with the President about the
Lecompton constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at
the end of the slavery agitation. But in one speech, I think last
winter, he did say that he didn't quite see when the end of the slavery
agitation would come. Now he tells us again that it is all over, and the
people of Kansas have voted down the Lecompton constitution. How is it
over? That was only one of the attempts to put an end to the slavery
agitation,--one of these "final settlements." Is Kansas in the Union?
Has she formed a constitution that she is likely to come in under? Is
not the slavery agitation still an open question in that Territory?...
If Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the
earth's surface, this vexed question would still be among us. I say,
then, there is no way of putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst
us, but to put it back upon the basis where our fathers placed it; no
way but to keep it out of our new Territories,--to restrict it for ever
to the old States where it now exists. Then the public mind will rest in
the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. That is one
way of putting an end to the slavery agitation.

The other way is for us to surrender, and let Judge Douglas and his
friends have their way, and plant slavery over all the States,--cease
speaking of it as in any way a wrong--regard slavery as one of the
common matters of property, and speak of our negroes as we do of our
horse and cattle.

_From Lincoln's Reply to Judge Douglas at Galesburg, Illinois. October
7, 1858_

... The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and
insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it
is a slander on the framers of that instrument to suppose that negroes
were meant therein; and he asks you, Is it possible to believe that Mr.
Jefferson, who penned that immortal paper, could have supposed himself
applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held
a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed
them? I only have to remark upon this part of his speech (and that too,
very briefly, for I shall not detain myself or you upon that point for
any great length of time), that I believe the entire records of the
world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within
three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation from
one single man, that t