e
is any conflict in them, the public have been able to detect it. When the
Judge says, in speaking on this subject, that I make speeches of one sort
for the people of the northern end of the State, and of a different sort
for the southern people, he assumes that I do not understand that my
speeches will be put in print and read north and south. I knew all the
while that the speech that I made at Chicago, and the one I made at
Jonesboro and the one at Charleston, would all be put in print, and all
the reading and intelligent men in the community would see them and know
all about my opinions. And I have not supposed, and do not now suppose,
that there is any conflict whatever between them. But the Judge will have
it that if we do not confess that there is a sort of inequality between
the white and black races which justifies us in making them slaves, we
must then insist that there is a degree of equality that requires us to
make them our wives. Now, I have all the while taken a broad distinction
in regard to that matter; and that is all there is in these different
speeches which he arrays here; and the entire reading of either of the
speeches will show that that distinction was made. Perhaps by taking two
parts of the same speech he could have got up as much of a conflict as
the one he has found. I have all the while maintained that in so far as it
should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and black
races that should produce a perfect social and political equality, it was
an impossibility. This you have seen in my printed speeches, and with it
I have said that in their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior races are
our equals. And these declarations I have constantly made in reference
to the abstract moral question, to contemplate and consider when we are
legislating about any new country which is not already cursed with
the actual presence of the evil,--slavery. I have never manifested any
impatience with the necessities that spring from the actual presence of
black people amongst us, and the actual existence of slavery amongst us
where it does already exist; but I have insisted that, in legislating for
new countries where it does not exist there is no just rule other than
that of moral and abstract right! With reference to those new countries,
those maxims as to the right of a people to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happines