, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to
interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.
I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do
so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between
the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between
the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living
together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes
a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas,
am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I
have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding
all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to
all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as
much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he
is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not
in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread,
without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my
equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies.
The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a
"grocery-keeper." I don't know as it would be a great sin, if I had been;
but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.
It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little
stillhouse, up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my friend the Judge
is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress
of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war. The
Judge did not make his charge very distinctly, but I can tell you what he
can prove, by referring to the record. You remember I was an old Whig,
and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had
been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But whenever
they asked for any money, or landwarrants, or anything to pay the soldiers
there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did.
You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent. Such is the
truth, and the Judge has the right to make all he can out of it. But when