The Great Conspiracy, CompleteLogan, John Alexander
History
The Great Conspiracy, Complete
Logan, John Alexander
Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1861-1865
I do not acknowledge that the States must
all be Free or must all be Slave. I do not acknowledge that the Negro
must have civil and political rights everywhere or nowhere. * * * I do
not acknowledge any of these doctrines of uniformity in the local and
domestic regulations in the different States. * * * Mr. Lincoln goes
for a warfare upon the Supreme Court of the United States because of
their judicial decision in the Dred Scott case. I yield obedience to
the decisions in that Court--to the final determination of the highest
judicial tribunal known to our Constitution. He objects to the Dred
Scott decision because it does not put the Negro in the possession of
the rights of citizenship on an equality with the White man. I am
opposed to Negro equality. * * * 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. * * * My friends, you see that the
issues are distinctly drawn."
On the following evening (July 10th) at Chicago, Mr. Lincoln addressed
another enthusiastic assemblage, in reply to Mr. Douglas; and, after
protesting against a charge that had been made the previous night by the
latter, of an "unnatural and unholy" alliance between Administration
Democrats and Republicans to defeat him, as being beyond his own
knowledge and belief, proceeded: "Popular Sovereignty! Everlasting
Popular Sovereignty! Let us for a moment inquire into this vast matter
of Popular Sovereignty. What is Popular Sovereignty? We recollect at
an early period in the history of this struggle there was another name
for the same thing--Squatter Sovereignty. It was not exactly Popular
Sovereignty, but Squatter Sovereignty. What do those terms mean? What
do those terms mean when used now? And vast credit is taken by our
friend, the Judge, in regard to his support of it, when he declares the
last years of his life have been, and all the future years of his life
shall be, devoted to this matter of Popular Sovereignty. What is it?
Why it is the Sovereignty of the People! What was Squatter Sovereignty?
I suppose if it had any significance at all, it was the right of the
people to govern themselves, to be sovereign in their own affairs while
they were squatted down in a country not their own--while they had
squatted on a territory that did not belong to them in the sense that a
State belongs to the people who inhabit it--when it belonged to the
Nation--such right to govern themselves was called 'Squatter
Sovereignty.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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