The Tribune, of Wednesday morning, copied conspicuously from the Albany Atlas and Argus an article intended to prove that Mr. LINCOLN holds firmly and unflinchingly to the principles of the Republican Party, -- and that among them, is the principle of Negro Equality. With what special object the Tribune thus gave prominence and a quasi endorsement to this statement of Mr. LINCOLN's position, from an open and unsparing political opponent, it is no part of our purpose to inquire. Probably nothing has done more to embitter the minds of the Southern people towards the President elect than the imputation of such sentiments on this subject. We propose, therefore, to examine the basis on which the allegation rests. 
     The Atlas and Argus quotes from a speech said to have been made by Mr. LINCOLN "in September, 1858," the following: 
     "That central idea in our political system at the beginning was, and until recently continued to be, the equality of men. And although it was always submitted patiently to, whatever inequality there seemed to be, as a matter of actual necessity, its constant working has been a steady progress toward the practical equality of all men. In what I have done I cannot claim to have acted from any peculiar consideration of the colored people as a separate and distinct class in the community, but from the simple conviction that all the individuals of that class are members of the community, and in virtue of their manhood entitled to every original right enjoyed by any other member. We feel, therefore, that all legal distinction between individuals of the same community, founded in any such circumstances as color, origin and the like, are hostile to the genius of our institutions, and incompatible with the true history of American liberty. Slavery and oppression must cease, or American liberty must perish. 
     In Massachusetts, and in most, if not all, the New-England States, the colored man and the white are absolutely equal before the law. 
      In New-York the colored man is restricted as to the right of suffrage by a property qualification. In other respects the same equality prevails. 
      I embrace with pleasure this opportunity of declaring my disapprobation of that clause of the Constitution (of Illinois,) which, denies to a portion of the colored people the right of suffrage. 
     True Democracy makes no inquiry about the color of the skin or place of nativity, or any other similar circumstance of condition. I regard, therefore, the exclusion of the colored people as a body from the elective franchise as incompatible with the true Democratic principle." 
    Where or on what occasion this alleged speech was made, we are not informed. We do not believe it was ever made by Mr. LINCOLN at all. We believe it to be a forgery, out and out; -- and we shall give the reasons which lead us to that belief. 
      The speech is said to have been made "in September, 1858." Now, during all that month Mr. LINCOLN was engaged in stumping the State of Illinois with Judge DOUGLAS. If any such speech, -- or any speech embodying such sentiments, was made at that time, therefore, it must have been in the course of that discussion. That whole debate has been published, -- and we find nothing in any one of Mr. LINCOLN's speeches like the language quoted, -- nor anything embodying the sentiments ascribed to him. Nor does Mr. DOUGLAS anywhere in that debate -- or during the succeeding month of October -- ascribe to Mr. LINCOLN any such language, as he would infallibly have done if Mr. LINCOLN had ever used it. So much for the negative evidence on the subject. 
     On the other hand, throughout that debate, Mr. LINCOLN repeatedly repudiated the sentiments ascribed to him in this extract. On the 18th of September, 1858, the very month in which he is alleged to have said what is quoted above, he made a speech at Charleston, Illinois, in which he said: -- 
From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858:
  "While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." 
     This was certainly a definite, distinct and unequivocal declaration of his sentiments on this point; and when Mr. DOUGLAS came to reply, all he said of it was this: 
     "I am glad that I have at last succeeded in getting an answer out of him upon this question of negro citizenship and eligibility to office, for I have been trying to bring him to the point ever since the canvass commenced." 
     Mr. DOUGLAS went on, however, -- not to quote anything Mr. LINCOLN had ever said like the sentence copied from the Atlas and Argus by the Tribune, -- but to argue that, inasmuch as Mr. L. had censured the decision of the Supreme Court that a negro could not be a citizen, he must therefore be in favor of negro citizenship. To this Mr. LINCOLN made the following reply: 
      "Judge DOUGLAS has said to you that he has not been able to get from me an answer to the question whether I am in favor of negro citizenship. So far as I know the Judge never asked me the question before. He shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF NEGRO CITIZENSHIP. This furnishes me an occasion for saying a few words upon the subject. I mentioned in a certain speech of mine which has been printed, that the Supreme Court had decided that a negro could not possibly be made a citizen, and without saying what was my ground of complaint in regard to that, or whether I had any ground of complaint, Judge DOUGLAS has from that thing manufactured nearly every thing that he ever says about my disposition to produce an equality between the negroes and the white people. If any one will read my speech, he will find I mentioned that as one of the points decided in the course of the Supreme Court opinions, but I did not state what objection I had to it. But Judge DOUGLAS tells the people what my objection was when I did not tell them myself. Now my opinion is that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States if they choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If the State of Illinois had that power, I SHOULD BE OPPOSED TO THE EXERCISE OF IT. That is all I have to say about it." 
      This seems to us perfectly explicit and conclusive. And although made in the same month with the alleged speech quoted by the Atlas and Argus, it repudiates utterly the sentiments there attributed to him, -- denies that he ever held them, and challenges Mr. DOUGLAS or anybody else to produce anything he had ever said that would warrant the allegation. And subsequently, whenever Mr. DOUGLAS recurred to the subject, Mr. LINCOLN reiterated the same declarations, and defied contradiction. Is it conceivable that he could have done so, without being refuted and silenced on the spot, by Mr. DOUGLAS, if he had ever made such a speech as the one now attributed to him? These sentiments were not then declared for the first time. In the very first speech of their joint debate, -- made at Ottawa, Aug. 21, 1858, -- Mr. LINCOLN, after quoting some previous remarks, thus spoke of this very subject: 
       "Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of Slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it; and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the fooling of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge DOUGLAS, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary." 
       And a year after this pretended speech, from which the Albany Atlas and the New-York Tribune profess to quote, -- in a speech made at Columbus, Ohio, in September, 1859, Mr. LINCOLN referred to a statement made by the Ohio Statesman, that he had "declared in favor of negro suffrage," -- pronounced it a misrepresentation, -- quoted the passages from his speeches which we have already cited, and then said: 
"There, my friends, you have briefly what I have, upon former occasions, said upon the subject to which this newspaper, to the extent of its ability, has drawn the public attention. In it you not only perceive, as a probability, that in that contest I did not at any time say I was in favor of negro suffrage; but the ABSOLUTE PROOF that twice -- once substantially and once expressly -- I DECLARED AGAINST IT. Having shown you this, there remains but a word of comment upon that newspaper article. It is this: that I presume the editor of that paper is an honest and truth-loving man, and that he will be greatly obliged to me for furnishing him thus early an opportunity to correct the misrepresentation he has made, before it has run so long that malicious people can call him a liar." 
      The advice thus administered to the Ohio Statesman may not be inapplicable to the two journals nearer home which are committing the same offence. 
   On the strength of the evidence thus submitted, we have not the shadow of a doubt that the pretended extract of Mr. LINCOLN's speech is, so far as he is concerned, an absolute forgery. It is probably the speech of somebody else, -- to which some partisan opponent of Mr. LINCOLN has attached his name in order to create a prejudice against him. He can felicitate himself on having succeeded. The paragraph has been copied far and wide, throughout the country, and especially in the Southern States. It has stimulated and strengthened the belief there that Mr. LINCOLN, is an Abolitionist, -- that he is pledged to the extension of Slavery and to the elevation of the negro to a social and political equality with the white man. It is very easy to stigmatize such an impression on their part as ignorant and inexcusable. But how can we blame the people of the Southern States for believing this when the intelligent Editor of the Albany Atlas and Argus believes it, and when even a person so well-informed as the Editor of the New-York Tribune ought to be concerning Mr. LINCOLN's views, is willing at least to encourage the belief in its genuineness and authenticity.
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COMMENTARY BY EL GRINGO VIEJO:

