r of acquiring additional territory, in
disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the
slavery question?"--Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 90.

CHAPTER X

LINCOLN'S OHIO SPEECHES

When Lincoln, in opening the Senatorial campaign of Illinois, declared
that the Republican cause must be intrusted to its own undoubted
friends "who do care for the result," he displayed a much better
understanding of the character and aims of his opponent than those
who, not so well informed, desired the adoption of a different course.
Had the wishes of Greeley and others prevailed, had Douglas been
adopted by the Illinois Republicans, the party would have found itself
in a fatal dilemma, No sooner was the campaign closed than Douglas,
having entered on his tour through the South, began making speeches,
apparently designed to pave his way to a nomination for President by
the next Democratic National Convention. Realizing that he had lost
ground by his anti-Lecomptonism, and especially by his Freeport
doctrine, and having felt in the late campaign the hostility of the
Buchanan Administration, he now sought to recover prestige by
publishing more advanced opinions indirectly sustaining and defending
slavery.

Hitherto he had declared he did not care whether slavery was voted
down or voted up. He had said he would not argue the question whether
slavery was right or wrong. He had adopted Taney's assertion that the
negro had no share in the Declaration of Independence. He had asserted
that uniformity was impossible, but that freedom and slavery might
abide together forever. But now that the election was over and a new
term in the Senate secure, he was ready to conciliate pro-slavery
opinion with stronger expressions. Hence, in a speech at Memphis, he
cunningly linked together in argument unfriendly legislation, slavery,
and annexation. He said: "Whenever a Territory has a climate, soil,
and production making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage
slave property, they will pass a slave code."

Wherever these preclude the possibility of slavery being profitable,
they will not permit it. On the sugar plantations of Louisiana it was
not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the
negro and the crocodile. He would say that between the negro and the
crocodile, he took the side of the negro; but between the negro and
the white man, he would go for the white man. The Almighty has drawn
the l