ce and human sympathy continually telling you that the
poor negro has some natural right to himself,--that those who deny it
and make mere merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death.

And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave, and
estimate him as only the equal of the hog? Why ask us to do what you
will not do yourselves? Why ask us to do for nothing what two hundred
millions of dollars could not induce you to do?

But one great argument in support of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is still to come. That argument is "the sacred right of
self-government." ... Some poet has said,--

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I
meet that argument,--I rush in,--I take that bull by the horns.... My
faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases
with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the
sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities
of men as well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is
politically wise as well as naturally just,--politically wise in saving
us from broils about matters which do not concern us. Here, or at
Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia,
or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is
right,--absolutely and internally right; but it has no just application
as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has
any application here depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If
he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may, as a matter of
self-government, do just what he pleases with him. But if the negro is a
man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to
say that he, too, shall not govern himself? When the white man 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, 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 p