Historical voices

I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong.

That controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion, and if we can learn exactly--can reduce to the lowest elements--what that difference of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the different systems…

If he decides that God wills Sambo to continue a slave, he thereby retains his own comfortable position; but if he decides that God wills Sambo to be free, he thereby has to walk out of the shade, throw off his gloves, and delve for his…

The sum of pro-slavery theology seems to be this: "Slavery is not universally right, nor yet universally wrong; it is better for some people to be slaves; and, in such cases, it is the will of God that they be such.

Give to him that is needy" is the Christian rule of charity; but "Take from him that is needy" is the rule of slavery.

Suppose it is true that the negro is inferior to the white in the gifts of nature; is it not the exact reverse of justice that the white should for that reason take from the negro any part of the little which he has had given him?

The other way is for us to surrender, and let Judge Douglas and his friends have their way, and plant slavery over all the States,--cease speaking of it as in any way a wrong--regard slavery as one of the common matters of property, and…

Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.

I say, then, there is no way of putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us, but to put it back upon the basis where our fathers placed it; no way but to keep it out of our new Territories,--to restrict it for ever to the old States…

If Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the earth's surface, this vexed question would still be among us.

To be sure, if we will all stop and allow Judge Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career until they plant the institution all over the nation, here and wherever else our flag waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be…

I will not charge upon Judge Douglas that he wilfully misrepresents me, but I call upon every fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him to point out any difference between my speeches north and south.

If I wished to refuse to give legislative support to slave property in the Territories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it, holding the view that the Constitution establishes that right.

And, although it is distasteful to me, I have sworn to support the Constitution; and, having so sworn, I cannot conceive that I do support it if I withhold from that right any necessary legislation to make it practical.

A member of Congress swears to support the Constitution of the United States, and if he sees a right established by that Constitution which needs specific legislative protection, can he clear his oath without giving that protection?

There can be nothing in the words "support the Constitution," if you may run counter to it by refusing support to any right established under the Constitution.

It takes not only law, but the enforcement of law to keep it out.

This shows that there is vigour enough in slavery to plant itself in a new country, even against unfriendly legislation.

I hold that the history of this country shows that the institution of slavery was originally planted upon this continent without these "police regulations" which the Judge now thinks necessary for the actual establishment of it.

I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new country without police regulations is historically false.

I maintain that when he says, after the Supreme Court has decided the question, that the people may yet exclude slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is not a question for the Supreme Court.

Do you think that the nature of man will be changed; that the same causes that produced agitation at one time will not have the same effect at another?

Whenever there has been an effort to spread it, there has been agitation and resistance.

All the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to spread it over more territory.