...  In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we cancel and tear to pieces even the white man’s charter of freedom....  If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution.  My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia—­to their own native land.  But, if they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days.  What then?  Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings?  Is it quite certain that this betters their condition?  I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon.  What next?  Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?  My own feelings will not admit of this; and, if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.  A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.  We cannot then make them equals.  It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but, for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

Our Republican robe is soiled—­trailed in the dust.  Let us repurify it.  Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution.  Let us turn slavery from its claims of ’moral right,’ back upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of ‘necessity.’  Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace.  Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it.  Let North and South—­let all Americans—­let all lovers of liberty everywhere—­join in the great and good work.  If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving.  We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free and happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest generations.

It was in one of these speeches that Lincoln’s power of repartee was admirably illustrated by a most laughable retort made by him to Douglas.  Mr. Ralph E. Hoyt, who was present, says:  “In the course of his speech, Mr. Douglas had said, ‘The Whigs are all dead.’  For some time before speaking, Lincoln sat on the platform with only his homely face visible to the audience above the high desk before him.  On being introduced, he arose from his chair and proceeded to straighten himself up.  For a few seconds I wondered when and where his head would cease its ascent; but at last it did stop, and ‘Honest Old Abe’ stood before us.  He commenced, ’Fellow-citizens:  My friend, Mr. Douglas, made the startling announcement to-day that the Whigs are all dead.  If this be so, fellow-citizens, you will now experience the novelty of hearing a speech from a dead man; and I suppose you might properly say, in the language of the old hymn: