties in every section of the Union. It has allayed all
sectional jealousies and irritations growing out of this vexed question,
and harmonized and tranquillized the whole country. It has given to Henry
Clay, as its prominent champion, the proud sobriquet of the "Great
Pacificator," and by that title, and for that service, his political
friends had repeatedly appealed to the people to rally under his standard
as a Presidential candidate, as the man who had exhibited the patriotism
and power to suppress an unholy and treasonable agitation, and preserve
the Union. He was not aware that any man or any party, from any section
of the Union, had ever urged as an objection to Mr. Clay that he was the
great champion of the Missouri Compromise. On the contrary, the effort
was made by the opponents of Mr. Clay to prove that he was not entitled
to the exclusive merit of that great patriotic measure, and that the
honor was equally due to others, as well as to him, for securing its
adoption; that it had its origin in the hearts of all patriotic men, who
desired to preserve and perpetuate the blessings of our glorious
Union--an origin akin to that of the Constitution of the United States,
conceived in the same spirit of fraternal affection, and calculated to
remove forever the only danger which seemed to threaten, at some distant
day, to sever the social bond of union. All the evidences of public
opinion at that day seemed to indicate that this compromise had been
canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred thing which
no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb."
I do not read this extract to involve Judge Douglas in an inconsistency.
If he afterward thought he had been wrong, it was right for him to
change. I bring this forward merely to show the high estimate placed on
the Missouri Compromise by all parties up to so late as the year 1849.
But going back a little in point of time. Our war with Mexico broke out
in 1846. When Congress was about adjourning that session, President Polk
asked them to place two millions of dollars under his control, to be used
by him in the recess, if found practicable and expedient, in negotiating
a treaty of peace with Mexico, and acquiring some part of her territory.
A bill was duly gotten up for the purpose, and was progressing swimmingly
in the House of Representatives, when a member by the name of David
Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, moved as an amendment, "Provided,
that in any territory thus acquired there never shall be slavery."
This is the origin of the far-famed Wilmot Proviso. It created a great
flutter; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bill, and the bill
passed with it through the House. The Senate, however, adjourned without
final action on it, and so both appropriation and proviso were lost for
the time. The war continued, and at the next session the President
renewed his request for the appropriation, enlarging the amount, I think,
to three millions. Again came the proviso, and defeated the measure.
Congress adjourned again, and the war went on. In December, 1847, the new
Congress assembled. I was in the lower House that term. The Wilmot
Proviso, or the principle of it, was constantly coming up in some shape
or other, and I think I may venture to say I voted for it at least forty
times during the short time I was there. The Senate, however, held it in
check, and it never became a law. In the spring of 1848 a treaty of peace
was made with Mexico, by which we obtained that portion of her country
which now constitutes the Territories of New Mexico and Utah and the
present State of California. By this treaty the Wilmot Proviso was
defeated, in so far as it was intended to be a condition of the
acquisition of territory. Its friends, however, were still determined to
find some way to restrain slavery from getting into the new country. This
new acquisition lay directly west of our old purchase from France, and
extended west to the Pacific Ocean, and was so situated that if the
Missouri line should be extended straight west, the new country would be
divided by such extended line, leaving some north and some south of it.
On Judge Douglas's motion, a bill, or provision of a bill, passed the
Senate to so extend the Missouri line. The proviso men in the House,
including myself, voted it down, because, by implication, it gave up the
southern part to slavery, while we were bent on having it all free.
In the fall of 1848 the gold-mines were discovered in California. This
attracted people to it with unprecedented rapidity, so that on, or soon
after, the meeting of the new Congress in December, 1849, she already had
a population of nearly a hundred thousand, had called a convention,
formed a State constitution excluding slavery, and was knocking for
admission into the Union. The proviso men, of course, were for letting
her in, but the Senate, always true to the other side, would not consent
to her admission, and there California stood, kept out of the Union
because she would not let slavery into her borders. Under all the
circumstances, perhaps, this was not wrong. There were other points of
dispute connected with the general question of Slavery, which equally
needed adjustment. The South clamored for a more efficient fugitive slave
law. The North clamored for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave
trade in the District of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from
the windows of the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves
of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to
Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been openly
maintained for fifty years. Utah and New Mexico needed territorial
governments; and whether slavery should or should not be prohibited
within them was another question. The indefinite western boundary of
Texas was to be settled. She was a slave State, and consequently the
farther west the slavery men could push her boundary, the more slave
country they secured; and the farther east the slavery opponents could
thrust the boundary back, the less slave ground was secured. Thus this
was just as clearly a slavery question as any of the others.
These points all needed adjustment, and they were held up, perhaps
wisely, to make them help adjust one another. The Union now, as in 1820,
was thought to be in danger, and devotion to the Union rightfully
inclined men to yield somewhat in points where nothing else could have so
inclined them. A compromise was finally effected. The South got their new
fugitive slave law, and the North got California, (by far the best part
of our acquisition from Mexico) as a free State. The South got a
provision that New Mexico and Utah, when admitted as States, may come in
with or without slavery as they may then choose; and the North got the
slave trade abolished in the District of Columbia.. The North got the
western boundary of Texas thrown farther back eastward than the South
desired; but, in turn, they gave Texas ten millions of dollars with which
to pay her old debts. This is the Compromise of 1850.
Preceding the Presidential election of 1852, each of the great political
parties, Democrats and Whigs, met in convention and adopted resolutions
indorsing the Compromise of '50, as a "finality," a final settlement, so
far as these parties could make it so, of all slavery agitation. Previous
to this, in 1851, the Illinois Legislature had indorsed it.
During this long period of time, Nebraska (the Nebraska Territory, not
the State of as we know it now) had remained substantially an uninhabited
country, but now emigration to and settlement within it began to take
place. It is about one third as large as the present United States, and
its importance, so long overlooked, begins to come into view. The
restriction of slavery by the Missouri Compromise directly applies to
it--in fact was first made, and has since been maintained expressly for
it. In 1853, a bill to give it a territorial government passed the House
of Representatives, and, in the hands of Judge Douglas, failed of passing
only for want of time. This bill contained no repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. Indeed, when it was assailed because it did not contain such
repeal, Judge Douglas defended it in its existing form. On January 4,
1854, Judge Douglas introduces a new bill to give Nebraska territorial
government. He accompanies this bill with a report, in which last he
expressly recommends that the Missouri Compromise shall neither be
affirmed nor repealed. Before long the bill is so modified as to make two
territories instead of one, calling the southern one Kansas.
Also, about a month after the introduction of the bill, on the Judge's
own motion it is so amended as to declare the Missouri Compromise
inoperative and void; and, substantially, that the people who go and
settle there may establish slavery, or exclude it, as they may see fit.
In this shape the bill passed both branches of Congress and became a law.
This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history may
not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I am sure it is
sufficiently so for all the use I shall attempt to make of it, and in it
we have before us the chief material enabling us to judge correctly
whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong. I think,
and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its direct effect,
letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective
principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world
where men can be found inclined to take it.
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal, for
the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our
republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the
enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites;
causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially
because it forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with
the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the
Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right
principle of action but self-interest.
Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudice against the
Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If
slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it
did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I
believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on
both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances, and others
who would gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of existence. We
know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North and become
tip-top abolitionists, while some Northern ones go South and become most
cruel slave masters.
When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the
origin of slavery than we are, 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 reflection 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 to carry them there in many times ten days. What
then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite
certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one
in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to
denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and
socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine
would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not.
Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the
sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. A universal feeling,
whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then
make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation
might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to
judge our brethren of the South.
When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge
them--not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any
legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives which should not in its
stringency be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than our
ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.
But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting
slavery to go into our own free territory than it would for reviving the
African slave trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves
from Africa, and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them into
Nebraska, can hardy be distinguished on any moral principle, and the
repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
latter.
The arguments by which the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is sought to
be justified are these:
First. That the Nebraska country needed a territorial government.
Second. That in various ways the public had repudiated that
compromise and demanded the repeal, and therefore should not now
complain of it.
And, lastly, That the repeal establishes a principle which is
intrinsically right.
I will attempt an answer to each of them in its turn.
First, then: If that country was in need of a territorial organization,
could it not have had it as well without as with a repeal? Iowa and
Minnesota, to both of which the Missouri restriction applied, had,
without its repeal, each in succession, territorial organizations. And
even the year before, a bill for Nebraska itself was within an ace of
passing without the repealing clause, and this in the hands of the same
men who are now the champions of repeal. Why no necessity then for
repeal? But still later, when this very bill was first brought in, it
contained no repeal. But, say they, because the people had demanded, or
rather commanded, the repeal, the repeal was to accompany the
organization whenever that should occur.
Now, I deny that the public ever demanded any such thing--ever repudiated
the Missouri Compromise, ever commanded its repeal. I deny it, and call
for the proof. It is not contended, I believe, that any such command has
ever been given in express terms. It is only said that it was done in
principle. The support of the Wilmot Proviso is the first fact mentioned
to prove that the Missouri restriction was repudiated in principle, and
the second is the refusal to extend the Missouri line over the country
acquired from Mexico. These are near enough alike to be treated together.
The one was to exclude the chances of slavery from the whole new
acquisition by the lump, and the other was to reject a division of it, by
which one half was to be given up to those chances. Now, whether this was
a repudiation of the Missouri line in principle depends upon whether the
Missouri law contained any principle requiring the line to be extended
over the country acquired from Mexico. I contend it did not. I insist
that it contained no general principle, but that it was, in every sense,
specific. That its terms limit it to the country purchased from France is
undenied and undeniable. It could have no principle beyond the intention
of those who made it. They did not intend to extend the line to country
which they did not own. If they intended to extend it in the event of
acquiring additional territory, why did they not say so? It was just as
easy to say that "in all the country west of the Mississippi which we now
own, or may hereafter acquire, there shall never be slavery," as to say
what they did say; and they would have said it if they had meant it. An
intention to extend the law is not only not mentioned in the law, but is
not mentioned in any contemporaneous history. Both the law itself, and
the history of the times, are a blank as to any principle of extension;
and by neither the known rules of construing statutes and contracts, nor
by common sense, can any such principle be inferred.
Another fact showing the specific character of the Missouri law--showing
that it intended no more than it expressed, showing that the line was not
intended as a universal dividing line between Free and Slave territory,
present and prospective, north of which slavery could never go--is the
fact that by that very law Missouri came in as a slave State, north of
the line. If that law contained any prospective principle, the whole law
must be looked to in order to ascertain what the principle was. And by
this rule the South could fairly contend that, inasmuch as they got one
slave State north of the line at the inception of the law, they have the
right to have another given them north of it occasionally, now and then,
in the indefinite westward extension of the line. This demonstrates the
absurdity of attempting to deduce a prospective principle from the
Missouri Compromise line.
When we voted for the Wilmot Proviso we were voting to keep slavery out
of the whole Mexican acquisition, and little did we think we were thereby
voting to let it into Nebraska lying several hundred miles distant. When
we voted against extending the Missouri line, little did we think we were
voting to destroy the old line, then of near thirty years' standing.
To argue that we thus repudiated the Missouri Compromise is no less
absurd than it would be to argue that because we have so far forborne to
acquire Cuba, we have thereby, in principle, repudiated our former
acquisitions and determined to throw them out of the Union. No less
absurd than it would be to say that because I may have refused to build
an addition to my house, I thereby have decided to destroy the existing
house! And if I catch you setting fire to my house, you will turn upon me
and say I instructed you to do it!
The most conclusive argument, however, that while for the Wilmot Proviso,
and while voting against the extension of the Missouri line, we never
thought of disturbing the original Missouri Compromise, is found in the
fact that there was then, and still is, an unorganized tract of fine
country, nearly as large as the State of Missouri, lying immediately west
of Arkansas and south of the Missouri Compromise line, and that we never
attempted to prohibit slavery as to it. I wish particular attention to
this. It adjoins the original Missouri Compromise line by its northern
boundary, and consequently is part of the country into which by
implication slavery was permitted to go by that compromise. There it has
lain open ever s, and there it still lies, and yet no effort has been
made at any time to wrest it from the South. In all our struggles to
prohibit slavery within our Mexican acquisitions, we never so much as
lifted a finger to prohibit it as to this tract. Is not this entirely
conclusive that at all times we have held the Missouri Compromise as a
sacred thing, even when against ourselves as well as when for us?
Senator Douglas sometimes says the Missouri line itself was in principle
only an extension of the line of the Ordinance of '87--that is to say, an
extension of the Ohio River. I think this is weak enough on its face. I
will remark, however, that, as a glance at the map will show, the
Missouri line is a long way farther south than the Ohio, and that if our
Senator in proposing his extension had stuck to the principle of jogging
southward, perhaps it might not have been voted down so readily.
But next it is said that the compromises of '50, and the ratification of
them by both political parties in '52, established a new principle which
required the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. This again I deny. I deny
it, and demand the proof. I have already stated fully what the
compromises of '50 are. That particular part of those measures from which
the virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise is sought to be inferred
(for it is admitted they contain nothing about it in express terms) is
the provision in the Utah and New Mexico laws which permits them when
they seek admission into the Union as States to come in with or without
slavery, as they shall then see fit. Now I insist this provision was made
for Utah and New Mexico, and for no other place whatever. It had no more
direct reference to Nebraska than it had to the territories of the moon.
But, say they, it had reference to Nebraska in principle. Let us see. The
North consented to this provision, not because they considered it right
in itself, but because they were compensated--paid for it.
They at the same time got California into the Union as a free State. This
was far the best part of all they had struggled for by the Wilmot
Proviso. They also got the area of slavery somewhat narrowed in the
settlement of the boundary of Texas. Also they got the slave trade
abolished in the District of Columbia.
