AN OUTLINE OF LINCOLN'S PEORIA ADDRESS (1854) 

(= Address on Kansas-Nebraska Act)
(Page references are to Basler’s one-volume edition of Lincoln’s writings.)

I. Introduction

A. Will adopt a national, not sectional, point of view (283)
B. Emphasizes distinction between the existing institution of slavery and its extension (283)

II. Historical Background

A. Northwest Ordinance reflects Founders' initiation of the "policy of prohibiting slavery in new territories" (284-5)

1. Results: beneficial for the inhabitants of states formed from the Northwest Territory (284-5)

2. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration and author of the slavery prohibition, never thought men had a "right" to bring slaves into new territories (285).

B. The exclusion of slavery north of 36'30" in the Missouri Compromise uses the same language as was contained in the Northwest Ordinance prohibition (286)..

C. That line was expressly extended across Texas (which already had slavery in its southern, settled portion) in 1845, and the Compromise was praised by Douglas in 1849 (286-7).

D. The Wilmot Proviso advocates voted down Douglas's bill for extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific in 1848 (287-8).

E. Douglas himself supported the 1853 Kansas-Nebraska bill, which contained no repeal of the Missouri Compromise (and failed to pass only on account of a lack of time); only in the following session of Congress was the bill amended on his motion so as to repeal the Compromise (290).

III. The wrongness of repeal, both in its direct effect and in its hateful "prospective principle," which contradicts the Declaration and teaches that there is "no right principle of action but self-interest" (291):

A. Preface:

1. Lincoln has no hostility towards the South, recognizing that Southerners are "no more responsible for the origin of slavery" than Northerners are (291).
2. Lincoln appreciates that there is no easy solution to the problem of slavery where it already exists. (Colonization for all ex-slaves seems prohibitively costly, at least in the short run.) (291-2)..
3. Lincoln's feelings - or at least those of "the great mass of white people," which "cannot be safely disregarded" - forbid making the slaves "politically and socially our equals" (292; cf. 322, below).
4. Lincoln respects the Constitutional rights of the South - including the right to have fugitive slaves returned (292).

B. Refutation of the arguments for repeal:

1. Repeal is not necessary in order to establish a territorial government (293).
2. Nor has the public "repudiated" the Compromise, as Douglas claims (293):

a. The Compromise contained no "principle" requiring the extension of the 36'30" line (from which the Compromise of 1850 deviated) (293):

1) Missouri Compromise line was expressly limited to the territory contained in the Louisiana Purchase (293-4).
2) The Compromise itself admitted Missouri as a slave state, even though it was north of the line (294).

b. The Wilmot Proviso advocates, respecting the Missouri Compromise, never attempted to prohibit slavery in the (future) Oklahoma Territory (which lay south of the line) (294).

c. The Compromise of 1850 provisions regarding slavery in the Utah/New Mexico Territories applied only to those territories (295-6).

d. The essential "principle" of the 1850 Compromise was the "system of equivalents," which the Kansas-Nebraska Act violates (296).

e. Note also that had the principle of "popular sovereignty" been followed in the 1850 Compromise, slavery itself - not only the slave trade - would have been abolished in the District of Columbia. (296-7) 

3. Nor is repeal justified by "intrinsic rightness" (298).

a. Violates fairness of compromise (298-9)
b. Rejection of "lullaby" arguments (299-30-):

1) That slavery won't enter Kansas even if lawful (299-301):

a) Climate won't keep it out (299).
b) Disposition of nearby population (Missouri) won't keep it out (299-300). 
c) Absence of slave law won't keep it out (300-301).

2) That allowing slavery into Kansas won't increase total number enslaved: (301) 

a) It will encourage continued illegal importation of slaves (301).

c. Violates antislavery feelings that Northerners aren't obliged to suppress (301-2).

1) Not an issue of "equal justice to the South" unless men are no different from other species of property, e.g., hogs (301).
2) Southerners themselves recognize that slaves are human beings, and hence that slavery is intrinsically wrong:

a) Agreed with North that the importation of slaves should be punished by death (301-2).
b) Their scorn of slave-dealers (302)
c) Many have emancipated slaves - as they would not do to hogs (302).

d. The "right of self-government" has no just application here, if Negroes are human, because that right cannot justify anyone in ruling another man without his consent (303-4). 

1) Re-emphasizes he's not advocating political and social equality of races, but only opposing the extension of slavery (304). (Note that slavery, unlike the denial of political or social equality, violates the natural rights of all human beings on which all just government is founded according to the Declaration of Independence.)

2) Founders' acceptance of slavery where it previously existed doesn't entail right to extend it. To the contrary, the Founders themselves banned slavery in the Northwest Territory (304-5).

