Jonesboro and the one at Charleston, would all be put in print, and all
the reading and intelligent men in the community would see them and know
all about my opinions. And I have not supposed, and do not now suppose,
that there is any conflict whatever between them. But the Judge will have
it that if we do not confess that there is a sort of inequality between
the white and black races which justifies us in making them slaves, we
must then insist that there is a degree of equality that requires us to
make them our wives. Now, I have all the while taken a broad distinction
in regard to that matter; and that is all there is in these different
speeches which he arrays here; and the entire reading of either of the
speeches will show that that distinction was made. Perhaps by taking two
parts of the same speech he could have got up as much of a conflict as
the one he has found. I have all the while maintained that in so far as
it should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and
black races that should produce a perfect social and political equality,
it was an impossibility. This you have seen in my printed speeches, and
with it I have said that in their right to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness," as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the
inferior races are our equals. And these declarations I have constantly
made in reference to the abstract moral question, to contemplate and
consider when we are legislating about any new country which is not
already cursed with the actual presence of the evil,--slavery. I have
never manifested any impatience with the necessities that spring from the
actual presence of black people amongst us, and the actual existence of
slavery amongst us where it does already exist; but I have insisted that,
in legislating for new countries where it does not exist there is no just
rule other than that of moral and abstract right! With reference to those
new countries, those maxims as to the right of a people to "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were the just rules to be
constantly referred to. There is no misunderstanding this, except by men