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    The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
    The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
    The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
    Ebook470 pages11 hours

    The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

    By Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas

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    About this ebook

    Complete texts for all 7 debates between the incumbent Democratic senator from Illinois and the 1858 nominee of the infant Republican party. Paving the way for modern debates between political candidates, the events brought Lincoln (who lost the election) to national prominence and helped propel him to the presidency in 1860.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateAug 13, 2012
    ISBN9780486145617
    The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
    Author

    Abraham Lincoln

    Abraham Lincoln was a store owner, postmaster, county surveyor, and lawyer, before sitting in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He was our 16th President, being elected twice, and serving until his assassination in 1865. He is best known for leading the United States through the Civil War, and his anti-slavery stance.

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    • 4/5
      This is an audio book. It is very well read by the narrators, one of whom is Richard Dreyfus.

      This rendition is quite revealing historically. I believe Lincoln came out not quite the hero we thought, and that Stephen Douglas not quite the bad guy as our teachers portrayed him.

      The difficulty truly is that each man was playing to the audience, and a modern listener is not going to get the nuance of these debates such that we would understand how each man truly felt.

      But the narration is so good and communicates character so well, that it merits an effort to either borrow or buy it (like on Audible.com).

      Having said all that, the Quality of the debate between Lincoln and Douglas is one for the ages!
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to enjoy this book. This version is the complete unedited (or at least as close as possible) version of what both Lincoln and Douglas said. I expected the Gettysburg Address, instead, most of time was taken up attacking the opponent in a manner that modern-day politicians are all-too familiar with.
    • 3/5
      The Lincoln-Douglas debates are classic and important American history, and guess what -- our society is STILL debaing many of these issues today.
    • 4/5
      A lot of time is spent hashing and re-hashing the issues of the day, and bickering over things that seem down-right trivial today. But the core of the debate is well worth the lulls. Both men make strong arguments. The logic of Douglas’s arguments would find a lot of support today (and do in both the abortion and gay marriage debates). Because of that, Lincoln’s rejoinders are as important now as they were when he fought for abolitionism.

    Book preview

    The Lincoln-Douglas Debates - Abraham Lincoln

    1858

    Introduction

    One of the most significant and far-reaching political events in United States history, the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 sharpened and brought to a head a number of crucial questions concerning slavery, states’ rights, the legal status of blacks, the effects of the Dred Scott decision, and other issues. Although it is difficult today to believe that less than a century and a half ago, men of goodwill on both sides were debating the legality and desirability of enslaving other human beings, such was indeed the case.

    The debates were held as part of the campaign for the Illinois senatorial seat in 1858, pitting the two-term incumbent, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, against the lesser-known Abraham Lincoln, a successful lawyer and state politician, and the Republican candidate. Held in seven congressional districts around the state, the debates (somewhat reluctantly agreed to by Douglas) focused on issues of critical importance to the country, resulting in close attention by the public and the media. Indeed, some thought the future of the nation rested on the outcome. The battle of the Union is to be fought in Illinois, declared one Washington newspaper.

    In a sense Lincoln helped lay the groundwork for debate of the slavery question with his famous House Divided speech (p. 1), given in Springfield on June 17, 1858. In that address, he warned that the nation could not survive as half-free and half-slave (A house divided against itself cannot stand.). Moreover, he charged that Douglas’s popular sovereignty position—allowing the states to decide the slavery issue for themselves—fostered the spread of slavery both in the states and in the western territories the United States had acquired from Mexico. Although Douglas did not like slavery, he liked even less the idea of the federal government telling states what they could or could not do. As an early advocate of states’ rights, he felt deeply that the people of each state or territory should have the right to decide whether or not slavery was right for them.

    Lincoln opposed slavery both on moral grounds (If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.), and political grounds, pointing out that the Declaration of Independence declared that all men are created equal. Surprisingly enough, Lincoln did not consider the black man his social or intellectual equal, but thought he was entitled to equal protection under the law. He saw it as a basic issue of good versus evil, right versus wrong, and he accused his opponent of upholding a wrong.

