Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 305 pages of information about Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865.

Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 305 pages of information about Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865.

I have told you what we mean to do.  I want to know, now, when that thing takes place, what do you mean to do?  I often hear it intimated that you mean to divide the Union whenever a Republican, or anything like it, is elected President of the United States. [A voice:  “That is so.”] “That is so,” one of them says; I wonder if he is a Kentuckian? [A voice:  “He is a Douglas man.”] Well, then, I want to know what you are going to do with your half of it.  Are you going to split the Ohio down through, and push your half off a piece?  Or are you going to keep it right alongside of us outrageous fellows?  Or are you going to build up a wall some way between your country and ours, by which that movable property of yours can’t come over here any more, to the danger of your losing it?  Do you think you can better yourselves on that subject by leaving us here under no obligation whatever to return those specimens of your movable property that come hither?

You have divided the Union because we would not do right with you, as you think, upon that subject; when we cease to be under obligation to do anything for you, how much better off do you think you will be?  Will you make war upon us and kill us all?  Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living; that you have shown yourselves capable of this upon various occasions; but man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us.  You will never make much of a hand at whipping us.  If we were fewer in numbers than you, I think that you could whip us; if we were equal it would likely be a drawn battle; but being inferior in numbers, you will make nothing by attempting to master us....

Labour is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn.  There is a difference in opinion about the elements of labour in society.  Some men assume that there is a necessary connection between capital and labour, and that connection draws within it the whole of the labour of the community.  They assume that nobody works unless capital excites them to work.  They begin next to consider what is the best way.  They say there are but two ways,—­one is to hire men and to allure them to labour by their consent; the other is to buy the men, and drive them to it, and that is slavery.  Having assumed that, they proceed to discuss the question of whether the labourers themselves are better off in the condition of slaves or of hired labourers, and they usually decide that they are better off in the condition of slaves.

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Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.