LINCOLN’S OHIO SPEECHES
When Lincoln, in opening the Senatorial campaign of
Illinois, declared that the Republican cause must
be intrusted to its own undoubted friends “who
do care for the result,” he displayed a much
better understanding of the character and aims of
his opponent than those who, not so well informed,
desired the adoption of a different course. Had
the wishes of Greeley and others prevailed, had Douglas
been adopted by the Illinois Republicans, the party
would have found itself in a fatal dilemma, No sooner
was the campaign closed than Douglas, having entered
on his tour through the South, began making speeches,
apparently designed to pave his way to a nomination
for President by the next Democratic National Convention.
Realizing that he had lost ground by his anti-Lecomptonism,
and especially by his Freeport doctrine, and having
felt in the late campaign the hostility of the Buchanan
Administration, he now sought to recover prestige by
publishing more advanced opinions indirectly sustaining
and defending slavery.
Hitherto he had declared he did not care whether slavery
was voted down or voted up. He had said he would
not argue the question whether slavery was right or
wrong. He had adopted Taney’s assertion
that the negro had no share in the Declaration of
Independence. He had asserted that uniformity
was impossible, but that freedom and slavery might
abide together forever. But now that the election
was over and a new term in the Senate secure, he was
ready to conciliate pro-slavery opinion with stronger
expressions. Hence, in a speech at Memphis, he
cunningly linked together in argument unfriendly legislation,
slavery, and annexation. He said: “Whenever
a Territory has a climate, soil, and production making
it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave
property, they will pass a slave code.”
Wherever these preclude the possibility of slavery
being profitable, they will not permit it. On
the sugar plantations of Louisiana it was not a question
between the white man and the negro, but between the
negro and the crocodile. He would say that between
the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of the
negro; but between the negro and the white man, he
would go for the white man. The Almighty has drawn
the line on this continent, on the one side of which
the soil must be cultivated by slave labor; on the
other by white labor. That line did not run on
36 and 30’ [the Missouri Compromise line], for
36 and 30’ runs over mountains and through valleys.
But this slave line, he said, meanders in the sugar-fields
and plantations of the South, and the people living
in their different localities and in the Territories
must determine for themselves whether their “middle
bed” is best adapted to slavery or free labor.
[Sidenote] Douglas, Memphis Speech, Nov.
29, 1858. Memphis “Eagle
and Enquirer.”
