1854 As more and more conquests or frontier settlements added to the American dominion, their inhabitants pressed to be admitted to the Union – first as territories, then in time, if they progressed and prospered, as states. In the years leading up to the Civil War this business grew more and more politically charged over whether slavery was to be allowed in the new territory or state. In 1820 and again in 1850, southern and northern congressmen reached compromises that drew a northern limit to slave-holding – the 36°30' parallel, the boundary between Arkansas and Missouri.
Then in 1854 the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, the prominent Democrat Stephen Douglas, introduced the Kansas–Nebraska Act to admit those two territories to the Union. All very uncontroversial, so far as slavery went, since both territories were above the 36°30' waterline. But there was a sting in the tail. Under southern pressure, Douglas drafted the Act so as to allow the inhabitants of the new territories to choose for themselves whether or not to hold slaves. Though practically speaking, the climate and terrain of the territories made them unsuitable for plantations, Douglas thought, he argued that ‘the sacred right of self-government’ ought to prevail in principle.
Abraham Lincoln, already a rising star in the Republican party, saw this for what it was – an attempt to repeal the hard-fought compromises that had so far preserved the Union. So he fought Douglas and the Act in a series of speeches, of which the longest and best-remembered was given at Peoria, Illinois, on this day. As for ‘the sacred right’, etc., ‘The doctrine of self-government is right – absolutely and eternally right’, he said, ‘but it has no just application’ here, because those claiming that right are also denying it to their slaves. ‘When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.’
Then, citing the Declaration of Independence almost as scripture (our ‘ancient faith’, he called it), he reminded his audience that:
The just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Now, the relation of masters is, PRO TANTO, a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent; but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.
The Act passed, despite Lincoln’s oratory. But Lincoln would confront Douglas again – in their great campaign debates over the Illinois seat in the US Senate in 1858, and in the struggle for the presidency in 1860. In electoral terms Lincoln lost the first and won the second. In terms of great American rhetoric he won both, and a great deal more.