I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the
white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many
respects,--certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual
endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of
anybody else, which his own hand earns, _he is my equal, and the equal
of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man_." Later at
Charleston he reiterated much of this in almost identical language, and
then in his turn took his fling at Douglas: "I am not in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor
to intermarry with white people.... I do not understand that because I
do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a
wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.... I have never
had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes, if
there was no law to keep them from it; but as Judge Douglas and his
friends seem to be in great apprehension that _they_ might, if there
were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that
I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids
the marrying of white people with negroes."
By all this it is made entirely evident that Lincoln held a faith widely
different from that of the great crusading leaders of Abolitionism at
the East.[84] Equally marked was the difference between him and them in
the matters of temper and of the attitude taken towards opponents.
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