Historical voices

The real issue in this controversy--the one dressing upon every mind--is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong.

Is it not a false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that everybody does care the most about,--a thing which all experience has shown we care a very great deal…

I say where is the philosophy or the statesmanship, based on the assumption that we are to quit talking about it, and that the public mind is all at once to cease being agitated by it?

But where is the philosophy or statesmanship which assumes that you can quiet that disturbing element in our society, which has disturbed us for more than half a century, which has been the only serious danger that has threatened our…

If you will get everybody else to stop talking about it, I assure you that I will quit before they have half done so.

Is that irresistible power which for fifty years has shaken the government and agitated the people, to be stilled and subdued by pretending that it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought not to talk about it?

Is it not this same mighty, deep-seated power, that somehow operates on the minds of men, exciting and stirring them up in every avenue of society, in politics, in religion, in literature, in morals, in all the manifold relations of life?

Parties themselves may be divided and quarrel on minor questions, yet it extends not beyond the parties themselves.

There never was a party in the history of this country, and there probably never will be, of sufficient strength to disturb the general peace of the country.

You will find that every time, with the single exception of the nullification question, they sprung from an endeavour to spread this institution.

When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that…

You say it must not be opposed in the free States, because slavery is not there; it must not be opposed in the slave States, because it is there; it must not be opposed in politics, because that will make a fuss; it must not be opposed in…

If you will examine the arguments that are made on it, you will find that every one carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in slavery.

I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country contrary to me--a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, and therefore goes for the policy that does not propose dealing with it as a wrong.

While, on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the constitutional guaranties thrown around it, and would act in disregard of…

I will add this, that if there be any man who does not believe that slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in any one of them, that man is misplaced and ought to leave us.

We propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject.

We do not propose to be bound by it as a political rule in that way, because we think it lays the foundation not merely of enlarging and spreading out what we consider an evil, but it lays the foundation for spreading that evil into the…

We do not propose that when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will decide him to be free.

We insist on the policy that shall restrict it to its present limits.

We also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself.

Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong.

We think it is a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong which in its tendency, to say the least, affects the existence of the whole nation.

The Republican party think it wrong--we think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong.