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"Can you imagine 10 percent of the populace following Lincoln on this today?" In transcript form, perhaps not. In spoken text? I think we could meet the 10% bar. A lot of the klunkiness of that is the transcription, I think; modern extemporaneous speech is transcribed differently. "So far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it. As I have already stated, the present frame of "the Government under which we live" consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates. As I understand, all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process of law", while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution" "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."" Transcribe the same speech with modern sensibilities, dropping intermediate "ands" and other such information-free interjections when appropriate and lay off the semicolon and it cleans up fairly well. Even the "hard words" and phrases I think are more common speech of the time, and only sound erudite because we inherently think of old-timey things as sounding educated since only educated people bother to learn them. My great-grandchildren will probably think "old-timey" sounds fancy. |