Stephen Arnold Douglas

“ Let the asperities growing out of the controversy die with the controversy. All I ask is, that in future we recognize the right of the people of a Territory to form a Free State, or a Slave State, as they may choose, and come into the Union on an equality with the other States. ”

“ Come, then, you, the intrepid and invincible tribune, the independent and uncompromising Senator; come, and speak forth with that boldness which you have so successfully displayed in the councils of the nation and before your own people at home, and say where were and where still are the designs of your enemies and ours. Be fearless. You are in the midst of men who love truth and who value above all other things moral courage and political honesty. ”

“ My votes in Congress have always been in harmony with that line of policy. It matters not how far you acquire more territory, or how much or how little you wish to acquire. Expansion is the law of our existence; when we cease to grow, we commence to decline. Hence our course is onward, on the principle established by our fathers, under divine inspiration, as I believe, in the formation of the Government. ”

“ But for your indomitable firmness and the enlightened patriotism of the Democracy of Illinois, which struck these with impotency, you and that Democracy had been surrendered over to the tender mercies of a foe, who, if victorious, would have strewed this glorious country of ours with such seeds of trouble and discord as would have imperiled the very existence of the Republic, and perhaps blasted the last hope on which hung with our own liberty the liberties of the world. ”

“ If the people want Slavery they will have it, if they don't want it they won't have it, and you can't force it upon them. If these principles be recognized and adhered to we can live in peace and harmony together; but just as surely as you attempt to force the people to have Slavery, against their will, in regions to which it is not adapted, fanaticism will take control of the Federal Government and attempt to force it out of other countries adapted to it. It was on these principles that, last Winter, I resisted the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution. ”

“ I repeat that this Government was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, to be administered by white men, and none others. It is true that then, as well as now, we had among us other races - inferior races - incapable of self-government, and necessarily dependent on others for protection.
But it is a law of humanity, a law of civilization, that whenever a man, or race of men, show themselves incapable of managing their own affairs, they must consent to be governed by those who are capable of performing the duty. ”

“ Simply because the sages who formed our Government had more at heart the great principles of civil liberty than the desire of sectional power or sectional advantage - because they wished to establish the principle that each State should possess the sovereign power of legislation over its own domestic institutions - to form them and modify them to suit themselves, retaining Slavery so long as they might desire to retain it, and abolishing it whenever they chose. ”

“ If experience shall continue to prove, what the past may be considered to have demonstrated, that those little Central American powers cannot maintain self-government, the interests of Christendom require that some power should preserve order for them. Hence, I maintain that we should adopt and observe a line of policy in unison with our own interests and our destiny. I do not wish to force things. We live in a rapid age. Events crowd upon each other with marvelous speed. I do not want territory any faster than we can occupy, Americanize and civilize it. ”

“ If you do not like our laws on the subject of negro Slavery, or any other domestic concern, stay at home and live under such laws as you choose to make. We have a law in our State that a negro shall not be a citizen, nor either shall he be a slave. But during our territorial existence, when the settlers were from Slaveholding States, bringing their slave-property with them, the Territorial Legislature, in defiance of the celebrated ordinance of 1787, established Slavery in Illinois, and maintained it for years. ”

“ Then they stop and say, "Doesn't that Declaration tell us that all men are created equal? Is not a negro a man, and is he not, therefore the equal of the white man? Was he not made equal by his Creator, and is his equality not, therefore inalienable by Divine law? ”

“ I desire to know whether the principles, which are admitted to be sound and orthodox in the Free States, can pass current in the Slave States. So long as we live under a common Constitution, binding on the people of all the States, any political creed which cannot be proclaimed in Louisiana as boldly as in Illinois, must be unsound and unsafe. ”

“ This Government was formed on the principle of State Rights and State Sovereignty. It is a confederacy of sovereign and independent States, having a certain common purpose, each retaining the right to manage its own affairs, and maintaining its own liberties inside of its own jurisdiction.
It is a fatal heresy to proclaim the doctrine that there out to be or can be uniformity among the different States of the Union, as to their local and domestic institutions. Uniformity is neither possible nor desirable. ”

