finds the Republicans insisting that the
Declaration of Independence includes _all_ men, black as well as white;
and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and
proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only
because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes!
He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest
against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want
a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. I
need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In some
respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat
the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one
else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that
the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole
human family; but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that
instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did
not at once actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this
grave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact that they
did not at once, nor ever afterward, actually place all white people on
an equality with one another. And this is the staple argument of both
the Chief Justice and the senator, for doing this obvious violence to
the plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include _all_
men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal _in all respects_.
They did not mean to say that all were equal in colour, size, intellect,
moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable
distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created
equal,--equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they
meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were
then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to
confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer
such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the
enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be
familiar to all and revered by all,--constantly looked to, constantl