... I particularly object to the new
position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to
slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that
there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I
object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people--a sad evidence
that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a principle,
we have ceased to revere.... Little by little, but steadily as man's
march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith.
Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created
equal; but now, from that beginning, we have run down to the other
declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a 'sacred right of
self-government.' These principles cannot stand together. They are as
opposite as God and Mammon."
If one compares the serious tone of this speech with the hard cider and
coon-skin buncombe of the Harrison campaign of 1840, and its lofty
philosophical thought with the humorous declamation of the Taylor
campaign of 1848, the speaker's advance in mental development at once
becomes apparent. In this single effort Mr. Lincoln had risen from the
class of the politician to the rank of the statesman. There is a
well-founded tradition that Douglas, disconcerted and troubled by
Lincoln's unexpected manifestation of power in the Springfield and
Peoria debates, sought a friendly interview with his opponent, and
obtained from him an agreement that neither one of them would make any
further speeches before the election.
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