I assert that Judge Douglas and all his friends may search the whole records of the country, and it will be a matter of great astonishment to me if they shall be able to find that one human being three years ago had ever uttered the astounding sentiment that the term "all men" in the Declaration did not include the negro.

Do not let me be misunderstood.

I know that more than three years ago there were men who, finding this assertion constantly in the way of their schemes to bring about the ascendency and perpetuation of slavery, denied the truth of it.

I know that Mr.Calhoun and all the politicians of his school denied the truth of the Declaration.

I know that it ran along in the mouth of some Southern men for a period of years, ending at last in that shameful though rather forcible declaration of Pettit, of Indiana, upon the floor of the United States Senate, that the Declaration of Independence was in that respect "a self-evident lie" rather than a self-evident truth.