3) Extension of slavery damages Northerners' right to self-government (305).

4) If the rightness of slavery were up to the individual to decide for himself, why not reopen the foreign slave trade as well? (305-6)

5) Extension of slavery deprives free whites of opportunities for settlement (306).

6) Extension of slavery also adversely affects rights of citizens of free states through the 3/5 clause and obligation to enforce fugitive slave laws (306-7).

7) Extension endangers liberties of all citizens (308).

e. Kansas-Nebraska Act isn't a "Union-saving" device as Douglas contends:

1) As a breach of faith with the North, necessarily arousing indignation, it aggravated agitation over slavery (309).

2) "Peculiar structure" of the Act leaves open how the people of Kansas are to decide: a source of future trouble [cf. Lecompton Constitution] (310).

3) The Act, by undermining the spirit of compromise, encourages the South to further excesses (311). 

IV. Response to objections to working for restoration of the Missouri Compromise:

A. That the Senate will block restoration:

1. Results of election can exercise influence even on incumbent Senators (312).

2. It’s more important to use the election to deny authors of Kansas-Nebraska Act endorsement of the principle they seek to establish: "the planting of slavery wherever ... local and unorganized opposition cannot prevent it" (312).

B. That it requires cooperation with Abolitionists:

1. Whig policy: "stand with anybody" to the extent he stands right, but not when he's wrong (312). 

V. Particular objection to "the new position which the avowed principle" of the Nebraska law gives to slavery: its assumption "that there can be a moral right" to enslave another human being (313):

A. The Founders rejected this assumption, accepting the existence of slavery only from "Necessity" (313-15).

1. They blamed the British king for introducing it here (313).
2. They prohibited it in the Northwest Territory even before Constitution was adopted (313).
3. They avoided mentioning slavery by name anywhere in the Constitution (313).
4. Series of legal enactments against slave trade, 1794-1820 (313-14)

B. But the "spirit of '76" is rapidly being "displaced" by spirit of the Nebraska law, which transforms slavery into a "sacred right" (315).

C. Unsafe to disregard opinion of "the liberal party throughout the world," which regards American slavery as threatening to destroy "the noblest political system the world ever saw" (315).

D. By turning slavery back from claims of "moral right" to its existing legal rights and "its arguments of necessity," we "re-adopt the Declaration of Independence" and its principles, and thus not only save the Union, but do so in such a manner as to "keep it, forever worthy of the saving," so "that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations" (315; cf. Luke 1:48, and the peroration of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address ["a new birth of freedom"]).

VI. Response to points made by Douglas in Springfield debate (316-323):

A. "Principle" of the Nebraska bill will inevitably have the effect of extending slavery (316).

B. Congressional enactments have been the cause keeping slavery out of the Northwest Territory and the states subsequently formed there (316-7).

C. Over fifty years have elapsed since a state previously having legal slavery within its boundaries abolished it; hence there’s no assurance that Nebraska would abolish slavery once introduced there (317).

D. Douglas's inapt comparison of principle of the Nebraska bill to the choice between good and evil given to mankind by God (318).

E. Resemblance of Douglas's comparison rather to the argument for divine right of Kings (318).

F. Constitution gives Congress the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories no less than to prohibit the African slave trade (318).

G. Southern ability to count 3/5 of slaves for purposes of representation in Congress more than counterbalances representation of free blacks in Northern states (318-19).

H. Compromise of 1850 was a "system of equivalents" entailing no distinct principle separable from the rest of the compromise (319).

I. Express authority given by 1850 Compromise to Utah and New Mexico to institute slavery when admitted to the Union implies that Nebraska has no such authority, since it wasn't provided for by Congress (320).

J. Nor did Washington territorial law repeal the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Ordinance (320).

K. From the premise that the American government was made "for white people," Douglas wrongly infers that whites have a right to enslave blacks, showing that he "has no very vivid impression that the negro is a human," and that there can therefore be "any moral question in legislating about him" (321).

L. But "the great mass of mankind take a totally different view" of slavery from Douglas, regarding it as "a great moral wrong." Their anti-slavery feeling "lies at the very foundation of their sense of justice," and forms "a great and durable element of popular action" which "no statesman can safely disregard" (322; cf. 292, above).

M. Acknowledgment of the diverse elements of which the anti-Nebraska-bill political coalition is formed (322; cf. 312 above, and the conclusion of Lincoln's "House Divided" speech).

N. Consistency of Lincoln's position with that of Clay and Webster (322-3).

O. That the compromises of 1850 were interdependent, that Illinois came into the Union as a free state, etc., are among "our national axioms, or dogmas," the denial of which would put "an end to all argument" (like the denial that 2 + 2 = 4) (323).