Lincoln, Slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act

I mentioned in class today that the common law tradition radically unites property and personal liberty (and has a weak conception of the common good).  To illustrate the power of the liberty point; and that American slavery exposed American claims of liberty as hypocritical here are two passages from Abraham Lincoln in the book I am reading at the moment: The Fiery Trial - Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner.


 Both come from a long speech in 1854 - denouncing Stephen Douglas and the Kansas Nebraska Act - which permitted settlers to decide whether slavery should be allowed in the Territory. - GWC

“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert zeal for the spread of slavery I cannot but hate.  I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.  I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites - causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty - criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”
“The dotrine of self government is right - absolutely and eternally right - but it has no just application...Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such just application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man...If the negro is a man, is it not to that extent, a total destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself?  When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man...that is despotism.  If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that `all men are created equal’; and that there can be no moral right in one man’s making a slave of another.”