this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position, the negro should be denied everything.  I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.  My understanding is that I can just let her alone.  I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife.  So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes.  I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child, who was in favor of producing perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men.  I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be satisfied of its correctness, and that is the case of Judge Douglas’s old friend Colonel Richard M. Johnson.  I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter at large upon this subject), that I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes, if there was no law to keep them from it; but as judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of the State which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.”

There, my friends, you have briefly what I have, upon former occasions, said upon this subject to which this newspaper, to the extent of its ability, has drawn the public attention.  In it you not only perceive, as a probability, that in that contest I did not at any time say I was in favor of negro suffrage, but the absolute proof that twice—­once substantially, and once expressly—­I declared against it.  Having shown you this, there remains but a word of comment upon that newspaper article.  It is this, that I presume the editor of that paper is an honest and truth-loving man, and that he will be greatly obliged to me for furnishing him thus early an opportunity to correct the misrepresentation he has made, before it has run so long that malicious people can call him a liar.

The Giant himself has been here recently.  I have seen a brief report of his speech.  If it were otherwise unpleasant to me to introduce the subject of the negro as a topic for discussion, I might be somewhat relieved by the fact that he dealt exclusively in that subject while he was here.  I shall, therefore, without much hesitation or diffidence, enter upon this subject.

The American people, on the first day of January, 1854, found the African slave trade prohibited by a law of Congress.  In a majority of the States of this Union, they found African slavery, or any other sort of slavery, prohibited by State constitutions.  They also found a law existing, supposed to be valid, by which slavery was excluded from almost all the territory the United States then owned.  This was