niggers, at least, I profess no taste for that job
at all. Why then do I yield support to a Fugitive
Slave law? Because I do not understand that the
Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be
supported without it. And if I believed that the
right to hold a slave in a Territory was equally fixed
in the Constitution with the right to reclaim fugitives,
I should be bound to give it the legislation necessary
to support it. I say that no man can deny his
obligation to give the necessary legislation to support
slavery in a Territory, who believes it is a constitutional
right to have it there. No man can, who does
not give the Abolitionists an argument to deny the
obligation enjoined by the Constitution to enact a
Fugitive State law. Try it now. It is the
strongest Abolition argument ever made. I say
if that Dred Scott decision is correct, then the right
to hold slaves in a Territory is equally a constitutional
right with the right of a slaveholder to have his
runaway returned. No one can show the distinction
between them. The one is express, so that we cannot
deny it. The other is construed to be in the
Constitution, so that he who believes the decision
to be correct believes in the right. And the man
who argues that by unfriendly legislation, in spite
of that constitutional right, slavery may be driven
from the Territories, cannot avoid furnishing an argument
by which Abolitionists may deny the obligation to return
fugitives, and claim the power to pass laws unfriendly
to the right of the slaveholder to reclaim his fugitive.
I do not know how such an arguement may strike a popular
assembly like this, but I defy anybody to go before
a body of men whose minds are educated to estimating
evidence and reasoning, and show that there is an
iota of difference between the constitutional right
to reclaim a fugitive and the constitutional right
to hold a slave, in a Territory, provided this Dred
Scott decision is correct, I defy any man to make
an argument that will justify unfriendly legislation
to deprive a slaveholder of his right to hold his
slave in a Territory, that will not equally, in all
its length, breadth, and thickness, furnish an argument
for nullifying the Fugitive Slave law. Why, there
is not such an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas,
after all! such an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas,
after all!
THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Volume Five
1858-1862
CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION
TO SYDNEY SPRING, GRAYVILLE, ILL.
Springfield, June 19, 1858.
Sydney spring, Esq.
My dear sir:—Your letter introducing Mr. Faree was duly received. There was no opening to nominate him for Superintendent of Public Instruction, but through him Egypt made a most valuable contribution to the convention. I think it may be fairly said that he came off the lion of the day—or rather of the night. Can you not elect him to the Legislature? It seems to me he would be hard to beat. What objection could be made to him? What is your Senator Martin saying and doing? What is Webb about?