But while it drives on in its state of progress as it is now driving, and as it has driven for the last five years, I have ventured the opinion, and I say to-day that we will have no end to the slavery agitation until it takes one turn or the other.

I do not mean to say that when it takes a turn towards ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two years.

I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in God's own good time, I have no doubt.
But the one dominating characteristic of Lincoln's speeches is their constant recurrence to broad and enduring principles, their unremitting effort to lead public opinion to loftier and nobler conceptions of political duty; and nothing in his career stamps him so distinctively an American as his constant eulogy and defense of the philosophical precepts of the Declaration of Independence.

The following is one of his indictments of his political opponents on this point: [Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p.

225.
At Galesburg the other day, I said, in answer to Judge Douglas, that three years ago there never had been a man, so far as I knew or believed, in the whole world, who had said that the Declaration of Independence did not include negroes in the term "all men." I re-assert it to-day.