Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Report of Speech at Paris, Illinois, 7 September 18581

“popular soverignty. what did douglas really invent?

Let us inquire, (said Mr. Lincoln,) what Douglas really invented when he introduced, and drove through Congress, the Nebraska bill. He called it “Popular Sovereignty.” What does Popular Sovereignty mean? Strictly and literally it means the Sovereignty of the People over their own affairs—in other words, the Right of the People of every nation and community to govern themselves. Did Mr. Douglas invent this? Not quite. The idea of Popular Sovereignty was floating about the world several ages before the anthor of t[h]e Nebraska bill saw daylight—indeed, before Columbus set foot on the American continent. In the year 1776 it took tangible form in the noble words which you are all familiar with:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; That they are cre-dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; That to secure these rights governments were instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”2 Was not this the origin of Popular Sovereignty as applied to the American people? Here we are told that governments are instituted among men to secure certain rights, and that they derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. If that is not Popular Sovereignty, then I have no conception of the meaning of words.

Then if Mr. Mr. Douglas did not invent this kind of Sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what the invention really was. Was it the right of emigrants in Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves and a gang of niggers too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no invention of his, because Gen. Cass put forth the same doctrine in 1848, in his so-called [Nicholson letter, six years before]3 Douglas thought of such a thing.4 Gen. Cass could have taken out a patent for the idea, if he had chosen to do so, and have prevented his Illinois rival from reaping a particle of benefit from it. Then what was it, I ask again, that this “Little Giant” invented? It never occurred to Gen. Cass to call his discovery by the odd name of “Popular Sovereignty.” He had not the impudence to say that the right of people to govern niggers was the right of people to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were not moulded to the brazen degree of calling the right to put a hundred niggers through under the lash in Nebraska, a “sacred right of self government.” And here, I submit to this intelligent andience and the whole world, was Judge Douglas’ discovery, and the whole of it. He invented a name for Gen. Cass’ old Nicholson letter dogma. He discovered that the right of the white man to breed and flog niggers in Nebraska was POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY! (Great applause and laughter.)5

1Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech in Paris, Illinois, on September 7, 1858. The Chicago Daily Press and Tribune published this report of his speech in its September 11, 1858 edition.
Lincoln was running in the 1858 Federal Election against Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas as the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. Both men traveled the state throughout the fall and summer of 1858, delivering public speeches in support of candidates for the Illinois General Assembly in their respective parties, as well as for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. They were highly attuned to the local elections for members of the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate because, at the time, members of the General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 11 September 1858, 2:5; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:458; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392, 394.

2This is a quotation from the Declaration of Independence, although in the Declaration the word “unalienable” is used rather than “inalienable” and present tense is utilized throughout rather than past tense (i.e. “governments are instituted among men” rather than “governments were instituted among men”).
Julian P. Boyd et al, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 1:429.

3A crease in the original newspaper obscured a line of text. The supplied text for the missing portion is from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.
Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 3:91.

4General Lewis Cass’s “Nicholson” letter is a reference to a letter Cass wrote Alfred O. P. Nicholson on December 24, 1847. In the letter, Cass offered one of the first articulations of popular sovereignty as a solution to the problem of slavery in the U.S. territories. The letter was widely published, and Cass ran for president during the 1848 Federal Election using the concept of popular sovereignty as his platform. Lincoln previously referenced the letter in a speech he gave July 27, 1848 while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis & Compromise of 1850 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1964), 145; Niles’ National Register (Baltimore, MD), 8 January 1848, 293:2-3, 294:1-3; The Daily Union (Washington, DC), 30 December 1847, 2:5-6, 3:1.

5In the end, in Illinois’s local elections of 1858, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in the state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois General Assembly and Douglas won reelection to the U.S. Senate. Through the campaign, however, and in particular through his participation in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Lincoln gained recognition and respect within the national Republican Party.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:556-57; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 414.