t profitable in Ohio, if any
man wants it, is wrong to him not to let him have it.

In this matter Judge Douglas is preparing the public mind for you of
Kentucky to make perpetual that good thing in your estimation, about which
you and I differ.

In this connection, let me ask your attention to another thing. I believe
it is safe to assert that five years ago no living man had expressed the
opinion that the negro had no share in the Declaration of Independence.
Let me state that again: five years ago no living man had expressed the
opinion that the negro had no share in the Declaration of Independence.
If there is in this large audience any man who ever knew of that opinion
being put upon paper as much as five years ago, I will be obliged to him
now or at a subsequent time to show it.

If that be true I wish you then to note the next fact: that within the
space of five years Senator Douglas, in the argument of this question, has
got his entire party, so far as I know, without exception, in saying that
the negro has no share in the Declaration of Independence. If there be now
in all these United States one Douglas man that does not say this, I have
been unable upon any occasion to scare him up. Now, if none of you said
this five years ago, and all of you say it now, that is a matter that you
Kentuckians ought to note. That is a vast change in the Northern public
sentiment upon that question.

Of what tendency is that change? The tendency of that change is to bring
the public mind to the conclusion that when men are spoken of, the
negro is not meant; that when negroes are spoken of, brutes alone are
contemplated. That change in public sentiment has already degraded
the black man in the estimation of Douglas and his followers from the
condition of a man of some sort, and assigned him to the condition of a
brute. Now, you Kentuckians ought to give Douglas credit for this. That is
the largest possible stride that can be made in regard to the perpetuation
of your thing of slavery.

A voice: Speak to Ohio men, and not to Kentuckians!

Mr. LINCOLN: I beg permission to speak as I please.

In Kentucky perhaps, in many of the slave States certainly, you are trying
to establish the rightfulness of slavery by reference to the Bible. You
are trying to show that slavery existed in the Bible times by divine
ordinance. Now, Douglas is wiser than you, for your own benefit, upon that
subject. Douglas knows that whenever you establi