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dents drawn from that source were equal. If we resort to the States the expressions of legislative, judicial and executive opinions against the bank have been probably to those in its favor as four to one. There is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me.'

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I drop the quotations merely to remark, that all there ever was, in the way of precedent, up to the Dred Scott decision, on the points therein decided, had been against that decision. But hear General Jackson further:

"If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive and the Court, must each for itself be guided by its own opin ion of the Constitution. Each public officer, who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others."

Again and again have I heard Judge Douglas denounce that bank decision, and applaud General Jackson for disregarding it. It would be interesting for him to look over his recent speech, and see how exactly his fierce philippics against us for resisting Supreme Court decisions, fall upon his own head. It will call to mind a long and fierce political war in this country, upon an issue which, in his own language, and, of course, in his own changeless estimation, was a distinct issue between the friends and the enemies of the Constitution," and in which war he fought in the ranks of the enemies of the Constitution.

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I have said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was, in part, based on assumed historical facts which were not really true, and I ought not to leave the subject without giving some reasons for saying this: I, therefore, give an instance or two, which I think fully sustains me. Chief Justice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the majority of the Court, insists at great length, that negroes were no part of the people who made, or for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States.

On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows that in five of the then thirteen States, to-wit: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina, free negroes were voters, and, in proportion to their numbers, had the same part in making the Constitution that the white people had. He shows this with so much particularity as to leave no doubt of its truth, and as a sort of conclusion on that point, holds the following language:

"The Constitution was ordained and established by the

people of the United States, through the action, in each State, of those persons who were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf of themselves and all other citizens of the State, In some of the States, as we have seen, colored persons were among those qualified by law to act on the subject. These colored persons were not only included in the body of the people of the United States,' by whom the Constitution was ordained and established; but in at least five of the States they had the power to act, and, doubtless, did act, by their suffrages, upon the question of its adoption."

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Again, Chief Justice Taney says: "It is difficult, at this day, to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted." And again, after quoting from the Declaration, he says: "The general words above quoted would seem to include the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day, would be so understood."

In these the Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes, as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This assumption is a mistake. In some trifling particulars, the condition of that race has been ameliorated; but, as a whole, in this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the other way; and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years. In two of the five States-New Jersey and North Carolina-that then gave the free negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away; and in the third -New York-it has been greatly abridged; while it has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional State, though the number of the States has more than doubled. In those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then such legal restraints have been made upon emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days Legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State Constitutions to withhold that power from the Legislatures. In those days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to the new countries was prohibited; but now, Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibitionand the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would. In those days our Declaration of Independence was held

sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him; ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison-house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is.

It is grossly incorrect to say or assume, that the public estimate of the negro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of the Government.

Three years and a half ago Judge Douglas brought forward his famous Nebraska bill. The country was at once in a blaze. He scorned all opposition, and carried it through Congress. Since then he has seen himself superseded in a Presidential nomination, by one indorsing the general doctrine of his measure, but at the same time standing clear of the odium of its untimely agitation, and its gross breach of national faith; and he has seen that successful rival constitutionally elected, not by the strength of friends, but by the division of his adversaries, being in a popular minority of nearly four hundred thousand votes. He has seen his chief aids in his own State, Shields and Richardson, politically speaking, successively tried, convicted, and executed, for an offense not their own, but his. And now he sees his own case, standing next on the docket for trial.

There is a natural disgust, in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope upon the chances of his being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He, therefore, clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the

Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence
includes ALL men, black as well as white, and forthwith he
boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to
argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because
they want to vote, eat and sleep, and marry with negroes! He
will have it that they can not be consistent else. Now, I pro-
test against the counterfeit logic which concludes that, because
I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily
want her for a wife. I need not have her for either.
I can
just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my
equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with
her own hands, without asking leave of any one else, she is my
equal, and the equal of all others.

Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole human family; but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did not at once actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now, this grave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact, that they did not at once, or ever afterward, actually place all white people on an equality with one another. And this is the staple argument of both the Chief Justice and the Senator for doing this obvious violence to the plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created equal-equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

Mr. Lincoln, in conclusion, pointed out in a clear and forcible manner the real distinction between his own views and those of Mr. Douglas on this question, as he has done in other speeches.

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CHAPTER XI.

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS CAMPAIGN OF 1858.

The Lecompton Struggle.--The Policy of Douglas Changed.-He Breaks with the Administration and Loses Caste at the South.Republican Sympathies.-Douglas Falters, but Opposes the English Bill.-Passage of that Measure.-Democratic State Convention of Illinois. Douglas İndorsed, and Efforts for his Re-Election Commenced. The Democratic Bolt.-Meeting of the Republican State Convention in June.-Mr. Lincoln named as the First and Only Choice of the Republicans for Senator.-His Great Speech Before the Convention at Springfield.-Douglas and Lincoln at Chicago.Speeches at Bloomington and Springfield.—Unfairness of the Apportionment Pointed out by Mr. Lincoln.-He Analyzes the Douglas Programme.-Seven Joint Debates.-Douglas Produces a Bogus Platform, and Propounds Interrogatories." Unfriendly Legislation."--Lincoln Fully Defines his Position on the Slavery Question.Result of the Canvass.-The People for Lincoln, the Apportionment for Douglas.-Public Opinion.

THE Lecompton Convention did its work according to the programme laid down at Washington. It adopted the Constitution desired, and probably devised, at the national capital, with the design of forcing slavery upon an unwilling people. One of the chief instruments in the execution of this work, so far as it could be consummated at Lecompton, was John Calhoun, an Illinois politician. The act under which that Convention was assembled, had received an unreserved and complete indorsement from Douglas, as "fair and just." He was emphatically committed in advance by his Springfield speech to the action of that Convention, which exercised no powers not distinctly conferred upon it by the act thus indorsed, or not in strict accordance with what was contemplated from the first by its framers. Yet late in the autumn. of 1857, a rumor began to be circulated that Douglas was hes. itating about sustaining the Lecompton Constitution. Know

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