keness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded,
and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race
of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the
farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children,
and their children's children, and the countless myriads who
should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they
were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and
so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in
the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should
set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men,
or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again
to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the
battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and
mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be
extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to
limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of
liberty was being built.

Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting
with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if
you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its
grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you
have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal
in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty,
let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose
waters spring close by the blood of the revolution. Think nothing
of me--take no thought for the political fate of any man
whomsoever--but come back to the truths that are in the
Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you
choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not
only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to
death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do
claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an
anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and
insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am
nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that
immortal emblem of Humanity--the Declaration of American