r reliance against tyranny All of those may be turned
against us without making us weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in
the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the
spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands
everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of
despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of
bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample
on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence
and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among
you. And let me tell you, that all these things are prepared for you by
the teachings of history, if the elections shall promise that the next
Dred Scott decision and all future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in
by the people.

VERSE TO "LINNIE"

September 30,? 1858.

TO "LINNIE":

A sweet plaintive song did I hear
And I fancied that she was the singer.
May emotions as pure as that song set astir
Be the wont that the future shall bring her.

NEGROES ARE MEN

TO J. U. BROWN.

SPRINGFIELD, OCT 18, 1858

HON. J. U. BROWN.

MY DEAR SIR:--I do not perceive how I can express myself more plainly
than I have in the fore-going extracts. In four of them I have expressly
disclaimed all intention to bring about social and political equality
between the white and black races and in all the rest I have done the same
thing by clear implication.

I have made it equally plain that I think the negro is included in the
word "men" used in the Declaration of Independence.

I believe the declaration that "all men are created equal" is the great
fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest; that
negro slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our frame of
government, that principle has not been made one of legal obligation; that
by our frame of government, States which have slavery are to retain it, or
surrender it at their own pleasure; and that all others--individuals, free
States and national Government--are constitutionally bound to leave them
alone about it.

I believe our Government was thus framed because of the necessity
springing from the actual presence of slavery, when it was framed.

That such necessity does not exist in the Territories when slavery is not
present.

In his Mendenhall speech Mr. Clay says: "Now as an abstract principle