“If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right enslave B, why may not B snatch the same argument and prove equally that he may enslave A?  You say A is white and B is black.  It is color then; the lighter having the right to enslave the darker?  Take care.  By this rule you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own.  You do not mean color exactly?  You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave them?  Take care again.  By this rule you are to be slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own.  But, you say, it is a question of interest, and if you make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another.  Very well.  And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."(4)

Speaking of slavery to a fellow lawyer, he said:  “It is the most glittering, ostentatious, and displaying property in the world; and now, if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is how many negroes he or his lady love owns.  The love of slave property is swallowing up every other mercenary possession.  Its ownership betokened not only the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who was above and scorned labor."(5)

It was because of these views, because he saw slavery allying itself with the spread of plutocratic ideals, that Lincoln entered the battle to prevent its extension.  He did so in his usual cool, determined way.

Though his first reply to Douglas was not recorded, his second, made at Peoria twelve days later, still exists.(6) It is a landmark in his career.  It sums up all his long, slow development in political science, lays the abiding foundation of everything he thought thereafter.  In this great speech, the end of his novitiate, he rings the changes on the white man’s charter of freedom.  He argues that the extension of slavery tends to discredit republican institutions, and to disappoint “the Liberal party throughout the world.”  The heart of his argument is: 

“Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska or other new Territories is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there.  The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories.  We want them for homes for free white people.  This they can not be to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them.  Slave States are places for poor white people to remove from, not remove to.  New Free States are the places for poor people to go to and better their condition.  For this use the nation needs these Territories.”

The speech was a masterpiece of simplicity, of lucidity.  It showed the great jury; lawyer at his best.  Its temper was as admirable as its logic; not a touch of anger nor of vituperation.

“I have no prejudice against the Southern people,” said he.  “They are just what we would be in their situation.  If slavery did not exist among them, they would not introduce it.  If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up.  This I believe of the masses North and South.