You have heard him frequently allude to my controversy with him in regard to the Declaration of Independence.  I confess that I have had a struggle with Judge Douglas on that matter, and I will try briefly to place myself right in regard to it on this occasion.  I said—­and it is between the extracts Judge Douglas has taken from this speech, and put in his published speeches: 

“It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities and impose them upon us, and to the extent that a necessity is imposed upon a man he must submit to it.  I think that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established this government.  We had slaves among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties.  Let the charter remain as our standard.”

Now, I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge Douglas against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of slavery.  You hear me read it from the same speech from which he takes garbled extracts for the purpose of proving upon me a disposition to interfere with the institution of slavery, and establish a perfect social and political equality between negroes and white people.

Allow me while upon this subject briefly to present one other extract from a speech of mine, more than a year ago, at Springfield, in discussing this very same question, soon after Judge Douglas took his ground that negroes were, not included in the Declaration of Independence: 

“I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects.  They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity.  They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal,—­equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This they said, and this they meant.  They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them.  In fact they had no power to confer such a boon.  They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

“They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all,—­constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.”

There again are the sentiments I have expressed in regard to the Declaration of Independence upon a former occasion,—­sentiments which have been put in print and read wherever anybody cared to know what so humble an individual as myself chose to say in regard to it.