For all these desirable objects the North could afford to yield
something; and they did yield to the South the Utah and New Mexico
provision. I do not mean that the whole North, or even a majority,
yielded, when the law passed; but enough yielded--when added to the vote
of the South, to carry the measure. Nor can it be pretended that the
principle of this arrangement requires us to permit the same provision to
be applied to Nebraska, without any equivalent at all. Give us another
free State; press the boundary of Texas still farther back; give us
another step toward the destruction of slavery in the District, and you
present us a similar case. But ask us not to repeat, for nothing, what
you paid for in the first instance. If you wish the thing again, pay
again. That is the principle of the compromises of '50, if, indeed, they
had any principles beyond their specific terms--it was the system of
equivalents.
Again, if Congress, at that time, intended that all future Territories
should, when admitted as States, come in with or without slavery at their
own option, why did it not say so? With such a universal provision, all
know the bills could not have passed. Did they, then--could
they-establish a principle contrary to their own intention? Still
further, if they intended to establish the principle that, whenever
Congress had control, it should be left to the people to do as they
thought fit with slavery, why did they not authorize the people of the
District of Columbia, at their option, to abolish slavery within their
limits?
I personally know that this has not been left undone because it was
unthought of. It was frequently spoken of by members of Congress, and by
citizens of Washington, six years ago; and I heard no one express a doubt
that a system of gradual emancipation, with compensation to owners, would
meet the approbation of a large majority of the white people of the
District. But without the action of Congress they could say nothing; and
Congress said "No." In the measures of 1850, Congress had the subject of
slavery in the District expressly on hand. If they were then establishing
the principle of allowing the people to do as they please with slavery,
why did they not apply the principle to that people?
Again it is claimed that by the resolutions of the Illinois Legislature,
passed in 1851, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was demanded. This
I deny also. Whatever may be worked out by a criticism of the language of
those resolutions, the people have never understood them as being any
more than an indorsement of the compromises of 1850, and a release of our
senators from voting for the Wilmot Proviso. The whole people are living
witnesses that this only was their view. Finally, it is asked, "If we did
not mean to apply the Utah and New Mexico provision to all future
territories, what did we mean when we, in 1852, indorsed the compromises
of 1850?"
For myself I can answer this question most easily. I meant not to ask a
repeal or modification of the Fugitive Slave law. I meant not to ask for
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. I meant not to
resist the admission of Utah and New Mexico, even should they ask to come
in as slave States. I meant nothing about additional Territories,
because, as I understood, we then had no Territory whose character as to
slavery was not already settled. As to Nebraska, I regarded its character
as being fixed by the Missouri Compromise for thirty years--as
unalterably fixed as that of my own home in Illinois. As to new
acquisitions, I said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." When
we make new acquisitions, we will, as heretofore, try to manage them
somehow. That is my answer; that is what I meant and said; and I appeal
to the people to say each for himself whether that is not also the
universal meaning of the free States.
And now, in turn, let me ask a few questions. If, by any or all these
matters, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was commanded, why was not
the command sooner obeyed? Why was the repeal omitted in the Nebraska
Bill of 1853? Why was it omitted in the original bill of 1854? Why in the
accompanying report was such a repeal characterized as a departure from
the course pursued in 1850 and its continued omission recommended?
I am aware Judge Douglas now argues that the subsequent express repeal is
no substantial alteration of the bill. This argument seems wonderful to
me. It is as if one should argue that white and black are not different.
He admits, however, that there is a literal change in the bill, and that
he made the change in deference to other senators who would not support
the bill without. This proves that those other senators thought the
change a substantial one, and that the Judge thought their opinions worth
deferring to. His own opinions, therefore, seem not to rest on a very
firm basis, even in his own mind; and I suppose the world believes, and
will continue to believe, that precisely on the substance of that change
this whole agitation has arisen.
I conclude, then, that the public never demanded the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.
I now come to consider whether the appeal with its avowed principles, is
intrinsically right. I insist that it is not. Take the particular case. A
controversy had arisen between the advocates and opponents of slavery, in
relation to its establishment within the country we had purchased of
France. The southern, and then best, part of the purchase was already in
as a slave State. The controversy was settled by also letting Missouri in
as a slave State; but with the agreement that within all the remaining
part of the purchase, north of a certain line, there should never be
slavery. As to what was to be done with the remaining part, south of the
line, nothing was said; but perhaps the fair implication was, it should
come in with slavery if it should so choose. The southern part, except a
portion heretofore mentioned, afterward did come in with slavery, as the
State of Arkansas. All these many years, since 1820, the northern part
had remained a wilderness. At length settlements began in it also. In due
course Iowa came in as a free State, and Minnesota was given a
territorial government, without removing the slavery restriction.
Finally, the sole remaining part north of the line--Kansas and
Nebraska--was to be organized; and it is proposed, and carried, to blot
out the old dividing line of thirty-four years' standing, and to open the
whole of that country to the introduction of slavery. Now this, to my
mind, is manifestly unjust. After an angry and dangerous controversy, the
parties made friends by dividing the bone of contention. The one party
first appropriates her own share, beyond all power to be disturbed in the
possession of it, and then seizes the share of the other party. It is as
if two starving men had divided their only loaf, the one had hastily
swallowed his half, and then grabbed the other's half just as he was
putting it to his mouth.
Let me here drop the main argument, to notice what I consider rather an
inferior matter. It is argued that slavery will not go to Kansas and
Nebraska, in any event. This is a palliation, a lullaby. I have some hope
that it will not; but let us not be too confident. As to climate, a
glance at the map shows that there are five slave States--Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and also the District of
Columbia, all north of the Missouri Compromise line. The census returns
of 1850 show that within these there are eight hundred and sixty-seven
thousand two hundred and seventy-six slaves, being more than one fourth
of all the slaves in the nation.
It is not climate, then, that will keep slavery out of these Territories.
Is there anything in the peculiar nature of the country? Missouri adjoins
these Territories by her entire western boundary, and slavery is already
within every one of her western counties. I have even heard it said that
there are more slaves in proportion to whites in the northwestern county
of Missouri than within any other county in the State. Slavery pressed
entirely up to the old western boundary of the State, and when rather
recently a part of that boundary at the northwest was moved out a little
farther west, slavery followed on quite up to the new line. Now, when the
restriction is removed, what is to prevent it from going still farther?
Climate will not, no peculiarity of the country will, nothing in nature
will. Will the disposition of the people prevent it? Those nearest the
scene are all in favor of the extension. The Yankees who are opposed to
it may be most flumerous; but, in military phrase, the battlefield is too
far from their base of operations.
But it is said there now is no law in Nebraska on the subject of slavery,
and that, in such case, taking a slave there operates his freedom. That
is good book-law, but it is not the rule of actual practice. Wherever
slavery is it has been first introduced without law. The oldest laws we
find concerning it are not laws introducing it, but regulating it as an
already existing thing. A white man takes his slave to Nebraska now. Who
will inform the negro that he is free? Who will take him before court to
test the question of his freedom? In ignorance of his legal emancipation
he is kept chopping, splitting, and plowing. Others are brought, and move
on in the same track. At last, if ever the time for voting comes on the
question of slavery the institution already, in fact, exists in the
country, and cannot well be removed. The fact of its presence, and the
difficulty of its removal, will carry the vote in its favor. Keep it out
until a vote is taken, and a vote in favor of it cannot be got in any
population of forty thousand on earth, who have been drawn together by
the ordinary motives of emigration and settlement. To get slaves into the
Territory simultaneously with the whites in the incipient stages of
settlement is the precise stake played for and won in this Nebraska
measure.
