re is
nobody that "don't care." All the people do care one way or the other! I
do not charge that its author, when he says he "don't care," states his
individual opinion; he only expresses his policy for the government. I
understand that he has never said as an individual whether he thought
slavery right or wrong--and he is the only man in the nation that has not!
Now such a policy may have a temporary run; it may spring up as necessary
to the political prospects of some gentleman; but it is utterly baseless:
the people are not indifferent, and it can therefore have no durability or
permanence.

But suppose it could: Then it could be maintained only by a public opinion
that shall say, "We don't care." There must be a change in public opinion;
the public mind must be so far debauched as to square with this policy
of caring not at all. The people must come to consider this as "merely
a question of dollars and cents," and to believe that in some places the
Almighty has made slavery necessarily eternal. This policy can be brought
to prevail if the people can be brought round to say honestly, "We don't
care"; if not, it can never be maintained. It is for you to say whether
that can be done.

You are ready to say it cannot, but be not too fast! Remember what a long
stride has been taken since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise! Do you
know of any Democrat, of either branch of the party--do you know one who
declares that he believes that the Declaration of Independence has any
application to the negro? Judge Taney declares that it has not, and Judge
Douglas even vilifies me personally and scolds me roundly for saying that
the Declaration applies to all men, and that negroes are men. Is there a
Democrat here who does not deny that the Declaration applies to the
negro? Do any of you know of one? Well, I have tried before perhaps
fifty audiences, some larger and some smaller than this, to find one such
Democrat, and never yet have I found one who said I did not place him
right in that. I must assume that Democrats hold that, and now, not one
of these Democrats can show that he said that five years ago! I venture to
defy the whole party to produce one man that ever uttered the belief
that the Declaration did not apply to negroes, before the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise! Four or five years ago we all thought negroes were
men, and that when "all men" were named, negroes were included. But the
whole Democratic party has deli