LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE...EXCERPT

"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia--to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope...there may be in this, in the long run its sudden execution is impossible...what then? Free them all and keep them among us as underlings?...What next free them and make then socially and politically our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this, and, if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not."

P. 178, ASSATA, An Autobiography, by Assata Shakur (1978) quoting Abraham Lincoln from the Lincoln-Douglas debates