At the 1858 state Republican convention in Springfield,
Illinois, the Republican Party’s United States Senate candidate for Illinois and
future president Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech.
Many politicians viewed Lincoln’s speech as radical. Stephen A. Douglas, the
Democratic Party’s candidate, accused Lincoln of taking an unreasonably hard
line against slavery and said he was “advocat[ing] boldly and clearly a war of
sections” between North and South over slavery. Excerpts from Lincoln’s speech
and Douglas’s reply follow below.
From “A House Divided”
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
[known as popular sovereignty, or “squatter sovereignty”] 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 anyone 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
endorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The
endorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly 400,000
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 endorsement. The
Supreme Court met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a
re-argument. 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 endorsing 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 [a constitution drafted by proslavery groups
in the Kansas territory that was rejected by the U.S. Congress] 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 mold 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:—
First, 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 the 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 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 awhile, 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 1,000 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 mold 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
re-argument? 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 [Douglas], Franklin [Pierce],
[Supreme Court Chief Justice] Roger [Taney], and James [Buchanan], 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 mortices 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.…
Speech of Senator Douglas
On the Occasion of his Public Reception at Chicago,
Friday Evening, July 9, 1858. (Mr. Lincoln was present.)
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 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
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 develop their own fundamental law,
and to manage and regulate their own internal affairs and domestic
institutions.…
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.…
The great principle is the right of every community to
judge and decide for itself whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would
be good or evil for them to adopt it; and the right of free action, the right of
free thought, the right of free judgment, upon the question is dearer to every
true American than any other under a free government. My objection to the
Lecompton contrivance was that it undertook to put a constitution on the people
of Kansas against their own will, in opposition to their wishes, and thus
violated the principle upon which all our institutions rest. It is no answer to
this argument to say that slavery is an evil, and hence should not be tolerated.
You must allow the people to decide for themselves whether it is a good or an
evil. You allow them to decide for themselves whether they desire a Maine liquor
law or not; you allow them to decide for themselves what kind of common schools
they will have, what system of banking they will adopt, or whether they will
adopt any at all; you allow them to decide for themselves the relations between
husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward,—in fact, you allow them
to decide for themselves all other questions; and why not upon this question?
Whenever you put a limitation upon the right of any people to decide what laws
they want, you have destroyed the fundamental principle of
self-government.…
…Mr. Lincoln made a speech before that Republican
Convention which unanimously nominated him for the Senate—a speech evidently
well prepared and carefully written,—in which he states the basis upon which he
proposes to carry on the campaign during this summer. In it he lays down two
distinct propositions which I shall notice, and upon which I shall take a direct
and bold issue with him.
His first and main proposition I will give in his own
language, scripture quotations and all [laughter]; I give his exact language:
''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 to cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or
all the other.'
In other words, Mr. Lincoln asserts, as a fundamental
principle of this Government, that there must be uniformity in the local laws
and domestic institutions of each and all the States of the Union; and he
therefore invites all the non-slaveholding states to band together, organize as
one body, and make war upon slavery in Kentucky, upon slavery in Virginia, upon
the Carolinas, upon slavery in all of the slaveholding states in this Union, and
to persevere in that war until it shall be exterminated. He then notifies the
slaveholding States to stand together as a unit and make an aggressive war upon
the Free States of this Union with a view of establishing slavery in them all;
of forcing it upon Illinois, of forcing it upon New York, upon New England, and
upon every other Free State, and that they shall keep up the warfare until it
has been formally established in them all. In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates
boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of
the Free States against the Slave States, a war of extermination,—to be
continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued and all the
States shall either become Free or become Slave.
Now, my friends, I must say to you frankly that I take
bold, unqualified issue with him upon that principle. I assert that it is
neither desirable nor possible that there should be uniformity in the local
institutions and domestic regulations of the different States of this Union. The
framers of our Government never contemplated uniformity in its internal
concerns. The fathers of the Revolution and the sages who made the Constitution
well understood that the laws and the domestic institutions which would suit the
granite hills of New Hampshire would be totally unfit for the rice plantations
of South Carolina; they well understood that the laws which would suit the
agricultural districts of New York would be totally unfit for the large mining
regions of the Pacific, or the lumber regions of Maine.…
The framers of the Constitution well understood that
each locality, having separate and distinct interests, required separate and
distinct laws, domestic institutions, and police regulations adapted to its own
wants and its own condition; and they acted on the presumption, also, that these
laws and institutions would be as diversified and as dissimilar as the States
would be numerous and that no two would be precisely alike, because the
interests of no two would be precisely the same. Hence, I assert that the great
fundamental principle which underlies our complex system of State and Federal
Governments contemplated diversity and dissimilarity in the local institutions
and domestic affairs of each and every State then in the Union or thereafter to
be admitted into the Confederacy. I therefore conceive that my friend Mr.
Lincoln has totally misapprehended the great principles upon which our
Government rests. Uniformity in local and domestic affairs would be destructive
of State rights, of State sovereignty, of personal liberty and personal freedom.
Uniformity is the parent of despotism the world over, not only in politics but
in religion. Wherever the doctrine of uniformity is proclaimed that all the
States must be Free or all Slave, that all labor must be white or all black,
that all the citizens of the different States must have the same privileges or
be governed by the same regulations, you have destroyed the greatest safeguard
which our institutions have thrown around the rights of the citizen.