    In his speech in Chicago on July 9, 1858 (p. 10), Douglas accused Lincoln of fomenting civil war by insisting that the states must be either all free or all slave. He was disturbed by Lincoln’s attempt to settle a controversial moral issue by political means, warning that it could lead to a conflict between the states. He also defended the principle of self-government for states and territories, declaring that uniformity in local and domestic affairs would be destructive of State rights, of State sovereignty, of personal liberty and personal freedom. He further took Lincoln to task for the latter’s criticism of the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court decided that all people of African ancestry—slaves as well as those who were free—could never become citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal court. As part of the decision, the court also ruled that the federal government did not have the power to prohibit slavery in its territories.

    For his part, Douglas maintained that a slave (or an Indian) was not the equal of a white man. I am opposed to giving him a voice in the adminstration of the government. I would extend to the negro, and the Indian, and to all dependent races every right, every privilege, and every immunity consistent with the safety and welfare of the white races; but equality they never should have, either political or social, or in any other respect whatever.

    The debates began in earnest on August 21, 1858, in Ottawa, Illinois (p. 26). The question of the extension of slavery into the territories dominated the seven debates. At Freeport, in August, Lincoln asked whether it was possible for the people of a United States territory to exclude slavery from its limits before the formation of a state constitution. Douglas replied that it was up to the people of the territory to allow or ban slavery from that region. This argument was based on Douglas’ belief that popular sovereignty was compatible with the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that the people of a territory could not exclude slavery. (In a bit of fudging, Douglas said they could do it by means of local legislation.) Known today as the Freeport Doctrine (Slavery cannot exist a day in the midst of an unfriendly people with unfriendly laws.), Douglas’s opinion caused great controversy throughout America.

    During the third debate in Jonesboro on September 15 (p. 109), Douglas accused Lincoln of conspiring with Lyman Trumball, a Democrat who supported Lincoln and the Republican cause, to abolitionize both parties. Knowing there was little chance of gaining much support among the proslavery advocates in attendance, Lincoln wisely refused to respond and again questioned Douglas’s Freeport Doctrine.

    The debates continued on through the fall, with both candidates trying to delineate their own positions, repudiate the accusations, unfair or otherwise, of the opponent, and appeal to the populace for support.

    In the fourth debate, at Charleston, Lincoln unequivocally stated that he was not in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. Moreover, he opined that the physical differences between the white and black races forbade them from living together on terms of social and political equality. Despite this inequality, however, he did not believe that because the white man is to hold the superior position, the negro should therefore be denied everything. As Lincoln’s speech was given in the southern part of the state, Douglas accused his opponent of pandering to the proslavery South, and that Lincoln took a different tack on equality when addressing audiences in the Abolitionist North.

    October found the two debating at Galesburgh (p. 207), at which forum Douglas took the opportunity to stress his belief in the principle that underlay the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which Douglas introduced), i.e. the great fundamental principle that the people of each State and Territory of this Union have the right, and ought to be permitted to exercise the right, of regulating their own domestic concerns in their own way, subject to no other limitation or restriction than that which the Constitution of the United States imposes upon them.

    Douglas also declared Lincoln’s claim that the white and the black man are made equal by the Declaration of Independence and divine providence a monstrous heresy, claiming that Jefferson had only white men in mind when composing the Declaration. He further pointed out that Jefferson and all the signers of the Declaration owned slaves, and none of them freed their slaves afterward. In response, Lincoln affirmed that nowhere in the Constitution is it stated that a slave is the property of his owner.

    In the sixth debate, at Quincy on October 13 (p. 249), Lincoln returned to the theme of the rights of the black man, declaring that the Declaration of Independence guaranteed him the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, just as it did white men. And while the black man might not be his [Lincoln’s] social, intellectual, or moral equal, he nevertheless insisted that in the black man’s right to eat the bread without the leave of any body else which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man.

