subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.  I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races.  There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.  I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.  I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment.  But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies.  The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a “grocery-keeper.”  I don’t know as it would be a great sin, if I had been; but he is mistaken.  Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.  It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little stillhouse, up at the head of a hollow.  And so I think my friend the Judge is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war.  The Judge did not make his charge very distinctly, but I can tell you what he can prove, by referring to the record.  You remember I was an old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it.  But whenever they asked for any money, or landwarrants, or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did.  You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent.  Such is the truth, and the Judge has the right to make all he can out of it.  But when he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war, or did anything else to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.

As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I will dwell a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics upon which the Judge has spoken.  He has read from my speech in Springfield, in which I say that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” Does the Judge say it can stand?  I don’t know whether he does or not.  The Judge does not seem to be attending to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion that a house divided against itself can stand.  If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an Authority of a somewhat higher character.