Historical voices

We had slaves among us; we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery; we could not secure the good we did secure, if we grasped for more; but, having by necessity submitted to that much, it does not…

If that Declaration is not the truth, let us get the statute-book in which we find it, and tear it out!

If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

I should like to know--taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal, upon principle, and making exceptions to it--where will it stop?

You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people,--not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.

They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world.

Now, I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform…

That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

My understanding is, that I need not have her for either; but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby.

I protest, now and for ever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that, because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife.

If Republican men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they had better not do it; but I think the Republican party is made up of those who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose the extension of slavery, and who will…

Plainly, you stand ready saddled, bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven over to the slavery-extension camp of the nation,--just ready to be driven over, tied together in a lot,--to be driven over, every man with a rope around…

Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made; and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.

But I am doing no such thing as that; all that I am doing is refusing to obey it as a political rule.

But for the thing itself I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency in advocating it.

I have said very many times in Judge Douglas's hearing that no man believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies at the bottom of all my ideas of just government from beginning to end.

I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States, to enter into the slave States and interfere with the question…

What were they but a clear indication that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that institution?

The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led the people to believe so, and that such was the belief of the framers of the Constitution itself.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any Abolitionist,--I have been an old-line Whig,--I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska bill began.

I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

I said that "we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not…

Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it; but sooner or later the victory is sure to come.