    Douglas continued to accuse Lincoln of inconsistency, claiming that he embraced one set of principles when speaking in Abolitionist counties and another set of principles when addressing anti-Abolitionist groups. He also attacked Lincoln’s policy of limiting the spread of slave states, with its ultimate aim of abolishing slavery altogether. For Douglas, the question was not whether slavery was right or wrong, but whether states had the right to decide the question for themselves. For his part, Lincoln had accused Douglas of being part of a conspiracy to make slavery national, and on this occasion refused to withdraw the charge unless it could be proved false.

    The final debate took place at Alton on October 15, 1858 (p. 293). In it Douglas again attacked three central propositions that Lincoln favored and that he [Douglas] opposed: First, that the country could not permanently survive divided into free and slave states, but must be one or the other. Second, Lincoln’s criticism of the Dred Scott decision for depriving blacks of the rights and benefits guaranteed under the Constitution to the citizens of each state; and third, Lincoln’s assertion that the distinctions between this man and that man, this race and the other race, must be discarded. For Lincoln the country had to stand by the Declaration of Independence, which declared all men created equal.

    In his reply, addressing the moral issue of slavery, Lincoln rose to the heights of eloquence in his condemnation: That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

    In the election that followed, in November of 1858, Lincoln won the popular vote by more than 4,000 votes. However, at the time senators were chosen by state legislatures (changed by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913), without regard to the popular vote. In the legislature, Lincoln received forty-six votes compared to Douglas’s fifty-four, and thereby lost the election. He responded with the famous quip, I am too big to cry about it, but it hurts too awful bad to laugh!

    Despite the loss, Lincoln emerged from the debates as a renowned orator and respected individual, a man who had made a deep impression on his countrymen. Just two years later, Lincoln garnered the Republican nomination for president and won the general election, defeating Douglas and two other candidates by a large majority of electoral votes.

    Speech of Abraham Lincoln

    SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858

    [The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the close of the Republican State Convention held at that time and place, and by which Convention Mr. LINCOLN had been named as their candidate for United States Senator. Mr. DOUGLAS was not present.]

    MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

    Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

    Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination—piece of machinery, so to speak—compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.

    The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the National territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

    But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.

    This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of squatter sovereignty, otherwise called sacred right of self-government, which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language which follows: It being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of squatter sovereignty, and sacred right of self-government. But, said opposition members, let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery. Not we, said the friends of the measure, and down they voted the amendment.

    While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving the question of a negro’s freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into a territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro’s name was Dred Scott, which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers: That is a question for the Supreme Court.

    The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.

    The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained!

    At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind,—the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision squatter sovereignty squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served through one blast, and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point—the right of a people to make their own constitution—upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.

    The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas’s care not policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are:

    Firstly, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

    Secondly, That, subject to the Constitution of the United States, neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future.

    Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.

    Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.

    It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left perfectly free, subject only to the Constitution. What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now,—it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now,—the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator’s individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough now,—the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President’s felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President’s advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others?

    We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen,—Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,—and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few,—not omitting even scaffolding,—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in,—in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

    It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people of a State as well as Territory were to be left perfectly free, subject only to the Constitution. Why mention a State? They were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska Bill,—I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska Act. On one occasion, his exact language is, Except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction. In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was left open in the Nebraska Act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.

    Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it?

    There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper to us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty, and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But a living dog is better than a dead lion. Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don’t care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the public heart to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas’s superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and, as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade,—how can he refuse that trade in that property shall be perfectly free,—unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.

    Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday; that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacles. But clearly he is not now with us; he does not pretend to be,—he does not promise ever to be.

    Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends,—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now,—now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail; if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

    Speech of Senator Douglas

    On the Occasion of his Public Reception at Chicago, Friday Evening, July 9, 1858. (Mr. Lincoln was present.)

