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I am presently listening to a group of lectures called Abraham Lincoln: In His Own Words, by professor David Zarefsky. In these lectures, Dr. Zarefsky takes a look at the rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln (Rhetoric used not in the negative sense we so often hear today). The past few lectures I’ve heard cover the series of debates in 1858 between Lincoln and Stephen A Douglas for the Illinois seat in the U.S. Senate. The sixth of the seven debates was held in Quincy. The full debate can be read here.

The subject that occupied center stage throughout the debates regarded the institution of slavery. Lincoln continued to develop his argument throughout the several debates until, at Quincy, he makes clear the dinstinction between his stance on slavery and that of Douglas. Here is Lincoln’s stance in his own words:

I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong. The Republican party think it wrong-we think it is a moral, a social and a political wrong. We think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due regard to the actual presence of it amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the Constitutional obligations thrown about it.

Lincoln classifies slavery as a moral wrong. His opposition to the practice is own the basis of morality. The immorality of slavery seems rather obvious to most modern westerners. It was not always the case. Here is Douglas’ stance on the issue in his own words:

He tells you that I will not argue the question whether slavery is right or wrong. I tell you why I will not do it. I hold that under the Constitution of the United States, each State of this Union has a right to do as it pleases on the subject of slavery. In Illinois we have exercised that sovereign right by prohibiting slavery within our own limits. I approve of that line of policy. We have performed our whole duty in Illinois. We have gone as far as we have a right to go under the Constitution of our common country. It is none of our business whether slavery exists in Missouri or not. Missouri is a sovereign State of this Union, and has the same right to decide the slavery question for herself that Illinois has to decide it for herself.

The analogy between the issue of slavery and that of abortion was all too obvious to me as I read the debate. One could almost substitute the word abortion for every time the word slavery is used and it would almost describe the pro-life and pro-choice positions on abortion which we find today. I point this out because while it seems obvious to us today that Douglas was wrong, it was not so obvious in 1858. Douglas talked as if the slave was a non-entity. The rights or feelings of the slave was not a consideration. Slavery was a matter of personal choice (or at least state choice) and Douglas, nor anyone else, had the right to interfere with the right of some to own slaves.

I can only hope, and I do believe, that eventually we will look back on the abortion issue and see that it was obvious all along that abortion is a moral wrong. If it is a moral wrong, the position of those who wish to maintain the right of women to have abortions is just as untenable and unpalatable and immoral as that of Stephen A. Douglas on slavery.