“ Thus, Slavery will exist wherever soil, climate, and productions demand it, and it will exist nowhere else. Now if climate and soil, and self-interest will regulate this question, why should we quarrel about it? When you arrive at a certain distance to the north of the line there cannot be any doubt of the result; and so, when you got a certain distance south the result will be equally certain the other way. ”

“ I presume that all men, North and South, of whatever politics, religion, or prejudices, will assent to the principle that humanity compels us all to extend to the negro, and all other dependent races, all the privileges, immunities and facilities, consistent with the good of the society in which they reside. ”

“ It is on this principle that you establish those institutions of charity, for the support of the blind, or the deaf and the dumb, or the insane, that those incapable of governing themselves must be governed by others. In accordance with this principle I assert that the negro race, under all circumstances, at all times and in all countries, has shown itself incapable of self-government. ”

“ The more degrees of latitude and longitude embraced beneath our Constitution, the better. The greater the variety of productions, the better; for then we shall have the principles of free trade between the important staples of the world, making us the greatest planting as well as the greatest manufacturing, the greatest commercial as well as the greatest agricultural power on the globe. ”

“ Bearing these facts in mind, tell me if you believe that those men were such hypocrites as to admit the negroes belonging to them to be their equals by divine right, and yet hold those negroes in Slavery the balance of their lives. Any man who asserts that the signers of the Declaration had reference to negroes in that document, declares every signer to have been a hypocrite, and worse than a hypocrite. ”

“ The tendency of events during the past fifteen years has been to force the organization of political parties on a geographical basis, to array the North against the South, embittering the South against the North, under the misapprehension that there is some irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of the one and the other, which prevents harmony between them. ”

“ But I will tell you when they will have it, and when Slavery will find protection in a territory, it is when the territory lies in those latitudes and climates which adapt it to the profitable production of rice and sugar and cotton, and where Slave labor will be remunerative. In those territories the people will want Slavery, and will have it in spite of Abolitionism and all its power. ”

“ So long as the Free States were the minority section, the North adhered to the doctrine that each State should manage its own domestic affairs without interference from the other States or the Federal Government. But when, in the progress of events the Free States increased till they obtained the majority in the House of Representatives, and then a tie in the Senate, ambitious men found that by organizing sectional parties, and belonging to the strongest section, they could ride into power. ”

“ They take the Declaration of Independence, as I have said, and read this passage: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." ”

“ Then, you will ask me, as the Abolitionists have asked me, what are these privileges and immunities - what are their nature and extent? I will return the same answer I have so often given them. It is a question for each State to decide for itself, independent of any other State. Illinois has decided the question for herself. We have adopted a line of policy which has given satisfaction to us. If you do not like it, though we may regret your dislike, we must be permitted to say that it is none of your business. ”

“ But in the great central regions, where there may be some doubt as to the effect of natural causes, who ought to decide the question except the people residing there, who have gone there to live with their wives and children? Any party which attempts, by a system of coercion, to force any institutions into regions not adapted to them, violates the great principles on which our Government is founded. ”

“ We say that for Congress to say to any people, you shall or shall not have such or such institutions, is a violation of the great principles of our Federal Government. In the discussion of these questions, I sometimes go back to the history of the Revolution, and show that it involved the same principles when the British Government attempted to pass laws for the American colonies, without giving them a representation in Parliament. ”

“ It is our duty to have Cuba, and you cannot prevent it if you try. It is folly to debate the acquisition of Cuba. It naturally belongs to the American continent. It guards the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is the heart of the American continent and the body of the American nation. ”

“ By this specious, but sophistical argument, they have succeeded in imposing on some weak-minded men, and some old women and children, until they have educated a generation who really believe that the negro is their brother. ”