     Now to the point of this submission which reinforces the words of George Orwell as posted at the beginning of this missive.  

     This article from the period that was marking the end of the Antebellum Epoch in America (December 28, 1860) represents, among other things, that the New York Times was, at one time, a true newspaper and worthy of the name.   The information being analysed was from the Lincoln - Douglas debates.

     A careful reading of the text of the entire article published reveals a certain "cloud of pre-War" as Mr. Lincoln is revealed, during the high moments of the famed "Lincoln - Douglas Debates" by his own words that he was not the Great Emancipator he became known to be.
     His actual words, spoken in real time before thousands of eye-and-ear witnesses, reveal that his opinion of the Negro and his/her situation was quite obviously not the same as the lunatic abolitionists who were prepared to destroy the United States of America and everything else instead of solving a problem.
    En lieu of droning on about the many secondary justifications for secession by the South, including but not limited to railroad gauges and foreign free trade which favoured the South, I shall simply return to the topic of this submission.   We, of the Southern Persuasion, have plenty of contradiction, hypocrisy, and duplicity to load into the cafeteria that feeds the Everlasting Dispute from Whence the Smoke Never Clears.
Treure der Union Monument
Comfort, Kendall County, Texas
(True to the Union)
     But...in Comfort, Texas, a pleasant little German community in Kendall County, out northwest of San Antonio...there is still a memorial monument, placed there by the mainly Germanic peoples back in 1866, shortly after the War Between the States ended.  It commemorates the deaths of Union loyalist Germanic people who colonised there during the late 1840s and 1850s.  Many were killed in defence of the Union, hence "Treue der Union" states the plaque.  Many of the German pro-Union people were not treated so well by the Confederate military and / or civil authority.
     It is a respected monument.  It has been the centre of many a long, windy, and pointless arguments.  It has sparked conjecture, rightisms and wrongisms, criminations and recriminations since its erection and placement.   But no one raises his/her hand against it.   I recall that there was a wreath placed there by the United Daughters of the Confederacy during some pertinent memorial period...and they might still do such things.  I live a long ways from Comfort...it is a nice, tidy place...but we do not stay in touch with the daily comings and goings of the Wreath Layers.

      That is the way things should be with monuments...among true Southerners and those who had people on one of those sides or the other, or both.   And by the way, George Orwell was correct.

 El Gringo Viejo
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