Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas. 1897.
Page 115
| The plain truth is simply this: Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes, and against them when he does not like, them. He is for the Dred Scott decision because it tends to nationalize slavery; because it is part of the original combination for that object. It so happens, singularly enough, that I never stood opposed to a decision of the Supreme Court till this. On the contrary, I have no recollection that he was ever particularly in favor of one till this. He never was in favor of any, nor opposed to any, till the present one, which helps to nationalize slavery. | 41 |
| Free men of Sangamon—free men of Illinois—free men everywhere—judge ye between him and me upon this issue. | 42 |
| He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,—that it has no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended upon it, and so would Judge Douglas if his liberty depended upon it. But suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the new Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract matter, and one of no practical importance. How has the planting of slavery in new countries always been effected? It has now been decided that slavery cannot be kept out of our new Territories by any legal means. In what do our new Territories now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when slavery was first planted within them? It was planted as Mr. Clay once declared, and as history proves true, by individual men in spite of the wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to prohibit it, and withholding from the people of the Colonies the authority to prohibit it for themselves. Mr. Clay says this was one of the great and just causes of complaint against Great Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology we can now make for having the institution among us. In that precise condition our Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our own new Territories; the Government will not prohibit slavery within them, nor allow the people to prohibit it. | 43 |
| I defy any man to find any difference between the policy which originally planted slavery in these Colonies and that policy | |