The question is asked us: "If slaves will go in notwithstanding the
general principle of law liberates them, why would they not equally go in
against positive statute law--go in, even if the Missouri restriction
were maintained!" I answer, because it takes a much bolder man to venture
in with his property in the latter case than in the former; because the
positive Congressional enactment is known to and respected by all, or
nearly all, whereas the negative principle that no law is free law is not
much known except among lawyers. We have some experience of this
practical difference. In spite of the Ordinance of '87, a few negroes
were brought into Illinois, and held in a state of quasi-slavery, not
enough, however, to carry a vote of the people in favor of the
institution when they came to form a constitution. But into the adjoining
Missouri country, where there was no Ordinance of '87,--was no
restriction,--they were carried ten times, nay, a hundred times, as fast,
and actually made a slave State. This is fact-naked fact.
Another lullaby argument is that taking slaves to new countries does not
increase their number, does not make any one slave who would otherwise be
free. There is some truth in this, and I am glad of it; but it is not
wholly true. The African slave trade is not yet effectually suppressed;
and, if we make a reasonable deduction for the white people among us who
are foreigners and the descendants of foreigners arriving here since
1808, we shall find the increase of the black population outrunning that
of the white to an extent unaccountable, except by supposing that some of
them, too, have been coming from Africa. If this be so, the opening of
new countries to the institution increases the demand for and augments
the price of slaves, and so does, in fact, make slaves of freemen, by
causing them to be brought from Africa and sold into bondage.
But however this may be, we know the opening of new countries to slavery
tends to the perpetuation of the institution, and so does keep men in
slavery who would otherwise be free. This result we do not feel like
favoring, and we are under no legal obligation to suppress our feelings
in this respect.
Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to the
extension of slavery to new countries. That is to say, inasmuch as you do
not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not object
to your taking your slave. Now, I admit that this is perfectly logical if
there is no difference between hogs and negroes. But while you thus
require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you
of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? It is
kindly provided that of all those who come into the world only a small
percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no larger in the slave
States than in the free. The great majority South, as well as North, have
human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they
can of their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies in the bosoms
of the Southern people manifest, in many ways, their sense of the wrong
of slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in
the negro. If they deny this, let me address them a few plain questions.
In 1820 you (the South) joined the North, almost unanimously, in
declaring the African slave trade piracy, and in annexing to it the
punishment of death. Why did you do this? If you did not feel that it was
wrong, why did you join in providing that men should be hung for it? The
practice was no more than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as
would buy them. But you never thought of hanging men for catching and
selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or wild bears.
Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native
tyrants known as the "slavedealer." He watches your necessities, and
crawls up to buy your slave, at a speculating price. If you cannot help
it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your
door. You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or
even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may
rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's
children. If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through the
job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands
with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the
ceremony--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows
rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up
the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now, why is this? You
do not so treat the man who deals in corn, cotton, or tobacco.
And yet again: There are in the United States and Territories, including
the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks. At five hundred dollars
per head they are worth over two hundred millions of dollars. How comes
this vast amount of property to be running about without owners? We do
not see free horses or free cattle running at large. How is this? All
these free blacks are the descendants of slaves, or have been slaves
themselves; and they would be slaves now but for something which has
operated on their white owners, inducing them at vast pecuniary sacrifice
to liberate them. What is that something? Is there any mistaking it? In
all these cases it is your sense of justice and human sympathy
continually telling you that the poor negro has some natural right to
himself--that those who deny it and make mere merchandise of him deserve
kickings, contempt, and death.
And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave, and
estimate him as only the equal of the hog? Why ask us to do what you will
not do yourselves? Why ask us to do for nothing what two hundred millions
of dollars could not induce you to do?
But one great argument in support of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is still to come. That argument is "the sacred right of
self-government." It seems our distinguished Senator has found great
difficulty in getting his antagonists, even in the Senate, to meet him
fairly on this argument. Some poet has said:
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I meet
that argument--I rush in--I take that bull by the horns. I trust I
understand and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in
the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all
which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of
justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men as
well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is politically wise, as
well as naturally just; politically wise in saving us from broils about
matters which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I would not
trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of
Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is right,--absolutely and
eternally right,--but it has no just application as here attempted. Or
perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends
upon whether a negro is or is not a man. If he is not a man, in that case
he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do just what he
pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a
total destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern
himself? When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but
when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than
self-government--that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why, then, my
ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there
can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of
another.
Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases our
argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska are good enough to
govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable
negroes!"
Well, I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to be
as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary.
What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without
that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle, the
sheet-anchor of American republicanism. Our Declaration of Independence
says:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR
JUST POWERS PROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."
I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, according to our
ancient faith, the just powers of government are derived from the consent
of the governed. Now the relation of master and slave is pro tanto a
total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave
without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether
different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow all the
governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is
self-government.
Let it not be said that I am contending for the establishment of
political and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have
already said the contrary. I am not combating the argument of necessity,
arising from the fact that the blacks are already among us; but I am
combating what is set up as moral argument for allowing them to be taken
where they have never yet been--arguing against the extension of a bad
thing, which, where it already exists, we must of necessity manage as we
best can.
In support of his application of the doctrine of self-government, Senator
Douglas has sought to bring to his aid the opinions and examples of our
Revolutionary fathers. I am glad he has done this. I love the sentiments
of those old-time men, and shall be most happy to abide by their
opinions. He shows us that when it was in contemplation for the colonies
to break off from Great Britain, and set up a new government for
themselves, several of the States instructed their delegates to go for
the measure, provided each State should be allowed to regulate its
domestic concerns in its own way. I do not quote; but this in substance.
This was right; I see nothing objectionable in it. I also think it
probable that it had some reference to the existence of slavery among
them. I will not deny that it had. But had it any reference to the
carrying of slavery into new countries? That is the question, and we will
let the fathers themselves answer it.
This same generation of men, and mostly the same individuals of the
generation who declared this principle, who declared independence, who
fought the war of the Revolution through, who afterward made the
Constitution under which we still live--these same men passed the
Ordinance of '87, declaring that slavery should never go to the Northwest
Territory.
I have no doubt Judge Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent in this.
It is a question of discrimination between them and him. But there is not
an inch of ground left for his claiming that their opinions, their
example, their authority, are on his side in the controversy.
Again, is not Nebraska, while a Territory, a part of us? Do we not own
the country? And if we surrender the control of it, do we not surrender
the right of self-government? It is part of ourselves. If you say we
shall not control it, because it is only part, the same is true of every
other part; and when all the parts are gone, what has become of the
whole? What is then left of us? What use for the General Government, when
there is nothing left for it to govern?
But you say this question should be left to the people of Nebraska,
because they are more particularly interested. If this be the rule, you
must leave it to each individual to say for himself whether he will have
slaves. What better moral right have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to
say that the thirty-second shall not hold slaves than the people of the
thirty-one States have to say that slavery shall not go into the
thirty-second State at all?
