Abraham Lincoln had settled into his Illinois law practice in
1854 when the United States Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This law
removed the north-south dividing line between free and slave territory that had
been created by the 1820 Missouri Compromise, and allowed the two new states to
decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Galvanized by the law, Lincoln
began to campaign fervently for antislavery Whig politicians in Illinois and
against Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who authored the act.
Lincoln delivered the speech excerpted here in Peoria, Illinois.
Lincoln: 'The Monstrous Injustice of Slavery'
I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; wrong
in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska—and wrong in its
prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide
world, where men can be found inclined to take it.
This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert
real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because
of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our
republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of
free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real
friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so
many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very
fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of
Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but
self-interest.…
…If all earthly power were given me, I should not know
what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all
the slaves and send them to … their own native land. But a moment’s reflection
would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be
in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.… What then? Free
them all and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this
betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate;
yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon.
What next? Free them and make them politically and
socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would,
we well know that the great mass of white peoples will not. Whether this feeling
accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if, indeed, it
is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well- or ill-founded, cannot be
safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that
systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in
this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.…
But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse
for permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it would for
reviving the African slave trade by law.…
…one great argument in the support of the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise is still to come. That argument is “the sacred right of
self-government.”…
The doctrine of self-government is right—absolutely and
eternally right—but it has no just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I
should rather say that whether it has such just application depends upon whether
a Negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case he who is a man
may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the
Negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of
self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man
governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also
governs another man, that is more than self-government—that is
despotism. If the Negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me
that 'all men are created equal'; and that there can be no moral right in
connection with one man's making a slave of another.
Judge Douglas [Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas]
frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases our argument by saying
'The white people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are
not good enough to govern a few miserable Negroes!'
Well I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are, and
will continue to be, as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say
the contrary. What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another
man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle—the sheet
anchor of American republicanism. Our Declaration of Independence says:
'We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'
I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that
according to our ancient faith the just powers of governments are derived from
the consent of the governed. Now the relation of masters and slaves is, pro
tanto [to a certain extent], a total violation of this principle. The master
not only governs the slave without his consent; but he governs him by a set of
rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow
all the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that
only, is self-government…
Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they
be thrown in company with the abolitionist. Will they allow me as an old Whig to
tell them good humoredly that I think this is very silly? Stand with anybody
that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he
goes wrong. Stand with the abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise;
and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the fugitive slave law. In the
latter case you stand with the southern disunionist. What of that? you are still
right. In both cases you are right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous
extremes. In both you stand on middle ground and hold the ship level and steady.
In both you are national and nothing less than national. This is good old Whig
ground. To desert such ground, because of any company, is to be less than a
Whig—less than a man—less than an American…
Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the
grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago
we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that
beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to
enslave others is a 'sacred right of self-government.' These principles cannot
stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon [false god of riches
described in the Bible]; and whoever holds to the one must despise the
other…
Fellow countrymen—Americans South, as well as North,
shall we make no effort to arrest this? Already the Liberal party throughout the
world express the apprehension 'that the one retrograde institution in America
is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest
political system the world ever saw.' This is not the taunt of enemies, but the
warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it—to despise it? Is there no
danger to liberty itself in discarding the earliest practice and first precept
of our ancient faith? In our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us
beware, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of
freedom.
Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust.
Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit if not the
blood of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of 'moral right,'
back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of 'necessity.' Let us
return it to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace.
Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and
policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South—let all Americans—let all
lovers of liberty everywhere—join in the great and good work. If we do this, we
shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it as to make,
and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it that the
succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call
us blessed, to the latest generations.
Source: The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches.
MacArthur, Brian, ed. Penguin Books, 1996.
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