Abraham Lincoln
American President
1809-1865 A selection from his
SPEECH AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK FEBRUARY 27, 1860
Narrated by Barrett Whitener
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If they would listen—as I suppose they will not—I would
address a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them:
You say you are conservative—eminently conservative—while we are
revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is
conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new
and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the
point in controversy which was adopted by our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live; while you with one accord reject and
scout and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting
something new.
True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be.
You have considerable variety of new propositions and plans, but you are
unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some
of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a congressional
slave code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the
Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining
slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat
pur-rinciple" that if one man would enslave another, no third man should
object—fantastically called "popular sovereignty." But never a man among
you in favor of prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according
to the practice of our fathers who framed the Government under which we
live. Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an
advocate in the century within which our Government originated. And yet
you draw yourselves up and say, "We are eminently conservative."
It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great confederacy
shall be at peace, and in harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do
our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing
through passion and ill-temper. Even though the Southern people will not
so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield
to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging
by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their
controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered
to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against
us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections
are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, in the future, if we have nothing
to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know
because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and
insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the
charge and the denunciation.
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: we must not
only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let
them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so
trying to convince them, from the very beginning of our organization, but
with no success. In all our platforms and speeches, we have constantly
protested our purpose to let them alone; but this had no tendency to
convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they
have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join
them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly—done in acts
as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated—we must place
ourselves avowedly with them. Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted
and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether
made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest
and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down
our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected of
all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe
that all their troubles proceed from us. So long as we call slavery
wrong, whenever a slave runs away they will overlook the obvious fact
that he ran away because he was oppressed, and declare he was stolen off.
Whenever a master cuts his slaves with a lash, and they cry out under it,
he will overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they
are hurt, and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally
abolitionist.
I am quite aware that they do not state their case precisely in this way.
Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us,
and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone—have
never disturbed them—so that, after all, it is what we say which
dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we
cease saying.
I am also aware that they have not as yet in terms demanded the overthrow
of our free-State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the
wrong of slavery with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings
against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced,
the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded. It is nothing to
the contrary that they do not demand the whole of this just now.
Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily
stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding as they do that slavery
is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a
full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our conviction
that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and
constitutions against it are themselves wrong and should be silenced and
swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its
nationality—its universality: if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist
upon its extension—its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily
grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily
grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking
it wrong is the precise fact on which depends the whole controversy.
Thinking it right as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full
recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we
yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our
own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we
do this?
Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it
is because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual
presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow
it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in
these free States?
If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty,
fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those
sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and
belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between
the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who would be
neither a living man nor a dead man—such as a policy of "don't care" on
a question about which all free men do care—such as Union appeals
beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine
rule, and caning, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance—such
as invocations of Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against
us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government,
nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might;
and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it. More information about Abraham Lincoln from Wikipedia
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