That would be a vain effort. I do not enter upon it. I
only propose to try to show you that you ought to nominate for the next
presidency, at Charleston, my distinguished friend, Judge Douglas. In
all that, there is no real difference between you and him; I understand
he is as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you than you are for
yourselves. I will try to demonstrate that proposition.
In Kentucky perhaps--in many of the slave States certainly--you are
trying to establish the rightfulness of slavery by reference to the
Bible. You are trying to show that slavery existed in the Bible times by
Divine ordinance. Now, Douglas is wiser than you, for your own benefit,
upon that subject. Douglas knows that whenever you establish that
slavery was right by the Bible, it will occur that that slavery was the
slavery of the white man,--of men without reference to colour,--and he
knows very well that you may entertain that idea in Kentucky as much as
you please, but you will never win any Northern support upon it. He
makes a wiser argument for you. He makes the argument that the slavery
of the black man--the slavery of the man who has a skin of a different
colour from your own--is right.
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