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 deliberately taken negroes from the class of
men and put them in the class of brutes. Turn it as you will it is simply
the truth! Don't be too hasty, then, in saying that the people cannot be
brought to this new doctrine, but note that long stride. One more as long
completes the journey from where negroes are estimated as men to where
they are estimated as mere brutes--as rightful property!

That saying "In the struggle between white men and the negro," etc., which
I know came from the same source as this policy--that saying marks another
step. There is a falsehood wrapped up in that statement. "In the struggle
between the white man and the negro" assumes that there is a struggle,
in which either the white man must enslave the negro or the negro must
enslave the white. There is no such struggle! It is merely the ingenious
falsehood to degrade and brutalize the negro. Let each let the other
alone, and there is no struggle about it. If it was like two wrecked
seamen on a narrow plank, when each must push the other off or drown
himself, I would push the negro off or a white man either, but it is not;
the plank is large enough for both. This good earth is plenty broad enough
for white man and negro both, and there is