THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN--VOLUME THREE

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I



POLITICAL SPEECHES & DEBATES of LINCOLN WITH DOUGLAS

In the Senatorial Campaign of 1858 in Illinois




SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858

[The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the
close of the Republican State Convention held at that time and
place, and by which Convention Mr. LINCOLN had been named as
their candidate for United States Senator.  Mr. DOUGLAS was not
present.]


Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:--If we could first
know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better
judge what to do, and how to do it.  We are now far into the
fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object
and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only
not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion, it will
not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.  "A
house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the
house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It
will become all one thing, or all the other.  Either the
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will
push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost
complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak
compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision.
Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to
do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of
its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he
can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action,
among its chief architects, from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half
the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National
territory by Congressional prohibition.  Four days later,
commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that
Congressional prohibition.  This opened all the National
territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the
people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point
already gained, and give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided
for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter
sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right of self-government,"
which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis
of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it
as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave
another, no third man shall be allowed to object.  That argument
was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language
which follows:

"It being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to
legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form
and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way,
subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter
sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government."  "But," said
opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly
declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery."
"Not we," said the friends of the measure, and down they voted
the amendment.

While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case,
involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his
owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and
then into a territory covered by the Congressional Prohibition,
and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing
through the United States Circuit Court for the District of
Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a
decision in the same month of May, 1854.  The negro's name was
"Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made
in the case.  Before the then next Presidential election, the law
case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United
States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the
election.  Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the
floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the
Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a
territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits;
and the latter answers: "That is a question for the Supreme
Court."

The election came.  Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the
indorsement, such as it was, secured.  That was the second point
gained.  The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular
majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes,(approximately 10%
of the vote) and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and
satisfactory.  The outgoing President, in his last annual
message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people
the weight and authority of the indorsement.  The Supreme Court
met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a
reargument.  The Presidential inauguration came, and still no
decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his
inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the
forth-coming decision, whatever it might be.  Then, in a few
days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion
to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott
decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it.  The
new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman
letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to
express his astonishment that any different view had ever been
entertained!

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the
author of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact,
whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not in any just
sense made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the
latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people,
and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up.
I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other
than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the
public mind,--the principle for which he declares he has suffered
so much, and is ready to suffer to the end.  And well may he
cling to that principle!  If he has any parental feeling, well
may he cling to it.  That principle is the only shred left of his
original Nebraska doctrine.  Under the Dred Scott decision
"squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down
like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served
through one blast, and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry
an election, and then was kicked to the winds.  His late joint
struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton
Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine.
That struggle was made on a point--the right of a people to make
their own constitution--upon which he and the Republicans have
never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with
Senator Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of
machinery, in its present state of advancement.  This was the
third point gained.  The working points of that machinery are:

Firstly, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and
no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State,
in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the
United States.  This point is made in order to deprive the negro,
in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the
United States Constitution which declares that "The citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States."

Secondly, That, "subject to the Constitution of the United
States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can
exclude slavery from any United States Territory.  This point is
made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories
with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus
to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through
all the future.

Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a
free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United
States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by
the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the
master.  This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but,
if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the
people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion
that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott,
in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do
with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in
any other free State.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the
Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould
public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care
whether slavery is voted down or voted up.  This shows exactly
where we now are; and partially, also, wither we are tending.

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run
the mind over the string of historical facts already stated.
Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they
did when they were transpiring.  The people were to be left
"perfectly free," " subject only to the Constitution." What the
Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see.
Plainly enough now,--it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred
Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect
freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all.  Why was the
amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted
down? Plainly enough now,--the adoption of it would have spoiled
the niche for the Dred Scott decision.  Why was the court
decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion
withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough
now,--the speaking out then would have damaged the "perfectly
free" argument upon which the election was to be carried.  Why
the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the
delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance
exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the
cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to
mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a
fall.  And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the
President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are
the result of preconcert.  But when we see a lot of framed
timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out
at different times and places and by different workmen, Stephen,
Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and when we see these
timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a
house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and
all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or
too few,--not omitting even scaffolding,--or, if a single piece
be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and
prepared yet to bring such piece in,--in such a case, we find it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and
James all understood one another from the beginning, and all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow
was struck.

It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people
of a State as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free,"
"subject only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They
were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States.
Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to
the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this
lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why are the people of a
Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together, and
their relation to the Constitution therefore treated as being
precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief
Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions
of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the
Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a
Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States
Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same
Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to
exclude it.  Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be
quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the
opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State
to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace
sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a
Territory, into the Nebraska Bill,--I ask, who can be quite sure
that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had
been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring
the power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson.  He
approaches it more than once, Using the precise idea, and almost
the language, too, of the Nebraska Act.  On one occasion, his
exact language is, "Except in cases where the power is restrained
by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is
supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction."  In
what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United
States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the
same question, as to the restraint on the power of the
Territories, was left open in the Nebraska Act.  Put this and
that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we
may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision,
declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not
permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits.  And this may
especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public
mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be
maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike
lawful in all the States.  Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is
probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of
the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown We
shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri
are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake
to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a
slave State.  To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is
the work now before all those who would prevent that
consummation.  That is what we have to do.  How can we best do
it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their friends, and yet
whisper to us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest
instrument there is with which to effect that object.  They wish
us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel
with the present head of the dynasty, and that he has regularly
voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never
differed.  They remind us that he is a great man, and that the
largest of us are very small ones.  Let this be granted.  But "a
living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a
dead lion, for this work is at least a caged and toothless one.
How can he oppose the advances of slavery?  He don't care
anything about it.  His avowed mission is impressing the "public
heart" to care nothing about it.  A leading Douglas Democratic
newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to
resist the revival of the African slave trade.  Does Douglas
believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching?  He has
not said so.  Does he really think so?  But if it is, how can he
resist it?  For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right
of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories.  Can
he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where
they can be bought cheapest?  And unquestionably they can be
bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia.  He has done all in
his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a
mere right of property; and, as such, how can he oppose the
foreign slave trade, how can he refuse that trade in that
"property" shall be "perfectly free,"--unless he does it as a
protection to the home production?  And as the home producers
will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a
ground of opposition.

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be
wiser to-day than he was yesterday; that he may rightfully change
when he finds himself wrong.  But can we, for that reason, run
ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of
which he himself has given no intimation?  Can we safely base our
action upon any such vague inference?  Now, as ever, I wish not
to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives,
or do aught that can be personally offensive to him.  Whenever,
if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our
cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have
interposed no adventitious obstacles.  But clearly he is not now
with us; he does not pretend to be,--he does not promise ever to
be.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own
undoubted friends,--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are
in the work, who do care for the result.  Two years ago the
Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand
strong.  We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a
common danger, with every external circumstance against us.  Of
strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered from
the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under
the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered
enemy.  Did we brave all then to falter now,--now, when that same
enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent?  The result is
not doubtful.  We shall not fail; if we stand firm, we shall not
fail.  Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but,
sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.




SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858.

IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS

DELIVERED AT CHICAGO, SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 10, 1858.

(Mr. DOUGLAS WAS NOT PRESENT.)

[Mr. LINCOLN was introduced by C. L. Wilson, Esq., and as he made
his appearance he was greeted with a perfect storm of applause.
For some moments the enthusiasm continued unabated.  At last,
when by a wave of his hand partial silence was restored, Mr.
LINCOLN said,]

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--On yesterday evening, upon the occasion of
the reception given to Senator Douglas, I was furnished with a
seat very convenient for hearing him, and was otherwise very
courteously treated by him and his friends, and for which I thank
him and them.  During the course of his remarks my name was
mentioned in such a way as, I suppose, renders it at least not
improper that I should make some sort of reply to him.  I shall
not attempt to follow him in the precise order in which he
addressed the assembled multitude upon that occasion, though I
shall perhaps do so in the main.

There was one question to which he asked the attention of the
crowd, which I deem of somewhat less importance--at least of
propriety--for me to dwell upon than the others, which he brought
in near the close of his speech, and which I think it would not
be entirely proper for me to omit attending to, and yet if I were
not to give some attention to it now, I should probably forget it
altogether.  While I am upon this subject, allow me to say that I
do not intend to indulge in that inconvenient mode sometimes
adopted in public speaking, of reading from documents; but I
shall depart from that rule so far as to read a little scrap from
his speech, which notices this first topic of which I shall
speak,--that is, provided I can find it in the paper:

"I have made up my mind to appeal to the people against the
combination that has been made against me; the Republican leaders
having formed an alliance, an unholy and unnatural alliance, with
a portion of unscrupulous Federal office-holders.  I intend to
fight that allied army wherever I meet them.  I know they deny
the alliance; but yet these men who are trying to divide the
Democratic party for the purpose of electing a Republican Senator
in my place are just as much the agents and tools of the
supporters of Mr. Lincoln.  Hence I shall deal with this allied
army just as the Russians dealt with the Allies at Sebastopol,--
that is, the Russians did not stop to inquire, when they fired a
broadside, whether it hit an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a Turk.
Nor will I stop to inquire, nor shall I hesitate, whether my
blows shall hit the Republican leaders or their allies, who are
holding the Federal offices, and yet acting in concert with
them."

Well, now, gentlemen, is not that very alarming?  Just to think
of it! right at the outset of his canvass, I, a poor, kind,
amiable, intelligent gentleman,--I am to be slain in this way!
Why, my friend the Judge is not only, as it turns out, not a dead
lion, nor even a living one,--he is the rugged Russian Bear!

But if they will have it--for he says that we deny it--that there
is any such alliance, as he says there is,--and I don't propose
hanging very much upon this question of veracity,--but if he will
have it that there is such an alliance, that the Administration
men and we are allied, and we stand in the attitude of English,
French, and Turk, he occupying the position of the Russian, in
that case I beg that he will indulge us while we barely suggest
to him that these allies took Sebastopol.

Gentlemen, only a few more words as to this alliance.  For my
part, I have to say that whether there be such an alliance
depends, so far as I know, upon what may be a right definition of
the term alliance.  If for the Republican party to see the other
great party to which they are opposed divided among themselves,
and not try to stop the division, and rather be glad of it,--if
that is an alliance, I confess I am in; but if it is meant to be
said that the Republicans had formed an alliance going beyond
that, by which there is contribution of money or sacrifice of
principle on the one side or the other, so far as the Republican
party is concerned,--if there be any such thing, I protest that I
neither know anything of it, nor do I believe it.  I will,
however, say,--as I think this branch of the argument is lugged
in,--I would before I leave it state, for the benefit of those
concerned, that one of those same Buchanan men did once tell me
of an argument that he made for his opposition to Judge Douglas.
He said that a friend of our Senator Douglas had been talking to
him, and had, among other things, said to him:

"...why, you don't want to beat Douglas?"  "Yes," said he, "I do
want to beat him, and I will tell you why.  I believe his
original Nebraska Bill was right in the abstract, but it was
wrong in the time that it was brought forward.  It was wrong in
the application to a Territory in regard to which the question
had been settled; it was brought forward at a time when nobody
asked him; it was tendered to the South when the South had not
asked for it, but when they could not well refuse it; and for
this same reason he forced that question upon our party.  It has
sunk the best men all over the nation, everywhere; and now, when
our President, struggling with the difficulties of this man's
getting up, has reached the very hardest point to turn in the
case, he deserts him and I am for putting him where he will
trouble us no more."

Now, gentlemen, that is not my argument; that is not my argument
at all.  I have only been stating to you the argument of a
Buchanan man.  You will judge if there is any force in it.

Popular sovereignty!  Everlasting popular sovereignty!  Let us
for a moment inquire into this vast matter of popular
sovereignty.  What is popular sovereignty?  We recollect that at
an early period in the history of this struggle there was another
name for the same thing,--"squatter sovereignty."  It was not
exactly popular sovereignty, but squatter sovereignty.  What do
those terms mean?  What do those terms mean when used now?  And
vast credit is taken by our friend the Judge in regard to his
support of it, when he declares the last years of his life have
been, and all the future years of his life shall be, devoted to
this matter of popular sovereignty.  What is it?  Why, it is the
sovereignty of the people!  What was squatter sovereignty?  I
suppose, if it had any significance at all, it was the right of
the people to govern themselves, to be sovereign in their own
affairs while they were squatted down in a country not their own,
while they had squatted on a Territory that did not belong to
them, in the sense that a State belongs to the people who inhabit
it, when it belonged to the nation; such right to govern
themselves was called "squatter sovereignty."

Now, I wish you to mark: What has become of that squatter
sovereignty? what has become of it?  Can you get anybody to tell
you now that the people of a Territory have any authority to
govern themselves, in regard to this mooted question of slavery,
before they form a State constitution?  No such thing at all;
although there is a general running fire, and although there has
been a hurrah made in every speech on that side, assuming that
policy had given the people of a Territory the right to govern
themselves upon this question, yet the point is dodged.  To-day
it has been decided--no more than a year ago it was decided--by
the Supreme Court of the United States, and is insisted upon
to-day that the people of a Territory have no right to exclude
slavery from a Territory; that if any one man chooses to take
slaves into a Territory, all the rest of the people have no right
to keep them out.  This being so, and this decision being made
one of the points that the Judge approved, and one in the
approval of which he says he means to keep me down,--put me down
I should not say, for I have never been up,--he says he is in
favor of it, and sticks to it, and expects to win his battle on
that decision, which says that there is no such thing as squatter
sovereignty, but that any one man may take slaves into a
Territory, and all the other men in the Territory may be opposed
to it, and yet by reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit
it.  When that is so, how much is left of this vast matter of
squatter sovereignty, I should like to know?

When we get back, we get to the point of the right of the people
to make a constitution.  Kansas was settled, for example, in
1854.  It was a Territory yet, without having formed a
constitution, in a very regular way, for three years.  All this
time negro slavery could be taken in by any few individuals, and
by that decision of the Supreme Court, which the Judge approves,
all the rest of the people cannot keep it out; but when they come
to make a constitution, they may say they will not have slavery.
But it is there; they are obliged to tolerate it some way, and
all experience shows it will be so, for they will not take the
negro slaves and absolutely deprive the owners of them.  All
experience shows this to be so.  All that space of time that runs
from the beginning of the settlement of the Territory until there
is sufficiency of people to make a State constitution,--all that
portion of time popular sovereignty is given up.  The seal is
absolutely put down upon it by the court decision, and Judge
Douglas puts his own upon the top of that; yet he is appealing to
the people to give him vast credit for his devotion to popular
sovereignty.