How could this uniformity be accomplished if it was
desirable and possible? There is but one mode in which it could be obtained, and
that must be by abolishing the State Legislatures, blotting out State
sovereignty, merging the rights and sovereignty of the States in one
consolidated empire, and vesting Congress with the plenary power to make all the
police regulations, domestic and local laws, uniform throughout the limits of
the republic. When you shall have done this, you will have uniformity. Then the
States will all be slave or all be Free; then negroes will vote everywhere or
nowhere; then you will have a Maine liquor law in every State or none; then you
will have uniformity in all things, local or domestic, by the authority of the
Federal Government. But, when you attain that uniformity, you will have
converted these thirty-two sovereign, independent States into one consolidated
empire, with the uniformity of disposition reigning triumphant throughout the
length and breadth of the land.
From this view of the case, my friends, I am driven
irresistibly to the conclusion that diversity, dissimilarity, variety in all our
local and domestic institutions is the great safeguard of our liberties and that
the framers of our institutions were wise, sagacious, and patriotic when they
made this Government a confederation of sovereign States, with a legislature for
each, and conferred upon each legislature the power to make all local and
domestic institutions to suit the people it represented, without interference
from any other State or from the general Congress of the Union. If we expect to
maintain our liberties, we must preserve the rights and sovereignty of the
states; we must maintain and carry out that great principle of self-government
incorporated in the Compromise measures of 1850; endorsed by the Illinois
Legislature in 1851; emphatically embodied and carried out in the
Kansas-Nebraska bill, and vindicated this year by the refusal to bring Kansas
into the Union with a constitution distasteful to her people.
The other proposition discussed by Mr. Lincoln in his
speech consists in a crusade against the Supreme Court of the United States on
account of the Dred Scott decision. On this question, also, I desire to say to
you unequivocally that I take direct and distinct issue with him. I have no
warfare to make on the Supreme Court of the United States, either on account of
that or any other decision which they have pronounced from that bench. The
Constitution of the United States has provided that the powers of government
(and the Constitution of each State has the same provision) shall be divided
into three departments: executive, legislative, and judicial. The right and the
province of expounding the Constitution and constructing the law is vested in
the judiciary established by the Constitution. As a lawyer, I feel at liberty to
appear before the court and controvert any principle of law while the question
is pending before the tribunal; but, when the decision is made, my private
opinion, your opinion, all other opinions must yield to the majesty of that
authoritative adjudication. I wish you to bear in mind that this involves a
great principle, upon which our rights, our liberty, and our property all
depend. What security have you for your property, for your reputation, and for
your personal rights if the courts are not upheld and their decisions respected
when once fairly rendered by the highest tribunal known to the Constitution? I
do not choose, therefore, to go into any argument with Mr. Lincoln in reviewing
the various decisions which the Supreme Court has made, either upon the Dred
Scott case or any other. I have no idea of appealing from the decision of the
Supreme Court upon a constitutional question to the decisions of a tumultuous
town meeting.…
Hence, I am opposed to this doctrine of Mr. Lincoln by
which he proposes to take an appeal from the decision of the Supreme Court of
the United States, upon this high constitutional question, to a Republican
caucus sitting in the country. Yes, or any other caucus or town meeting, whether
it be Republican, American, or Democratic. I respect the decisions of that
august tribunal; I shall always bow in deference to them. I am a law-abiding
man. I will sustain the Constitution of my country as our fathers have made it.
I will yield obedience to the laws, whether I like them or not, as I find them
on the statute book. I will sustain the judicial tribunals and constituted
authorities in all matters within the pale of their jurisdiction as defined by
the Constitution.
But I am equally free to say that the reason assigned by
Mr. Lincoln for resisting the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott
case does not in itself meet any approbation. He objects to it because that
decision declared that a negro descended from African parents, who were brought
here and sold as slaves, is not, and cannot be, a citizen of the United States.
He says it is wrong because it deprives the negro of the benefits of that clause
of the Constitution which says that citizens of one State shall enjoy all the
privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States; in other words, he
thinks it wrong because it deprives the negro of the privileges, immunities, and
rights of citizenship which pertain, according to that decision, only to the
white man. I am free to say to you that in my opinion this Government of ours is
founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the
white man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should
determine. It is also true that a negro, an Indian, or any other man of inferior
race to a white man should be permitted to enjoy, and humanity requires that he
should have, all the rights, privileges, and immunities which he is capable of
exercising consistent with the safety of society. I would give him every right
and every privilege which his capacity would enable him to enjoy, consistent
with the good of the society in which he lived. But you may ask me, What are
these rights and these privileges? My answer is, That each State must decide for
itself the nature and extent of these rights. Illinois has decided for herself.
We have decided that the negro shall not be a slave, and we have at the same
time decided that he shall not vote, or serve on juries, or enjoy political
privileges. I am content with that system of policy which we have adopted for
ourselves. I deny the right of any other State to complain of our policy in that
respect, or to interfere with it, or to attempt to change it. On the other hand,
the State of Maine has decided that in that State a negro man may vote on an
equality with the white man. The sovereign power of Maine has the right to
prescribe that rule for herself. Illinois has no right to complain of Maine for
conferring the right of negro suffrage, nor has Maine any right to interfere
with or complain of Illinois because she has denied negro suffrage.…
Thus you see, my fellow citizens, that the issues
between Mr. Lincoln and myself… are direct, unequivocal, and irreconcilable. He
goes for uniformity in our domestic institutions, for a war of sections, until
one or the other shall be subdued. I go for the great principle of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill,—the right of the people to decide for themselves.
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