AMERICANA 46 “Foreshadowed The Approach He Would Take During The Senate Debates With Douglas” First separate printing of Lincoln’s bold 1857 Speech, delivered two weeks after Stephen A. Douglas’ provocative address on Dred Scott (included here), with Lincoln’s breakthrough Speech a clear assertion of the Declaration’s “all men are created equal” as a “maxim for a free society… and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere,” leading up to his famous “House Divided” speech. Lincoln was in the audience when Douglas delivered his June 12, 1857 speech. which is included here with Lincoln’s powerful response in his Speech of June 26. Douglas had briefly touched on Utah’s territorial status and slavery in Kansas, before focusing on the recent Dred Scott decision and asserting that those critical of it were “’enemies of the Constitution.’” Douglas echoed Chief Justice Taney by stating “that ‘negroes were regarded as an inferior race, who, in all ages, and in every part of the globe… had shown themselves incapable of government’” (Simon, Lincoln, 135-6). For months Lincoln had been silent about Dred Scott but Douglas’ words “provoked him to speak. He only did so, however, after he had meticulously prepared a rebuttal” (Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott, 4) When he stepped up to deliver this speech, he was “carrying an armload of legal volumes.” After countering Douglas on Utah and Kansas, Lincoln swiftly turned to Dred Scott. “Responding to claims made by Douglas and Taney that the authors of the Declaration did not intend to include Blacks when they wrote that ‘all men are created equal,’” Lincoln asserted “the Declaration’s authors ‘intended to include all men, but they… did not mean to say that all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments or social capacity.’” To Lincoln, the founders instead changed history by declaring how all men were equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Zarefsky, Consistency and Change, 25). Delivered almost a year before his famous House Divided speech, this Speech “contains some of the most memorable passages in his writing.” It clearly reveals, even at this early point in his path toward the presidency, Lincoln’s rhetorical brilliance and his apparently effortless ability to infuse “great poetic significance… into the political matter of the pre-Civil War epoch” (Basler, 19). The Illinois State Journal advertised copies of the speech for sale, while at least two papers (Illinois State Chronicle and Clinton Central Transcript) printed the text in full. (Lincoln) Eberstadt 165:356. Text very fresh, Lincoln with two leaves separated at foldline not affecting text. Rare together, about-fine. 52 LINCOLN, Abraham. Speech of the Hon. Abram [sic] Lincoln, In Reply to Judge Douglas. WITH: DOUGLAS, Stephen A. Kansas, Utah, and the Dred Scott Decision. Springfield, Illinois, 1857. Two items. Single folio sheet folded, untrimmed. $17,500
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