But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take and hold
slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy them where they can
buy them cheapest; and that, undoubtedly, will be on the coast of Africa,
provided you will consent not to hang them for going there to buy them.
You must remove this restriction, too, from the sacred right of
self-government. I am aware you say that taking slaves from the States to
Nebraska does not make slaves of freemen; but the African slave-trader
can say just as much. He does not catch free negroes and bring them here.
He finds them already slaves in the hands of their black captors, and he
honestly buys them at the rate of a red cotton handkerchief a head. This
is very cheap, and it is a great abridgment of the sacred right of
self-government to hang men for engaging in this profitable trade.
Another important objection to this application of the right of
self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the
succeeding many of a free exercise of the right of self-government. The
first few may get slavery in, and the subsequent many cannot easily get
it out. How common is the remark now in the slave States, "If we were
only clear of our slaves, how much better it would be for us." They are
actually deprived of the privilege of governing themselves as they would,
by the action of a very few in the beginning. The same thing was true of
the whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed.
Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories, is not
a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole
nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these
Territories. We want them for homes of free white people. This they
cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within
them. Slave States are places for poor white people to remove from, not
to remove to. New free States are the places for poor people to go to,
and better their condition. For this use the nation needs these
Territories.
Still further: there are constitutional relations between the slave and
free States which are degrading to the latter. We are under legal
obligations to catch and return their runaway slaves to them: a sort of
dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, as a general rule, the
slaveholders will not perform for one another. Then again, in the control
of the government--the management of the partnership affairs--they have
greatly the advantage of us. By the Constitution each State has two
senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to the
number of its people, and each has a number of Presidential electors
equal to the whole number of its senators and representatives together.
But in ascertaining the number of the people for this purpose, five
slaves are counted as being equal to three whites. The slaves do not
vote; they are only counted and so used as to swell the influence of the
white people's votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by
a comparison of the States of South Carolina and Maine. South Carolina
has six representatives, and so has Maine; South Carolina has eight
Presidential electors, and so has Maine. This is precise equality so far;
and of course they are equal in senators, each having two. Thus in the
control of the government the two States are equals precisely. But how
are they in the number of their white people? Maine has 581,813, while
South Carolina has 274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina,
and 32,679 over. Thus, each white man in South Carolina is more than the
double of any man in Maine. This is all because South Carolina, besides
her free people, has 384,984 slaves. The South Carolinian has precisely
the same advantage over the white man in every other free State as well
as in Maine. He is more than the double of any one of us in this crowd.
The same advantage, but not to the same extent, is held by all the
citizens of the slave States over those of the free; and it is an
absolute truth, without an exception, that there is no voter in any slave
State but who has more legal power in the government than any voter in
any free State. There is no instance of exact equality; and the
disadvantage is against us the whole chapter through. This principle, in
the aggregate, gives the slave States in the present Congress twenty
additional representatives, being seven more than the whole majority by
which they passed the Nebraska Bill.
Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention it to complain of
it, in so far as it is already settled. It is in the Constitution, and I
do not for that cause, or any other cause, propose to destroy, or alter,
or disregard the Constitution. I stand to it, fairly, fully, and firmly.
But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other people to say
whether new partners are to be bred up and brought into the firm, on the
same degrading terms against me, I respectfully demur. I insist that
whether I shall be a whole man or only the half of one, in comparison
with others is a question in which I am somewhat concerned, and one which
no other man can have a sacred right of deciding for me. If I am wrong in
this, if it really be a sacred right of self-government in the man who
shall go to Nebraska to decide whether he will be the equal of me or the
double of me, then, after he shall have exercised that right, and thereby
shall have reduced me to a still smaller fraction of a man than I already
am, I should like for some gentleman, deeply skilled in the mysteries of
sacred rights, to provide himself with a microscope, and peep about, and
find out, if he can, what has become of my sacred rights. They will
surely be too small for detection with the naked eye.
Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the
whole people to never intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is
the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.
And if they shall think as I do, that the extension of slavery endangers
them more than any or all other causes, how recreant to themselves if
they submit The question, and with it the fate of their country, to a
mere handful of men bent only on seif-interest. If this question of
slavery extension were an insignificant one, one having no power to do
harm--it might be shuffled aside in this way; and being, as it is, the
great Behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the nation be loosened
upon him, to intrust him to the hands of such feeble keepers?
I have done with this mighty argument of self-government. Go, sacred
thing! Go in peace.
But Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure. Well, I too go for
saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the
extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would
consent to any great evil to avoid a greater one. But when I go to
Union-saving, I must believe, at least, that the means I employ have some
adaptation to the end. To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation.
"It hath no relish of salvation in it."
It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one thing which ever endangers
the Union. When it came upon us, all was peace and quiet. The nation was
looking to the forming of new bends of union, and a long course of peace
and prosperity seemed to lie before us. In the whole range of
possibility, there scarcely appears to me to have been anything out of
which the slavery agitation could have been revived, except the very
project of repealing the Missouri Compromise. Every inch of territory we
owned already had a definite settlement of the slavery question, by which
all parties were pledged to abide. Indeed, there was no uninhabited
country on the continent which we could acquire, if we except some
extreme northern regions which are wholly out of the question.
In this state of affairs the Genius of Discord himself could scarcely
have invented a way of again setting us by the ears but by turning back
and destroying the peace measures of the past. The counsels of that
Genius seem to have prevailed. The Missouri Compromise was repealed; and
here we are in the midst of a new slavery agitation, such, I think, as we
have never seen before. Who is responsible for this? Is it those who
resist the measure, or those who causelessly brought it forward, and
pressed it through, having reason to know, and in fact knowing, it must
and would be so resisted? It could not but be expected by its author that
it would be looked upon as a measure for the extension of slavery,
aggravated by a gross breach of faith.
Argue as you will and long as you will, this is the naked front and
aspect of the measure. And in this aspect it could not but produce
agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's
nature--opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are at
eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as
slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must
ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all
compromises, repeal the Declaration of Independence, repeal all past
history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the
abundance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the
abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak.
The structure, too, of the Nebraska Bill is very peculiar. The people are
to decide the question of slavery for themselves; but when they are to
decide, or how they are to decide, or whether, when the question is once
decided, it is to remain so or is to be subject to an indefinite
succession of new trials, the law does not say. Is it to be decided by
the first dozen settlers who arrive there, or is it to await the arrival
of a hundred? Is it to be decided by a vote of the people or a vote of
the Legislature, or, indeed, by a vote of any sort? To these questions
the law gives no answer. There is a mystery about this; for when a member
proposed to give the Legislature express authority to exclude slavery, it
was hooted down by the friends of the bill. This fact is worth
remembering. Some Yankees in the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska
to exclude slavery from it; and, so far as I can judge, they expect the
question to be decided by voting in some way or other. But the
Missourians are awake, too. They are within a stone's-throw of the
contested ground. They hold meetings and pass resolutions, in which not
the slightest allusion to voting is made. They resolve that slavery
already exists in the Territory; that more shall go there; that they,
remaining in Missouri, will protect it, and that abolitionists shall be
hung or driven away. Through all this bowie knives and six-shooters are
seen plainly enough, but never a glimpse of the ballot-box.
