Abraham Lincoln Speech on the Dred Scott Decision
June 26, 1857
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope, upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes ALL men, black as well as white; and forthwith he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes! He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
And he gets even worse further into the speech.
Isn’t it amazing that with all the accusations of racism against Republican presidents the one who really was a racist is the one that most would never believe was a racist and in fact a huge percentage of black people don’t even believe he was a Republican but insist that the president who “freed the slaves”, a misconception in itself, was a Democrat. It would seem that wrong information, even if it is not a deliberate lie, can reach the Moon before the truth can get out of a chair.
"Amidst this prospect of evil, I am glad to see one good effect. It has brought the necessity of some plan of general emancipation & deportation more home to the minds of our people than it has ever been before. Insomuch, that our Governor has ventured to propose one to the legislature. This will probably not be acted on at this time. Nor would it be effectual; for while it proposes to devote to that object one third of the revenue of the State, it would not reach one tenth of the annual increase. My proposition would be that the holders should give up all born after a certain day, past, present, or to come, that these should be placed under the guardianship of the State, and sent at a proper age to S. Domingo. There they are willing to receive them, & the shortness of the passage brings the deportation within the possible means of taxation aided by charitable contributions. In this I think Europe, which has forced this evil on us, and the Eastern states who have been it's chief instruments of importation, would be bound to give largely. But the proceeds of the land office, if appropriated, would be quite sufficient."