Who is so bold as to do it?... Let us
discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race
and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in
an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let
us discard all these things and unite as one people throughout this land
until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created
equal."
Douglas had driven Lincoln hard upon this application of the Declaration
of Independence with the result that in the southern part of Illinois,
at Charleston, Lincoln had uttered these words of a very different
tenor:
"I will say then that I am not nor never have been in favor of bringing
about in any way the social and political equality of the white and
black races; that I am not nor never have been in favor of making free
voters of the negroes or jurors or qualifying them to hold office or
having them marry with white people. I will say in addition that there
is a physical difference between the white and black races which I
suppose will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of
social and political equality; and inasmuch as they cannot so live that
while they do remain together there must be the position of the superior
and the inferior; that I, as much as any other man, am in favor of the
superior position assigned to the white man.
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