THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I

Political speeches & debates of Lincoln with Douglas
In the Senatorial Campaign of 1858 in Illinois
speech at Springfield, June 17, 1858

[The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the close of the Republican State Convention held at that time and place, and by which Convention Mr. Lincoln had been named as their candidate for United States Senator.  Mr. Douglas was not present.]

Mr. President and gentlemen of the convention:—­If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.  We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.  Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.  “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 it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision.  Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National territory by Congressional prohibition.  Four days later, commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition.  This opened all the National territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of “squatter sovereignty,” 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 into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language which follows: