favors. I have been with you but little for the past few years on account of my official duties. I intend to visit you again before the campaign is over. I wish to speak to your whole people. I wish them to pass judgment upon the correctness of my course, and the soundness of the principles which I have proclaimed. If you do not approve my principles, I cannot ask your support. If you believe that the election of Mr. Lincoln would contribute more to preserve the harmony of the country, to perpetuate the Union, and more to the prosperity and the honor and glory of the State, then it is your duty to give him the preference. If, on the contrary, you believe that I have been faithful to my trust, and that by sustaining me you will give greater strength and efficiency to the principles which I have expounded, I shall then be grateful for your support. I renew my profound thanks for your attention..

SPEECH OF SENATOR DOUGLAS,

Delivered July 17, 1858, at Springfield, Ill. (Mr. Lincoln was not present.)

MR. CHAIRMAN, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF SPRINGFIELD AND OLD SANGAMON My heart is filled with emotions at the allusions which have been so happily and so kindly made in the welcome just extended to me-a welcome so numerous and so enthusiastic, bringing me to my home among my old friends, that language cannot express my gratitude. I do feel at home whenever I return to old Sangamon and receive those kind and friendly greetings which have never failed to meet me when I have come among you; but never before have I had such occasion to be grateful and to be proud of the manner of the reception as on the present. While I am willing, sir, to attribute a part of this demonstration to those kind and friendly personal relations to which you have referred, I cannot conceal from myself that the controlling and pervading element in this great mass of human beings is devotion to that principle of self-government to which so many years of my life have been devoted; and rejoice more in considering it an approval of my support of a cardinal principle than I would if I could appropriate it to myself as a personal compliment. You but speak rightly when you assert that during the last session of Congress there was an attempt to violate one of the fundamental principles upon which our free institutions rest. The attempt to force the Lecompton Constitution upon the people of Kansas against their will, would have been, if successful, subversive of the great fundamental principles upon which all our institutions rest. If there is any one principle more sacred and more vital to the existence of a free government than all others, it is the right of the people to form and ratify the Constitution under which they are to live. It is the corner-stone of the temple of liberty, it is the foundation upon which the whole structure rests, and whenever it can be successfully evaded self-government has received a vital stab. I deemed it my duty, as a citizen and as a representative of the State of Illinois, to resist, with all my energies and with whatever of ability I could command, the consummation of that effort to force a Constitution upon an unwilling people.

I am aware that other questions have been connected, or attempted to be connected, with that great struggle, but they were mere collateral questions, not affecting the main point. My opposition to the Lecompton Constitution rested solely upon the fact that it was not the act and deed of that people, and that it did not embody their will. I did not object to it upon the ground of the slavery clause contained in it. I should have resisted it with the same energy and determination even if it had

been a free State instead of a slaveholding State; and as an evidence of this fact I wish you to bear in mind that my speech against that Lecompton act was made on the 9th day of December, nearly two weeks before the vote was taken on the acceptance or rejection of the slavery clause. I did not then know, I could not have known, whether the slavery clause would be accepted or rejected; the general impression was that it would be rejected, and in my speech I assumed that impression to be true; that probably it would be voted down; and then I said to the U. S. Senate, as I now proclaim to you, my constituents, that you have no more right to force a free State upon an unwilling people than you have to force a slave State upon them against their will. You have no right to force either a good or a bad thing upon a people who do not choose to receive it. And then, again, the highest privilege of our people is to determine for themselves what kind of institu tions are good and what kind of institutions are bad, and it may be true that the same people, situated in a different latitude and different climate, and with different productions and different interests, might decide the same question one way in the North and another way in the South, in order to adapt their institutions to the wants! and wishes of the people to be affected by them.

