Lincoln as Abolitionist (2)

Lincoln continued by working in some specific campaign allusions, building on this same theme to come up with some political mockery of his opponent:

I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its - correctness - and that is the case of Judge Douglas' old friend Col Richard M. Johnson. [Laughter.]

He concluded his remarks in this vein by focusing on the pragmatic aspects of the question. The debate over slavery in this contest was between the Northern Democrats' proslavery doctrine of "popular sovereignty" which would allow slavery in federal terroritories without restriction, and the Republicans' doctrine of halting the spread of slavery to additional states.