Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Volume 2 (of 2)Herndon, William Henry
History
Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Volume 2 (of 2)
Herndon, William Henry
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
it. This is the difference, as I understand it, between the Republican
and Democratic parties....
"'My friends, I have endeavored to show you the logical consequences
of the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people of a Territory
cannot prevent the establishment of slavery in their midst. I have
stated what cannot be gainsaid, that the grounds upon which this
decision is made are equally applicable to the free States as to the
free Territories, and that the peculiar reasons put forth by Judge
Douglas for endorsing this decision, commit him, in advance, to the next
decision and to all other decisions coming from the same source. And
when, by all these means, you have succeeded in dehumanizing the negro;
when you have put him down and made it impossible for him to be but as
the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul in this
world and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out as in the
darkness of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have
roused will not turn and rend you? What constitutes the bulwark of our
own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our
bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance
against tyranny. All of those may be turned against us without making
us weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which
God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty
as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this
spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.
Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your
own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others,
you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit
subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. And let me
tell you, that all these things are prepared for you by the teachings
of history, if the elections shall promise that the next Dred Scott
decision and all future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in by the
people.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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