Again, when we get to the question of the right of the people to
form a State constitution as they please, to form it with slavery
or without slavery, if that is anything new, I confess I don't
know it.  Has there ever been a time when anybody said that any
other than the people of a Territory itself should form a
constitution?  What is now in it that Judge Douglas should have
fought several years of his life, and pledge himself to fight all
the remaining years of his life for?  Can Judge Douglas find
anybody on earth that said that anybody else should form a
constitution for a people?  [A voice, "Yes."] Well, I should like
you to name him; I should like to know who he was.  [Same voice,
"John Calhoun."]

No, sir, I never heard of even John Calhoun saying such a thing.
He insisted on the same principle as Judge Douglas; but his mode
of applying it, in fact, was wrong.  It is enough for my purpose
to ask this crowd whenever a Republican said anything against it.
They never said anything against it, but they have constantly
spoken for it; and whoever will undertake to examine the
platform, and the speeches of responsible men of the party, and
of irresponsible men, too, if you please, will be unable to find
one word from anybody in the Republican ranks opposed to that
popular sovereignty which Judge Douglas thinks that he has
invented.  I suppose that Judge Douglas will claim, in a little
while, that he is the inventor of the idea that the people should
govern themselves; that nobody ever thought of such a thing until
he brought it forward.  We do not remember that in that old
Declaration of Independence it is said that:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."

There is the origin of popular sovereignty.  Who, then, shall
come in at this day and claim that he invented it?

The Lecompton Constitution connects itself with this question,
for it is in this matter of the Lecompton Constitution that our
friend Judge Douglas claims such vast credit.  I agree that in
opposing the Lecompton Constitution, so far as I can perceive, he
was right.  I do not deny that at all; and, gentlemen, you will
readily see why I could not deny it, even if I wanted to.  But I
do not wish to; for all the Republicans in the nation opposed it,
and they would have opposed it just as much without Judge
Douglas's aid as with it.  They had all taken ground against it
long before he did.  Why, the reason that he urges against that
constitution I urged against him a year before.  I have the
printed speech in my hand.  The argument that he makes, why that
constitution should not be adopted, that the people were not
fairly represented nor allowed to vote, I pointed out in a speech
a year ago, which I hold in my hand now, that no fair chance was
to be given to the people.  ["Read it, Read it."] I shall not
waste your time by trying to read it.  ["Read it, Read it."]
Gentlemen, reading from speeches is a very tedious business,
particularly for an old man that has to put on spectacles, and
more so if the man be so tall that he has to bend over to the
light.

A little more, now, as to this matter of popular sovereignty and
the Lecompton Constitution.  The Lecompton Constitution, as the
Judge tells us, was defeated.  The defeat of it was a good thing
or it was not.  He thinks the defeat of it was a good thing, and
so do I, and we agree in that.  Who defeated it?

[A voice: Judge Douglas.]

Yes, he furnished himself, and if you suppose he controlled the
other Democrats that went with him, he furnished three votes;
while the Republicans furnished twenty.

That is what he did to defeat it.  In the House of
Representatives he and his friends furnished some twenty votes,
and the Republicans furnished ninety odd.  Now, who was it that
did the work?

[A voice: Douglas.]

Why, yes, Douglas did it!  To be sure he did.

Let us, however, put that proposition another way.  The
Republicans could not have done it without Judge Douglas.  Could
he have done it without them?  Which could have come the nearest
to doing it without the other?

[A voice: Who killed the bill?]

[Another voice: Douglas.]

Ground was taken against it by the Republicans long before
Douglas did it.  The proportion of opposition to that measure is
about five to one.

[A voice: Why don't they come out on it?]

You don't know what you are talking about, my friend.  I am quite
willing to answer any gentleman in the crowd who asks an
intelligent question.

Now, who in all this country has ever found any of our friends of
Judge Douglas's way of thinking, and who have acted upon this
main question, that has ever thought of uttering a word in behalf
of Judge Trumbull?

[A voice: We have.]

I defy you to show a printed resolution passed in a Democratic
meeting--I take it upon myself to defy any man to show a printed
resolution of a Democratic meeting, large or small--in favor of
Judge Trumbull, or any of the five to one Republicans who beat
that bill.  Everything must be for the Democrats!  They did
everything, and the five to the one that really did the thing
they snub over, and they do not seem to remember that they have
an existence upon the face of the earth.

Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious.  I leave this
branch of the subject to take hold of another.  I take up that
part of Judge Douglas's speech in which he respectfully attended
to me.

Judge Douglas made two points upon my recent speech at
Springfield.  He says they are to be the issues of this campaign.
The first one of these points he bases upon the language in a
speech which I delivered at Springfield, which I believe I can
quote correctly from memory.  I said there that "we are now far
into the fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed
object, and with the confident promise, of putting an end to
slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy, that
agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented."
"I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been
reached and passed.  'A house divided against itself cannot
stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free." "I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved,"--I am quoting from my speech, "--I do not expect the
house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It
will become all one thing or all the other.  Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the spread of it and place it where the
public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, north as well as
south."

What is the paragraph?  In this paragraph, which I have quoted in
your hearing, and to which I ask the attention of all, Judge
Douglas thinks he discovers great political heresy.  I want your
attention particularly to what he has inferred from it.  He says
I am in favor of making all the States of this Union uniform in
all their internal regulations; that in all their domestic
concerns I am in favor of making them entirely uniform.  He draws
this inference from the language I have quoted to you.  He says
that I am in favor of making war by the North upon the South for
the extinction of slavery; that I am also in favor of inviting
(as he expresses it) the South to a war upon the North for the
purpose of nationalizing slavery.  Now, it is singular enough, if
you will carefully read that passage over, that I did not say
that I was in favor of anything in it.  I only said what I
expected would take place.  I made a prediction only,--it may
have been a foolish one, perhaps.  I did not even say that I
desired that slavery should be put in course of ultimate
extinction.  I do say so now, however, so there need be no longer
any difficulty about that.  It may be written down in the great
speech.

Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine
was probably carefully prepared.  I admit that it was.  I am not
master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable
of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you
call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any
such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it.  But I don't
care about a quibble in regard to words.  I know what I meant,
and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can explain it to
them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph.

I am not, in the first place, unaware that this government has
endured eighty-two years half slave and half free.  I know that.
I am tolerably well acquainted with the history of the country,
and I know that it has endured eighty-two years half slave and
half free.  I believe--and that is what I meant to allude to
there--I believe it has endured because during all that time,
until the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, the public mind did
rest all the time in the belief that slavery was in course of
ultimate extinction.  That was what gave us the rest that we had
through that period of eighty-two years,--at least, so I believe.
I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any
Abolitionist,--I have been an Old Line Whig,--I have always hated
it; but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of
the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.  I always believed
that everybody was against it, and that it was in course of
ultimate extinction.  [Pointing to Mr. Browning, who stood near
by.] Browning thought so; the great mass of the nation have
rested in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate
extinction.  They had reason so to believe.

The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led
the people to believe so; and that such was the belief of the
framers of the Constitution itself, why did those old men, about
the time of the adoption of the Constitution, decree that slavery
should not go into the new Territory, where it had not already
gone?  Why declare that within twenty years the African slave
trade, by which slaves are supplied, might be cut off by
Congress?  Why were all these acts?  I might enumerate more of
these acts; but enough.  What were they but a clear indication
that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the
ultimate extinction of that institution?  And now, when I say, as
I said in my speech that Judge Douglas has quoted from, when I
say that I think the opponents of slavery will resist the farther
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest with
the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, I only
mean to say that they will place it where the founders of this
government originally placed it.

I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to
take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be
no inclination, in the people of the free States to enter into
the slave States and interfere with the question of slavery at
all.  I have said that always; Judge Douglas has heard me say it,
if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred
times; and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with
slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by anything I
have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever
said.  If, by any means, I have ever used language which could
fairly be so construed (as, however, I believe I never have), I
now correct it.

So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I
am in favor of setting the sections at war with one another.  I
know that I never meant any such thing, and I believe that no
fair mind can infer any such thing from anything I have ever
said.

Now, in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general
consolidation of all the local institutions of the various
States.  I will attend to that for a little while, and try to
inquire, if I can, how on earth it could be that any man could
draw such an inference from anything I said.  I have said, very
many times, in Judge Douglas's hearing, that no man believed more
than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies at the
bottom of all my ideas of just government, from beginning to end.
I have denied that his use of that term applies properly.  But
for the thing itself, I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of
me in his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in
efficiency in advocating it.  I think that I have said it in your
hearing, that I believe each individual is naturally entitled to
do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far
as it in no wise interferes with any other man's rights; that
each community as a State has a right to do exactly as it pleases
with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the
right of no other State; and that the General Government, upon
principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than
that general class of things that does concern the whole.  I have
said that at all times.  I have said, as illustrations, that I do
not believe in the right of Illinois to interfere with the
cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia, or the
liquor laws of Maine.  I have said these things over and over
again, and I repeat them here as my sentiments.

How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see
slavery put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that
it is in the course of ultimate extinction, that I am in favor of
Illinois going over and interfering with the cranberry laws of
Indiana?  What can authorize him to draw any such inference?

I suppose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to
draw such an inference that would not be true with me or many
others: that is, because he looks upon all this matter of slavery
as an exceedingly little thing,--this matter of keeping one sixth
of the population of the whole nation in a state of oppression
and tyranny unequaled in the world.  He looks upon it as being an
exceedingly little thing,--only equal to the question of the
cranberry laws of Indiana; as something having no moral question
in it; as something on a par with the question of whether a man
shall pasture his land with cattle, or plant it with tobacco; so
little and so small a thing that he concludes, if I could desire
that anything should be done to bring about the ultimate
extinction of that little thing, I must be in favor of bringing
about an amalgamation of all the other little things in the
Union.  Now, it so happens--and there, I presume, is the
foundation of this mistake--that the Judge thinks thus; and it so
happens that there is a vast portion of the American people that
do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing.
They look upon it as a vast moral evil; they can prove it as such
by the writings of those who gave us the blessings of liberty
which we enjoy, and that they so looked upon it, and not as an
evil merely confining itself to the States where it is situated;
and while we agree that, by the Constitution we assented to, in
the States where it exists, we have no right to interfere with
it, because it is in the Constitution; and we are by both duty
and inclination to stick by that Constitution, in all its letter
and spirit, from beginning to end,

So much, then, as to my disposition--my wish to have all the
State legislatures blotted out, and to have one consolidated
government, and a uniformity of domestic regulations in all the
States, by which I suppose it is meant, if we raise corn here, we
must make sugar-cane grow here too, and we must make those which
grow North grow in the South.  All this I suppose he understands
I am in favor of doing.  Now, so much for all this nonsense; for
I must call it so.  The Judge can have no issue with me on a
question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations
of the States.

A little now on the other point,--the Dred Scott decision.
Another of the issues he says that is to be made with me is upon
his devotion to the Dred Scott decision, and my opposition to it.

I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to
the Dred Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the
nature of that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do
so.  What is fairly implied by the term Judge Douglas has used,
"resistance to the decision"?  I do not resist it.  If I wanted
to take Dred Scott from his master, I would be interfering with
property, and that terrible difficulty that Judge Douglas speaks
of, of interfering with property, would arise.  But I am doing no
such thing as that, but all that I am doing is refusing to obey
it as a political rule.  If I were in Congress, and a vote should
come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a
new Territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote
that it should.

That is what I should do.  Judge Douglas said last night that
before the decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be
contrary to the decision when it was made; but after it was made
he would abide by it until it was reversed.  Just so!  We let
this property abide by the decision, but we will try to reverse
that decision.  We will try to put it where Judge Douglas would
not object, for he says he will obey it until it is reversed.
Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and we
mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

What are the uses of decisions of courts?  They have two uses.
As rules of property they have two uses.  First, they decide upon
the question before the court.  They decide in this case that
Dred Scott is a slave.  Nobody resists that, not only that, but
they say to everybody else that persons standing just as Dred
Scott stands are as he is.  That is, they say that when a
question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided
again, unless the court decides in another way, unless the court
overrules its decision.  Well, we mean to do what we can to have
the court decide the other way.  That is one thing we mean to try
to do.

The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is
a degree of sacredness that has never been before thrown around
any other decision.  I have never heard of such a thing.  Why,
decisions apparently contrary to that decision, or that good
lawyers thought were contrary to that decision, have been made by
that very court before.  It is the first of its kind; it is an
astonisher in legal history.  It is a new wonder of the world.
It is based upon falsehood in the main as to the facts;
allegations of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in
many instances, and no decision made on any question--the first
instance of a decision made under so many unfavorable
circumstances--thus placed, has ever been held by the profession
as law, and it has always needed confirmation before the lawyers
regarded it as settled law.  But Judge Douglas will have it that
all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these
extraordinary circumstances, and give their vote in Congress in
accordance with it, yield to it, and obey it in every possible
sense.  Circumstances alter cases.  Do not gentlemen here
remember the case of that same Supreme Court some twenty-five or
thirty years ago deciding that a National Bank was
constitutional?  I ask, if somebody does not remember that a
National Bank was declared to be constitutional?  Such is the
truth, whether it be remembered or not.  The Bank charter ran
out, and a recharter was granted by Congress.  That recharter was
laid before General Jackson.  It was urged upon him, when he
denied the constitutionality of the Bank, that the Supreme Court
had decided that it was constitutional; and General Jackson then
said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to
govern a coordinate branch of the government, the members of
which had sworn to support the Constitution; that each member had
sworn to support that Constitution as he understood it.  I will
venture here to say that I have heard Judge Douglas say that he
approved of General Jackson for that act.  What has now become of
all his tirade about "resistance of the Supreme Court"?

My fellow-citizens, getting back a little,--for I pass from these
points,--when Judge Douglas makes his threat of annihilation upon
the "alliance," he is cautious to say that that warfare of his is
to fall upon the leaders of the Republican party.  Almost every
word he utters, and every distinction he makes, has its
significance.  He means for the Republicans who do not count
themselves as leaders, to be his friends; he makes no fuss over
them; it is the leaders that he is making war upon.  He wants it
understood that the mass of the Republican party are really his
friends.  It is only the leaders that are doing something that
are intolerant, and that require extermination at his hands.  As
this is dearly and unquestionably the light in which he presents
that matter, I want to ask your attention, addressing myself to
the Republicans here, that I may ask you some questions as to
where you, as the Republican party, would be placed if you
sustained Judge Douglas in his present position by a re-election?
I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish; I do not pretend that
I would not like to go to the United States Senate,--I make no
such hypocritical pretense; but I do say to you that in this
mighty issue it is nothing to you--nothing to the mass of the
people of the nation,--whether or not Judge Douglas or myself
shall ever be heard of after this night; it may be a trifle to
either of us, but in connection with this mighty question, upon
which hang the destinies of the nation, perhaps, it is absolutely
nothing: but where will you be placed if you reindorse Judge
Douglas?  Don't you know how apt he is, how exceedingly anxious
he is at all times, to seize upon anything and everything to
persuade you that something he has done you did yourselves?  Why,
he tried to persuade you last night that our Illinois Legislature
instructed him to introduce the Nebraska Bill.  There was nobody
in that Legislature ever thought of such a thing; and when he
first introduced the bill, he never thought of it; but still he
fights furiously for the proposition, and that he did it because
there was a standing instruction to our Senators to be always
introducing Nebraska bills.  He tells you he is for the
Cincinnati platform, he tells you he is for the Dred Scott
decision.  He tells you, not in his speech last night, but
substantially in a former speech, that he cares not if slavery is
voted up or down; he tells you the struggle on Lecompton is past;
it may come up again or not, and if it does, he stands where he
stood when, in spite of him and his opposition, you built up the
Republican party.  If you indorse him, you tell him you do not
care whether slavery be voted up or down, and he will close or
try to close your mouths with his declaration, repeated by the
day, the week, the month, and the year.  Is that what you mean?
[Cries of "No," one voice Yes."] Yes, I have no doubt you who
have always been for him, if you mean that.  No doubt of that,
soberly I have said, and I repeat it.  I think, in the position
in which Judge Douglas stood in opposing the Lecompton
Constitution, he was right; he does not know that it will return,
but if it does we may know where to find him, and if it does not,
we may know where to look for him, and that is on the Cincinnati
platform.  Now, I could ask the Republican party, after all the
hard names that Judge Douglas has called them by all his repeated
charges of their inclination to marry with and hug negroes; all
his declarations of Black Republicanism,--by the way, we are
improving, the black has got rubbed off,--but with all that, if
he be indorsed by Republican votes, where do you stand?  Plainly,
you stand ready saddled, bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to
be driven over to the slavery extension camp of the nation,--just
ready to be driven over, tied together in a lot, to be driven
over, every man with a rope around his neck, that halter being
held by Judge Douglas.  That is the question.  If Republican men
have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they had
better not do it; but I think that the Republican party is made
up of those who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose the
extension of slavery, and who will hope for its ultimate
extinction.  If they believe it is wrong in grasping up the new
lands of the continent and keeping them from the settlement of
free white laborers, who want the land to bring up their families
upon; if they are in earnest, although they may make a mistake,
they will grow restless, and the time will come when they will
come back again and reorganize, if not by the same name, at least
upon the same principles as their party now has.  It is better,
then, to save the work while it is begun.  You have done the
labor; maintain it, keep it.  If men choose to serve you, go with
them; but as you have made up your organization upon principle,
stand by it; for, as surely as God reigns over you, and has
inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and
continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to
these ideas, and you will at last come back again after your
wanderings, merely to do your work over again.

We were often,--more than once, at least,--in the course of Judge
Douglas's speech last night, reminded that this government was
made for white men; that he believed it was made for white men.
Well, that is putting it into a shape in which no one wants to
deny it; but the Judge then goes into his passion for drawing
inferences that are not warranted.  I protest, now and forever,
against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I did
not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for
a wife.  My understanding is that I need not have her for either,
but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and
do one another much good thereby.  There are white men enough to
marry all the white women, and enough black men to marry all the
black women; and in God's name let them be so married.  The Judge
regales us with the terrible enormities that take place by the
mixture of races; that the inferior race bears the superior down.
Why, Judge, if we do not let them get together in the
Territories, they won't mix there.

[A voice: "Three cheers for Lincoln". --The cheers were given
with a hearty good-will.]

I should say at least that that is a self-evident truth.

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometimes
about the 4th of July, for some reason or other.  These 4th of
July gatherings I suppose have their uses.  If you will indulge
me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty or about thirty
millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one fifteenth
part of the dry land of the whole earth.  We run our memory back
over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we
discover that we were then a very small people in point of
numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less
extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem
desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly
advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon
something that happened away back, as in some way or other being
connected with this rise of prosperity.  We find a race of men
living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers;
they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were
contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it
has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has
come to us.  We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves
of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done
and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it;
and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we
feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to
the country we inhabit.  In every way we are better men in the
age and race and country in which we live, for these
celebrations.  But after we have done all this we have not yet
reached the whole.  There is something else connected with it.
We have--besides these, men descended by blood from our
ancestors--among us perhaps half our people who are not
descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from
Europe, German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian,--men that have
come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither
and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.
If they look back through this history to trace their connection
with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot
carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make
themselves feel that they are part of us; but when they look
through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that
those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal"; and then they feel that that
moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their relation to
those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them,
and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood
of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that
Declaration; and so they are.  That is the electric cord in that
Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving
men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as
the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the
world.

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of
"don't care if slavery is voted up or voted down," for sustaining
the Dred Scott decision, for holding that the Declaration of
Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas
giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence
means, and we have him saying that the people of America are
equal to the people of England.  According to his construction,
you Germans are not connected with it.  Now, I ask you in all
soberness if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if
confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated
to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the
country, and to transform this government into a government of
some other form.  Those arguments that are made, that the
inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they
are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as
their condition will allow,--what are these arguments?  They are
the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in
all ages of the world.  You will find that all the arguments in
favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the
necks of the people not that they wanted to do it, but because
the people were better off for being ridden.  That is their
argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent
that says, You work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the
fruits of it.  Turn in whatever way you will, whether it come
from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of
his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for
enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old
serpent; and I hold, if that course of argumentation that is made
for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not
care about this should be granted, it does not stop with the
negro.  I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of
Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon
principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?  If
one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it
does not mean some other man?  If that Declaration is not the
truth, let us get the statute book, in which we find it, and tear
it out!  Who is so bold as to do it?  If it is not true, let us
tear it out!  [Cries of "No, no."] Let us stick to it, then; let
us stand firmly by it, then.

It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make
necessities and impose them upon us; and to the extent that a
necessity is imposed upon a man, he must submit to it.  I think
that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we
established this government.  We had slavery among us, we could
not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in
slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped
for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does
not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties.
Let that charter stand as our standard.

My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote
Scripture.  I will try it again, however.  It is said in one of
the admonitions of our Lord, "As your Father in heaven is
perfect, be ye also perfect."  The Savior, I suppose, did not
expect that any human creature could be perfect as the Father in
heaven; but he said, "As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye
also perfect."  He set that up as a standard; and he who did most
towards reaching that standard attained the highest degree of
moral perfection.  So I say in relation to the principle that all
men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can.  If
we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that
will impose slavery upon any other creature.  Let us then turn
this government back into the channel in which the framers of the
Constitution originally placed it.  Let us stand firmly by each
other.  If we do not do so, we are turning in the contrary
direction, that our friend Judge Douglas proposes--not
intentionally--as working in the traces tends to make this one
universal slave nation.  He is one that runs in that direction,
and as such I resist him.

My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do,
and I have only to say: Let us discard all this quibbling about
this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other
race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an
inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us.
Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people
throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring
that all men are created equal.

My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new
topic, which would detain you too long, continue to-night.  I
thank you for this most extensive audience that you have
furnished me to-night.  I leave you, hoping that the lamp of
liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a
doubt that all men are created free and equal.




SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858.

DELIVERED SATURDAY EVENING

(Mr. Douglas was not present.)

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--Another election, which is deemed an important
one, is approaching, and, as I suppose, the Republican party
will, without much difficulty, elect their State ticket.  But in
regard to the Legislature, we, the Republicans, labor under some
disadvantages.  In the first place, we have a Legislature to
elect upon an apportionment of the representation made several
years ago, when the proportion of the population was far greater
in the South (as compared with the North) than it now is; and
inasmuch as our opponents hold almost entire sway in the South,
and we a correspondingly large majority in the North, the fact
that we are now to be represented as we were years ago, when the
population was different, is to us a very great disadvantage.  We
had in the year 1855, according to law, a census, or enumeration
of the inhabitants, taken for the purpose of a new apportionment
of representation.  We know what a fair apportionment of
representation upon that census would give us.  We know that it
could not, if fairly made, fail to give the Republican party from
six to ten more members of the Legislature than they can probably
get as the law now stands.  It so happened at the last session of
the Legislature that our opponents, holding the control of both
branches of the Legislature, steadily refused to give us such an
apportionment as we were rightly entitled to have upon the census
already taken.  The Legislature steadily refused to give us such
an apportionment as we were rightfully entitled to have upon the
census taken of the population of the State.  The Legislature
would pass no bill upon that subject, except such as was at least
as unfair to us as the old one, and in which, in some instances,
two men in the Democratic regions were allowed to go as far
toward sending a member to the Legislature as three were in the
Republican regions.  Comparison was made at the time as to
representative and senatorial districts, which completely
demonstrated that such was the fact.  Such a bill was passed and
tendered to the Republican Governor for his signature; but,
principally for the reasons I have stated, he withheld his
approval, and the bill fell without becoming a law.

Another disadvantage under which we labor is that there are one
or two Democratic Senators who will be members of the next
Legislature, and will vote for the election of Senator, who are
holding over in districts in which we could, on all reasonable
calculation, elect men of our own, if we only had the chance of
an election.  When we consider that there are but twenty-five
Senators in the Senate, taking two from the side where they
rightfully belong, and adding them to the other, is to us a
disadvantage not to be lightly regarded.  Still, so it is; we
have this to contend with.  Perhaps there is no ground of
complaint on our part.  In attending to the many things involved
in the last general election for President, Governor, Auditor,
Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Members of
Congress, of the Legislature, County Officers, and so on, we
allowed these things to happen by want of sufficient attention,
and we have no cause to complain of our adversaries, so far as
this matter is concerned.  But we have some cause to complain of
the refusal to give us a fair apportionment.

There is still another disadvantage under which we labor, and to
which I will ask your attention.  It arises out of the relative
positions of the two persons who stand before the State as
candidates for the Senate.  Senator Douglas is of world-wide
renown.  All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have
been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as
certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United
States.  They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face
post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet
appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions bursting and
sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of
by their greedy hands.  And as they have been gazing upon this
attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little
distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves
to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush
about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries,
and receptions beyond what even in the days of his highest
prosperity they could have brought about in his favor.  On the
contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.  In my
poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages
were sprouting out.  These are disadvantages all, taken together,
that the Republicans labor under.  We have to fight this battle
upon principle, and upon principle alone.  I am, in a certain
sense, made the standard-bearer in behalf of the Republicans.  I
was made so merely because there had to be some one so placed,--I
being in nowise preferable to any other one of twenty-five,
perhaps a hundred, we have in the Republican ranks.  Then I say I
wish it to be distinctly understood and borne in mind that we
have to fight this battle without many--perhaps without any of
the external aids which are brought to bear against us.  So I
hope those with whom I am surrounded have principle enough to
nerve themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can
be fairly done to bring about the right result.

After Senator Douglas left Washington, as his movements were made
known by the public prints, he tarried a considerable time in the
city of New York; and it was heralded that, like another
Napoleon, he was lying by and framing the plan of his campaign.
It was telegraphed to Washington City, and published in the
Union, that he was framing his plan for the purpose of going to
Illinois to pounce upon and annihilate the treasonable and
disunion speech which Lincoln had made here on the 16th of June.
Now, I do suppose that the Judge really spent some time in New
York maturing the plan of the campaign, as his friends heralded
for him.  I have been able, by noting his movements since his
arrival in Illinois, to discover evidences confirmatory of that
allegation.  I think I have been able to see what are the
material points of that plan.  I will, for a little while, ask
your attention to some of them.  What I shall point out, though
not showing the whole plan, are, nevertheless, the main points,
as I suppose.

They are not very numerous.  The first is popular sovereignty.
The second and third are attacks upon my speech made on the 16th
of June.  Out of these three points--drawing within the range of
popular sovereignty the question of the Lecompton Constitution--
he makes his principal assault.  Upon these his successive
speeches are substantially one and the same.  On this matter of
popular sovereignty I wish to be a little careful.  Auxiliary to
these main points, to be sure, are their thunderings of cannon,
their marching and music, their fizzlegigs and fireworks; but I
will not waste time with them.  They are but the little trappings
of the campaign.

Coming to the substance,--the first point,"popular sovereignty."
It is to be labeled upon the cars in which he travels; put upon
the hacks he rides in; to be flaunted upon the arches he passes
under, and the banners which wave over him.  It is to be dished
up in as many varieties as a French cook can produce soups from
potatoes.  Now, as this is so great a staple of the plan of the
campaign, it is worth while to examine it carefully; and if we
examine only a very little, and do not allow ourselves to be
misled, we shall be able to see that the whole thing is the most
arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community.  What
is the matter of popular sovereignty?  The first thing, in order
to understand it, is to get a good definition of what it is, and
after that to see how it is applied.

I suppose almost every one knows that, in this controversy,
whatever has been said has had reference to the question of negro
slavery.  We have not been in a controversy about the right of
the people to govern themselves in the ordinary matters of
domestic concern in the States and Territories.  Mr. Buchanan, in
one of his late messages (I think when he sent up the Lecompton
Constitution) urged that the main point to which the public
attention had been directed was not in regard to the great
variety of small domestic matters, but was directed to the
question of negro slavery; and he asserts that if the people had
had a fair chance to vote on that question there was no
reasonable ground of objection in regard to minor questions.
Now, while I think that the people had not had given, or offered,
them a fair chance upon that slavery question, still, if there
had been a fair submission to a vote upon that main question, the
President's proposition would have been true to the utmost.
Hence, when hereafter I speak of popular sovereignty, I wish to
be understood as applying what I say to the question of slavery
only, not to other minor domestic matters of a Territory or a
State.

