Racial Equality

Abraham Lincoln argued that there was no reason why the Negro was not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, and that in the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns he was Lincoln’s equal, the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. Stephen Douglas countered that it was a falsification of the Declaration of Independence to pretend that it applied to the equality of Negroes, even though it said that all men are created equal.

Quincy, Illinois · United States