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LINCOLN SPEAKS
Lincoln rose slowly and spoke quietly. " I assure Judge Douglas that I too have been in New England, which has been mentioned. I have been those cotton mills and the workers on their way home through the darkness. In those mills cotton picked by black slaves is made into cloth by white people, who are separated from slaves by no more than fifty cents a day. As an American, I can not be proud that such conditions exist.
But - as an American - I can ask: would any of those striking workers in the North want to change places with the slaves in the South? Also as an American, I can say - thank Got! we live under a system by which men have the right to strike! I am not stirring up the people to rebel. I dont have to. This country belongs to the people who live in it. When they are not satisfied with their government, they can exercise their right to change it.If the fathers of our country gave us anything, they gave us that.
I am not advising lack of respect for the Supreme Court. I am only saying that the decisions of human beings are often wrong. And Supreme Court is made up of human beings, most of whom come from the privileged class in the South. As a nation, we begin by declaring that all men are created equal. Does Judge Douglas mean to say that all men were created equal except negroes?
If we accept this decision, what is there to stop us from declaring in the future that all men were created equal except negroes, foreigners, people not of our religion, or just poor people? Those who are in favor of slavery are driving us to that conclusion. The virtues at the base of our democracy, which have made us great and which can make us greater, are now in danger, not only because of those who honestly believe in slavery, but even more by those who repeat the cry of Judge Douglas - 'Leave it alone!'
This is the policy of turning back on evil and that policy I hate. I hate it because of the injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our good faith. I hate it because it forces many good men among ourselves into an open war with the foundation of civil liberty. In his final words tonight, the Judge said, 'we shall be the terror of the world.' I don't think we want to be the terror of the world. I think we would prefer to be the light of the world. But we shall not be such a light, unless we can show the world that we can live and grow as a nation.
And we shall surely do neither if these states fail to remain united. There can be no difference in the meaning of liberty for one section and another, one race and another, one class and another. A house divided against itself can not stand. This government can not endure, half slave and half free!"
The election on November 2 was close. The Republican polled 125,430 votes for their state ticket against 121,609 for the Douglas Democrats. But the Democrats won a majority of members of legislature, which at that time elected United States senators. Douglas' victory was confirmed on January 5, 1859. Lincoln was defeated, but the debates attracted the attention of the country; and in 1860 he was nominated by the Republican party a candidate for the President.
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