It was made by white men, for the benefits of white men, to be administered by white men in such manner as they should determine.
Let each State decide for itself how it would treat the negroes and let its neighbors alone.
"The issues between Mr. Lincoln and myself," he said, "are made up, * * * *. He goes for uniformity in our domestic institutions, for a war of sections, until one or the other shall be subdued. Igo for * * * the right of the people to decide for themselves. On the other hand Mr. Lincoln goes for a warfare on the Supreme Court.
* * * * I yield obedience to the decisions of that Court. * * ** I am opposed to negro equality. I repeat that this nation is a white people, * * * * a people that have established this Government for themselves and their posterity. * * * * I am opposed to taking any step that recognizes the negro man * * * as the equal of the white man. I am opposed to giving him a voice in the administration of the Government."The reception was recognized by the politicians of both parties as a great success. It was a brilliant opening of the senatorial campaign. The Republicans were anxious to counteract it. On the following evening Lincoln spoke at the same place. He had a large and enthusiastic audience. But he was not an impromptu orator at all comparable to Douglas. While his carefully prepared Springfield speech was decidedly better than Douglas' dashing address in Chicago, his unprepared speech was by no means equal to it. The marked disparity between the two speeches must have intensified the suspicion among Lincoln's friends that he was no match for his rival on the stump.
On the 16th of July Douglas again spoke to a vast multitude at Bloomington. He made an artful appeal for the Whig vote by a well turned compliment to "Kentucky's great and gallant statesman, John J. Crittenden," who proposed to refer the whole question back to the people of Kansas and thus "showed himself a worthy successor of the immortal Clay." The Republicans had "endorsed the great principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill," they had "come to the Douglas platform in supporting the Crittenden-Montgomery bill." The compromise of 1850 embodied the principle that every people ought to have the privilege of forming and regulating their own institutions to suit themselves. Each State had that right and no reason existed why it should not be extended to the Territories. The Illinois House of Representatives by an almost unanimous vote had asserted that the principle embodied in the measures of 1850 was the birth-right of free men, the gift of heaven, a principle vindicated by our Revolutionary fathers, that no limitation should ever be placed upon it either in the organization of a territorial government or the admission of a State into the Union. In conformity with that principle he had brought in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, for which Lincoln and his friends were seeking his defeat.
"I have known Lincoln well," he said, "for a quarter of a century.
I have known him as you all know him, a kind-hearted, amiable gentleman, a right good fellow, a worthy citizen, of eminent ability as a lawyer, and, I have no doubt, sufficient ability to make a good Senator."He examined Lincoln's "house divided-against-itself" philosophy, pointing out that the house had been divided for nearly seventy years and still stood.
"How is Lincoln, if elected Senator, going to carry out that principle which he says is essential to the existence of this Union; that slavery must be abolished in all the States, or must be established in all? * * * * He invites, by his proposition, a war between Illinois and Kentucky, a war between the free States and the slave States, a war between the North and the South, for the purpose of either exterminating slavery in every Southern State, or planting it in every Northern State. * * * * * What man in Illinois would not lose the last drop if his heart's blood before he would submit to the institution of slavery being forced upon us by the other States against our will? * * * What Southern man would not shed the last drop of his heart's blood to prevent Illinois or any other Northern State from interfering to abolish slavery in his State? ** * * I am opposed to organizing a sectional party which appeals to Northern pride and Northern passion and prejudice against Southern institutions, thus stirring up ill feeling and hot blood between brethren of the same Republic. * * * * How is he to carry out his principles when he gets to the Senate? Does he intend to introduce a bill to abolish slavery in Kentucky? Does he intend to introduce a bill to interfere with slavery in Virginia? How is he to accomplish what he professes must be done to save the Union?
"There would be but one way to carry out his ideas. That would be to establish a consolidated empire as destructive to the liberties of the people and the rights of the citizen as that of Austria or Russia or any other despotism that rests upon the necks of the people * * * *. Who among you expects to live or have his children live until slavery shall be established in Illinois or abolished in South Carolina? * * * * There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished and that is by leaving a State * * ** perfectly free to form and regulate its institutions in its own way. That was the principle upon which this Republic was founded.
