The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

STATE PAPERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

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and J"Edgc Douglas evidently is basing his cliief hope upon the chances of
lhis being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himnself. If he
can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea
upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. Iie
therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning main to the last plank. He
nakes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the l)red Scott
decision. He finds the Republicans insisting tlhat the )cclalration of
Inpependence includes ALL men, black as well as white, and fortlhwith lhe
boldly denies tlhat it includes negroes at all, and p)roceces to argue gravely
that all who contend that it does, do so only because tlhey want to vote,
eat and sleep, and marry with negroes! I e will have it that tlhey cannot
be consistent else. Now, I prot-ct against the counterfeit logic w'hich
concludes that, because T J, not want a black woman for a slave, I must.
necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for eitlher. I can
just leave her alone. In some respects, slie certainly is not my equal;
but in her natural righlt to eat tlhe bread she earns with he.r owl lai:n i:ds,
without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and tlhe cqual of
all others.
We have thus presented the leading points in these
two speeches, because the discussion was tlih prelude to
the famous Senatorial contest of 1858, which gave Mr.
Lincoln a national reputation, not only as an able debater
and eloquent orator, but as a sagacious and wise politician-wise enough to stand inflexibly by principles of
the soundness of which he was himself satisfied, even
against the judgment of earnest friends.
On the 4th of March, 1857, Mr. Buchanan had taken
his seat in the Presidential chair. The struggle between
freedom and slavery for the possession of Kansas was at
its height. A few days after his inauguration, the Supreme Court rendered the Dred Scott dec(ision, which was
thought by the friends of slavery to insure their victory,
by its holding the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional, because the Constitution its(elf carri' d slavery all
over the Territories of the United States. In spite of this
decision, the friends of freedom in Kansas maintained
their ground. The slaveholders, however, pushed forward their schemes, and in November, 1857, their Constitutional Convention, held at Lecompton, adopted the
Lecompton Constitution. The trick by which they subumitted to the popular vote only a schedule on the slavery
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