The Lincoln and Douglas Debates: In the Senatorial Campaign of 1858 in Illinois, Between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Arnold Douglas; Containing Also Lincoln's Address at Cooper Institute

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Page 290 - ... it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union, to your collective and individual happiness...
Page 57 - A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push...
Page 240 - Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Page 224 - Our fathers, when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better than we do now.
Page 87 - I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people...
Page 116 - ... the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.
Page 31 - It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations.
Page xlviii - ... otherwise called *' sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this : That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated...
Page 236 - But you will not abide the election of a Republican President ! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!
Page 194 - It is the eternal struggle between these two principles— right and wrong— throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.

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