substance. This was right; I see nothing objectionable in it. I also think it probable that it had some reference to the existence of slavery among them. I will not deny that it had. But had it any reference to the carrying of slavery into new countries? That is the question, and we will let the fathers themselves 5 answer it. This same generation of men, and mostly the same individuals of the generation who declared this principle, who declared independence, who fought the War of the Revolution through, who afterward made the Constitution under which we still live 10 – these same men passed the Ordinance of '87, declaring that slavery should never go to the Northwest Territory. I have no doubt Judge Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent in this. It is a question of discrimination between them and him. But there is not an inch of ground left for his claiming that their 15 opinions, their example, their authority, are on his side in the controversy. Again, is not Nebraska, while a territory, a part of us? Do we not own the country? And if we surrender the control of it, do we not surrender the right of self-government? It is part 20 of ourselves. If you say we shall not control it, because it is only part, the same is true of every other part; and when all the parts are gone, what has become of the whole? What is then left of us? What use for the general government, when there is nothing left for it to govern? 25 But you say this question should be left to the people of Nebraska, because they are more particularly interested. If this be the rule, you must leave it to each individual to say for himself whether he will have slaves. What better moral right have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to say that the thirty-second shall 30 not hold slaves than the people of the thirty-one states have to say that slavery shall not go into the thirty-second state at all? But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy them where they can buy them cheapest; and that, undoubtedly, will be on the coast of Africa, provided you will consent not to hang them for going there to buy them. You must remove this restriction, too, from the sacred right of self-government. I am 5 aware, you say, that taking slaves from the states to Nebraska does not make slaves of freemen; but the African slave trader can say just as much. He does not catch free negroes and bring them here. He finds them already slaves in the hands of their black captors, and he honestly buys them at the rate of a 10 red cotton handkerchief a head. This is very cheap, and it is a great abridgment of the sacred right of self-government to hang men for engaging in this profitable trade. Another important objection to this application of the right of self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the 15 succeeding many of a free exercise of the right of self-government. The first few may get slavery in, and the subsequent many cannot easily get it out. How common is the remark now in the slave states, "If we were only clear of our slaves, how much better it would be for us." They are actually deprived of 20 the privilege of governing themselves as they would, by the action of a very few in the beginning. The same thing was true of the whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed. Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who 25 may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave states are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to. 30 New free states are the places for poor people to go to, and better their condition. For this use the nation needs these territories. Still further: there are constitutional relations between the slave and free states which are degrading to the latter. We are under legal obligations to catch and return their runaway slaves to them: a sort of dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, as a general rule, the slaveholders will not perform for one another. Then again, in the control of the government the management of the partnership affairs— they have greatly 5 the advantage of us. By the Constitution each state has two senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to the number of its people, and each has a number of presidential electors equal to the whole number of its senators and representatives together. But in ascertaining the number of the 10 people for this purpose, five slaves are counted as being equal to three whites. The slaves do not vote; they are only counted and so used as to swell the influence of the white people's votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a comparison of the states of South Carolina and Maine. South 15 Carolina has six representatives, and so has Maine; South Carolina has eight presidential electors, and so has Maine. This is precise equality so far; and of course they are equal in senators, each having two. Thus in the control of the government the two states are equals precisely. But how are they in the 20 number of their white people? Maine has 581,813, while South Carolina has 274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina, and 32,679 over. Thus, each white man in South Carolina is more than the double of any man in Maine. This is all because South Carolina, besides her free people, has 384,984 25 slaves. The South Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over the white man in every other free state as well as in Maine. He is more than the double of any one of us in this crowd. The same advantage, but not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens of the slave states over those of the free; and 30 it is an absolute truth, without an exception, that there is no voter in any slave state, but who has more legal power in the government than any voter in any free state. There is no instance of exact equality; and the disadvantage is against us the whole chapter through. This principle, in the aggregate, gives the slave states in the present Congress twenty additional representatives, being seven more than the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska Bill. 5 Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention it to complain of it, in so far as it is already settled. It is in the Constitution, and I do not for that cause, or any other cause, propose to destroy, or alter, or disregard the Constitution. I stand to it, fairly, fully, and firmly. 1Ο But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other people to say whether new partners are to be bred up and brought into the firm, on the same degrading terms against me, I respectfully demur. (I insist that whether I shall be a whole man, or only the half of one, in comparison with others, is a 15 question in which I am somewhat concerned, and one which no other man can have a sacred right of deciding for me) If I am wrong in this if it really be a sacred right of self-government in the man who shall go to Nebraska to decide whether he will be the equal of me or the double of me, then, after he shall 20 have exercised that right, and thereby shall have reduced me to a still smaller fraction of a man than I already am, I should like for some gentleman, deeply skilled in the mysteries of sacred rights, to provide himself with a microscope, and peep about, and find out, if he can, what has become of my sacred rights. 25 They will surely be too small for detection with the naked eye. . Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions. And if they shall think, as I do, that the 30 extension of slavery endangers them more than any or all other causes, how recreant to themselves if they submit the question, and with it the fate of their country, to a mere handful of men bent only on self-interest. If this question of slavery extension were an insignificant one-one having no power to do harm it might be shuffled aside in this way; but being, as it is, the great behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the nation be loosened upon him, to intrust him to the hands of such feeble keepers? I have done with this mighty argument of self-government. 5 Go, sacred thing! Go in peace. AFTER THE DEFEAT OF 1856 (Close of address at a Republican banquet in Chicago, Let every one who really believes, and is resolved, that 2 Points "A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF' I history (Extracts from speech made in Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858) Tendency to spread of sleever Legal m B Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could 20 first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed |