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    The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
    The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
    The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
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    The Writings of Abraham Lincoln

    By Abraham Lincoln

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    This magnificent seven-book series delves deep into the mind and heart of one of America's most revered Presidents. Each volume offers a unique window into Lincoln's life, showcasing his unparalleled eloquence, deep humanity, and astute political acumen. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLeft of Brain Books
    Release dateJan 1, 2024
    ISBN9781396323614
    The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
    Author

    Abraham Lincoln

    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) was the sixteenth president of the United States and a pioneer in abolishing slavery. Lincoln was born into poverty in Hardin County, Kentucky. As a young man, he fought in the Black Hawk War, during which he made strong political connections. In 1834, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois state legislature as a member of the Whig Party. He then devoted much of his time to studying law, which eventually led to his single term in the United States House of Representatives. In 1856, Lincoln joined the Republican Party, using his position as a platform to speak against slavery in the Confederacy. Four years later, he was elected president. The Civil War erupted shortly after. In 1862, Lincoln delivered his famous Emancipation Proclamation, successfully freeing slaves in the Confederacy. Lincoln penned many more speeches and essays, most famously his Gettysburg Address. John Wilkes Booth, a Confederacy sympathizer, assassinated Lincoln at the Ford’s Theatre in 1865.  

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      Book preview

      The Writings of Abraham Lincoln - Abraham Lincoln

      The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3 of 7

      By

      Abraham Lincoln

      Image 1

      Published by Left of Brain Books

      Copyright © 2023 Left of Brain Books

      ISBN 978-1-396-32361-4

      eBook Edition

      Al rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations permitted by copyright law. Left of Brain Books is a division of Left Of Brain Onboarding Pty Ltd.

      PUBLISHER’S PREFACE

      About the Book

      Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809-April 15, 1865), the sixteenth President of the United States, successfully led his country through its greatest crisis, the Civil War, only to be assassinated less than a month after the war's end. Before his election as President, Lincoln was a lawyer, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Senate. As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later that year. During his term, he helped preserve the United States by leading the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which passed Congress before Lincoln's death and was ratified by the states later in 1865.

      (Quote from wikipedia.org)

      CONTENTS

      PUBLISHER’S PREFACE

      POLITICAL SPEECHES & DEBATES OF LINCOLN WITH DOUGLAS ...................... 1

      SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858 ............................................................... 9

      SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858. ....................................................... 27

      CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS ............................... 45

      MR. DOUGLAS TO MR. LINCOLN .................................................................... 46

      MR. LINCOLN TO MR. DOUGLAS .................................................................... 47

      FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA ................................................................. 48

      SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT .......................................................... 66

      MR. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER ............................................................................ 77

      THIRD JOINT DEBATE, AT JONESBORO .......................................................... 84

      INTERROGATORIES ........................................................................................ 92

      CAMPBELL'S REPLY ........................................................................................ 93

      POLITICAL SPEECHES & DEBATES OF LINCOLN WITH

      DOUGLAS

      In the Senatorial Campaign of 1858 in Illinois

      SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858

      [The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the close of the Republican State Convention held at that time and place, and by which Convention Mr. LINCOLN had been named as their candidate for United States Senator. Mr. DOUGLAS was not present.]

      MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:--If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now farinto the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

      Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

      Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.

      The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the National territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

      But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.

      This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of squatter sovereignty, otherwise called sacred right of self-government, which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language which follows:

      It being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.

      Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of squatter sovereignty, and sacred right of self-government. But, said opposition members, let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery. Not we, said the friends of the measure, and down they voted the amendment.

      While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into a territory covered by the Congressional Prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was Dred Scott, which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in,

      the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Stil , before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers: That is a question for the Supreme Court.

      The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes,(approximately 10% of the vote) and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The Presidential inauguration came, and stil no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forth-coming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.

      The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained!

      At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska Bil , on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind,--the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision squatter sovereignty squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary

      scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served through one blast, and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point--the right of a people to make their own constitution--upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.

      The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's care not policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are:

      Firstly, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

      Secondly, That, subject to the Constitution of the United States, neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future.

      Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but wil leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.

      Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at

      least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, wither we are tending.

      It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left perfectly free, subject only to the Constitution.

      What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see.

      Plainly enough now,--it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now,--the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.

      Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough now,--

      the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others?

      We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make

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