Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 3: the Lincoln-Douglas debates eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 162 pages of information about Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 3.

Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 3: the Lincoln-Douglas debates eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 162 pages of information about Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 3.

I stop the quotation there, again requesting that it may all be read.  I have read all of the portion I desire to comment upon.  What is this charge that the Judge thinks I must have a very corrupt heart to make?  It was a purpose on the part of certain high functionaries to make it impossible for the people of one State to prohibit the people of any other State from entering it with their “property,” so called, and making it a slave State.  In other words, it was a charge implying a design to make the institution of slavery national.  And now I ask your attention to what Judge Douglas has himself done here.  I know he made that part of the speech as a reason why he had refused to vote for a certain man for public printer; but when we get at it, the charge itself is the very one I made against him, that he thinks I am so corrupt for uttering.  Now, whom does he make that charge against?  Does he make it against that newspaper editor merely?  No; he says it is identical in spirit with the Lecompton Constitution, and so the framers of that Constitution are brought in with the editor of the newspaper in that “fatal blow being struck.”  He did not call it a “conspiracy.”  In his language, it is a “fatal blow being struck.”  And if the words carry the meaning better when changed from a “conspiracy” into a “fatal blow being struck,” I will change my expression, and call it “fatal blow being struck.”  We see the charge made not merely against the editor of the Union, but all the framers of the Lecompton Constitution; and not only so, but the article was an authoritative article.  By whose authority?  Is there any question but he means it was by the authority of the President and his Cabinet,—­the Administration?

Is there any sort of question but he means to make that charge?  Then there are the editors of the Union, the framers of the Lecompton Constitution, the President of the United States and his Cabinet, and all the supporters of the Lecompton Constitution, in Congress and out of Congress, who are all involved in this “fatal blow being struck.”  I commend to Judge Douglas’s consideration the question of how corrupt a man’s heart must be to make such a charge!

Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the subject, in the little time I have left, to which to call your attention; and as I shall come to a close at the end of that branch, it is probable that I shall not occupy quite all the time allotted to me.  Although on these questions I would like to talk twice as long as I have, I could not enter upon another head and discuss it properly without running over my time.  I ask the attention of the people here assembled and elsewhere to the course that Judge Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of making slavery national.  Not going back to the records, but taking the speeches he makes, the speeches he made yesterday and day before, and makes constantly all over the country, I ask your attention to them. 

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Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 3: the Lincoln-Douglas debates from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.