Lincoln on Democracy

"THE MORAL LIGHTS AROUND US"

Lincoln and the Race for President, 1859-1860 157 would now place themselves on republican ground. But I am against letting down the republican standard a hair's breadth. I have written this hastily, but I believe it answers your questions substantially. Yours truly A. LINCOLN "THE MORAL LIGHTS AROUND US" From a Speech at Columbus, Ohio [SEPTEMBER 16, 1859] The opening address in a six-state speaking tour, this speech, delivered from the terrace ofthe Ohio statehouse, was used by Lincoln to renew his attack on Stephen A. Douglas-"without gloves," according to the influential Washington newspaper, the National Intelligencer. Although a pro-Douglas Cincinnati paper reported that Lincoln "disappointed his friends" by proving not to be "a very pleasing speaker, " others credited his campaigning for bringing about the Republican Party's success in the state's fall elections. He returned home, an Illinois journalist reported, "after electrifying Ohio. " I believe there is a genuine popular sovereignty. I think a definition of genuine popular sovereignty, in the abstract, would be about this: That each man shall do precisely as he pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively concern him. Applied to government, this principle would be, that a general government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and all the local governments shall do precisely as they please in respect to those matters which exclusively concern them. I understand that this government of the United States, under which we live, is based upon this principle; and I am misunderstood if it is supposed that I have any war to make upon that principle. 158 LINCOLN ON DEMOCRACY ... After Judge Douglas has established this proposition [the right of states to run their own affairs--eds.], which nobody disputes or ever has disputed, he proceeds to assume, without proving it, that slavery is one ofthose little, unimportant, trivial matters which are ofjust about as much consequence as the question would be to me, whether my neighbor should raise horned cattle or plant tobacco [laughter]; that there is no moral question about it, but that it is altogether a matter ofdollars and cents; that when a new territory is opened for settlement, the first man who goes into it may plant there a thing which, like the Canada thistle, or some other of those pests of the soil, cannot be dug out by the millions of men who will come thereafter; that it is one of those little things that is so trivial in its nature that it has no effect upon anybody save the few men who first plant upon the soil; that it is not a thing which in any way affects the family of communities composing these States, nor any way endangers the general government. Judge Douglas ignores altogether the very well known fact, that we have never had a serious menace to our political existence, except it sprang from this thing which he chooses to regard as only upon a par with onions and potatoes. [Laughter.] Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody I ask you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be plastered on, layer after layer, until very soon you are prepared to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute. If public sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further until your minds, now ripening under these teachings will be ready for all these things, and you will receive and support, or submit to, the slave trade; revived with all its horrors; a slave code enforced in our territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up into the very heart of the free North. This, I must say, is but carrying out those words prophetically spoken by Mr. Clay, many, many years ago. I believe more than thirty years when he told an audience that ifthey would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation, they must go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which thundered its annual joyous return on the Fourth of July; they must blowout the moral lights around us; they Lincoln and the Race for President...