"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. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them into Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle, and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter."[288]
In the domain of literature on the slavery question there is no statement that surpasses this in charity, sanity and wisdom. With his overflowing hatred to slavery, he still kept justice as his guide and was slow to blame the South for the long standing sin. In this he towers above the Abolitionists who put upon the slave holders the burdens of a past as well as a present wrong. Yet unlike the politician he did not lose his ideal and become palsied and apologetic. He saw the need of keeping alive the principles of the Republic. Hastening the coming of the better humanity, with patience for human shortcoming, with zeal for the triumph of emancipation, he continued in his peculiar, lonely and potent way the advocacy of justice to God's dusky children.
In the Senate Douglas with triumphant eloquence charged Seward and Sumner and the North with having repudiated the Missouri Compromise through the Wilmot Proviso and the measures of 1850. Anti-slavery leaders in the Senate were confounded by this sudden charge and grandiloquent accusation. Lincoln took up the challenge and met the arrogant claim of Douglas without flinching. His analysis exposed the glittering sophistry of the man who enraptured the Northern statesmen in the solemn Senate. He not only held his ground in the face of the brilliant strategy of his opponent, but even carried the war into the camp of the foe.
He argued that the contention of Douglas that the North repudiated the Missouri Compromise was no less absurd than it would be to argue that because they had so far forborne to acquire Cuba, they would have thereby, in principle, repudiated former acquisitions and determined to throw them out of the Union; that it was no less absurd than it would be to say that because he may have refused to build an addition to his house, he thereby decided to destroy the existing house.
This speech abounds in plain, hard English, travelling direct to the intellect on a straight line. No labored argument could be half as sure of a welcome to the human mind as his graphic exposal of the injustice of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise: "After an angry and dangerous controversy, the parties made friends by dividing the bone of contention. The one party first appropriates its own share, beyond all power to be disturbed in the possession of it, and then seizes the share of the other party. It is as if two starving men had divided their own loaf; the one had hastily swallowed his half, and then grabbed the other's half just as he was putting it to his mouth."[289]
In nothing did Douglas show greater genius than in hallowing his doctrine of popular sovereignty. The leaders in Congress feared openly to fight his vaunted "sacred right of self government," they were not sure of their ground. Lincoln with confidence, born of lonely struggle, rushed on the angry battlefield to run the gantlet of debate on the conquering doctrine of popular sovereignty: "When the white man," he said, "governs himself, that is self-government, but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self government—that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created equal,' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.
"Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases our argument by saying: 'The white people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable negroes!' Well! I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary. What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."[290] In a single weighty phrase he crushed the elaborate argument of the Senator of Illinois and left its fair form so that only a shattered frame remains.
At times he spoke like a seer lifted above the petty prejudices of the time. He declared that the spirit of mutual concession—that first wrought the Constitution, and thrice saved the Union—and that trust in a national compromise, would thus be strangled; that the South flushed with triumph would provoke and aggress, and the North, brooding on wrong, would resent and retaliate. He alleged that already a few in the North defied all constitutional restraint, and even menaced the institution of slavery in the southern States; that already a few in the South claimed the constitutional right to hold slaves in the free States and demanded the revival of the slave trade. That it was a grave question for lovers of the Union whether the final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of all compromise, would not fatally increase the number of both.[291]
His sanity enabled him to guide the erring and confounded in the days of doubt. "Some men," he said, "mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they be thrown in company with the Abolitionists. Will they allow me, as an old Whig, to tell them, good humoredly, that I think this is very silly? Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the Abolitionists in restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the fugitive slave law. In the latter case you stand with the Southern disunionist. What of that? You are still right. In both cases you are right. In both cases you expose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand on middle ground, and hold the ship level and steady."[292]