Does Judge Douglas, when he says that several of the past years
of his life have been devoted to the question of "popular
sovereignty," and that all the remainder of his life shall be
devoted to it, does he mean to say that he has been devoting his
life to securing to the people of the Territories the right to
exclude slavery from the Territories?  If he means so to say he
means to deceive; because he and every one knows that the
decision of the Supreme Court, which he approves and makes
especial ground of attack upon me for disapproving, forbids the
people of a Territory to exclude slavery.  This covers the whole
ground, from the settlement of a Territory till it reaches the
degree of maturity entitling it to form a State Constitution.  So
far as all that ground is concerned, the Judge is not sustaining
popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing it.  He sustains the
decision which declares that the popular will of the Territory
has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their
territorial existence.  This being so, the period of time from
the first settlement of a Territory till it reaches the point of
forming a State Constitution is not the thing that the Judge has
fought for or is fighting for, but, on the contrary, he has
fought for, and is fighting for, the thing that annihilates and
crushes out that same popular sovereignty.

Well, so much being disposed of, what is left?  Why, he is
contending for the right of the people, when they come to make a
State Constitution, to make it for themselves, and precisely as
best suits themselves.  I say again, that is quixotic.  I defy
contradiction when I declare that the Judge can find no one to
oppose him on that proposition.  I repeat, there is nobody
opposing that proposition on principle.  Let me not be
misunderstood.  I know that, with reference to the Lecompton
Constitution, I may be misunderstood; but when you understand me
correctly, my proposition will be true and accurate.  Nobody is
opposing, or has opposed, the right of the people, when they form
a constitution, to form it for themselves.  Mr. Buchanan and his
friends have not done it; they, too, as well as the Republicans
and the Anti-Lecompton Democrats, have not done it; but on the
contrary, they together have insisted on the right of the people
to form a constitution for themselves.  The difference between
the Buchanan men on the one hand, and the Douglas men and the
Republicans on the other, has not been on a question of
principle, but on a question of fact.

The dispute was upon the question of fact, whether the Lecompton
Constitution had been fairly formed by the people or not.  Mr.
Buchanan and his friends have not contended for the contrary
principle any more than the Douglas men or the Republicans.  They
have insisted that whatever of small irregularities existed in
getting up the Lecompton Constitution were such as happen in the
settlement of all new Territories.  The question was, Was it a
fair emanation of the people?  It was a question of fact, and not
of principle.  As to the principle, all were agreed.  Judge
Douglas voted with the Republicans upon that matter of fact.

He and they, by their voices and votes, denied that it was a fair
emanation of the people.  The Administration affirmed that it
was.  With respect to the evidence bearing upon that question of
fact, I readily agree that Judge Douglas and the Republicans had
the right on their side, and that the Administration was wrong.
But I state again that, as a matter of principle, there is no
dispute upon the right of a people in a Territory, merging into a
State, to form a constitution for themselves without outside
interference from any quarter.  This being so, what is Judge
Douglas going to spend his life for?  Is he going to spend his
life in maintaining a principle that nobody on earth opposes?
Does he expect to stand up in majestic dignity, and go through
his apotheosis and become a god in the maintaining of a principle
which neither man nor mouse in all God's creation is opposing?
Now something in regard to the Lecompton Constitution more
specially; for I pass from this other question of popular
sovereignty as the most arrant humbug that has ever been
attempted on an intelligent community.

As to the Lecompton Constitution, I have already said that on the
question of fact, as to whether it was a fair emanation of the
people or not, Judge Douglas, with the Republicans and some
Americans, had greatly the argument against the Administration;
and while I repeat this, I wish to know what there is in the
opposition of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton Constitution that
entitles him to be considered the only opponent to it,--as being
par excellence the very quintessence of that opposition.  I agree
to the rightfulness of his opposition.  He in the Senate and his
class of men there formed the number three and no more.  In the
House of Representatives his class of men--the Anti-Lecompton
Democrats--formed a number of about twenty.  It took one hundred
and twenty to defeat the measure, against one hundred and twelve.
Of the votes of that one hundred and twenty, Judge Douglas's
friends furnished twenty, to add to which there were six
Americans and ninety-four Republicans.  I do not say that I am
precisely accurate in their numbers, but I am sufficiently so for
any use I am making of it.

Why is it that twenty shall be entitled to all the credit of
doing that work, and the hundred none of it?  Why, if, as Judge
Douglas says, the honor is to be divided and due credit is to be
given to other parties, why is just so much given as is consonant
with the wishes, the interests, and advancement of the twenty?
My understanding is, when a common job is done, or a common
enterprise prosecuted, if I put in five dollars to your one, I
have a right to take out five dollars to your one.  But he does
not so understand it.  He declares the dividend of credit for
defeating Lecompton upon a basis which seems unprecedented and
incomprehensible.

Let us see.  Lecompton in the raw was defeated.  It afterward
took a sort of cooked-up shape, and was passed in the English
bill.  It is said by the Judge that the defeat was a good and
proper thing.  If it was a good thing, why is he entitled to more
credit than others for the performance of that good act, unless
there was something in the antecedents of the Republicans that
might induce every one to expect them to join in that good work,
and at the same time something leading them to doubt that he
would?  Does he place his superior claim to credit on the ground
that he performed a good act which was never expected of him?  He
says I have a proneness for quoting Scripture.  If I should do so
now, it occurs that perhaps he places himself somewhat upon the
ground of the parable of the lost sheep which went astray upon
the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep found the
one that was lost, and threw it upon his shoulders and came home
rejoicing, it was said that there was more rejoicing over the one
sheep that was lost and had been found than over the ninety and
nine in the fold.  The application is made by the Saviour in this
parable, thus: "Verily, I say unto you, there is more rejoicing
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and
nine just persons that need no repentance."

And now, if the Judge claims the benefit of this parable, let him
repent.  Let him not come up here and say: "I am the only just
person; and you are the ninety-nine sinners!  Repentance before
forgiveness is a provision of the Christian system, and on that
condition alone will the Republicans grant his forgiveness.

How will he prove that we have ever occupied a different position
in regard to the Lecompton Constitution or any principle in it?
He says he did not make his opposition on the ground as to
whether it was a free or slave constitution, and he would have
you understand that the Republicans made their opposition because
it ultimately became a slave constitution.  To make proof in
favor of himself on this point, he reminds us that he opposed
Lecompton before the vote was taken declaring whether the State
was to be free or slave.  But he forgets to say that our
Republican Senator, Trumbull, made a speech against Lecompton
even before he did.

Why did he oppose it?  Partly, as he declares, because the
members of the convention who framed it were not fairly elected
by the people; that the people were not allowed to vote unless
they had been registered; and that the people of whole counties,
some instances, were not registered.  For these reasons he
declares the Constitution was not an emanation, in any true
sense, from the people.  He also has an additional objection as
to the mode of submitting the Constitution back to the people.
But bearing on the question of whether the delegates were fairly
elected, a speech of his, made something more than twelve months
ago, from this stand, becomes important.  It was made a little
while before the election of the delegates who made Lecompton.
In that speech he declared there was every reason to hope and
believe the election would be fair; and if any one failed to
vote, it would be his own culpable fault.

I, a few days after, made a sort of answer to that speech.  In
that answer I made, substantially, the very argument with which
he combated his Lecompton adversaries in the Senate last winter.
I pointed to the facts that the people could not vote without
being registered, and that the time for registering had gone by.
I commented on it as wonderful that Judge Douglas could be
ignorant of these facts which every one else in the nation so
well knew.

I now pass from popular sovereignty and Lecompton.  I may have
occasion to refer to one or both.

When he was preparing his plan of campaign, Napoleon-like, in New
York, as appears by two speeches I have heard him deliver since
his arrival in Illinois, he gave special attention to a speech of
mine, delivered here on the 16th of June last.  He says that he
carefully read that speech.  He told us that at Chicago a week
ago last night and he repeated it at Bloomington last night.
Doubtless, he repeated it again to-day, though I did not hear
him.  In the first two places--Chicago and Bloomington I heard
him; to-day I did not.  He said he had carefully examined that
speech,--when, he did not say; but there is no reasonable doubt
it was when he was in New York preparing his plan of campaign.  I
am glad he did read it carefully.  He says it was evidently
prepared with great care.  I freely admit it was prepared with
care.  I claim not to be more free from errors than others,--
perhaps scarcely so much; but I was very careful not to put
anything in that speech as a matter of fact, or make any
inferences, which did not appear to me to be true and fully
warrantable.  If I had made any mistake, I was willing to be
corrected; if I had drawn any inference in regard to Judge
Douglas or any one else which was not warranted, I was fully
prepared to modify it as soon as discovered.  I planted myself
upon the truth and the truth only, so far as I knew it, or could
be brought to know it.

Having made that speech with the most kindly feelings toward
Judge Douglas, as manifested therein, I was gratified when I
found that he had carefully examined it, and had detected no
error of fact, nor any inference against him, nor any
misrepresentations of which he thought fit to complain.  In
neither of the two speeches I have mentioned did he make any such
complaint.  I will thank any one who will inform me that he, in
his speech to-day, pointed out anything I had stated respecting
him as being erroneous.  I presume there is no such thing.  I
have reason to be gratified that the care and caution used in
that speech left it so that he, most of all others interested in
discovering error, has not been able to point out one thing
against him which he could say was wrong.  He seizes upon the
doctrines he supposes to be included in that speech, and declares
that upon them will turn the issues of this campaign.  He then
quotes, or attempts to quote, from my speech.  I will not say
that he wilfully misquotes, but he does fail to quote accurately.
His attempt at quoting is from a passage which I believe I can
quote accurately from memory.  I shall make the quotation now,
with some comments upon it, as I have already said, in order that
the Judge shall be left entirely without excuse for
misrepresenting me.  I do so now, as I hope, for the last time.
I do this in great caution, in order that if he repeats his
misrepresentation it shall be plain to all that he does so
wilfully.  If, after all, he still persists, I shall be compelled
to reconstruct the course I have marked out for myself, and draw
upon such humble resources, as I have, for a new course, better
suited to the real exigencies of the case.  I set out in this
campaign with the intention of conducting it strictly as a
gentleman, in substance at least, if not in the outside polish.
The latter I shall never be; but that which constitutes the
inside of a gentleman I hope I understand, and am not less
inclined to practice than others.  It was my purpose and
expectation that this canvass would be conducted upon principle,
and with fairness on both sides, and it shall not be my fault if
this purpose and expectation shall be given up.

He charges, in substance, that I invite a war of sections; that I
propose all the local institutions of the different States shall
become consolidated and uniform.  What is there in the language
of that speech which expresses such purpose or bears such
construction?  I have again and again said that I would not enter
into any of the States to disturb the institution of slavery.
Judge Douglas said, at Bloomington, that I used language most
able and ingenious for concealing what I really meant; and that
while I had protested against entering into the slave States, I
nevertheless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio and throw
missiles into Kentucky, to disturb them in their domestic
institutions.

I said in that speech, and I meant no more, that the institution
of slavery ought to be placed in the very attitude where the
framers of this government placed it and left it.  I do not
understand that the framers of our Constitution left the people
of the free States in the attitude of firing bombs or shells into
the slave States.  I was not using that passage for the purpose
for which he infers I did use it.  I said:

"We are now far advanced into the fifth year since a policy was
created for the avowed object and with the confident promise of
putting an end to slavery agitation.  Under the operation of that
policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly
augmented.  In my opinion it will not cease till a crisis shall
have been reached and passed.  'A house divided against itself
cannot stand.' I believe that this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free; it will become all one
thing or all the other.  Either the opponents of slavery will
arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public
mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as
new, North as well as South."

Now, you all see, from that quotation, I did not express my wish
on anything.  In that passage I indicated no wish or purpose of
my own; I simply expressed my expectation.  Cannot the Judge
perceive a distinction between a purpose and an expectation?  I
have often expressed an expectation to die, but I have never
expressed a wish to die.  I said at Chicago, and now repeat, that
I am quite aware this government has endured, half slave and half
free, for eighty-two years.  I understand that little bit of
history.  I expressed the opinion I did because I perceived--or
thought I perceived--a new set of causes introduced.  I did say
at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread
of slavery arrested, and to see it placed where the public mind
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction.  I said that because I supposed, when the public mind
shall rest in that belief, we shall have peace on the slavery
question.  I have believed--and now believe--the public mind did
rest on that belief up to the introduction of the Nebraska Bill.

Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, so far I rested in
the hope and belief that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction.  For that reason it had been a minor question with
me.  I might have been mistaken; but I had believed, and now
believe, that the whole public mind, that is, the mind of the
great majority, had rested in that belief up to the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.  But upon that event I became convinced that
either I had been resting in a delusion, or the institution was
being placed on a new basis, a basis for making it perpetual,
national, and universal.  Subsequent events have greatly
confirmed me in that belief.  I believe that bill to be the
beginning of a conspiracy for that purpose.  So believing, I have
since then considered that question a paramount one.  So
believing, I thought the public mind will never rest till the
power of Congress to restrict the spread of it shall again be
acknowledged and exercised on the one hand or, on the other, all
resistance be entirely crushed out.  I have expressed that
opinion, and I entertain it to-night.  It is denied that there is
any tendency to the nationalization of slavery in these States.

Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, in one of his speeches, when they
were presenting him canes, silver plate, gold pitchers, and the
like, for assaulting Senator Sumner, distinctly affirmed his
opinion that when this Constitution was formed it was the belief
of no man that slavery would last to the present day.  He said,
what I think, that the framers of our Constitution placed the
institution of slavery where the public mind rested in the hope
that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.  But he went on
to say that the men of the present age, by their experience, have
become wiser than the framers of the Constitution, and the
invention of the cotton gin had made the perpetuity of slavery a
necessity in this country.

As another piece of evidence tending to this same point: Quite
recently in Virginia, a man--the owner of slaves--made a will
providing that after his death certain of his slaves should have
their freedom if they should so choose, and go to Liberia, rather
than remain in slavery.  They chose to be liberated.  But the
persons to whom they would descend as property claimed them as
slaves.  A suit was instituted, which finally came to the Supreme
Court of Virginia, and was therein decided against the slaves
upon the ground that a negro cannot make a choice; that they had
no legal power to choose, could not perform the condition upon
which their freedom depended.

I do not mention this with any purpose of criticizing it, but to
connect it with the arguments as affording additional evidence of
the change of sentiment upon this question of slavery in the
direction of making it perpetual and national.  I argue now as I
did before, that there is such a tendency; and I am backed, not
merely by the facts, but by the open confession in the slave
States.

And now as to the Judge's inference that because I wish to see
slavery placed in the course of ultimate extinction,--placed
where our fathers originally placed it,--I wish to annihilate the
State Legislatures, to force cotton to grow upon the tops of the
Green Mountains, to freeze ice in Florida, to cut lumber on the
broad Illinois prairie,--that I am in favor of all these
ridiculous and impossible things.

