...  The fraud having been apparently successful upon that occasion, both Harris and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to put it to new uses.  As the fisherman’s wife, whose drowned husband was brought home with his body full of eels, said, when she was asked what was to be done with him, ‘Take out the eels and set him again,’ so Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris’s election, and set the fraud again, more than once....  And now that it has been discovered publicly to be a fraud, we find that Judge Douglas manifests no surprise at all....  But meanwhile the three are agreed that each is a most honourable man.

Notes for Speeches.  October 1858

Suppose it is true that the negro is inferior to the white in the gifts of nature; is it not the exact reverse of justice that the white should for that reason take from the negro any part of the little which he has had given him?  “Give to him that is needy” is the Christian rule of charity; but “Take from him that is needy” is the rule of slavery.

The sum of pro-slavery theology seems to be this:  “Slavery is not universally right, nor yet universally wrong; it is better for some people to be slaves; and, in such cases, it is the will of God that they be such.”

Certainly there is no contending against the will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining and applying it to particular cases.  For instance, we will suppose the Rev. Dr. Ross has a slave named Sambo, and the question is, “Is it the will of God that Sambo shall remain a slave, or be set free?” The Almighty gives no audible answer to the question, and his revelation, the Bible, gives none—­or at most none but such as admits of a squabble as to its meaning; no one thinks of asking Sambo’s opinion on it.  So at last it comes to this, that Dr. Ross is to decide the question; and while he considers it, he sits in the shade, with gloves on his hands, and subsists on the bread that Sambo is earning in the burning sun.  If he decides that God wills Sambo to continue a slave, he thereby retains his own comfortable position; but if he decides that God wills Sambo to be free, he thereby has to walk out of the shade, throw off his gloves, and delve for his own bread.  Will Dr. Ross be actuated by the perfect impartiality which has ever been considered most favourable to correct decisions?

We have in this nation the element of domestic slavery.  It is a matter of absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element.  It is the opinion of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is a dangerous element.  We keep up a controversy in regard to it.  That controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion, and if we can learn exactly—­can reduce to the lowest elements—­what that difference of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the different systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that disturbing element.