    Mr. Douglas said,—

    MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I can find no language which can adequately express my profound gratitude for the magnificent welcome which you have extended to me on this occasion. This vast sea of human faces indicates how deep an interest is felt by our people in the great questions which agitate the public mind, and which underlie the foundations of our free institutions. A reception like this, so great in numbers that no human voice can be heard to its countless thousands,—so enthusiastic that no one individual can be the object of such enthusiasm,—clearly shows that there is some great principle which sinks deep in the heart of the masses, and involves the rights and the liberties of a whole people, that has brought you together with a unanimity and a cordiality never before excelled, if, indeed, equalled, on any occasion. I have not the vanity to believe that it is any personal compliment to me.

    It is an expression of your devotion to that great principle of self-government, to which my life for many years past has been, and in the future will be, devoted. If there is any one principle dearer and more sacred than all others in free governments, it is that which asserts the exclusive right of a free people to form and adopt their own fundamental law, and to manage and regulate their own internal affairs and domestic institutions.

    When I found an effort being made during the recent session of Congress to force a constitution upon the people of Kansas against their will, and to force that State into the Union with a constitution which her people had rejected by more than ten thousand, I felt bound as a man of honour and a representative of Illinois, bound by every consideration of duty, of fidelity, and of patriotism, to resist to the utmost of my power the consummation of that fraud. With others, I did resist it, and resisted it successfully until the attempt was abandoned. We forced them to refer that constitution back to the people of Kansas, to be accepted or rejected as they shall decide at an election which is fixed for the first Monday in August next. It is true that the mode of reference, and the form of the submission, was not such as I could sanction with my vote, for the reason that it discriminated between free States and slave States; providing that if Kansas consented to come in under the Lecompton Constitution it should be received with a population of thirty-five thousand; but that if she demanded another constitution, more consistent with the sentiments of her people and their feelings, that it should not be received into the Union until she had 93,420 inhabitants. I did not consider that mode of submission fair, for the reason that any election is a mockery which is not free, that any election is a fraud upon the rights of the people which holds out inducements for affirmative votes, and threatens penalties for negative votes. But whilst I was not satisfied with the mode of submission, whilst I resisted it to the last, demanding a fair, a just, a free mode of submission, still, when the law passed placing it within the power of the people of Kansas at that election to reject the Lecompton Constitution, and then make another in harmony with their principles and their opinions, I did not believe that either the penalties on the one hand, or the inducements on the other, would force that people to accept a constitution to which they are irreconcilably opposed. All I can say is, that if their votes can be controlled by such considerations all the sympathy which has been expended upon them has been misplaced, and all the efforts that have been made in defence of their right to self-government have been made in an unworthy cause.

    Hence, my friends, I regard the Lecompton battle as having been fought, and the victory won, because the arrogant demand for the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution unconditionally, whether her people wanted it or not, has been abandoned, and the principle which recognizes the right of the people to decide for themselves has been submitted in its place.

    Fellow-citizens, while I devoted my best energies—all my energies, mental and physical—to the vindication of the great principle, and whilst the result has been such as will enable the people of Kansas to come into the Union with such a constitution as they desire, yet the credit of this great moral victory is to be divided among a large number of men of various and different political creeds. I was rejoiced when I found in this great contest the Republican party coming up manfully and sustaining the principle that the people of each Territory, when coming into the Union, have the right to decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits. I have seen the time when that principle was controverted. I have seen the time when all parties did not recognize the right of a people to have slavery or freedom, to tolerate or prohibit slavery as they deemed best, but claimed that power for the Congress of the United States, regardless of the wishes of the people to be affected by it; and when I found upon the Crittenden-Montgomery bill the Republicans and Americans of the North, and I may say, too, some glorious Americans and old-line Whigs from the South, like Crittenden and his patriotic associates, joined with a portion of the Democracy to carry out and vindicate the right of the people to decide whether slavery should or should not exist within the limits of Kansas, I was rejoiced within my secret soul, for I saw an indication that the American people, when they came to understand the principle, would give it their cordial support.

    The Crittenden-Montgomery bill was as fair and as perfect an exposition of the doctrine of popular sovereignty as could be carried out by any bill that man ever devised. It proposed to refer the Lecompton Constitution back to the people of Kansas, and give them the right to accept or reject it as they pleased, at a fair election, held in pursuance of law, and in the event of their rejecting it, and forming another in its stead, to permit them to come into the Union on an equal footing with the original States. It was fair and just in all of its provisions. I gave it my cordial support, and was rejoiced when I found that it passed the House of Representatives, and at one time I entertained high hope that it would pass the Senate.

    I regard the great principle of popular sovereignty as having been vindicated and made triumphant in this land as a permanent rule of public policy in the organization of Territories and the admission of new States. Illinois took her position upon this principle many years ago. You all recollect that in 1850, after the passage of the Compromise measures of that year, when I returned to my home there was great dissatisfaction expressed at my course in supporting those measures. I appeared before the people of Chicago at a mass meeting, and vindicated each and every one of those measures; and by reference to my speech on that occasion, which was printed and circulated broadcast throughout the State at the time, you will find that I then and there said that those measures were all founded upon the great principle that every people ought to possess the right to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way, and that, that right being possessed by the people of the States, I saw no reason why the same principle should not be extended to all of the Territories of the United States. A general election was held in this State a few months afterwards, for members of the Legislature, pending which all these questions were thoroughly canvassed and discussed, and the nominees of the different parties instructed in regard to the wishes of their constituents upon them. When that election was over, and the Legislature assembled, they proceeded to consider the merits of those Compromise measures, and the principles upon which they were predicated. And what was the result of their action? They passed resolutions, first repealing the Wilmot Proviso instructions, and in lieu thereof adopted another resolution, in which they declared the great principle which asserts the right of the people to make their own form of government and establish their own institutions. That resolution is as follows:

    Resolved, That our liberty and independence are based upon the right of the people to form for themselves such a government as they may choose; that this great principle, the birthright of freemen, the gift of Heaven, secured to us by the blood of our ancestors, ought to be secured to future generations, and no limitation ought to be applied to this power in the organization of any Territory of the United States, of either Territorial Government or State Constitution, provided the Government so established shall be republican, and in conformity with the Constitution of the United States.

    That resolution, declaring the great principle of self-government as applicable to the Territories and new States, passed the House of Representatives of this State by a vote of sixty-one in the affirmative, to only four in the negative. Thus you find that an expression of public opinion—enlightened, educated, intelligent public opinion—on this question, by the representatives of Illinois in 1851, approaches nearer to unanimity than has ever been obtained on any controverted question. That resolution was entered on the journal of the Legislature of the State of Illinois, and it has remained there from that day to this, a standing instruction to her Senators, and a request to her Representatives, in Congress to carry out that principle in all future cases. Illinois, therefore, stands pre-eminent as the State which stepped forward early and established a platform applicable to this slavery question, concurred in alike by Whigs and Democrats, in which it was declared to be the wish of our people that thereafter the people of the Territories should be left perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, and that no limitation should be placed upon that right in any form.

    Hence what was my duty in 1854, when it became necessary to bring forward a bill for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska? Was it not my duty, in obedience to the Illinois platform, to your standing instructions to your Senators, adopted with almost entire unanimity, to incorporate in that bill the great principle of self-government, declaring that it was the true intent and meaning of the Act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States? I did incorporate that principle in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and perhaps I did as much as any living man in the enactment of that bill, thus establishing the doctrine in the public policy of the country. I then defended that principle against assaults from one section of the Union. During this last winter it became my duty to vindicate it against assaults from the other section of the Union. I vindicated it boldly and fearlessly, as the people of Chicago can bear witness, when it was assailed by Free-soilers; and during this winter I vindicated and defended it as boldly and fearlessly when it was attempted to be violated by the almost united South. I pledged myself to you on every stump in Illinois in 1854, I pledged myself to the people of other States north and south, wherever I spoke; and in the United States Senate and elsewhere, in every form

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