Speech at Meredosia, Illinois1Jump to section
On Monday night last he addressed a small meeting at Meredosia. His object was to convert two or three Germans at that place to the republican faith. To effect this object, we are informed he took for his text the Declaration of Independence and labored for an hour to prove by that instrument that the negro was born with rights equal with the whites; thus by implication assailing the Constitution of the United States, which protects the institution of negro servitude in the slave states.
In the course of his speech he remarked that, while at Naples on the preceding2Jump to section day he had noticed about a dozen Irishmen on the levee, and it had occurred to him that those Irishmen had been imported expressly to vote him down.
Doubtless Mr. Lincoln entertains a holy horror of all Irishmen and other adopted citizens who have sufficient self-respect to believe themselves superior to the negro. What right have adopted citizens to vote Mr. Lincoln and his negro equality doctrines down? He would doubtless disfranchise every one of them if he had the power. His reference to the danger of his being voted down by foreigners, was a cue to his followers, similar in character to the intimation