s avowed mission is impressing the 'public heart' to care nothing
about it.... Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle
so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I
hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But, clearly, he is
not now with us--he does not pretend to be--he does not promise ever to
be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own
undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the
work, who do care for the result."

Since the result of the Illinois senatorial campaign had assured the
reelection of Douglas to the Senate, Lincoln's sage advice acquired a
double significance and value. Almost immediately after the close of the
campaign Douglas took a trip through the Southern States, and in
speeches made by him at Memphis, at New Orleans, and at Baltimore sought
to regain the confidence of Southern politicians by taking decidedly
advanced ground toward Southern views on the slavery question. On the
sugar plantations of Louisiana he said, it was not a question between
the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile. He
would say that between the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of
the negro; but between the negro and the white man, he would go for the
white man. The Almighty had drawn a line on this continent, on the one
side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor? on the other,
by white labor. That line did not run on 36 deg. and 30' [the Missouri
Compromise line], for 36 deg. and 30' runs over mountains and through
valleys. But this slave line, he said, meanders in the sugar-fields and
plantations of the South, and the people living in their different
localities and in the Territories must determine for themselves whether
their "middle belt" were best adapted to slavery or free labor. He
advocated the eventual annexation of Cuba and Central America. Still
going a step further, he laid down a far-reaching principle.

"It is a law of humanity," he said, "a law of civilization that whenever
a man or a race of men show themselves incapable of managing their own
affairs, they must consent to be governed by those who are capable of
performing the duty.... In accordance with this principle, I assert that
the negro race, under all circumstances, at all times, and in all
countries, has shown itself incapable of self-government."

This pro-slavery coquetting, however, availed him not