And, really, what is the result of all this? Each party within having
numerous and determined backers without, is it not probable that the
contest will come to blows and bloodshed? Could there be a more apt
invention to bring about collision and violence on the slavery question
than this Nebraska project is? I do not charge or believe that such was
intended by Congress; but if they had literally formed a ring and placed
champions within it to fight out the controversy, the fight could be no
more likely to come off than it is. And if this fight should begin, is it
likely to take a very peaceful, Union-saving turn? Will not the first
drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the Union?
The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored. For the sake of the Union,
it ought to be restored. We ought to elect a House of Representatives
which will vote its restoration. If by any means we omit to do this, what
follows? Slavery may or may not be established in Nebraska. But whether
it be or not, we shall have repudiated--discarded from the councils of
the nation--the spirit of compromise; for who, after this, will ever
trust in a national compromise? The spirit of mutual concession--that
spirit which first gave us the Constitution, and which has thrice saved
the Union--we shall have strangled and cast from us forever. And what
shall we have in lieu of it? The South flushed with triumph and tempted
to excess; the North, betrayed as they believe, brooding on wrong and
burning for revenge. One side will provoke, the other resent. The one
will taunt, the other defy; one aggresses, the other retaliates. Already
a few in the North defy all constitutional restraints, resist the
execution of the Fugitive Slave law, and even menace the institution of
slavery in the States where it exists. Already a few in the South claim
the constitutional right to take and to hold slaves in the free States,
demand the revival of the slave trade, and demand a treaty with Great
Britain by which fugitive slaves may be reclaimed from Canada. As yet
they are but few on either side. It is a grave question for lovers of the
union whether the final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with
it the spirit of all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter
each of these, and fatally increase the number of both.
But restore the compromise, and what then? We thereby restore the
national faith, the national confidence, the national feeling of
brotherhood. We thereby reinstate the spirit of concession and
compromise, that spirit which has never failed us in past perils, and
which may be safely trusted for all the future. The South ought to join
in doing this. The peace of the nation is as dear to them as to us. In
memories of the past and hopes of the future, they share as largely as
we. It would be on their part a great act--great in its spirit, and great
in its effect. It would be worth to the nation a hundred years purchase
of peace and prosperity. And what of sacrifice would they make? They only
surrender to us what they gave us for a consideration long, long ago;
what they have not now asked for, struggled or cared for; what has been
thrust upon them, not less to their astonishment than to ours.
But it is said we cannot restore it; that though we elect every member of
the lower House, the Senate is still against us. It is quite true that of
the senators who passed the Nebraska Bill a majority of the whole Senate
will retain their seats in spite of the elections of this and the next
year. But if at these elections their several constituencies shall
clearly express their will against Nebraska, will these senators
disregard their will? Will they neither obey nor make room for those who
will?
But even if we fail to technically restore the compromise, it is still a
great point to carry a popular vote in favor of the restoration. The
moral weight of such a vote cannot be estimated too highly. The authors
of Nebraska are not at all satisfied with the destruction of the
compromise--an indorsement of this principle they proclaim to be the
great object. With them, Nebraska alone is a small matter--to establish a
principle for future use is what they particularly desire.
The future use is to be the planting of slavery wherever in the wide
world local and unorganized opposition cannot prevent it. Now, if you
wish to give them this indorsement, if you wish to establish this
principle, do so. I shall regret it, but it is your right. On the
contrary, if you are opposed to the principle,--intend to give it no such
indorsement, let no wheedling, no sophistry, divert you from throwing a
direct vote against it.
Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they be
thrown in company with the abolitionists. Will they allow me, as an old
Whig, to tell them, good-humoredly, that I think this is very silly?
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right,
and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the abolitionist in
restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts
to repeal the Fugitive Slave law. In the latter case you stand with the
Southern disunionist. What of that? You are still right. In both cases
you are right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes. In both
you stand on middle ground, and hold the ship level and steady. In both
you are national, and nothing less than national. This is the good old
Whig ground. To desert such ground because of any company is to be less
than a Whig--less than a man--less than an American.
I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of
this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it
because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one
man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free
people--a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that
liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere. I object to it because
the fathers of the republic eschewed and rejected it. The argument of
"necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favor of slavery;
and so far, and so far only, as it carried them did they ever go. They
found the institution existing among us, which they could not help, and
they cast blame upon the British king for having permitted its
introduction.
The royally appointed Governor of Georgia in the early 1700's was
threatened by the King with removal if he continued to oppose slavery in
his colony--at that time the King of England made a small profit on every
slave imported to the colonies. The later British criticism of the United
States for not eradicating slavery in the early 1800's, combined with
their tacit support of the 'Confederacy' during the Civil War is a prime
example of the irony and hypocrisy of politics: that self-interest will
ever overpower right.
Before the Constitution they prohibited its introduction into the
Northwestern Territory, the only country we owned then free from it. At
the framing and adoption of the Constitution, they forbore to so much as
mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in the whole instrument. In the
provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a
"person held to service or labor." In that prohibiting the abolition of
the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "the
migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now
existing shall think proper to admit," etc. These are the only provisions
alluding to slavery. Thus the thing is hid away in the Constitution, just
as an afflicted man hides away a wen or cancer which he dares not cut out
at once, lest he bleed to death,--with the promise, nevertheless, that
the cutting may begin at a certain time. Less than this our fathers could
not do, and more they would not do. Necessity drove them so far, and
farther they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress
under the Constitution took the same view of slavery. They hedged and
hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.
In 1794 they prohibited an outgoing slave trade--that is, the taking of
slaves from the United States to sell. In 1798 they prohibited the
bringing of slaves from Africa into the Mississippi Territory, this
Territory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and
Alabama. This was ten years before they had the authority to do the same
thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the Constitution. In
1800 they prohibited American citizens from trading in slaves between
foreign countries, as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil. In 1803 they
passed a law in aid of one or two slave-State laws in restraint of the
internal slave trade. In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the
law, nearly a year in advance,--to take effect the first day of 1808, the
very first day the Constitution would permit, prohibiting the African
slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties. In 1820, finding
these provisions ineffectual, they declared the slave trade piracy, and
annexed to it the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in
the General Government, five or six of the original slave States had
adopted systems of gradual emancipation, by which the institution was
rapidly becoming extinct within their limits. Thus we see that the plain,
unmistakable spirit of that age toward slavery was hostility to the
principle and toleration only by necessity.
But now it is to be transformed into a "sacred right." Nebraska brings it
forth, places it on the highroad to extension and perpetuity, and with a
pat on its back says to it, "Go, and God speed you." Henceforth it is to
be the chief jewel of the nation the very figure-head of the ship of
state. Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we
have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we
began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that
beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to
enslave others is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles
cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and who
ever holds to the one must despise the other. When Pettit, in connection
with his support of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declaration of
Independence "a self-evident lie," he only did what consistency and
candor require all other Nebraska men to do. Of the forty-odd Nebraska
senators who sat present and heard him, no one rebuked him. Nor am I
apprised that any Nebraska newspaper, or any Nebraska orator, in the
whole nation has ever yet rebuked him. If this had been said among
Marion's men, Southerners though they were, what would have become of the
man who said it? If this had been said to the men who captured Andre, the
man who said it would probably have been hung sooner than Andre was. If
it had been said in old Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the
very doorkeeper would have throttled the man and thrust him into the
street. Let no one be deceived. The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit
of Nebraska are utter antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly
displaced by the latter.