It seems to me it is a complete answer to all this to ask if,
when Congress did have the fashion of restricting slavery from
free territory; when courts did have the fashion of deciding that
taking a slave into a free country made him free,--I say it is a
sufficient answer to ask if any of this ridiculous nonsense about
consolidation and uniformity did actually follow.  Who heard of
any such thing because of the Ordinance of '87?  because of the
Missouri restriction?  because of the numerous court decisions of
that character?

Now, as to the Dred Scott decision; for upon that he makes his
last point at me.  He boldly takes ground in favor of that
decision.

This is one half the onslaught, and one third of the entire plan
of the campaign.  I am opposed to that decision in a certain
sense, but not in the sense which he puts it.  I say that in so
far as it decided in favor of Dred Scott's master, and against
Dred Scott and his family, I do not propose to disturb or resist
the decision.

I never have proposed to do any such thing.  I think that in
respect for judicial authority my humble history would not suffer
in comparison with that of Judge Douglas.  He would have the
citizen conform his vote to that decision; the member of
Congress, his; the President, his use of the veto power.  He
would make it a rule of political action for the people and all
the departments of the government.  I would not.  By resisting it
as a political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no
disorder, excite no mobs.

When he spoke at Chicago, on Friday evening of last week, he made
this same point upon me.  On Saturday evening I replied, and
reminded him of a Supreme Court decision which he opposed for at
least several years.  Last night, at Bloomington, he took some
notice of that reply, but entirely forgot to remember that part
of it.

He renews his onslaught upon me, forgetting to remember that I
have turned the tables against himself on that very point.  I
renew the effort to draw his attention to it.  I wish to stand
erect before the country, as well as Judge Douglas, on this
question of judicial authority; and therefore I add something to
the authority in favor of my own position.  I wish to show that I
am sustained by authority, in addition to that heretofore
presented.  I do not expect to convince the Judge.  It is part of
the plan of his campaign, and he will cling to it with a
desperate grip.  Even turn it upon him,--the sharp point against
him, and gaff him through,--he will still cling to it till he can
invent some new dodge to take the place of it.

In public speaking it is tedious reading from documents; but I
must beg to indulge the practice to a limited extent.  I shall
read from a letter written by Mr. Jefferson in 1820, and now to
be found in the seventh volume of his correspondence, at page
177.  It seems he had been presented by a gentleman of the name
of Jarvis with a book, or essay, or periodical, called the
Republican, and he was writing in acknowledgment of the present,
and noting some of its contents.  After expressing the hope that
the work will produce a favorable effect upon the minds of the
young, he proceeds to say:

"That it will have this tendency may be expected, and for that
reason I feel an urgency to note what I deem an error in it, the
more requiring notice as your opinion is strengthened by that of
many others.  You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider the
judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions,-
-a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us
under the despotism of an oligarchy.  Our judges are as honest as
other men, and not more so.  They have, with others, the same
passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.
Their maxim is, 'Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem'; and
their power is the more dangerous as they are in office for life,
and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the
elective control.  The Constitution has erected no such single
tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the
corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and
co-sovereign with themselves."

Thus we see the power claimed for the Supreme Court by Judge
Douglas, Mr. Jefferson holds, would reduce us to the despotism of
an oligarchy.

Now, I have said no more than this,--in fact, never quite so much
as this; at least I am sustained by Mr. Jefferson.

Let us go a little further.  You remember we once had a National
Bank.  Some one owed the bank a debt; he was sued, and sought to
avoid payment on the ground that the bank was unconstitutional.
The case went to the Supreme Court, and therein it was decided
that the bank was constitutional.  The whole Democratic party
revolted against that decision.  General Jackson himself asserted
that he, as President, would not be bound to hold a National Bank
to be constitutional, even though the court had decided it to be
so.  He fell in precisely with the view of Mr. Jefferson, and
acted upon it under his official oath, in vetoing a charter for a
National Bank.  The declaration that Congress does not possess
this constitutional power to charter a bank has gone into the
Democratic platform, at their National Conventions, and was
brought forward and reaffirmed in their last Convention at
Cincinnati.  They have contended for that declaration, in the
very teeth of the Supreme Court, for more than a quarter of a
century.  In fact, they have reduced the decision to an absolute
nullity.  That decision, I repeat, is repudiated in the
Cincinnati platform; and still, as if to show that effrontery can
go no further, Judge Douglas vaunts in the very speeches in which
he denounces me for opposing the Dred Scott decision that he
stands on the Cincinnati platform.

Now, I wish to know what the Judge can charge upon me, with
respect to decisions of the Supreme Court, which does not lie in
all its length, breadth, and proportions at his own door.  The
plain truth is simply this: Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court
decisions when he likes and against them when he does not like
them.  He is for the Dred Scott decision because it tends to
nationalize slavery; because it is part of the original
combination for that object.  It so happens, singularly enough,
that I never stood opposed to a decision of the Supreme Court
till this, on the contrary, I have no recollection that he was
ever particularly in favor of one till this.  He never was in
favor of any nor opposed to any, till the present one, which
helps to nationalize slavery.

Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, free men everywhere,
judge ye between him and me upon this issue.

He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,--
that it has no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I
suppose, at worst, it is but an abstraction.  I submit that the
proposition that the thing which determines whether a man is free
or a slave is rather concrete than abstract.  I think you would
conclude that it was, if your liberty depended upon it, and so
would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended upon it.  But
suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the new
Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract
matter, and one of no practical importance.  How has the planting
of slavery in new countries always been effected?  It has now
been decided that slavery cannot be kept out of our new
Territories by any legal means.  In what do our new Territories
now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when slavery was
first planted within them?  It was planted, as Mr. Clay once
declared, and as history proves true, by individual men, in spite
of the wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to
prohibit it, and withholding from the people of the Colonies the
authority to prohibit it for themselves.  Mr. Clay says this was
one of the great and just causes of complaint against Great
Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology we can now make for
having the institution amongst us.  In that precise condition our
Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our own
new Territories; the government will not prohibit slavery within
them, nor allow the people to prohibit it.

I defy any man to find any difference between the policy which
originally planted slavery in these Colonies and that policy
which now prevails in our new Territories.  If it does not go
into them, it is only because no individual wishes it to go.  The
Judge indulged himself doubtless to-day with the question as to
what I am going to do with or about the Dred Scott decision.
Well, Judge, will you please tell me what you did about the bank
decision?  Will you not graciously allow us to do with the Dred
Scott decision precisely as you did with the bank decision?  You
succeeded in breaking down the moral effect of that decision: did
you find it necessary to amend the Constitution, or to set up a
court of negroes in order to do it?

There is one other point.  Judge Douglas has a very affectionate
leaning toward the Americans and Old Whigs.  Last evening, in a
sort of weeping tone, he described to us a death-bed scene.  He
had been called to the side of Mr. Clay, in his last moments, in
order that the genius of "popular sovereignty" might duly descend
from the dying man and settle upon him, the living and most
worthy successor.  He could do no less than promise that he would
devote the remainder of his life to "popular sovereignty"; and
then the great statesman departs in peace.  By this part of the
"plan of the campaign" the Judge has evidently promised himself
that tears shall be drawn down the cheeks of all Old Whigs, as
large as half-grown apples.

Mr. Webster, too, was mentioned; but it did not quite come to a
death-bed scene as to him.  It would be amusing, if it were not
disgusting, to see how quick these compromise-breakers administer
on the political effects of their dead adversaries, trumping up
claims never before heard of, and dividing the assets among
themselves.  If I should be found dead to-morrow morning, nothing
but my insignificance could prevent a speech being made on my
authority, before the end of next week.  It so happens that in
that "popular sovereignty" with which Mr. Clay was identified,
the Missouri Compromise was expressly reversed; and it was a
little singular if Mr. Clay cast his mantle upon Judge Douglas on
purpose to have that compromise repealed.

Again, the Judge did not keep faith with Mr. Clay when he first
brought in his Nebraska Bill.  He left the Missouri Compromise
unrepealed, and in his report accompanying the bill he told the
world he did it on purpose.  The manes of Mr. Clay must have been
in great agony till thirty days later, when "popular sovereignty"
stood forth in all its glory.

One more thing.  Last night Judge Douglas tormented himself with
horrors about my disposition to make negroes perfectly equal with
white men in social and political relations.  He did not stop to
show that I have said any such thing, or that it legitimately
follows from anything I have said, but he rushes on with his
assertions.  I adhere to the Declaration of Independence.  If
Judge Douglas and his friends are not willing to stand by it, let
them come up and amend it.  Let them make it read that all men
are created equal except negroes.  Let us have it decided whether
the Declaration of Independence, in this blessed year of 1858,
shall be thus amended.  In his construction of the Declaration
last year, he said it only meant that Americans in America were
equal to Englishmen in England.  Then, when I pointed out to him
that by that rule he excludes the Germans, the Irish, the
Portuguese, and all the other people who have come among us since
the revolution, he reconstructs his construction.  In his last
speech he tells us it meant Europeans.

I press him a little further, and ask if it meant to include the
Russians in Asia; or does he mean to exclude that vast population
from the principles of our Declaration of Independence?  I expect
ere long he will introduce another amendment to his definition.
He is not at all particular.  He is satisfied with anything which
does not endanger the nationalizing of negro slavery.  It may
draw white men down, but it must not lift negroes up.

Who shall say, "I am the superior, and you are the inferior"?

My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be
misrepresented, but cannot be misunderstood.  I have said that I
do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men were
created equal in all respects.  They are not our equal in color;
but I suppose that it does mean to declare that all men are equal
in some respects; they are equal in their right to "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Certainly the negro is
not our equal in color, perhaps not in many other respects;
still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own
hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or
black.  In pointing out that more has been given you, you cannot
be justified in taking away the little which has been given him.
All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him
alone.  If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

When our government was established we had the institution of
slavery among us.  We were in a certain sense compelled to
tolerate its existence.  It was a sort of necessity.  We had gone
through our struggle and secured our own independence.  The
framers of the Constitution found the institution of slavery
amongst their own institutions at the time.  They found that by
an effort to eradicate it they might lose much of what they had
already gained.  They were obliged to bow to the necessity.  They
gave power to Congress to abolish the slave trade at the end of
twenty years.  They also prohibited it in the Territories where
it did not exist.  They did what they could, and yielded to the
necessity for the rest.  I also yield to all which follows from
that necessity.  What I would most desire would be the separation
of the white and black races.

One more point on this Springfield speech which Judge Douglas
says he has read so carefully.  I expressed my belief in the
existence of a conspiracy to perpetuate and nationalize slavery.
I did not profess to know it, nor do I now.  I showed the part
Judge Douglas had played in the string of facts constituting to
my mind the proof of that conspiracy.  I showed the parts played
by others.

I charged that the people had been deceived into carrying the
last Presidential election, by the impression that the people of
the Territories might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was
known in advance by the conspirators that the court was to decide
that neither Congress nor the people could so exclude slavery.
These charges are more distinctly made than anything else in the
speech.

Judge Douglas has carefully read and reread that speech.  He has
not, so far as I know, contradicted those charges.  In the two
speeches which I heard he certainly did not.  On this own tacit
admission, I renew that charge.  I charge him with having been a
party to that conspiracy and to that deception for the sole
purpose of nationalizing slavery.




CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS

[The following is the correspondence between the two rival
candidates for the United States Senate]

MR. LINCOLN TO MR. DOUGLAS.

CHICAGO, ILL., July 24, 1558.

HON. S.  A.  DOUGLAS:

My dear Sir,--Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement
for you and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences
the present canvass?  Mr. Judd, who will hand you this, is
authorized to receive your answer; and, if agreeable to you, to
enter into the terms of such arrangement.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




Mr. DOUGLAS TO Mr. LINCOLN.

BEMENT,  PIATT Co., ILL., July 30, 1858.

Dear Sir,--Your letter dated yesterday, accepting my proposition
for a joint discussion at one prominent point in each
Congressional District, as stated in my previous letter, was
received this morning.

The times and places designated are as follows:

Ottawa, La Salle County     August    21st, 1858.
Freeport, Stephenson County   "       27th,
Jonesboro, Union County, September 15th,
Charleston, Coles County      "    18th,
Galesburgh, Knox County October 7th,
Quincy, Adams County        "  13th,
Alton, Madison County       "  15th,

I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately open and
close the discussion.  I will speak at Ottawa one hour, you can
reply, occupying an hour and a half, and I will then follow for
half an hour.  At Freeport, you shall open the discussion and
speak one hour; I will follow for an hour and a half, and you can
then reply for half an hour.  We will alternate in like manner in
each successive place.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

S.  A.  DOUGLAS.




Mr. LINCOLN TO Mr. DOUGLAS.

SPRINGFIELD, July 31, 1858.

HON. S.  A.  DOUGLAS:

Dear Sir,--Yours of yesterday, naming places, times, and terms
for joint discussions between us, was received this morning.
Although, by the terms, as you propose, you take four openings
and closes, to my three, I accede, and thus close the
arrangement.  I direct this to you at Hillsborough, and shall try
to have both your letter and this appear in the Journal and
Register of Monday morning.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA,

AUGUST 21, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When a man hears himself somewhat
misrepresented, it provokes him, at least, I find it so with
myself; but when misrepresentation becomes very gross and
palpable, it is more apt to amuse him.  The first thing I see fit
to notice is the fact that Judge Douglas alleges, after running
through the history of the old Democratic and the old Whig
parties, that Judge Trumbull and myself made an arrangement in
1854, by which I was to have the place of General Shields in the
United States Senate, and Judge Trumbull was to have the place of
Judge Douglas.  Now, all I have to say upon that subject is that
I think no man not even Judge Douglas can prove it, because it is
not true.  I have no doubt he is "conscientious" in saying it.
As to those resolutions that he took such a length of time to
read, as being the platform of the Republican party in 1854, I
say I never had anything to do with them, and I think Trumbull
never had.  Judge Douglas cannot show that either of us ever did
have anything to do with them.

I believe this is true about those resolutions: There was a call
for a convention to form a Republican party at Springfield, and I
think that my friend Mr. Lovejoy, who is here upon this stand,
had a hand in it.  I think this is true, and I think if he will
remember accurately he will be able to recollect that he tried to
get me into it, and I would not go in.  I believe it is also true
that I went away from Springfield when the convention was in
session, to attend court in Tazewell county.  It is true they did
place my name, though without authority, upon the committee, and
afterward wrote me to attend the meeting of the committee; but I
refused to do so, and I never had anything to do with that
organization.  This is the plain truth about all that matter of
the resolutions.

Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells of Trumbull
bargaining to sell out the old Democratic party, and Lincoln
agreeing to sell out the old Whig party, I have the means of
knowing about that: Judge Douglas cannot have; and I know there
is no substance to it whatever.  Yet I have no doubt he is
"conscientious" about it.  I know that after Mr. Lovejoy got into
the Legislature that winter, he complained of me that I had told
all the old Whigs of his district that the old Whig party was
good enough for them, and some of them voted against him because
I told them so.  Now, I have no means of totally disproving such
charges as this which the Judge makes.  A man cannot prove a
negative; but he has a right to claim that when a man makes an
affirmative charge, he must offer some proof to show the truth of
what he says.  I certainly cannot introduce testimony to show the
negative about things, but I have a right to claim that if a man
says he knows a thing, then he must show how he knows it.  I
always have a right to claim this, and it is not satisfactory to
me that he may be "conscientious" on the subject.

Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things; but in
regard to that general Abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes,
when he says that I was engaged at that time in selling out and
Abolitionizing the old Whig party, I hope you will permit me to
read a part of a printed speech that I made then at Peoria, which
will show altogether a different view of the position I took in
that contest of 1854.

[Voice:"Put on your specs."]

Mr. LINCOLN: Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer a
young man.

"This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  The foregoing
history may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I
am sure it is sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to
make of it, and in it we have before us the chief materials
enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is right or wrong.

"I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its
direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and
wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to
every other part of the wide world where men can be found
inclined to take it.

"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real
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,
criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that
there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

"Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice
against the Southern people.  They are just what we would be in
their situation.  If slavery did not now exist among them, they
would not introduce it.  If it did now exist among us, we should
not instantly give it up.  This I believe of the masses north and
south.  Doubtless there are individuals on both sides who would
not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would
gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence.  We
know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go north, and
become tip-top Abolitionists; while some Northern ones go south
and become most cruel slave-masters.

"When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for
the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact.  When it
is said that the institution exists, and that it is very
difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can
understand and appreciate the saying.  I will not blame them for
not doing what I should not know how to do myself.  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 (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long term,
its sudden execution is impossible.  If they were all landed
there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and
there are not surp1us shipping and surplus money enough in the
world to carry them there in many times ten days.  What then?
Free them all and keep them among us as underlings?  Is it quite
certain that this betters their condition?  I think I would not
hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear
enough to me to denounce people upon.  What next?  Free them, and
make them politically and socially our equals?  My own feelings
will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that
those of the great mass of white people will not.  Whether this
feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole
question, if, indeed, it is any part of it.  A universal feeling,
whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.  We
cannot, then, make them equals.  It does seem to me that systems
of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness
in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I
acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I
would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their
fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to
carry a free man into slavery than Our ordinary criminal laws are
to hang an innocent one.

"But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for
permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it
would for reviving the African slave-trade by law.  The law which
forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so
long forbid the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be
distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the
former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
latter."

I have reason to know that Judge Douglas knows that I said this.
I think he has the answer here to one of the questions he put to
me.  I do not mean to allow him to catechize me unless he pays
back for it in kind.  I will not answer questions one after
another, unless he reciprocates; but as he has made this inquiry,
and I have answered it before, he has got it without my getting
anything in return.  He has got my answer on the Fugitive Slave
law.

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 the
black races.  There is a physical difference between the two
which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living
together upon the footing 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, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no
reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the
natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I hold
that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.  I agree
with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects, certainly
not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment.
But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody
else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of
Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little
follies.  The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend
Lincoln being a "grocery-keeper."  I don't know as it would be a
great sin, if I had been; but he is mistaken.  Lincoln never kept
a grocery anywhere in the world.  It is true that Lincoln did
work the latter part of one winter in a little stillhouse, up at
the head of a hollow.  And so I think my friend the Judge is
equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in
Congress of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the
Mexican war.  The Judge did not make his charge very distinctly,
but I can tell you what he can prove, by referring to the record.
You remember I was an old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party
tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun
by the President, I would not do it.  But whenever they asked for
any money, or landwarrants, or anything to pay the soldiers
there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge
Douglas did.  You can think as you please as to whether that was
consistent.  Such is the truth, and the Judge has the right to
make all he can out of it.  But when he, by a general charge,
conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who
were fighting in the Mexican war, or did anything else to hinder
the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether
mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.

As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I
will dwell a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics
upon which the Judge has spoken.  He has read from my speech in
Springfield, in which I say that "a house divided against itself
cannot stand" Does the Judge say it can stand?  I don't know
whether he does or not.  The Judge does not seem to be attending
to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion
that a house divided against itself can stand.  If he does, then
there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but
between the Judge and an Authority of a somewhat higher
character.

Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the
purpose of saying something seriously.  I know that the Judge may
readily enough agree with me that the maxim which was put forth
by the Savior is true, but he may allege that I misapply it; and
the Judge has a right to urge that, in my application, I do
misapply it, and then I have a right to show that I do not
misapply it, When he undertakes to say that because I think this
nation, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, will all
become one thing or all the other, I am in favor of bringing
about a dead uniformity in the various States, in all their
institutions, he argues erroneously.  The great variety of the
local institutions in the States, springing from differences in
the soil, differences in the face of the country, and in the
climate, are bonds of Union.  They do not make "a house divided
against itself," but they make a house united.  If they produce
in one section of the country what is called for, by the wants of
another section, and this other section can supply the wants of
the first, they are not matters of discord, but bonds of union,
true bonds of union.  But can this question of slavery be
considered as among these varieties in the institutions of the
country?  I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our
government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to
be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been an apple of
discord and an element of division in the house.  I ask you to
consider whether, so long as the moral constitution of men's
minds shall continue to be the same, after this generation and
assemblage shall sink into the grave, and another race shall
arise, with the same moral and intellectual development we have,
whether, if that institution is standing in the same irritating
position in which it now is, it will not continue an element of
division?  If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to
this question, the Union is a house divided against itself; and
when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the
institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some
States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the
fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which
our fathers originally placed it--restricting it from the new
Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its
source by the abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the
seal of legislation against its spread.  The public mind did rest
in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.
But lately, I think--and in this I charge nothing on the Judge's
motives--lately, I think that he, and those acting with him, have
placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the
perpetuity and nationalization of slavery.  And while it is
placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I
believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the
opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place
it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that
its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike
lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as
South.  Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place
it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would
be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind
would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the
course of ultimate extinction.  The crisis would be past, and the
institution might be let alone for a hundred years, if it should
live so long, in the States where it exists; yet it would be
going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the
white races.

[A voice: "Then do you repudiate popular sovereignty?"]

Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty!  what is
popular sovereignty?  Is it the right of the people to have
slavery or not have it, as they see fit, in the Territories?  I
will state--and I have an able man to watch me--my understanding
is that popular sovereignty, as now applied to the question of
slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have slavery if
they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do
not want it.  I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people
were in a Territory of the United States, any one of them would
be obliged to have a slave if he did not want one; but I do say
that, as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man
wants slaves, all the rest have no way of keeping that one man
from holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge
complains, and from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of
the things which he ascribes to me at all.  I had no thought in
the world that I was doing anything to bring about a war between
the free and slave states.  I had no thought in the world that I
was doing anything to bring about a political and social equality
of the black and white races.  It never occurred to me that I was
doing anything or favoring anything to reduce to a dead
uniformity all the local institutions of the various States.  But
I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing
something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better
that I did not mean it.  It is just as fatal to the country, if I
have any influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not.
But can it be true that placing this institution upon the
original basis--the basis upon which our fathers placed it--can
have any tendency to set the Northern and the Southern States at
war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to make
the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane, because they raise it in
Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut
pine logs on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because
they cut pine logs in Maine, where they do grow?  The Judge says
this is a new principle started in regard to this question.  Does
the Judge claim that he is working on the plan of the founders of
government?  I think he says in some of his speeches indeed, I
have one here now--that he saw evidence of a policy to allow
slavery to be south of a certain line, while north of it it
should be excluded, and he saw an indisposition on the part of
the country to stand upon that policy, and therefore he set about
studying the subject upon original principles, and upon original
principles he got up the Nebraska Bill!  I am fighting it upon
these "original principles, fighting it in the Jeffersonian,
Washingtonian, and Madisonian fashion.

Now, my friends, I wish you to attend for a little while to one
or two other things in that Springfield speech.  My main object
was to show, so far as my humble ability was capable of showing,
to the people of this country what I believed was the truth,--
that there was a tendency, if not a conspiracy, among those who
have engineered this slavery question for the last four or five
years, to make slavery perpetual and universal in this nation.
Having made that speech principally for that object, after
arranging the evidences that I thought tended to prove my
proposition, I concluded with this bit of comment:

"We cannot absolutely know that these exact adaptations are the
result of preconcert; but when we see a lot of framed timbers,
different portions of which we know have been gotten out at
different times and places, and by different workmen--Stephen,
Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,--and when we see these
timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a
house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and
all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or
too few,--not omitting even the scaffolding,--or if a single
piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted
and prepared yet to bring such piece in,--in such a case we feel
it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger
and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow
was struck."

When my friend Judge Douglas came to Chicago on the 9th of July,
this speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an
harangue there, in which he took hold of this speech of mine,
showing that he had carefully read it; and while he paid no
attention to this matter at all, but complimented me as being a
"kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman," notwithstanding I had
said this, he goes on and eliminates, or draws out, from my
speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one
another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the
niggers and white people to marrying together.  Then, as the
Judge had complimented me with these pleasant titles (I must
confess to my weakness), I was a little "taken," for it came from
a great man.  I was not very much accustomed to flattery, and it
came the sweeter to me.  I was rather like the Hoosier, with the
gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better than any
other man, and got less of it.  As the Judge had so flattered me,
I could not make up my mind that he meant to deal unfairly with
me; so I went to work to show him that he misunderstood the whole
scope of my speech, and that I really never intended to set the
people at war with one another.  As an illustration, the next
time I met him, which was at Springfield, I used this expression,
that I claimed no right under the Constitution, nor had I any
inclination, to enter into the slave States and interfere with
the institutions of slavery.  He says upon that: Lincoln will not
enter into the slave States, but will go to the banks of the
Ohio, on this side, and shoot over!  He runs on, step by step, in
the horse-chestnut style of argument, until in the Springfield
speech he says: "Unless he shall be successful in firing his
batteries until he shall have extinguished slavery in all the
States the Union shall be dissolved."  Now, I don't think that
was exactly the way to treat "a kind, amiable, intelligent
gentleman."  I know if I had asked the Judge to show when or
where it was I had said that, if I didn't succeed in firing into
the slave States until slavery should be extinguished, the Union
should be dissolved, he could not have shown it.  I understand
what he would do.  He would say: I don't mean to quote from you,
but this was the result of what you say.  But I have the right to
ask, and I do ask now, Did you not put it in such a form that an
ordinary reader or listener would take it as an expression from
me?

In a speech at Springfield, on the night of the 17th, I thought I
might as well attend to my own business a little, and I recalled
his attention as well as I could to this charge of conspiracy to
nationalize slavery.  I called his attention to the fact that he
had acknowledged in my hearing twice that he had carefully read
the speech, and, in the language of the lawyers, as he had twice
read the speech, and still had put in no plea or answer, I took a
default on him.  I insisted that I had a right then to renew that
charge of conspiracy.  Ten days afterward I met the Judge at
Clinton,--that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the
discussion,--and heard him make a speech.  Then he comes in with
his plea to this charge, for the first time; and his plea when
put in, as well as I can recollect it, amounted to this: that he
never had any talk with Judge Taney or the President of the
United States with regard to the Dred Scott decision before it
was made.  I (Lincoln) ought to know that the man who makes a
charge without knowing it to be true falsifies as much as he who
knowingly tells a falsehood; and, lastly, that he would pronounce
the whole thing a falsehood; but, he would make no personal
application of the charge of falsehood, not because of any regard
for the "kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman," but because of
his own personal self-respect!  I have understood since then (but
[turning to Judge Douglas] will not hold the Judge to it if he is
not willing) that he has broken through the "self-respect," and
has got to saying the thing out.  The Judge nods to me that it is
so.  It is fortunate for me that I can keep as good-humored as I
do, when the Judge acknowledges that he has been trying to make a
question of veracity with me.  I know the Judge is a great man,
while I am only a small man, but I feel that I have got him.  I
demur to that plea.  I waive all objections that it was not filed
till after default was taken, and demur to it upon the merits.
What if Judge Douglas never did talk with Chief Justice Taney and
the President before the Dred Scott decision was made, does it
follow that he could not have had as perfect an understanding
without talking as with it?  I am not disposed to stand upon my
legal advantage.  I am disposed to take his denial as being like
an answer in chancery, that he neither had any knowledge,
information, or belief in the existence of such a conspiracy.  I
am disposed to take his answer as being as broad as though he had
put it in these words.  And now, I ask, even if he had done so,
have not I a right to prove it on him, and to offer the evidence
of more than two witnesses, by whom to prove it; and if the
evidence proves the existence of the conspiracy, does his broader
answer denying all knowledge, information, or belief, disturb the
fact?  It can only show that he was used by conspirators, and was
not a leader of them.

Now, in regard to his reminding me of the moral rule that persons
who tell what they do not know to be true falsify as much as
those who knowingly tell falsehoods.  I remember the rule, and it
must be borne in mind that in what I have read to you, I do not
say that I know such a conspiracy to exist.  To that I reply, I
believe it.  If the Judge says that I do not believe it, then he
says what he does not know, and falls within his own rule, that
he who asserts a thing which he does not know to be true,
falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood.  I want
to call your attention to a little discussion on that branch of
the case, and the evidence which brought my mind to the
conclusion which I expressed as my belief.  If, in arraying that
evidence I had stated anything which was false or erroneous, it
needed but that Judge Douglas should point it out, and I would
have taken it back, with all the kindness in the world.  I do not
deal in that way.  If I have brought forward anything not a fact,
if he will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take it
back.  But if he will not point out anything erroneous in the
evidence, is it not rather for him to show, by a comparison of
the evidence, that I have reasoned falsely, than to call the
"kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar?  If I have
reasoned to a false conclusion, it is the vocation of an able
debater to show by argument that I have wandered to an erroneous
conclusion.  I want to ask your attention to a portion of the
Nebraska Bill, which Judge Douglas has quoted:

 "It being the true intent and meaning of this Act, not to
legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form
and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way,
subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

Thereupon Judge Douglas and others began to argue in favor of
"popular sovereignty," the right of the people to have slaves if
they wanted them, and to exclude slavery if they did not want
them.  "But," said, in substance, a Senator from Ohio (Mr. Chase,
I believe),

"we more than suspect that you do not mean to allow the people to
exclude slavery if they wish to; and if you do mean it, accept an
amendment which I propose, expressly authorizing the people to
exclude slavery."

I believe I have the amendment here before me, which was offered,
and under which the people of the Territory, through their
representatives, might, if they saw fit, prohibit the existence
of slavery therein.  And now I state it as a fact, to be taken
back if there is any mistake about it, that Judge Douglas and
those acting with him voted that amendment down.  I now think
that those men who voted it down had a real reason for doing so.
They know what that reason was.  It looks to us, since we have
seen the Dred Scott decision pronounced, holding that "under the
Constitution" the people cannot exclude slavery, I say it looks
to outsiders, poor, simple, "amiable, intelligent gentlemen," as
though the niche was left as a place to put that Dred Scott
decision in,--a niche which would have been spoiled by adopting
the amendment.  And now, I say again, if this was not the reason,
it will avail the Judge much more to calmly and good-humoredly
point out to these people what that other reason was for voting
the amendment down, than, swelling himself up, to vociferate that
he may be provoked to call somebody a liar.

Again: There is in that same quotation from the Nebraska Bill
this clause: "It being the true intent and meaning of this bill
not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State."   I have
always been puzzled to know what business the word "State" had in
that connection.  Judge Douglas knows.  He put it there.  He
knows what he put it there for.  We outsiders cannot say what he
put it there for.  The law they were passing was not about
States, and was not making provisions for States.  What was it
placed there for?  After seeing the Dred Scott decision, which
holds that the people cannot exclude slavery from a Territory, if
another Dred Scott decision shall come, holding that they cannot
exclude it from a State, we shall discover that when the word was
originally put there, it was in view of something which was to
come in due time, we shall see that it was the other half of
something.  I now say again, if there is any different reason for
putting it there, Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without
calling anybody a liar, can tell what the reason was.

When the Judge spoke at Clinton, he came very near making a
charge of falsehood against me.  He used, as I found it printed
in a newspaper, which, I remember, was very nearly like the real
speech, the following language:

"I did not answer the charge [of conspiracy] before, for the
reason that I did not suppose there was a man in America with a
heart so corrupt as to believe such a charge could be true.  I
have too much respect for Mr. Lincoln to suppose he is serious in
making the charge."

I confess this is rather a curious view, that out of respect for
me he should consider I was making what I deemed rather a grave
charge in fun.  I confess it strikes me rather strangely.  But I
let it pass.  As the Judge did not for a moment believe that
there was a man in America whose heart was so "corrupt" as to
make such a charge, and as he places me among the "men in
America" who have hearts base enough to make such a charge, I
hope he will excuse me if I hunt out another charge very like
this; and if it should turn out that in hunting I should find
that other, and it should turn out to be Judge Douglas himself
who made it, I hope he will reconsider this question of the deep
corruption of heart he has thought fit to ascribe to me.  In
Judge Douglas's speech of March 22, 1858, which I hold in my
hand, he says:

"In this connection there is another topic to which I desire to
allude.  I seldom refer to the course of newspapers, or notice
the articles which they publish in regard to myself; but the
course of the Washington Union has been so extraordinary for the
last two or three months, that I think it well enough to make
some allusion to it.  It has read me out of the Democratic party
every other day, at least for two or three months, and keeps
reading me out, and, as if it had not succeeded, still continues
to read me out, using such terms as 'traitor,' 'renegade,'
'deserter,' and other kind and polite epithets of that nature.
Sir, I have no vindication to make of my Democracy against the
Washington Union, or any other newspapers.  I am willing to allow
my history and action for the last twenty years to speak for
themselves as to my political principles and my fidelity to
political obligations.  The Washington Union has a personal
grievance.  When its editor was nominated for public printer, I
declined to vote for him, and stated that at some time I might
give my reasons for doing so.  Since I declined to give that
vote, this scurrilous abuse, these vindictive and constant
attacks have been repeated almost daily on me.  Will any friend
from Michigan read the article to which I allude?"

This is a part of the speech.  You must excuse me from reading
the entire article of the Washington Union, as Mr. Stuart read it
for Mr. Douglas.  The Judge goes on and sums up, as I think,
correctly:

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and
apparently authoritatively; and any man who questions any of them
is denounced as an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic.  The
propositions are, first, that the primary object of all
government at its original institution is the protection of
person and property; second, that the Constitution of the United
States declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether
organic or otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State
from settling in another with their slave property, and
especially declaring it forfeited, are direct violations of the
original intention of the government and Constitution of the
United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of the slaves
of the Northern States was a gross outrage of the rights of
property, inasmuch as it was involuntarily done on the part of
the owner.

"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the
17th of November, and on the 18th appeared the first article
giving the adhesion of the Union, to the Lecompton Constitution.
It was in these words:

"KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled.
The problem is saved.  The dead point of danger is passed.  All
serious trouble to Kansas affairs is over and gone ..."

And a column nearly of the same sort.  Then, when you come to
look into the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine
incorporated in it which was put forth editorially in the Union.
What is it?

"ARTICLE 7, Section I.  The right of property is before and
higher than any constitutional sanction; and the right of the
owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and
as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property
whatever."

Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be
amended after 1864 by a two-thirds vote:

"But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property
in the ownership of slaves."

"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution
that they are identical in spirit with the authoritative article
in the Washington Union of the day previous to its indorsement of
this Constitution."

I pass over some portions of the speech, and I hope that any one
who feels interested in this matter will read the entire section
of the speech, and see whether I do the Judge injustice.  He
proceeds:

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November,
followed by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on
the 10th of November, and this clause in the Constitution
asserting the doctrine that a State has no right to prohibit
slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow
being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."

I stop the quotation there, again requesting that it may all be
read.  I have read all of the portion I desire to comment upon.
What is this charge that the Judge thinks I must have a very
corrupt heart to make?  It was a purpose on the part of certain
high functionaries to make it impossible for the people of one
State to prohibit the people of any other State from entering it
with their "property," so called, and making it a slave State.
In other words, it was a charge implying a design to make the
institution of slavery national.  And now I ask your attention to
what Judge Douglas has himself done here.  I know he made that
part of the speech as a reason why he had refused to vote for a
certain man for public printer; but when we get at it, the charge
itself is the very one I made against him, that he thinks I am so
corrupt for uttering.  Now, whom does he make that charge
against?  Does he make it against that newspaper editor merely?
No; he says it is identical in spirit with the Lecompton
Constitution, and so the framers of that Constitution are brought
in with the editor of the newspaper in that "fatal blow being
struck."  He did not call it a "conspiracy."  In his language, it
is a "fatal blow being struck."  And if the words carry the
meaning better when changed from a "conspiracy" into a "fatal
blow being struck, "I will change my expression, and call it
"fatal blow being struck."  We see the charge made not merely
against the editor of the Union, but all the framers of the
Lecompton Constitution; and not only so, but the article was an
authoritative article.  By whose authority?  Is there any
question but he means it was by the authority of the President
and his Cabinet,--the Administration?

Is there any sort of question but he means to make that charge?
Then there are the editors of the Union, the framers of the
Lecompton Constitution, the President of the United States and
his Cabinet, and all the supporters of the Lecompton
Constitution, in Congress and out of Congress, who are all
involved in this "fatal blow being struck."  I commend to Judge
Douglas's consideration the question of how corrupt a man's heart
must be to make such a charge!

Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the subject, in the
little time I have left, to which to call your attention; and as
I shall come to a close at the end of that branch, it is probable
that I shall not occupy quite all the time allotted to me.
Although on these questions I would like to talk twice as long as
I have, I could not enter upon another head and discuss it
properly without running over my time.  I ask the attention of
the people here assembled and elsewhere to the course that Judge
Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of
making slavery national.  Not going back to the records, but
taking the speeches he makes, the speeches he made yesterday and
day before, and makes constantly all over the country, I ask your
attention to them.  In the first place, what is necessary to make
the institution national?  Not war.  There is no danger that the
people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets, and, with a young
nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into Illinois and force them
upon us.  There is no danger of our going over there and making
war upon them.  Then what is necessary for the nationalization of
slavery?  It is simply the next Dred Scott decision.  It is
merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the
Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided
that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial
Legislature can do it.  When that is decided and acquiesced in,
the whole thing is done.  This being true, and this being the
way, as I think, that slavery is to be made national, let us
consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end.  In
the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on
public sentiment.  In this and like communities, public sentiment
is everything.  With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without
it, nothing can succeed.  Consequently, he who moulds public
sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces
decisions.  He makes statutes and decisions possible or
impossible to be executed.  This must be borne in mind, as also
the additional fact that Judge Douglas is a man of vast
influence, so great that it is enough for many men to profess to
believe anything when they once find out Judge Douglas professes
to believe it.  Consider also the attitude he occupies at the
head of a large party,--a party which he claims has a majority of
all the voters in the country.  This man sticks to a decision
which forbids the people of a Territory from excluding slavery,
and he does so, not because he says it is right in itself,--he
does not give any opinion on that,--but because it has been
decided by the court; and being decided by the court, he is, and
you are, bound to take it in your political action as law, not
that he judges at all of its merits, but because a decision of
the court is to him a "Thus saith the Lord."  He places it on
that ground alone; and you will bear in mind that thus committing
himself unreservedly to this decision commits him to the next one
just as firmly as to this.  He did not commit himself on account
of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a "Thus saith
the Lord."  The next decision, as much as this, will be a "Thus
saith the Lord."  There is nothing that can divert or turn him
away from this decision.  It is nothing that I point out to him
that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the
binding force of decisions.  It is nothing to him that Jefferson
did not so believe.  I have said that I have often heard him
approve of Jackson's course in disregarding the decision of the
Supreme Court pronouncing a National Bank constitutional.  He
says I did not hear him say so.  He denies the accuracy of my
recollection.  I say he ought to know better than I, but I will
make no question about this thing, though it still seems to me
that I heard him say it twenty times.  I will tell him, though,
that he now claims to stand on the Cincinnati platform, which
affirms that Congress cannot charter a National Bank, in the
teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a
bank.  And I remind him of another piece of history on the
question of respect for judicial decisions, and it is a piece of
Illinois history belonging to a time when the large party to
which Judge Douglas belonged were displeased with a decision of
the Supreme Court of Illinois, because they had decided that a
Governor could not remove a Secretary of State.  You will find
the whole story in Ford's History of Illinois, and I know that
Judge Douglas will not deny that he was then in favor of over-
slaughing that decision by the mode of adding five new judges, so
as to vote down the four old ones.  Not only so, but it ended in
the Judge's sitting down on that very bench as one of the five
new judges to break down the four old ones  It was in this way
precisely that he got his title of judge.  Now, when the Judge
tells me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members of a
court will have to be catechized beforehand upon some subject, I
say, "You know, Judge; you have tried it."  When he says a court
of this kind will lose the confidence of all men, will be
prostituted and disgraced by such a proceeding, I say, "You know
best, Judge; you have been through the mill."  But I cannot shake
Judge Douglas's teeth loose from the Dred Scott decision.  Like
some obstinate animal (I mean no disrespect) that will hang on
when he has once got his teeth fixed, you may cut off a leg, or
you may tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold.  And
so I may point out to the Judge, and say that he is bespattered
all over, from the beginning of his political life to the present
time, with attacks upon judicial decisions; I may cut off limb
after limb of his public record, and strive to wrench him from a
single dictum of the court,--yet I cannot divert him from it.  He
hangs, to the last, to the Dred Scott decision.  These things
show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he
adheres to this decision, and for which he will adhere to all
other decisions of the same court.

[A HIBERNIAN: "Give us something besides Dred Scott."]

Yes; no doubt you want to hear something that don't hurt.  Now,
having spoken of the Dred Scott decision, one more word, and I am
done.  Henry Clay, my beau-ideal of a statesman, the man for whom
I fought all my humble life, Henry Clay once said of a class of
men who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate
emancipation that they must, if they would do this, go back to
the era of our Independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders
its annual joyous return; they must blow out the moral lights
around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate
there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, could
they perpetuate slavery in this country!  To my thinking, Judge
Douglas is, by his example and vast influence, doing that very
thing in this community, when he says that the negro has nothing
in the Declaration of Independence.  Henry Clay plainly
understood the contrary.  Judge Douglas is going back to the era
of our Revolution, and, to the extent of his ability, muzzling
the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return.  When he
invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he
is blowing out the moral lights around us.  When he says he
"cares not whether slavery is voted down or up,"--that it is a
sacred right of self-government,--he is, in my judgment,
penetrating the human soul and eradicating the light of reason
and the love of liberty in this American people.  And now I will
only say that when, by all these means and appliances, Judge
Douglas shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to an exact
accordance with his own views; when these vast assemblages shall
echo back all these sentiments; when they shall come to repeat
his views and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says
on these mighty questions,--then it needs only the formality of
the second Dred Scott decision, which he indorses in advance, to
make slavery alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new,
North as well as South.

My friends, that ends the chapter.  The Judge can take his
half-hour.




SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT,

AUGUST 27, 1858

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--On Saturday last, Judge Douglas and myself
first met in public discussion.  He spoke one hour, I an hour and
a half, and he replied for half an hour.  The order is now
reversed.  I am to speak an hour, he an hour and a half, and then
I am to reply for half an hour.  I propose to devote myself
during the first hour to the scope of what was brought within the
range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa.  Of course there was
brought within the scope in that half-hour's speech something of
his own opening speech.  In the course of that opening argument
Judge Douglas proposed to me seven distinct interrogatories.  In
my speech of an hour and a half, I attended to some other parts
of his speech, and incidentally, as I thought, intimated to him
that I would answer the rest of his interrogatories on condition
only that he should agree to answer as many for me.  He made no
intimation at the time of the proposition, nor did he in his
reply allude at all to that suggestion of mine.  I do him no
injustice in saying that he occupied at least half of his reply
in dealing with me as though I had refused to answer his
interrogatories.  I now propose that I will answer any of the
interrogatories, upon condition that he will answer questions
from me not exceeding the same number.  I give him an opportunity
to respond.

The Judge remains silent.  I now say that I will answer his
interrogatories, whether he answers mine or not; and that after I
have done so, I shall propound mine to him.

I have supposed myself, since the organization of the Republican
party at Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by the
platforms of the party, then and since.  If in any
interrogatories which I
shall answer I go beyond the scope of what is within these
platforms, it will be perceived that no one is responsible but
myself.

