Lincoln on Democracy

"THE ELECTRIC CORD INTHAT DECLARATION"

114 LINCOLN ON DEMOCRACY "THE ELECTRIC CORD IN THAT DECLARATION" From a Speech in Reply to Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Chicago, Illinois [JULY 10, 1858] Douglas opened his reelection campaign with a speech from the balcony of Chicago's Tremont House on July 9, and Lincoln spoke there the next night. The Tribune described the challenger's audience as only "threefourths as large as" Douglas's but ''four times" as enthusiastic. Lincoln used a humorous touch to deflate Douglas's warnings that Lincoln's policies would result in racial "amalgamation"-the pre-Civil War term for interracial marriage or cohabitation. This concluding excerpt is from the newspaper reprint that Lincoln pasted in his debates scrapbook. We were often-more than once at least-in the course of Judge Douglas' speech last night, reminded that this government was made for white men-that he believed it was made for white men. Well, that is putting it into a shape in which no one wants to deny it, but the Judge then goes into his passion for drawing inferences that are not warranted . I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. [Laughter and cheers.] My understanding is that I need not have her for either, but as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone and do one another much good thereby. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and enough black men to marry all the black women, and in God's name let them be so married. The Judge regales us with the terrible enormities that take place by the mixture of races; that the inferior race bears the superior down. Why, Judge, if we will not let them get together in the Territories, they won't mix there. [Immense applause.] A voice-"Three cheers for Lincoln." [The cheers were given with a hearty good will.] Mr. Lincoln-I should say at least that that is a self evident truth. Lincoln and the House Divided, 1858 115 Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometimes about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them. We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty-or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent ofcountry,-with vastly less ofeverything we deem desirable among men,-we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves-we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men-descended by blood from our ancestors-among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe-German, Irish, French and Scandinavian-men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they...