Fellow-countrymen, Americans, South as well as North, shall we make no
effort to arrest this? Already the liberal party throughout the world
express the apprehension that "the one retrograde institution in America
is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the
noblest political system the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of
enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it--to
despise it? Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding the
earliest practice and first precept of our ancient faith? In our greedy
chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we "cancel and tear
in pieces" even the white man's charter of freedom.
Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify
it. Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not the blood, of the
Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of "moral right," back
upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of "necessity." Let us
return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in
peace. Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the
practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South, let
all Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great and
good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we
shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the
saving. We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free
happy people the world over shall rise up and call us blessed to the
latest generations.
At Springfield, twelve days ago, where I had spoken substantially as I
have here, Judge Douglas replied to me; and as he is to reply to me here,
I shall attempt to anticipate him by noticing some of the points he made
there. He commenced by stating I had assumed all the way through that the
principle of the Nebraska Bill would have the effect of extending
slavery. He denied that this was intended or that this effect would
follow.
I will not reopen the argument upon this point. That such was the
intention the world believed at the start, and will continue to believe.
This was the countenance of the thing, and both friends and enemies
instantly recognized it as such. That countenance cannot now be changed
by argument. You can as easily argue the color out of the negro's skin.
Like the "bloody hand," you may wash it and wash it, the red witness of
guilt still sticks and stares horribly at you.
Next he says that Congressional intervention never prevented slavery
anywhere; that it did not prevent it in the Northwestern Territory, nor
in Illinois; that, in fact, Illinois came into the Union as a slave
State; that the principle of the Nebraska Bill expelled it from Illinois,
from several old States, from everywhere.
Now this is mere quibbling all the way through. If the Ordinance of '87
did not keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory, how happens it that
the northwest shore of the Ohio River is entirely free from it, while the
southeast shore, less than a mile distant, along nearly the whole length
of the river, is entirely covered with it?
If that ordinance did not keep it out of Illinois, what was it that made
the difference between Illinois and Missouri? They lie side by side, the
Mississippi River only dividing them, while their early settlements were
within the same latitude. Between 1810 and 1820 the number of slaves in
Missouri increased 7211, while in Illinois in the same ten years they
decreased 51. This appears by the census returns. During nearly all of
that ten years both were Territories, not States. During this time the
ordinance forbade slavery to go into Illinois, and nothing forbade it to
go into Missouri. It did go into Missouri, and did not go into Illinois.
That is the fact. Can any one doubt as to the reason of it? But he says
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. Silence, perhaps, would be
the best answer to this flat contradiction of the known history of the
country. What are the facts upon which this bold assertion is based? When
we first acquired the country, as far back as 1787, there were some
slaves within it held by the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia. The
territorial legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave States as
indentured servants. One year after the adoption of the first State
constitution, the whole number of them was--what do you think? Just one
hundred and seventeen, while the aggregate free population was
55,094,--about four hundred and seventy to one. Upon this state of facts
the people framed their constitution prohibiting the further introduction
of slavery, with a sort of guaranty to the owners of the few indentured
servants, giving freedom to their children to be born thereafter, and
making no mention whatever of any supposed slave for life. Out of this
small matter the Judge manufactures his argument that Illinois came into
the Union as a slave State. Let the facts be the answer to the argument.
The principles of the Nebraska Bill, he says, expelled slavery from
Illinois. The principle of that bill first planted it here--that is, it
first came because there was no law to prevent it, first came before we
owned the country; and finding it here, and having the Ordinance of '87
to prevent its increasing, our people struggled along, and finally got
rid of it as best they could.
But the principle of the Nebraska Bill abolished slavery in several of
the old States. Well, it is true that several of the old States, in the
last quarter of the last century, did adopt systems of gradual
emancipation by which the institution has finally become extinct within
their limits; but it may or may not be true that the principle of the
Nebraska Bill was the cause that led to the adoption of these measures.
It is now more than fifty years since the last of these States adopted
its system of emancipation.
If the Nebraska Bill is the real author of the benevolent works, it is
rather deplorable that it has for so long a time ceased working
altogether. Is there not some reason to suspect that it was the principle
of the Revolution, and not the principle of the Nebraska Bill, that led
to emancipation in these old States? Leave it to the people of these old
emancipating States, and I am quite certain they will decide that neither
that nor any other good thing ever did or ever will come of the Nebraska
Bill.
In the course of my main argument, Judge Douglas interrupted me to say
that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was very old; that it originated
when God made man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to
choose for himself, being responsible for the choice he should make. At
the time I thought this was merely playful, and I answered it
accordingly. But in his reply to me he renewed it as a serious argument.
In seriousness, then, the facts of this proposition are not true as
stated. God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make
his choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree of the
fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death. I should
scarcely wish so strong a prohibition against slavery in Nebraska.
But this argument strikes me as not a little remarkable in another
particular--in its strong resemblance to the old argument for the "divine
right of kings." By the latter, the king is to do just as he pleases with
his white subjects, being responsible to God alone. By the former, the
white man is to do just as he pleases with his black slaves, being
responsible to God alone. The two things are precisely alike, and it is
but natural that they should find similar arguments to sustain them.
I had argued that the application of the principle of self-government, as
contended for, would require the revival of the African slave trade; that
no argument could be made in favor of a man's right to take slaves to
Nebraska which could not be equally well made in favor of his right to
bring them from the coast of Africa. The Judge replied that the
Constitution requires the suppression of the foreign slave trade, but
does not require the prohibition of slavery in the Territories. That is a
mistake in point of fact. The Constitution does not require the action of
Congress in either case, and it does authorize it in both. And so there
is still no difference between the cases.
In regard to what I have said of the advantage the slave States have over
the free in the matter of representation, the Judge replied that we in
the free States count five free negroes as five white people, while in
the slave States they count five slaves as three whites only; and that
the advantage, at last, was on the side of the free States.
Now, in the slave States they count free negroes just as we do; and it so
happens that, besides their slaves, they have as many free negroes as we
have, and thirty thousand over. Thus, their free negroes more than
balance ours; and their advantage over us, in consequence of their
slaves, still remains as I stated it.
In reply to my argument that the compromise measures of 1850 were a
system of equivalents, and that the provisions of no one of them could
fairly be carried to other subjects without its corresponding equivalent
being carried with it, the Judge denied outright that these measures had
any connection with or dependence upon each other. This is mere
desperation. If they had no connection, why are they always spoken of in
connection? Why has he so spoken of them a thousand times? Why has he
constantly called them a series of measures? Why does everybody call them
a compromise? Why was California kept out of the Union six or seven
months, if it was not because of its connection with the other measures?
Webster's leading definition of the verb "to compromise" is "to adjust
and settle a difference, by mutual agreement, with concessions of claims
by the parties." This conveys precisely the popular understanding of the
word "compromise."
