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 must be placed in an inferior position.  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.

My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new topic, which would detain you too long, continue to-night.  I thank you for this most extensive audience that you have furnished me to-night.  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.

From a Speech at Springfield, Illinois.  July 17, 1858

...  There is still another disadvantage under which we labour, and to which I will ask your attention.  It arises out of the relative positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate.  Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown.  All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States.  They have seen, in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.  And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope.  But with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what, even in the days of his highest prosperity, they could have brought about in his favour.  On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.  In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.  These are disadvantages, all taken together, that the Republicans labour under.  We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone.  I am in a certain sense made the standard-bearer in behalf of the Republicans.  I was made so merely because there had to be some one so placed,—­I being in no wise preferable to any other one of the twenty-five, perhaps a hundred, we have in the Republican ranks.  Then I say, I wish it to be distinctly understood and borne in mind, that we have to fight this battle without many—­perhaps without any—­of the external aids which are brought to bear against us.  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.  As appears by two speeches I have heard him deliver