Now I have spoken of a policy based on the idea that slavery is wrong, and a policy based on the idea that it is right.  But an effort has been made for a policy that shall treat it as neither right nor wrong.  It is based upon utter indifference.  Its leading advocate [Douglas] has said, “I don’t care whether it be voted up or down.”  “It is merely a matter of dollars and cents.”  “The Almighty has drawn a line across this continent, on one side of which all soil must forever be cultivated by slave labor, and on the other by free.”  “When the struggle is between the white man and the negro, I am for the white man; when it is between the negro and the crocodile, I am for the negro.”  Its central idea is indifference.  It holds that it makes no more difference to us whether the Territories become free or slave States than whether my neighbor stocks his farm with horned cattle or puts in tobacco.  All recognize this policy, the plausible sugar-coated name of which is “popular sovereignty.”

This policy chiefly stands in the way of a permanent settlement of the question.  I believe there is no danger of its becoming the permanent policy of the country, for it is based on a public indifference.  There is nobody that “don’t care.”  All the people do care one way or the other!  I do not charge that its author, when he says he “don’t care,” states his individual opinion; he only expresses his policy for the government.  I understand that he has never said as an individual whether he thought slavery right or wrong—­and he is the only man in the nation that has not!  Now such a policy may have a temporary run; it may spring up as necessary to the political prospects of some gentleman; but it is utterly baseless:  the people are not indifferent, and it can therefore have no durability or permanence.

But suppose it could:  Then it could be maintained only by a public opinion that shall say, “We don’t care.”  There must be a change in public opinion; the public mind must be so far debauched as to square with this policy of caring not at all.  The people must come to consider this as “merely a question of dollars and cents,” and to believe that in some places the Almighty has made slavery necessarily eternal.  This policy can be brought to prevail if the people can be brought round to say honestly, “We don’t care”; if not, it can never be maintained.  It is for you to say whether that can be done.

You are ready to say it cannot, but be not too fast!  Remember what a long stride has been taken since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise!  Do you know of any Democrat, of either branch of the party—­do you know one who declares that he believes that the Declaration of Independence has any application to the negro?  Judge Taney declares that it has not, and Judge Douglas even vilifies me personally and scolds me roundly for saying that the Declaration applies to all men, and that negroes are men.  Is there a Democrat here who does not deny that the