...  I ask attention to the fact that in a pre-eminent degree these popular sovereigns are at this work:  blowing out the moral lights around us; teaching that the negro is no longer a man, but a brute; that the Declaration has nothing to do with him; that he ranks with the crocodile and the reptile; that man with body and soul is a matter of dollars and cents.  I suggest to this portion of the Ohio Republicans, or Democrats, if there be any present, the serious consideration of this fact, that there is now going on among you a steady process of debauching public opinion on this subject.  With this, my friends, I bid you adieu.

From a Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, on the Intentions of “Black Republicans,” the Relation of Labour and Capital, etc.  September 17, 1859

...  I say, then, in the first place to the Kentuckians that I am what they call, as I understand it, a “Black Republican.”  I think slavery is wrong, morally and politically.  I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.  While I say this for myself, I say to you, Kentuckians, that I understand you differ radically with me upon this proposition; that you believe slavery is a good thing; that slavery is right; that it ought to be extended and perpetuated in this Union.  Now, there being this broad difference between us, I do not pretend, in addressing myself to you, Kentuckians, to attempt proselyting you.  That would be a vain effort.  I do not enter upon it.  I only propose to try to show you that you ought to nominate for the next presidency, at Charleston, my distinguished friend, Judge Douglas.  In all that, there is no real difference between you and him; I understand he is as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you than you are for yourselves.  I will try to demonstrate that proposition.

In Kentucky perhaps—­in many of the slave States certainly—­you are trying to establish the rightfulness of slavery by reference to the Bible.  You are trying to show that slavery existed in the Bible times by Divine ordinance.  Now, Douglas is wiser than you, for your own benefit, upon that subject.  Douglas knows that whenever you establish that slavery was right by the Bible, it will occur that that slavery was the slavery of the white man,—­of men without reference to colour,—­and he knows very well that you may entertain that idea in Kentucky as much as you please, but you will never win any Northern support upon it.  He makes a wiser argument for you.  He makes the argument that the slavery of the black man—­the slavery of the man who has a skin of a different colour from your own—­is right.  He thereby brings to your support Northern voters, who could not for a moment be brought by your own argument of the Bible right of slavery.

...  At Memphis he [Judge Douglas] declared that in all contests between the negro and the white man, he was for the white man, but that in all questions between the negro and the crocodile, he was for the negro.  He did not make that declaration accidentally ... he made it a great many times.