blood from
our ancestors--among us, perhaps half our people who are not descendants
at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe,--German,
Irish, French, and Scandinavian,--men that have come from Europe
themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here,
finding themselves our equal in all things. If they look back through
this history, to trace their connection with those days by blood, they
find they have none: they cannot carry themselves back into that
glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us; but
when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find
that those old men say that "we hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral
sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that
it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a
right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of
the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That
is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of
patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those
patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of
men throughout the world.

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of "don't
care if slavery is voted up or voted down"; for sustaining the Dred
Scott decision; for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not
mean anything at all,--we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of
what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that
the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to
his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now, I ask you
in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if
confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children and repeated to them,
do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to
transform this government into a government of some other form? Those
arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with
as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be
done for them as their condition will allow,--what are these arguments?
They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in
all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favour of
kingcraft were of this class; they a