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

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

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…

So I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can.

If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature.

Let us, then, turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.

My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they…

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.

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

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…

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…

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…

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 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.

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.

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

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…

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.

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.

Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.

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.

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.

And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.