You all are familiar with the Lecompton struggle, and I will occupy no more time upon the subject, except to remark that when we drove the enemies of the principle of popular sovereignty from the effort to force the Lecompton Constitution upon the people of Kansas, and when we compelled them to abandon the attempt and to refer that Constitution to that people for acceptance or rejection, we obtained a concession of the principle for which I had contended throughout the struggle. When I saw that the principle was conceded, and that the Constitution was not to be forced on Kansas against the wishes of the people, I felt anxious to give the proposition my support; but, when I examined it, I found that the mode of reference to the people and the form of submission, upon which the vote was taken, was so objectionable as to make it unfair and unjust.

Sir, it is an axiom with me that in every free government an unfair election is no election at all. Every election should be free, should be fair, with the same privileges and the same inducements for a negative as for an affirmative vote. The objection to what is called the "English" proposition, by which the Lecompton Constitution was referred back to the people of Kansas, was this, that if the people chose to accept the Lecompton Constitution they could come in with only 35,000 inhabitants, while if they determined to reject it in order to form another more in accordance with their wishes and sentiments, they were compelled to stay out until they should have 93,420 inhabitants. In other words, it was making a distinction and discrimination between free States and slave States under the Federal Constitution. I deny the justice, I deny the right, of any distinction or discrimination between the States North and South, free or slave. Equality among the States is a fundamental principle. of this government. Hence, while I will never consent to the passage of a law that a slave State may come in with 35,000, while a free State shall not come in unless it have 93,000, on the other hand, I shall not consent to admit a free State with a population of 35,000, and require 93,000 in a slaveholding State.

My principle is to recognize each State of the Union as independent, sovereign and equal in its sovereignty. I will apply that principle not only to the original thirteen States, but to the States which have since been brought into the Union, and also to every State that shall hereafter be received, "as long as water shall run and grass grow." For these reasons I felt compelled, by a sense of duty, by a conviction of principle, to record my vote against what is called the English bill; but yet the bill became a law, and under that law an election has been ordered to be held on the first Monday in August for the purpose of determining the question of the acceptance or rejection of the proposition submitted by Congress. I have no hesitation in saying to you, as the chairman of your committee has justly said in his address, that whatever the decision of the people of Kansas may be at that election, it must be final and conclusive of the whole subject; for if at that

election a majority of the people of Kansas shall vote for the acceptance of the Congressional proposition, Kansas from that moment becomes a State of the Union, the law admitting her becomes irrepealable, and thus the controversy terminates forever; if, on the other hand, the people of Kansas shall vote down that proposition, as it is now generally admitted they will, by a large majority, then from that instant the Lecompton Constitution is dead, dead beyond the power of resurrection, and thus the controversy terminates. And when the monster shall die I shall be willing, and trust that all of you will be willing, to acquiesce in the death of the Lecompton Constitution. The controversy may now be considered as terininated, for in three weeks from now it will be finally settled, and all the ill-feeling, all the embittered feeling which grew out of it shall cease, unless an attempt should be made in the future to repeat the same outrage upon popular rights. I need not tell you that my past course is a sufficient guarantee that if the occasion shall ever arise again while I occupy a seat in the United States Senate, you will find me carrying out the same principle that I have this winter, with all the energy and all the power I may be able to command. I have the gratification of saying to you that I do not believe that that controversy will ever arise again; first, because the fate of Lecompton is a warning to the people of every Territory and of every State to be cautious how the example is repeated; and secondly, because the President of the United States, in his annual message, has said that he trusts the example in the Minnesota case, wherein Congress passed a law, called an enabling act, requiring the Constitution to be submitted to the people for acceptance or rejection, will be followed in all future cases. [“That was right."] I agree with you that it was right. I said so on the day after the message was delivered, in my speech in the Senate on the Lecompton Constitution, and I have frequently in the debate tendered to the President and his friends, tendered to the Lecomptonites, my voluntary pledge that if he will stand by that recommendation, and they will stand by it, that they will find me working hand in hand with them in the effort to carry it out. All we have to do, therefore, is to adhere firmly in the future, as we have done in the past, to the principle contained in the recommendation of the President in his annual message, that the example in the Minnesota case shall be carried out in all future cases of the admission of Territories into the Union as States. Let that be done and the principle of popular sovereignty will be maintained in all of its vigor and all of its integrity. I rejoice to know that Illinois stands prominently and proudly forward among the States which first took their position firmly and immovably upon this principle of popular sovereignty, applied to the Territories as well as to the States. You all recollect when in 1850 the peace of the country was disturbed in consequence of the agitation of the slavery question, and the effort to force the Wilmot Proviso upon all the Territories, that it required all the talent and all the energy, all the wisdom, all the patriotism, of a Clay and a Webster, united with other great party leaders, to devise a system of measures by which peace and harmony could be restored to our distracted country. Those compromise measures eventually passed and were recorded on the statute book, not only as the settlement of the then existing difficulties, but as furnishing a rule of action which should prevent in all future time the recurrence of like evils, if they were firmly and fairly carried out. Those compromise measures rested, as I said in my speech at Chicago, on my return home that year, upon the principle that every peoplo ought to have the right to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution. They were founded upon the principle that, while every State possessed that right under the Constitution, that the same right ought to be extended to and exercised by the people of the Territories. When the Illinois Legislature assembled, a few months after the adoption of these measures, the first thing the members did was to review their action upon this slavery agitation, and to correct the errors into which their predecessors had fallen. You remember that their first act was to repeal the Wilmot Proviso instructions to our U. S. Senators, which had been previously passed, and in lieu of them to record an

