The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 4: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates — John Shaqi
The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 4: The Lincoln-Douglas DebatesLincoln, Abraham
History
The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 4: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Ill., 1858
"Yes, here you find men who hurrah for Lincoln, and say he is right when
he discards all distinction between races, or when he declares that
he discards the doctrine that there is such a thing as a superior and
inferior race; and Abolitionists are required and expected to vote for
Mr. Lincoln because he goes for the equality of races, holding that in the
Declaration of Independence the white man and negro were declared equal,
and endowed by divine law with equality. And down South, with the old-line
Whigs, with the Kentuckians, the Virginians and the Tennesseeans, he tells
you that there is a physical difference between the races, making the
one superior, the other inferior, and he is in favor of maintaining the
superiority of the white race over the negro."
Those are the Judges comments. Now, I wish to show you that a month,
or only lacking three days of a month, before I made the speech at
Charleston, which the Judge quotes from, he had himself heard me say
substantially the same thing It was in our first meeting, at Ottawa--and I
will say a word about where it was, and the atmosphere it was in, after a
while--but at our first meeting, at Ottawa, I read an extract from an
old speech of mine, made nearly four years ago, not merely to show my
sentiments, but to show that my sentiments were long entertained and
openly expressed; in which extract I expressly declared that my own
feelings would not admit a social and political equality between the white
and black races, and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I
still knew that the public sentiment of the country would not, and that
such a thing was an utter impossibility, or substantially that. That
extract from my old speech the reporters by some sort of accident passed
over, and it was not reported. I lay no blame upon anybody. I suppose they
thought that I would hand it over to them, and dropped reporting while I
was giving it, but afterward went away without getting it from me. At the
end of that quotation from my old speech, which I read at Ottawa, I made
the comments which were reported at that time, and which I will now read,
and ask you to notice how very nearly they are the same as Judge Douglas
says were delivered by me down in Egypt. After reading, I added these
words:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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