Declaration applies to the negro?  Do any of you know of one?  Well, I have tried before perhaps fifty audiences, some larger and some smaller than this, to find one such Democrat, and never yet have I found one who said I did not place him right in that.  I must assume that Democrats hold that, and now, not one of these Democrats can show that he said that five years ago!  I venture to defy the whole party to produce one man that ever uttered the belief that the Declaration did not apply to negroes, before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise!  Four or five years ago we all thought negroes were men, and that when “all men” were named, negroes were included.  But the whole Democratic party has deliberately taken negroes from the class of men and put them in the class of brutes.  Turn it as you will it is simply the truth!  Don’t be too hasty, then, in saying that the people cannot be brought to this new doctrine, but note that long stride.  One more as long completes the journey from where negroes are estimated as men to where they are estimated as mere brutes—­as rightful property!

That saying “In the struggle between white men and the negro,” etc., which I know came from the same source as this policy—­that saying marks another step.  There is a falsehood wrapped up in that statement.  “In the struggle between the white man and the negro” assumes that there is a struggle, in which either the white man must enslave the negro or the negro must enslave the white.  There is no such struggle!  It is merely the ingenious falsehood to degrade and brutalize the negro.  Let each let the other alone, and there is no struggle about it.  If it was like two wrecked seamen on a narrow plank, when each must push the other off or drown himself, I would push the negro off or a white man either, but it is not; the plank is large enough for both.  This good earth is plenty broad enough for white man and negro both, and there is no need of either pushing the other off.

So that saying, “In the struggle between the negro and the crocodile,” etc., is made up from the idea that down where the crocodile inhabits, a white man can’t labor; it must be nothing else but crocodile or negro; if the negro does not the crocodile must possess the earth; in that case he declares for the negro.  The meaning of the whole is just this:  As a white man is to a negro, so is a negro to a crocodile; and as the negro may rightfully treat the crocodile, so may the white man rightfully treat the negro.  This very dear phrase coined by its author, and so dear that he deliberately repeats it in many speeches, has a tendency to still further brutalize the negro, and to bring public opinion to the point of utter indifference whether men so brutalized are enslaved or not.  When that time shall come, if ever, I think that policy to which I refer may prevail.  But I hope the good freemen of this country will never allow it to come, and until then the policy can never be maintained.