"I think and will try to show, that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is wrong—wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska; wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it. This declared indifference, but as I must think covert zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our Republic of an example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites. I have no prejudices against the Southern people; they are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did now exist amongst us we would not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. When the Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the same. I surely will not blame them for what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly powers were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution."
Declaring that he did not advocate freeing the negroes, and making them our political and social equals, but suggesting that gradual systems of emancipation might be adopted by the States, he added, "But for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South. But all this to my judgment furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our free territory than it would for reviving the African slave trade by law."
He then added:
"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. But I hold that notwithstanding all this there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral and intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
Referring to the quotation from his Springfield speech of the words,
"A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said:
"Does the Judge say it can stand? If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an authority of somewhat higher character. I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our Government, the institution of slavery has not only failed to be a bond of union, but on the contrary been an apple of discord and an element of division in the house. If so, then I have a right to say that in regard to this question the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to that fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it—restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the seal of legislation against its spread, the public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. Now, I believe if we could arrest its spread and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would—as for eighty years past —believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction."
Referring further to his Springfield speech, he declared that he had no thought of doing anything to bring about a war between the free and slave States; that he had no thought in the world that he was doing anything to bring about social and political equality of the black and white races.
Pursuing this line of argument, he insisted that the first step in the conspiracy, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, followed soon by the Dred Scott Decision—the latter fitting perfectly into the niche left by the former—"in such a case, we feel it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin, Roger and James, all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow was struck."
In closing, Douglas, after indignant denial of the charge of conspiracy, said:
"I have lived twenty-five years in Illinois; I have served you with all the fidelity and ability which I possess, and Mr. Lincoln is at liberty to attack my public action, my votes, and my conduct, but when he dares to attack my moral integrity by a charge of conspiracy between myself, Chief Justice Taney, and the Supreme Court and two Presidents of the United States, I will repel it."