(LE) On Not Caring About Slavery

In the penultimate paragraph of the Cooper Union address, Lincoln gives an analysis of Douglas's professed stance on slavery: "Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored -- contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man or a dead man -- such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care..."

As had been clear in his speeches for at least six years, Lincoln here insists that there is no middle ground on the morality of slavery, and that it is manipulatively dishonest and dangerous ("sophistical") to pretend to hold such middle ground. He is considerably gentler on those who honestly claim slavery is not wrong, or even a positive good, than he is on demagogues like Douglas.