The Big One

Abraham Lincoln and slavery aren't often linked in the study of history—oh, wait. Strike that, reverse it.

Since the "house divided" that was the United States was primarily divided (oh, the irony) over the issue of slavery, the topic figures heavily into Lincoln's speech. He frames the conversation in a couple different ways.

First, there the discussion of recent events and what it meant for the country. Lincoln says, early on:

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states by state constitutions and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery… (14-16)

He focuses on how quickly and dramatically the situation changed, as a warning to his audience about what could be next.

So there's the review of recent history with regards to slavery, to remind people that the threat is real.

Lincoln also discusses the outcome of that recent history and its effect on the slaves themselves. Regarding the Dred Scott decision, he says, somewhat sarcastically:

This point is made in order to deprive the Negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." (50)

In summary, he says:

The people were to be left 'perfectly free,' 'subject only to the Constitution.' What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough, now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. (59-61)

His frustration with the states of legislation about slavery and its contradiction to the essential principles of America is palpable. You can almost smell it. This quote also reminds peoples of the moral problem with slavery, by comparing it to the freedom that is so precious to his audience. He reminds them "individual men may fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property" (51), and very soon that could be the case in the North.

At various points in the speech, Lincoln also criticizes Douglas' ambivalence about slavery, since his opponent consistently pushed the decision to the states, and references the "dynasty" (88) of slaveholders wielding political power.

Since the speech is pretty much all about slavery, there are many references, but they take some slightly different perspectives. Some statements focus on historical events, others on legal issues and government regulation, and a few go so far as to directly question the morality question.

Not that it's really a question, of course.