. When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever
community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly
logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit
that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do
wrong. When he says that slave property and horse and hog property are
alike to be allowed to go into the Territories, upon the principles of
equality, he is reasoning truly if there is no difference between them
as property; but if the one is property, held rightfully, and the other
is wrong, then there is no equality between the right and wrong; so
that, turn it in any way you can, in all the arguments sustaining the
Democratic policy, and in that policy itself, there is a careful,
studied exclusion of the idea that there is anything wrong in slavery.

Let us understand this. I am not, just here, trying to prove that we are
right and they are wrong. I have been stating where we and they stand,
and trying to show what is the real difference between us; and I now say
that whenever we can get the question distinctly stated,--can get all
these men who believe that slavery is in some of these respects wrong,
to stand and act with us in treating it as a wrong,--then, and not till
then, I think, will we in some way come to an end of this slavery
agitation.

_Mr. Lincoln's Reply to Judge Douglas in the Seventh and Last Debate.
Alton, Illinois. October 15, 1858_

... But is it true that all the difficulty and agitation we have in
regard to this institution of slavery springs from office-seeking,--from
the mere ambition of politicians? Is that the truth? How many times have
we had danger from this question? Go back to the day of the Missouri
Compromise. Go back to the nullification question, at the bottom of
which lay this same slavery question. Go back to the time of the
annexation of Texas. Go back to the troubles that led to the Compromise
of 1850. You will find that every time, with the single exception of the
nullification question, they sprung from an endeavour to spread this
institution. There never was a party in the history of this country, and
there probably never will be, of sufficient strength to disturb the
general peace of the country. Parties themselves may be divided and
quarrel on minor questions, yet it extends not beyond the parties
themselves. But does not this question make a disturbance outside of
political circles? Does it not enter