be as nearly reached as
we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing
that will impose slavery upon any other creature. Let us, then, turn
this government back into the channel in which the framers of the
Constitution originally placed it. Let us stand firmly by each other.
If we do not do so, we are tending in the contrary direction, that our
friend Judge Douglas proposes,--not intentionally,--working in the
traces that tend to make this one universal slave nation. He is one that
runs in that direction, and as such I resist him.

My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I
have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and
the other man, this race and that race and the other race being
inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let
us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this
land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are
created equal.

My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new topic,
which would detain you too long, continue to-night. I thank you for this
most extensive audience that you have furnished me to-night. I leave
you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until
there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and
equal.

_From a Speech at Springfield, Illinois. July 17, 1858_

... There is still another disadvantage under which we labour, and to
which I will ask your attention. It arises out of the relative positions
of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the
Senate. Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious
politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past,
have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the
President of the United States. They have seen, in his round, jolly,
fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet
appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting
out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy
hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so
long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the
party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope. But with greedier
anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches,
triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what, even in the days of his