Lincoln on Slavery

[RJNorton]

Hi Craig. Regarding that fragment I think Hay and Nicolay found quite a few of these and did the best they could at assigning them dates. In the Collected Works the Galesburg debate comes just pages later; thus, due to the nature of what Lincoln said, it looks to me like they felt Lincoln wrote it in the fall of 1858.

They also gave an August 1, 1858, date to this fragment: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

The explanation for the August 1, 1858, date is given as, "The date which has been assigned to this document is apparently pure conjecture. The manuscript is associated with no speech or occasion known to the editors. It was given by Mrs. Lincoln to her friend Myra Bradwell of Chicago, who together with her husband, Judge James B. Bradwell, succeeded in having Mrs. Lincoln released from the institution in which she was confined as insane in her later years. The scrap of paper is unsigned, but a signature clipped from another document has been pasted below the definition."