And to this end they will, if possible, restore the government to the policy of the fathers, the policy of preserving the new Territories from the baneful influence of human bondage, as the Northwestern Territories were sought to be preserved by the Ordinance of 1787, and the Compromise Act of 1820.  They will oppose, in all its length and breadth, the modern Democratic idea, that slavery is as good as freedom, and ought to have room for expansion all over the continent, if people can be found to carry it.  All, or nearly all, of Judge Douglas’s arguments are logical, if you admit that slavery is as good and as right as freedom, and not one of them is worth a rush if you deny it.  This is the difference, as I understand it, between the Republican and Democratic parties.

My friends, I have endeavored to show you the logical consequences of the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people of a Territory cannot prevent the establishment of slavery in their midst.  I have stated what cannot be gainsaid, that the grounds upon which this decision is made are equally applicable to the free States as to the free Territories, and that the peculiar reasons put forth by Judge Douglas for indorsing this decision commit him, in advance, to the next decision and to all other decisions corning from the same source.  And when, by all these means, you have succeeded in dehumanizing the negro; when you have put him down and made it impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul in this world and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you?  What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?  It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy.  These are not our reliance against tyranny All of those may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle.  Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us.  Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere.  Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.  Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.  Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.  And let me tell you, that all these things are prepared for you by the teachings of history, if the elections shall promise that the next Dred Scott decision and all future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in by the people.

VERSE TO “LINNIE”

September 30,? 1858.

To “Linnie”: 

A sweet plaintive song did I hear And I fancied that she was the singer.  May emotions as pure as that song set astir Be the wont that the future shall bring her.