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Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas. 1897.

Page 452

 
out by the millions of men who will come thereafter; that it is one of those little things that is so trivial in its nature that it has no effect upon anybody save the few men who first plant upon the soil; that it is not a thing which in any way affects the family of communities composing these States, nor any way endangers the General Government. Judge Douglas ignores altogether the very well known fact, that we have never had a serious menace to our political existence, except it sprang from this thing, which he chooses to regard as only upon a par with onions and potatoes.  20
  Turn it, and contemplate it in another view. He says that, according to his Popular Sovereignty, the General Government may give to the Territories governors, judges, marshals, secretaries, and all the other chief men to govern them, but they must not touch upon this other question. Why? The question of who shall be governor of a Territory for a year or two, and pass away, without his track being left upon the soil, or an act which he did for good or for evil being left behind, is a question of vast national magnitude; it is so much opposed in its nature to locality that the nation itself must decide it: while this other matter of planting slavery upon a soil,—a thing which, once planted, cannot be eradicated by the succeeding millions who have as much right there as the first comers, or, if eradicated, not without infinite difficulty and a long struggle,—he considers the power to prohibit it as one of these little local trivial things that the nation ought not to say a word about; that it affects nobody save the few men who are there.  21
  Take these two things and consider them together, present the question of planting a State with the institution of slavery by the side of a question of who shall be Governor of Kansas for a year or two, and is there a man here,—is there a man on earth,—who would not say the Governor question is the little one? and the slavery question is the great one? I ask any honest Democrat if the small, the local, the trivial and temporary question is not, Who shall be Governor? While the durable, the important, and the mischievous one is, Shall this soil be planted with slavery?  22
  This is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in Judge Douglas’s mind from his peculiar structure. I suppose the institution