Lincoln Douglas

The most famous political campaign in American history, the 1858 race for the U.S. Senate between Senator Stephen A. Douglas (a former Illinois judge) and Abraham Lincoln was highlighted by seven debates in which they discussed the pol- itics of slavery and contrasting understandings of freedom.

ooucras: Mr. Lincoln says that this government cannot endure permanently in the same condition in which it was made by its framers-divided into free and slave states. He says that it has existed for about seventy years thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot endure permanently on the same principles and in the same relative conditions in which our fathers made it. . . . One of the reserved rights of the states, was the right to regulate the relations between master and servant, on the slavery question.

Now, my friends, if we will only act conscientiously upon this great principle of popular sovereignty which guarantees to each state and territory the right to do as it pleases on all things local and domestic instead of Congress interfering, we will con- tinue to be at peace one with another.

LTNCoLN: )udge Douglas says, "Why can t this Union endure permanently, half slave and half free?' 1Why cant we let it stand as our fathers placed it?" That is the exact diffi- culty between us. . . . I say when this government was first established it was the policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy and placed it upon a new basis by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have asked or desired anlwhere is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the founders of our government originally placed it-restricting it from the new teffitories....

|udge Douglas assumes that we have no interest in them-that we have no right to interfere. . . . Do we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express myself? Do we not feel an interest in getting to that outlet with such institutions as we would like to have prevail there? Now irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there is a right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I am still in favor of our new territodes being in such a condition that white men may find a home. I am in favor of this not merely for our own people, but as an outletfor free white people everywhere,the world over-in which Hans and Baptiste and Patrick, and all other men from all the world, may find new homes and better their conditions in life.

DoucLAs: For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this government was -aae on the whiie basis. I believe it was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever. . . . I do not believe that the Almighty made the negro capable of self-government. I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion the signers of the Declaration of Independence had no reference to the negro whatever when they declared all men to be created equal. They desired to

510 r,+; CHAPTER 13 A House Divided

express by that phrase, white men, men of European birth and European descent . . . when they spoke of the equality of men.

LrNcoLN: I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perlect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difierence, I, as well as |udge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. . . . But I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the worid why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Inde- pendence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with |udge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of ludge Douglas, and the equal of every liuing man.

DoucLAs: He tells you that I will not argue the question whether slavery is right or wrong. I tell you why I will not do it. . . . I hold that the people of the slaveholding states are civilized men as well as ourselves, that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God and their posterity and not to us. It is for them to decide therefore the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits. . . . He says that he looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abol- ished everywhere. I look forward to a time when each state shall be ailowed to do as it pleases.

LTNCoLN: I suppose that the reai dif- ference between |udge Douglas and his friends, and the Republicans, is that the

|udge is not in favor of making any dif- ference between slavery and liberty . . . and consequently every sentiment he utters discards the idea that there is any wrong in slavery. . . . That is the real issue. That is the issue that will con- tinue in this country when these poor tongues of |udge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles-right and wrong-throughout the world.

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*i. How do Lincoln and Douglas dffir on what rights black Americans a.re entitled

to enjoy?

tr. Why does Lincoln belieue the nation can- not exist forever half slaue and half free, whereas Douglas belieues it can?

3" How does each of the speakers balance

the right of each state to manage its lwn affairs against the right of euery person to be free?

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