These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought
into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and
throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri
Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the Declaration of
Independence, repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human
nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery
extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth
will continue to speak."
With argument as impetuous, and logic as inexorable, he disposes of
Douglas's plea of popular sovereignty:
"Here, or at Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws
of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of
self-government is right--absolutely and eternally right--but it has no
just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say, that
whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or
is a man. If he is not a man, in that case, he who is a man may, as a
matter of self-government, do just what he pleases with him. But if the
negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of
self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the
white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs
himself and also governs another man, that is more than
self-government--that is despotism.
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