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one or the other end of our ticket.

It would

do my soul good to do that thing. It would enable us to teach them that inasmuch as we select one of their own number to carry out our principles, we are free from the charge that we mean more than we say."

FROM HIS SPEECH OF FEBRUARY 27, 1860, AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK.

[NOTE. In this speech Mr. Lincoln maintained the negative of a question upon which the Douglas Democrats held the affirmative, viz., Whether there was anything in the Constitution which forbade the Federal government to control slavery in the Territories of the United States? After clearly showing that the thirty-nine members of the convention who signed the Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments to it, also held the negative of this question, he dealt with the threats of the South to disrupt the Union if a Republican President was elected, and the duty of loyal citizens to defend and maintain it. He said]:

"It is surely safe to assume that the thirtynine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together,

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do certainly include those who may be fairly called our fathers who framed the government under which we live.' And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost say, prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. To those who now so declare, I give not only our fathers who framed the government under which we live,' but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

"But enough! Let all who believe that 'our fathers who framed the government under which we live understood this question just as well, and

even better than we do now,' speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask, all Republicans desire, in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it again be marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.

"And now, if they would listen, as I suppose they will not, I would address a few words to the Southern people.

"I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to Black Republicans.' In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of 'Black Republicanism as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed,

such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite, licence, so to speak, among you, to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you or not be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

"You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof, and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. . . . The fact that we get no votes in your section, is a fact of your making and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any

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wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started, - to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle and we with it are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section, and so meet us as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which our fathers who framed the government under which we live' thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again upon their official oaths, is, in fact, so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration.

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"Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory; and about one year after he penned it [that

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