I am fighting it upon these "original principles"--fighting it in the Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, Madisonian fashion....

In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything.

With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.

Consequently he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.

To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by his example and vast influence, doing that very thing in this community when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declaration of Independence.

Judge Douglas is going back to the era of our Revolution, and, to the extent of his ability, muzzling the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return.

When he invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is blowing out the moral lights around us.

When he says he "cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up,"--that it is a sacred right of self-government,--he is, in my judgment, penetrating the human soul and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this…

The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

Still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black.

I have said that I do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men were created equal in all respects.

I have again and again said that I would not enter into any one of the States to disturb the institution of slavery.

All I ask for the negro is, that if you do not like him, let him alone.

If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

It was my purpose and expectation that this canvass would be conducted upon principle, and with fairness on both sides, and it shall not be my fault if this purpose and expectation shall be given up.

So I hope those with whom I am surrounded have principle enough to nerve themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can fairly be done to bring about the right result.

I planted myself upon the truth and the truth only, so far as I knew it, or could be brought to know it.

In pointing out that more has been given you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given him.

We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone.

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.

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…

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

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.

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?