LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: You are, as yet, the people of a Territory; but you probably soon will be the people of a State of the Union. Then you will be in possession of new privileges, and new duties will be upon you. You will have to bear a part in all that pertains to the administration of the National Government. That government, from the beginning, has had, has now, and must continue to have a policy in relation to domestic slavery. It cannot, if it would, be without a policy upon that subject. And that policy must, of necessity, take one of two directions. It must deal with the institution as being wrong or as not being wrong.
Mr. Lincoln then stated, somewhat in detail, the early
action of the General Government upon the question—in relation to the foreign
slave trade, the basis of Federal representation, and the prohibition of
slavery in the Federal territories; the Fugitive Slave clause in the
Constitution, and insisted that, plainly that early policy, was based on the
idea of slavery being wrong; and tolerating it so far, and only so far, as the
necessity of its actual presence required.
He then took up the policy of the Kansas-Nebraska act, which
he argued was based on opposite ideas—that is, the idea that slavery is not
wrong. He said: “You, the people of Kansas, furnish the example of the first
application of this new policy. At the end of about five years, after having
almost continual struggles, fire and bloodshed, over this very question, and
after having framed several State Constitutions, you have, at last, secured a
Free State Constitution, under which you will probably be admitted into the
Union. You have, at last, at the end of all this difficulty, attained what we,
in the old North-western Territory, attained without any difficulty at all.
Compare, or rather contrast, the actual working of this new policy with that of
the old, and say whether, after all, the old way—the way adopted by Washington
and his compeers—was not the better way.”
Mr. Lincoln argued that the new policy had proven false to
all its promises—that its promise to the Nation was to speedily end the slavery
agitation, which it had not done, but directly the contrary—that its promises
to the people of the Territories was to give them greater control of their own
affairs than the people of former Territories had had; while, by the actual
experiment, they had had less control of their own affairs, and had been more
bedeviled by outside interference than the people of any other Territory ever
had.
He insisted that it was deceitful in its expressed wish to
confer additional privileges upon the people; else it would have conferred upon
them the privilege of choosing their own officers. That if there be any just
reason why all the privileges of a State should not be conferred on the people
of a Territory at once, it only could be the smallness of numbers; and that if
while their number was small, they were fit to do some things, and unfit to do
others, it could only be because those they were unfit to do, were the larger
and more important things—that, in this case, the allowing the people of Kansas
to plant their soil with slavery, and not allowing them to choose their own
Governor, could only be justified on the idea that the planting a new State
with slavery was a very small matter, and the election of Governor a very much
greater matter. “Now,” said he, “compare these two matters and decide which is
really the greater. You have already had, I think, five Governors, and yet,
although their doings, in their respective days, were of some little interest
to you, it is doubtful whether you now, even remember the names of half of
them. They are gone (all but the last) without leaving a trace upon your soil,
or having done a single act which can, in the least degree, help or hurt you,
in all the indefinite future before you. This is the size of the Governor
question. Now, how is it with the slavery question? If your first settlers had
so far decided in favor of slavery, as to have got five thousand slaves planted
on your soil, you could, by no moral possibility, have adopted a Free State
Constitution. Their owners would be influential voters among you as good men as
the rest of you, and, by their greater wealth, and consequent, greater
capacity, to assist the more needy, perhaps the most influential among you. You
could not wish to destroy, or injuriously interfere with their property. You
would not know what to do with the slaves after you had made them free. You
would not wish to keep them as underlings; nor yet to elevate them to social
and political equality. You could not send them away. The slave States would
not let you send them there; and the free States would not let you send
them there. All the rest of your property would not pay for sending them to
Liberia. In one word, you could not have made a free State, if the first half
of your own numbers had got five thousand slaves fixed upon the soil. You could
have disposed of, not merely five, but five hundred Governors easier. There
they would have stuck, in spite of you, to plague you and your children, and
your children's children, indefinitely. Which is the greater, this, or the
Governor question? Which could the more safely be intrusted to the first few
people who settle a Territory? Is it that which, at most, can be but temporary
and brief in its effects? or that which being done by the first few, can
scarcely ever be undone by the succeeding many?
He insisted that, little as was Popular Sovereignty at
first, the Dred Scott decision, which is indorsed by the author of Popular
Sovereignty, has reduced it to still smaller proportions, if it has not
entirely crushed it out. That, in fact, all it lacks of being crushed out
entirely by that decision, is the lawyer's technical distinction between decision
and dictum. That the Court has already said a Territorial
government cannot exclude slavery; but because they did not say it in a case
where a Territorial government had tried to exclude slavery, the lawyers hold
that saying of the Court to be dictum and not decision. “But,”
said Mr. Lincoln, “is it not certain that the Court will make a decision
of it, the first time a Territorial government tries to exclude slavery?”
Mr. Lincoln argued that the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty,
carried out, renews the African Slave Trade. Said he: “Who can show that one
people have a better right to carry slaves to where they have never been, than
another people have to buy slaves wherever they please, even in Africa?”
He also argued that the advocates of Popular Sovereignty, by
their efforts to brutalize the negro in the public mind—denying him any share
in the Declaration of Independence, and comparing him to the crocodile—were
beyond what avowed pro-slavery men ever do, and really did as much, or more
than they, toward making the institution national and perpetual.
He said many of the Popular Sovereignty advocates were “as
much opposed to slavery as any one;” but that they could never find any proper
time or place to oppose it. In their view, it must not be opposed in politics,
because that is agitation; nor in the pulpit, because it is not religion; nor
in the Free States, because it is not there; nor in the Slave States, because
it is there. These gentlemen, however, are never offended by hearing Slavery
supported in any of these places. Still, they are “as much opposed to Slavery
as anybody.” One would suppose that it would exactly suit them if the people of
the Slave States would themselves adopt emancipation; but when Frank Blair
tried this last year, in Missouri, and was beaten, every one of them threw up
his hat and shouted “Hurrah for the Democracy!”
Mr. Lincoln argued that those who thought Slavery right
ought to unite on a policy which should deal with it as being right; that they
should go for a revival of the Slave Trade; for carrying the institution
everywhere, into Free States as well as Territories; and for a surrender of
fugitive slaves in Canada, or war with Great Britain. Said he, “all shades of
Democracy, popular sovereign as well as the rest, are fully agreed that slaves
are property, and only property. If Canada now had as many horses as she has
slaves belonging to Americans, I should think it just cause of war if she did
not surrender them on demand.[”]
“On the other hand, all those who believe slavery is wrong
should unite on a policy, dealing with it as a wrong. They should be deluded
into no deceitful contrivances, pretending indifference, but really working for
that to which they are opposed.” He urged this at considerable length.
He then took up some of the objections to Republicans. They
were accused of being sectional. He denied it. What was the proof? “Why, that
they have no existence, get no votes in the South. But that depends on the
South, and not on us. It is their volition, not ours; and if there be fault in
it, it is primarily theirs, and remains so, unless they show that we repeal
them by some wrong principle. If they attempt this, they will find us holding
no principle, other than those held and acted upon by the men who gave us the
government under which we live. They will find that the charge of sectionalism
will not stop at us, but will extend to the very men who gave us the liberty we
enjoy. But if the mere fact that we get no votes in the slave states makes us
sectional, whenever we shall get votes in those states, we shall cease to be
sectional; and we are sure to get votes, and a good many of them too, in these
states next year.
“You claim that you are conservative; and we are not. We
deny it. What is conservatism? Preserving the old against the new. And yet you
are conservative in struggling for the new, and we are destructive in trying to
maintain the old. Possibly you mean you are conservative in trying to maintain
the existing institution of slavery. Very well; we are not trying to destroy
it. The peace of society, and the structure of our government both require that
we should let it alone, and we insist on letting it alone. If I might advise my
Republican friends here, I would say to them, leave your Missouri neighbors
alone. Have nothing whatever to do with their slaves. Have nothing whatever to
do with the white people, save in a friendly way. Drop past differences, and so
conduct yourselves that if you cannot be at peace with them, the fault shall be
wholly theirs.
“You say we have made the question more prominent than
heretofore. We deny it. It is more prominent; but we did not make it so.
Despite of us, you would have a change of policy; we resist the change, and in
the struggle, the greater prominence is given to the question. Who is
responsible for that, you or we? If you would have the question reduced to its
old proportions go back to the old policy. That will effect it.
“But you are for the Union; and you greatly fear the success
of the Republicans would destroy the Union. Why? Do the Republicans declare
against the Union? Nothing like it. Your own statement of it is, that if the
Black Republicans elect a President, you won't stand it. You will break up the
Union. That will be your act, not ours. To justify it, you must show that our
policy gives you just cause for such desperate action. Can you do that? When
you attempt it, you will find that our policy is exactly the policy of the men
who made the Union. Nothing more and nothing less. Do you really think you are
justified to break up the government rather than have it administered by
Washington, and other good and great men who made it, and first administered
it? If you do you are very unreasonable; and more reasonable men cannot and
will not submit to you. While you elect [the] President, we submit, neither
breaking nor attempting to break up the Union. If we shall constitutionally
elect a President, it will be our duty to see that you submit. Old John Brown
has just been executed for treason against a state. We cannot object, even
though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse
violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might
think himself right. So, if constitutionally we elect a President, and
therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with
you as old John Brown has been dealt with. We shall try to do our duty. We hope
and believe that in no section will a majority so act as to render such extreme
measures necessary.”
Mr. Lincoln closed by an appeal to all—opponents as well as
friends—to think soberly and maturely, and never fail to cast their vote,
insisting that it was not a privilege only, but a duty to do so.
SOURCE: Roy P. Bassler, Editor, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 3, p. 497-502 which
cites Illinois State Journal, December 12, 1859 as its source.
