Noted Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Including the Lincoln-Douglas DebateLincoln, Abraham
History
Noted Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Including the Lincoln-Douglas Debate
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Oratory
Again, there is in that same quotation from the Nebraska bill this
clause: “It being the true intent and meaning of this bill not to
legislate slavery into any Territory or _State_.” I have always been
puzzled to know what business the word “State” had in that connection.
Judge Douglas knows. He put it there. He knows what he put it there
for. We outsiders cannot say what he put it there for. The law they
were passing was not about States, and was not making provision for
States. What was it placed there for? After seeing the Dred Scott
decision, which holds that the people cannot exclude slavery from a
_Territory_, if another Dred Scott decision shall come, holding that
they cannot exclude it from a _State_, we shall discover that when
the word was originally put there it was in view of something which
was to come in due time; we shall see that it was the _other half_
of something. I now say again, if there is any different reason for
putting it there, Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without calling
anybody a liar, _can tell what the reason was_.
* * * * *
Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the subject, in the little
time I have left, to which to call your attention; and, as I shall come
to a close at the end of that branch, it is probable that I shall not
occupy quite all the time allotted to me. Although on these questions
I would like to talk twice as long as I have, I could not enter upon
another head and discuss it properly without running over my time. I
ask the attention of the people here assembled and elsewhere to the
course that Judge Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this
question of making slavery national. Not going back to the records,
but taking the speeches he makes, the speeches he made yesterday and
day before, and makes constantly all over the country,--I ask your
attention to them. In the first place, what is necessary to make the
institution national? Not war. There is no danger that the people of
Kentucky will shoulder their muskets, and, with a young nigger stuck
on every bayonet, march into Illinois and force them upon us. There is
no danger of our going over there and making war upon them. Then what
is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next
Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that
no _State_ under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have
already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the
Territorial legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced
in, the whole thing is done. This being true, and this being the way,
as I think, that slavery is to be made national, let us consider
what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end. In the first
place, let us see what influence he is exerting on public sentiment.
In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With
public sentiment, nothing can fail: without it, nothing can succeed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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