negro should be denied everything. I do not understand
that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave
I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding
is that I can just let her alone. I am now in
my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a
black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it
seems to me quite possible for us to get along without
making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will
add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge,
a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing
a perfect equality, social and political, between
negroes and white men. I recollect of but one
distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently
as to be entirely satisfied of its correctness, and
that is the case of Judge Douglas’s old friend
Colonel Richard M. Johnson. I will also add to
the remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter
at large upon this subject), that I have never had
the least apprehension that I or my friends would
marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from
it; but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be
in great apprehension that they might, if there were
no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn
pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law
of this State which forbids the marrying of white
people with negroes. I will add one further word,
which is this: that I do not understand that there
is any place where an alteration of the social and
political relations of the negro and the white man
can be made, except in the State Legislature,—not
in the Congress of the United States; and as I do not
really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself,
and as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror
that some such danger is rapidly approaching, I propose
as the best means to prevent it that the Judge be
kept at home, and placed in the State Legislature to
fight the measure. I do not propose dwelling
longer at this time on this subject.
When Judge Trumbull, our other Senator in Congress,
returned to Illinois in the month of August, he made
a speech at Chicago, in which he made what may be
called a charge against Judge Douglas, which I understand
proved to be very offensive to him. The Judge
was at that time out upon one of his speaking tours
through the country, and when the news of it reached
him, as I am informed, he denounced Judge Trumbull
in rather harsh terms for having said what he did
in regard to that matter. I was traveling at
that time, and speaking at the same places with Judge
Douglas on subsequent days, and when I heard of what
Judge Trumbull had said of Douglas, and what Douglas
had said back again, I felt that I was in a position
where I could not remain entirely silent in regard
to the matter. Consequently, upon two or three
occasions I alluded to it, and alluded to it in no
other wise than to say that in regard to the charge
brought by Trumbull against Douglas, I personally knew
nothing, and sought to say nothing about it; that