other resolution upon the journal, with which you must all be familiar-a resolution brought forward by Mr. Ninian Edwards, and adopted by the House of Representa tives by a vote of 61 in the affirmative to 4 in the negative. That resolution I can quote to you in almost its precise language. It declared that the great principle of self-government was the birthright of freemen; was the gift of heaven; was achieved by the blood of our revolutionary fathers, and must be continued and carried out in the organization of all the Territories and the admission of all new States. That became the Illinois platform by the united voices of the Democratic party and of the Whig party in 1851; all the Whigs and all the Democrats in the Legislature uniting in an affirmative vote upon it, and there being only 4 votes in the negative, of Abolitionists, of course, that resolution stands upon the journal of your Legislature to this day and hour unrepealed, as a standing, living, perpetual instruction to the Senators from Illinois in all time to come to carry out that principle of self-government and allow no limitation upon it in the organization of any Territories or the admission of any new States. In 1854, when it became my duty as the chairman of the committee on Territories to bring forward a bill for the organization of Kansas and Nebraska, I incorporated that principle in it and Congress passed it, thus carrying the principle into practical effect. I will not recur to the scenes which took place all over the country in 1854 when that Nebraska bill passed. I could then travel from Boston to Chicago by the light of my own effigies, in consequence of having stood up for it. I leave it to you to say how I met that storm, and whether I quailed under it; whether I did not "face the music," justify the principle, and pledge my life to carry it out.

A friend here reminds me, too, that when making speeches then, justifying the Nebraska bill and the great principle of self-government, that I predicted that in less than five years you would have to get out a search warrant to find an anti-Nebraska man. Well, I believe I did make that prediction. I did not claim the power of a prophet, but it occurred to me that among a free people, and an honest people, and an intelligent people, that five years was long enough for them to come to an understanding that the great principle of self-government was right, not only in the States, but in the Territories. I rejoiced this year to see my prediction, in that respect, carried out and fulfilled by the unanimous vote, in one form or another, of both Houses of Congress. If you will remember that pending this Lecompton controversy that gallant old Roman, Kentucky's favorite son, the worthy successor of the immortal Clay — I allude, as you know, to the gallant John J. Crittenden brought forward a bill, now known as the Crittenden-Montgomery bill, in which it was proposed that the Lecompton Constitution should be referred back to the people of Kansas, to be decided for or against it, at a fair election, and if a majority of the people were in favor of it, that Kansas should come into the Union as a slaveholding State, but that if a majority were against it, that they should make a new Constitution, and come in with slavery or without it, as they thought proper. ["That was right."] Yes, my dear sir, it was not only right, but it was carrying out the principle of the Nebraska bill in its letter and in its spirit. course I voted for it, and so did every Republican Senator and Representative un Congress. I have found some Democrats so perfectly straight that they blame me for voting for the principle of the Nebraska bill because the Republicans voted he same way. [Great laughter. "What did they say?"]

