Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas. 1897.
Page 484
| and to give it up with him. In this again he serves you faithfully, and, as I say, more wisely than you serve yourselves. | 45 |
| Again: I have alluded in the beginning of these remarks to the fact, that Judge Douglas has made great complaint of my having expressed the opinion that this Government “cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.” He has complained of Seward for using different language, and declaring that there is an “irrepressible conflict” between the principles of free and slave labor. [A voice: He says it is not original with Seward. That is original with Lincoln.] I will attend to that immediately, sir. Since that time, Hickman of Pennsylvania expressed the same sentiment. He has never denounced Mr. Hickman: why? There is a little chance, notwithstanding that opinion in the mouth of Hickman, that he may yet be a Douglas man. That is the difference! It is not unpatriotic to hold that opinion if a man is a Douglas man. | 46 |
| But neither I, nor Seward, nor Hickman, is entitled to the enviable or unenviable distinction of having first expressed that idea. That same idea was expressed by the Richmond Enquirer in Virginia, in 1856,—quite two years before it was expressed by the first of us. And while Douglas was pluming himself that in his conflict with my humble self, last year, he had “squelched” out that fatal heresy, as he delighted to call it, and had suggested that if he only had had a chance to be in New York and meet Seward he would have “squelched” it there also, it never occurred to him to breathe a word against Pryor. I don’t think that you can discover that Douglas ever talked of going to Virginia to “squelch” out that idea there. No. More than that. That same Roger A. Pryor was brought to Washington City and made the editor of the par excellence Douglas paper, after making use of that expression, which, in us, is so unpatriotic and heretical. From all this, my Kentucky friends may see that this opinion is heretical in his view only when it is expressed by men suspected of a desire that the country shall all become free, and not when expressed by those fairly known to entertain the desire that the whole country shall become slave. When expressed by that class of men, it is in nowise offensive to him. In this again, my friends of Kentucky, you have Judge Douglas with you. | 47 |