We knew, before the Judge told us, that these measures passed separately,
and in distinct bills, and that no two of them were passed by the votes
of precisely the same members. But we also know, and so does he know,
that no one of them could have passed both branches of Congress but for
the understanding that the others were to pass also. Upon this
understanding, each got votes which it could have got in no other way. It
is this fact which gives to the measures their true character; and it is
the universal knowledge of this fact that has given them the name of
"compromises," so expressive of that true character.
I had asked: "If, in carrying the Utah and New Mexico laws to Nebraska,
you could clear away other objection, how could you leave Nebraska
'perfectly free' to introduce slavery before she forms a constitution,
during her territorial government, while the Utah and New Mexico laws
only authorize it when they form constitutions and are admitted into the
Union?" To this Judge Douglas answered that the Utah and New Mexico laws
also authorized it before; and to prove this he read from one of their
laws, as follows: "That the legislative power of said Territory shall
extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the
Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act."
Now it is perceived from the reading of this that there is nothing
express upon the subject, but that the authority is sought to be implied
merely for the general provision of "all rightful subjects of
legislation." In reply to this I insist, as a legal rule of construction,
as well as the plain, popular view of the matter, that the express
provision for Utah and New Mexico coming in with slavery, if they choose,
when they shall form constitutions, is an exclusion of all implied
authority on the same subject; that Congress having the subject
distinctly in their minds when they made the express provision, they
therein expressed their whole meaning on that subject.
The Judge rather insinuated that I had found it convenient to forget the
Washington territorial law passed in 1853. This was a division of Oregon,
organizing the northern part as the Territory of Washington. He asserted
that by this act the Ordinance of '87, theretofore existing in Oregon,
was repealed; that nearly all the members of Congress voted for it,
beginning in the House of Representatives with Charles Allen of
Massachusetts, and ending with Richard Yates of Illinois; and that he
could not understand how those who now opposed the Nebraska Bill so voted
there, unless it was because it was then too soon after both the great
political parties had ratified the compromises of 1850, and the
ratification therefore was too fresh to be then repudiated.
Now I had seen the Washington act before, and I have carefully examined
it since; and I aver that there is no repeal of the Ordinance of '87, or
of any prohibition of slavery, in it. In express terms, there is
absolutely nothing in the whole law upon the subject--in fact, nothing to
lead a reader to think of the subject. To my judgment it is equally free
from everything from which repeal can be legally implied; but, however
this may be, are men now to be entrapped by a legal implication,
extracted from covert language, introduced perhaps for the very purpose
of entrapping them? I sincerely wish every man could read this law quite
through, carefully watching every sentence and every line for a repeal of
the Ordinance of '87, or anything equivalent to it.
Another point on the Washington act: If it was intended to be modeled
after the Utah and New Mexico acts, as Judge Douglas insists, why was it
not inserted in it, as in them, that Washington was to come in with or
without slavery as she may choose at the adoption of her constitution? It
has no such provision in it; and I defy the ingenuity of man to give a
reason for the omission, other than that it was not intended to follow
the Utah and New Mexico laws in regard to the question of slavery.
The Washington act not only differs vitally from the Utah and New Mexico
acts, but the Nebraska act differs vitally from both. By the latter act
the people are left "perfectly free" to regulate their own domestic
concerns, etc.; but in all the former, all their laws are to be submitted
to Congress, and if disapproved are to be null. The Washington act goes
even further; it absolutely prohibits the territorial Legislature, by
very strong and guarded language, from establishing banks or borrowing
money on the faith of the Territory. Is this the sacred right of
self-government we hear vaunted so much? No, sir; the Nebraska Bill finds
no model in the acts of '50 or the Washington act. It finds no model in
any law from Adam till to-day. As Phillips says of Napoleon, the Nebraska
act is grand, gloomy and peculiar, wrapped in the solitude of its own
originality, without a model and without a shadow upon the earth.
In the course of his reply Senator Douglas remarked in substance that he
had always considered this government was made for the white people and
not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too. But in
this remark of the Judge there is a significance which I think is the key
to the great mistake (if there is any such mistake) which he has made in
this Nebraska measure. It shows that the Judge has no very vivid
impression that the negro is human, and consequently has no idea that
there can be any moral question in legislating about him. In his view the
question of whether a new country shall be slave or free is a matter of
as utter indifference as it is whether his neighbor shall plant his farm
with tobacco or stock it with horned cattle. Now, whether this view is
right or wrong, it is very certain that the great mass of mankind take a
totally different view. They consider slavery a great moral wrong, and
their feeling against it is not evanescent, but eternal. It lies at the
very foundation of their sense of justice, and it cannot be trifled with.
It is a great and durable element of popular action, and I think no
statesman can safely disregard it.
Our Senator also objects that those who oppose him in this matter do not
entirely agree with one another. He reminds me that in my firm adherence
to the constitutional rights of the slave States I differ widely from
others who are cooperating with me in opposing the Nebraska Bill, and he
says it is not quite fair to oppose him in this variety of ways. He
should remember that he took us by surprise--astounded us by this
measure. We were thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell in
utter confusion. But we rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he could
first reach--a scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping-ax, or a butcher's
cleaver. We struck in the direction of the sound, and we were rapidly
closing in upon him. He must not think to divert us from our purpose by
showing us that our drill, our dress, and our weapons are not entirely
perfect and uniform. When the storm shall be past he shall find us still
Americans, no less devoted to the continued union and prosperity of the
country than heretofore.
Finally, the Judge invokes against me the memory of Clay and Webster,
They were great men, and men of great deeds. But where have I assailed
them? For what is it that their lifelong enemy shall now make profit by
assuming to defend them against me, their lifelong friend? I go against
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; did they ever go for it? They went
for the Compromise of 1850; did I ever go against them? They were greatly
devoted to the Union; to the small measure of my ability was I ever less
so? Clay and Webster were dead before this question arose; by what
authority shall our Senator say they would espouse his side of it if
alive? Mr. Clay was the leading spirit in making the Missouri Compromise;
is it very credible that if now alive he would take the lead in the
breaking of it? The truth is that some support from Whigs is now a
necessity with the Judge, and for this it is that the names of Clay and
Webster are invoked. His old friends have deserted him in such numbers as
to leave too few to live by. He came to his own, and his own received him
not; and lo! he turns unto the Gentiles.
A word now as to the Judge's desperate assumption that the compromises of
1850 had no connection with one another; that Illinois came into the
Union as a slave State, and some other similar ones. This is no other
than a bold denial of the history of the country. If we do not know that
the compromises of 1850 were dependent on each other; if we do not know
that Illinois came into the Union as a free State,--we do not know
anything. If we do not know these things, we do not know that we ever had
a Revolutionary War or such a chief as Washington. To deny these things
is to deny our national axioms,--or dogmas, at least,--and it puts an end
to all argument. If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and
reassert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power
of argument that can stop him. I think I can answer the Judge so long as
he sticks to the premises; but when he flies from them, I cannot work any
argument into the consistency of a mental gag and actually close his
mouth with it. In such a case I can only commend him to the seventy
thousand answers just in from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.