ter or worse than the other; or to show by the
Constitution, that one differs a whit from the other. He will tell
me, doubtless, that there is no constitutional provision against
people taking slaves into the new Territories, and I tell him that
there is equally no constitutional provision against buying slaves
in Africa....

Then I say, if this principle is established, that there is no
wrong in slavery, and whoever wants it has a right to have it;
that it is a matter of dollars and cents; a sort of question how
they shall deal with brutes; that between us and the negro here
there is no sort of question, but that at the South the question
is between the negro and the crocodile; that it is a mere matter
of policy; that there is a perfect right according to interest to
do just as you please--when this is done, where this doctrine
prevails, the miners and sappers will have formed public opinion
for the slave trade....

[Sidenote] Lincoln, Columbus Speech, Sept. 16, 1859. Debates, pp.
253-54

Public opinion in this country is everything. In a nation like
ours this popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have
already wrought a change in the public mind to the extent I have
stated. There is no man in this crowd who can contradict it. Now,
if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody, I ask
you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be
plastered on layer after layer, until very soon you are prepared
to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute. If public
sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn
of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is
constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular
sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further until your
minds, now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all
these things; and you will receive and support, or submit to, the
slave trade revived with all its horrors, a slave code enforced in
our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up
into the very heart of the free North.

This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing
for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and
perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general
welfare. We believe--nay, we know, that