Of

What did they say? Why, many of them said that Douglas voted with the Republicans. Yes! not only that, but with the black Republicans. Well, there are different modes of stating that proposition. The New York Tribune says that Douglas did not vote with the Republicans, but that on that question the Republicans went over to Douglas and voted with him.

My friends, I have never yet abandoned a principle because of the support I found men yielding to it, and I shall never abandon my Democratic principles merely because Republicans come to them. For what do we travel over the country and make speeches in every political canvass, if it is not to enlighten the minds

of these Republicans; to remove the scales from their eyes, and to impart to them the light of democratic vision, so that they may be able to carry out the Constitution of our country as our fathers made it. And if by preaching our principles to the people we succeed in convincing the Republicans of the errors of their ways, and bring them over to us, are we bound to turn traitors to our principles, merely because they give them their support? All I have to say is that I hope the Republican party will stand firm, in the future, by the vote they gave on the Crittenden-Montgomery bill. I hope we will find, in the resolutions of their County and Congressional Conventions, no declarations of "no more slave States to be admitted into this Union," but in lieu of that declaration that we will find the principle that the people of every State and every Territory shall come into the Union with slavery or without it, just as they please, without any interference on the part of Congress.

My friends, whilst I was at Washington, engaged in this great battle for sound constitutional principles, I find from the newspapers that the Republican party of this State assembled in this Capital, in State Convention, and not only nominated, as it was wise and proper for them to do, a man for my successor in the Senate, but laid down a platform, and their nominee made a speech, carefully written and prepared, and well delivered, which that Convention accepted as containing the Republican creed. I have no comment to make on that part of Mr. Lincoln's speech, in which he represents me as forming a conspiracy with the Supreme Court, and with the late President of the United States and the present chief magistrate, having for my object the passage of the Nebraska bill, the Dred Scott decision and the extension of slavery a scheme of political tricksters, composed of Chief Justice Taney and his eight associates, two Presidents of the United States, and one Senator of Illinois. If Mr. Lincoln deems me a conspirator of that kind, all I have to say is that I do not think so badly of the President of the United States, and the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal on earth, as to believe that they were capable in their action and decision of entering into political intrigues for partisan purposes. I therefore shall only notice those parts of Mr. Lincoln's speech, in which he lays down his platform of principles, and tells you what he intends to do if he is elected to the Senate of the United States.

[An old gentleman here rose on the platform and said: Judge, be particular."]

"Be particular now,

Mr. Douglas - My venerable friend here says that he will be gratified if I will be particular, and in order that I may be so, I will read the language of Mr. Lincoln as reported by himself and published to the country. Mr. Lincoln lays down his main proposition in these words:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this Union cannot endure permanently half free and half slave. I do not expect the Union will De dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it to cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."

Mr. Lincoln does not think this Union can continue to exist composed of half slave and half free States; they must all be free or all slave. I do not doubt that this is Mr. Lincoln's conscientious conviction. I do not doubt that he thinks it is the highest duty of every patriotic citizen to preserve this glorious Union, and to adopt these measures as necessary to its preservation. He tells you that the only mode to preserve the Union is to make all the States free or all slave. It must be the one or it must be the other. Now that being essential, in his estimation, to the preservation of this glorious Union, how is he going to accomplish it? He says that he wants to go to the Senate in order to carry out this favorite patriotic policy of his, of making all the States free, so that the house shall no longer be divided against itself. When he gets to the Senate, by what means is he going to accomplish it? By an act of Congress? Will he contend that Congress has any power under the Constitution to abolish slavery