when he told an audience that if they would
repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation they must go
back to the era of our independence, and muzzle the cannon which thundered
its annual joyous return on the Fourth of July; they must blow out the
moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate
the love of liberty: but until they did these things, and others
eloquently enumerated by him, they could not repress all tendencies to
ultimate emancipation.

I ask attention to the fact that in a pre-eminent degree these popular
sovereigns are at this work: blowing out the moral lights around us;
teaching that the negro is no longer a man, but a brute; that the
Declaration has nothing to do with him; that he ranks with the crocodile
and the reptile; that man, with body and soul, is a matter of dollars and
cents. I suggest to this portion of the Ohio Republicans, or Democrats, if
there be any present, the serious consideration of this fact that there
is now going on among you a steady process of debauching public opinion on
this subject. With this, my friends, I bid you adieu.

SPEECH AT CINCINNATI OHIO, SEPTEMBER 17, 1859

My Fellow-Citizens of the State of Ohio: This is the first time in my
life that I have appeared before an audience in so great a city as this:
I therefore--though I am no longer a young man--make this appearance
under some degree of embarrassment. But I have found that when one is
embarrassed, usually the shortest way to get through with it is to quit
talking or thinking about it, and go at something else.

I understand that you have had recently with you my very distinguished
friend Judge Douglas, of Illinois; and I understand, without having had
an opportunity (not greatly sought, to be sure) of seeing a report of the
speech that he made here, that he did me the honor to mention my humble
name. I suppose that he did so for the purpose of making some objection to
some sentiment at some time expressed by me. I should expect, it is true,
that judge Douglas had reminded you, or informed you, if you had never
before heard it, that I had once in my life declared it as my opinion that
this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free; that
a house divided against itself cannot stand, and, as I had expressed it,
I did not expect the house to fall, that I did not expect the Union to be
dissolved, but that I did expect that it would cease to be divid