Who shall say, “I am the superior, and you are the inferior”?

My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be misrepresented, but cannot be misunderstood.  I have said that I do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men were created equal in all respects.  They are not our equal in color; but I suppose that it does mean to declare that all men are equal in some respects; they are equal in their right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Certainly the negro is not our equal in color, perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black.  In pointing out that more has been given you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given him.  All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone.  If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

When our government was established we had the institution of slavery among us.  We were in a certain sense compelled to tolerate its existence.  It was a sort of necessity.  We had gone through our struggle and secured our own independence.  The framers of the Constitution found the institution of slavery amongst their own institutions at the time.  They found that by an effort to eradicate it they might lose much of what they had already gained.  They were obliged to bow to the necessity.  They gave power to Congress to abolish the slave trade at the end of twenty years.  They also prohibited it in the Territories where it did not exist.  They did what they could, and yielded to the necessity for the rest.  I also yield to all which follows from that necessity.  What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.

One more point on this Springfield speech which Judge Douglas says he has read so carefully.  I expressed my belief in the existence of a conspiracy to perpetuate and nationalize slavery.  I did not profess to know it, nor do I now.  I showed the part Judge Douglas had played in the string of facts constituting to my mind the proof of that conspiracy.  I showed the parts played by others.

I charged that the people had been deceived into carrying the last Presidential election, by the impression that the people of the Territories might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was known in advance by the conspirators that the court was to decide that neither Congress nor the people could so exclude slavery.  These charges are more distinctly made than anything else in the speech.

Judge Douglas has carefully read and reread that speech.  He has not, so far as I know, contradicted those charges.  In the two speeches which I heard he certainly did not.  On this own tacit admission, I renew that charge.  I charge him with having been a party to that conspiracy and to that deception for the sole purpose of nationalizing slavery.