and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that
there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of
the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said
anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there
is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the
rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence,--the right of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled
to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not
my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not in
intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread,
without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my
equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man."

I have chiefly introduced this for the purpose of meeting the Judge's
charge that the quotation he took from my Charleston speech was what I
would say down South among the Kentuckians, the Virginians, etc., but
would not say in the regions in which was supposed to be more of the
Abolition element. I now make this comment: That speech from which I have
now read the quotation, and which is there given correctly--perhaps too
much so for good taste--was made away up North in the Abolition District
of this State par excellence, in the Lovejoy District, in the personal
presence of Lovejoy, for he was on the stand with us when I made it. It
had been made and put in print in that region only three days less than
a month before the speech made at Charleston, the like of which Judge
Douglas thinks I would not make where there was any Abolition element.
I only refer to this matter to say that I am altogether unconscious of
having attempted any double-dealing anywhere; that upon one occasion I may
say one thing, and leave other things unsaid, and vice versa, but that I
have said anything on one occasion that is inconsistent with what I have
said elsewhere, I deny, at least I deny it so far as the intention is
concerned. I find that I have devoted to this topic a larger portion of my
time than I had intended. I wished to show, but I will pass it upon this
occasion, that in the sentiment I have occasionally advanced upon the
Declaration of Independence I am entirely borne out by the sentiments
advanced by our old Whig leader, Henry Clay, and I have the book here to
show it from but because I have already occupied more tim