Having said thus much, I will take up the Judge's interrogatories
as I find them printed in the Chicago Times, and answer them
seriatim.  In order that there may be no mistake about it, I have
copied the interrogatories in writing, and also my answers to
them.  The first one of these interrogatories is in these words:

Question 1.--"I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as
he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the
Fugitive Slave law?"  Answer:--I do not now, nor ever did, stand
in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law.

Q.  2.--"I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day,
as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States
into the Union, even if the people want them?"  Answer:--I do not
now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any
more slave States into the Union.

Q.  3.--"I want to know whether he stands pledged against the
admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution
as the people of that State may see fit to make?"  Answer:--I do
not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the
Union, with such a constitution as the people of that State may
see fit to make.

Q.  4.--"I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?" Answer:--I do
not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia.

Q.  5.--"I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the
prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?"
Answer:--I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the
slave-trade between the different States.

Q.  6.--I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit
slavery in all the Territories of the United States, north as
well as south of the Missouri Compromise line?" Answer:--I am
impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and
duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States
'Territories.

Q.  7. --"I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the
acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first
prohibited therein?"  Answer:--I am not generally opposed to
honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would
or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might
think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery
question among ourselves.

Now, my friends, it will be perceived, upon an examination of
these questions and answers, that so far I have only answered
that I was not pledged to this, that, or the other.  The Judge
has not framed his interrogatories to ask me anything more than
this, and I have answered in strict accordance with the
interrogatories, and have answered truly, that I am not pledged
at all upon any of the points to which I have answered.  But I am
not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatory.  I
am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions,
and state what I really think upon them.

As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive Slave law, I have
never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I
think, under the Constitution of the United States, the people of
the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive
Slave law.  Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard
to the existing Fugitive Slave law, further than that I think it
should have been framed so as to be free from some of the
objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency.
And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an
alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to
introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general
question of slavery.

In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the
admission of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you
very frankly that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in
a position of having to pass upon that question.  I should be
exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave
State admitted into the Union; but I must add that if slavery
shall be kept out of the Territories during the territorial
existence of any one given Territory, and then the people shall,
having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt
the constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a
slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the
institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the
country, but to admit them into the Union.

The third interrogatory is answered by the answer to the second,
it being, as I conceive, the same as the second.

The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia.  In relation to that, I have my mind very
distinctly made up.  I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery
abolished in the District of Columbia.  I believe that Congress
possesses the constitutional power to abolish it.  Yet as a
member of Congress, I should not, with my present views, be in
favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia, unless it would be upon these conditions: First, that
the abolition should be gradual; second, that it should be on a
vote of the majority of qualified voters in the District; and
third, that compensation should be made to unwilling owners.
With these three conditions, I confess I would be exceedingly
glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia,
and, in the language of Henry Clay, "sweep from our capital that
foul blot upon our nation."

In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must say here that, as to
the question of the abolition of the slave-trade between the
different States, I can truly answer, as I have, that I am
pledged to nothing about it.  It is a subject to which I have not
given that mature consideration that would make me feel
authorized to state a position so as to hold myself entirely
bound by it.  In other words, that question has never been
prominently enough before me to induce me to investigate whether
we really have the constitutional power to do it.  I could
investigate it if I had sufficient time to bring myself to a
conclusion upon that subject; but I have not done so, and I say
so frankly to you here, and to Judge Douglas.  I must say,
however, that if I should be of opinion that Congress does
possess the constitutional power to abolish the slave-trade among
the different States, I should still not be in favor of the
exercise of that power, unless upon some conservative principle
as I conceive it, akin to what I have said in relation to the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

My answer as to whether I desire that slavery should be
prohibited in all the Territories of the United States is full
and explicit within itself, and cannot be made clearer by any
comments of mine.  So I suppose in regard to the question whether
I am opposed to the acquisition of any more territory unless
slavery is first prohibited therein, my answer is such that I
could add nothing by way of illustration, or making myself better
understood, than the answer which I have placed in writing.

Now in all this the Judge has me, and he has me on the record.  I
suppose he had flattered himself that I was really entertaining
one set of opinions for one place, and another set for another
place; that I was afraid to say at one place what I uttered at
another.  What I am saying here I suppose I say to a vast
audience as strongly tending to Abolitionism as any audience in
the State of Illinois, and I believe I am saying that which, if
it would be offensive to any persons and render them enemies to
myself, would be offensive to persons in this
audience.

I now proceed to propound to the Judge the interrogatories, so
far as I have framed them.  I will bring forward a new
installment when I get them ready.  I will bring them forward now
only reaching to number four.
The first one is:

Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State
constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before
they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the
English bill,--some ninety-three thousand,--will you vote to
admit them?

Q.  2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States,
exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State
constitution?

Q.  3.  If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide
that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in
favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as
a rule of political action?

Q.  4.  Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in
disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the
slavery question?

As introductory to these interrogatories which Judge Douglas
propounded to me at Ottawa, he read a set of resolutions which he
said Judge Trumbull and myself had participated in adopting, in
the first Republican State Convention, held at Springfield in
October, 1854.  He insisted that I and Judge Trumbull, and
perhaps the entire Republican party, were responsible for the
doctrines contained in the set of resolutions which he read, and
I understand that it was from that set of resolutions that he
deduced the interrogatories which he propounded to me, using
these resolutions as a sort of authority for propounding those
questions to me.  Now, I say here to-day that I do not answer his
interrogatories because of their springing at all from that set
of resolutions which he read.  I answered them because Judge
Douglas thought fit to ask them.  I do not now, nor ever did,
recognize any responsibility upon myself in that set of
resolutions.  When I replied to him on that occasion, I assured
him that I never had anything to do with them.  I repeat here to
today that I never in any possible form had anything to do with
that set of resolutions  It turns out, I believe, that those
resolutions were never passed in any convention held in
Springfield.

It turns out that they were never passed at any convention or any
public meeting that I had any part in.  I believe it turns out,
in addition to all this, that there was not, in the fall of 1854,
any convention holding a session in Springfield, calling itself a
Republican State Convention; yet it is true there was a
convention, or assemblage of men calling themselves a convention,
at Springfield, that did pass some resolutions.  But so little
did I really know of the proceedings of that convention, or what
set of resolutions they had passed, though having a general
knowledge that there had been such an assemblage of men there,
that when Judge Douglas read the resolutions, I really did not
know but they had been the resolutions passed then and there.  I
did not question that they were the resolutions adopted.  For I
could not bring myself to suppose that Judge Douglas could say
what he did upon this subject without knowing that it was true.
I contented myself, on that occasion, with denying, as I truly
could, all connection with them, not denying or affirming whether
they were passed at Springfield.  Now, it turns out that he had
got hold of some resolutions passed at some convention or public
meeting in Kane County.  I wish to say here, that I don't
conceive that in any fair and just mind this discovery relieves
me at all.  I had just as much to do with the convention in Kane
County as that at Springfield.  I am as much responsible for the
resolutions at Kane County as those at Springfield,--the amount
of the responsibility being exactly nothing in either case; no
more than there would be in regard to a set of resolutions passed
in the moon.

I allude to this extraordinary matter in this canvass for some
further purpose than anything yet advanced.  Judge Douglas did
not make his statement upon that occasion as matters that he
believed to be true, but he stated them roundly as being true, in
such form as to pledge his veracity for their truth.  When the
whole matter turns out as it does, and when we consider who Judge
Douglas is, that he is a distinguished Senator of the United
States; that he has served nearly twelve years as such; that his
character is not at all limited as an ordinary Senator of the
United States, but that his name has become of world-wide
renown,--it is most extraordinary that he should so far forget
all the suggestions of justice to an adversary, or of prudence to
himself, as to venture upon the assertion of that which the
slightest investigation would have shown him to be wholly false.
I can only account for his having done so upon the supposition
that that evil genius which has attended him through his life,
giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, such as to lead
very many good men to doubt there being any advantage in virtue
over vice,--I say I can only account for it on the supposition
that that evil genius has as last made up its mind to forsake
him.

And I may add that another extraordinary feature of the Judge's
conduct in this canvass--made more extraordinary by this
incident--is, that he is in the habit, in almost all the speeches
he makes, of charging falsehood upon his adversaries, myself and
others.  I now ask whether he is able to find in anything that
Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything that I
have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in
this instance, for that sort of vulgarity.

I have been in the habit of charging as a matter of belief on my
part that, in the introduction of the Nebraska Bill into
Congress, there was a conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and
national.  I have arranged from time to time the evidence which
establishes and proves the truth of this charge.  I recurred to
this charge at Ottawa.  I shall not now have time to dwell upon
it at very great length; but inasmuch as Judge Douglas, in his
reply of half an hour, made some points upon me in relation to
it, I propose noticing a few of them.

The Judge insists that, in the first speech I made, in which I
very distinctly made that charge, he thought for a good while I
was in fun!  that I was playful; that I was not sincere about it;
and that he only grew angry and somewhat excited when he found
that I insisted upon it as a matter of earnestness.  He says he
characterized it as a falsehood so far as I implicated his moral
character in that transaction.  Well, I did not know, till he
presented that view, that I had implicated his moral character.
He is very much in the habit, when he argues me up into a
position I never thought of occupying, of very cosily saying he
has no doubt Lincoln is "conscientious" in saying so.  He should
remember that I did not know but what he was ALTOGETHER
"CONSCIENTIOUS" in that matter.  I can conceive it possible for
men to conspire to do a good thing, and I really find nothing in
Judge Douglas's course of arguments that is contrary to or
inconsistent with his belief of a conspiracy to nationalize and
spread slavery as being a good and blessed thing; and so I hope
he will understand that I do not at all question but that in all
this matter he is entirely "conscientious."

But to draw your attention to one of the points I made in this
case, beginning at the beginning:  When the Nebraska Bill was
introduced, or a short time afterward, by an amendment, I
believe, it was provided that it must be considered "the true
intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any
State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the
people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their own
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the
Constitution of the United States."  I have called his attention
to the fact that when he and some others began arguing that they
were giving an increased degree of liberty to the people in the
Territories over and above what they formerly had on the question
of slavery, a question was raised whether the law was enacted to
give such unconditional liberty to the people; and to test the
sincerity of this mode of argument, Mr. Chase, of Ohio,
introduced an amendment, in which he made the law--if the
amendment were adopted--expressly declare that the people of the
Territory should have the power to exclude slavery if they saw
fit.  I have asked attention also to the fact that Judge Douglas
and those who acted with him voted that amendment down,
notwithstanding it expressed exactly the thing they said was the
true intent and meaning of the law.  I have called attention to
the fact that in subsequent times a decision of the Supreme Court
has been made, in which it has been declared that a Territorial
Legislature has no constitutional right to exclude slavery.  And
I have argued and said that for men who did, intend that the
people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery
absolutely and unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's
amendment is wholly inexplicable.  It is a puzzle, a riddle.  But
I have said, that with men who did look forward to such a
decision, or who had it in contemplation that such a decision of
the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting down of that
amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible.  It would
keep Congress from coming in collision with the decision when it
was made.  Anybody can conceive that if there was an intention or
expectation that such a decision was to follow, it would not be a
very desirable party attitude to get into for the Supreme Court--
all or nearly all its members belonging to the same party--to
decide one way, when the party in Congress had decided the other
way.  Hence it would be very rational for men expecting such a
decision to keep the niche in that law clear for it.  After
pointing this out, I tell Judge Douglas that it looks to me as
though here was the reason why Chase's amendment was voted down.
I tell him that, as he did it, and knows why he did it, if it was
done for a reason different from this, he knows what that reason
was and can tell us what it was.  I tell him, also, it will be
vastly more satisfactory to the country for him to give some
other plausible, intelligible reason why it was voted down than
to stand upon his dignity and call people liars.  Well, on
Saturday he did make his answer; and what do you think it was?
He says if I had only taken upon myself to tell the whole truth
about that amendment of Chase's, no explanation would have been
necessary on his part or words to that effect.  Now, I say here
that I am quite unconscious of having suppressed anything
material to the case, and I am very frank to admit if there is
any sound reason other than that which appeared to me material,
it is quite fair for him to present it.  What reason does he
propose?  That when Chase came forward with his amendment
expressly authorizing the people to exclude slavery from the
limits of every Territory, General Cass proposed to Chase, if he
(Chase) would add to his amendment that the people should have
the power to introduce or exclude, they would let it go.  This is
substantially all of his reply.  And because Chase would not do
that, they voted his amendment down.  Well, it turns out, I
believe, upon examination, that General Cass took some part in
the little running debate upon that amendment, and then ran away
and did not vote on it at all.  Is not that the fact?  So
confident, as I think, was General Cass that there was a snake
somewhere about, he chose to run away from the whole thing.  This
is an inference I draw from the fact that, though he took part in
the debate, his name does not appear in the ayes and noes.  But
does Judge Douglas's reply amount to a satisfactory answer?

[Cries of "Yes, "Yes," and "No," "No."]

There is some little difference of opinion here.  But I ask
attention to a few more views bearing on the question of whether
it amounts to a satisfactory answer.  The men who were determined
that that amendment should not get into the bill, and spoil the
place where the Dred Scott decision was to come in, sought an
excuse to get rid of it somewhere.  One of these ways--one of
these excuses--was to ask Chase to add to his proposed amendment
a provision that the people might introduce slavery if they
wanted to.  They very well knew Chase would do no such thing,
that Mr. Chase was one of the men differing from them on the
broad principle of his insisting that freedom was better than
slavery,--a man who would not consent to enact a law, penned with
his own hand, by which he was made to recognize slavery on the
one hand, and liberty on the other, as precisely equal; and when
they insisted on his doing this, they very well knew they
insisted on that which he would not for a moment think of doing,
and that they were only bluffing him.  I believe (I have not,
since he made his answer, had a chance to examine the journals or
Congressional Globe and therefore speak from memory)--I believe
the state of the bill at that time, according to parliamentary
rules, was such that no member could propose an additional
amendment to Chase's amendment.  I rather think this is the
truth,--the Judge shakes his head.  Very well.  I would like to
know, then, if they wanted Chase's amendment fixed over, why
somebody else could not have offered to do it?  If they wanted it
amended, why did they not offer the amendment?  Why did they not
put it in themselves?   But to put it on the other ground:
suppose that there was such an amendment offered, and Chase's was
an amendment to an amendment; until one is disposed of by
parliamentary law, you cannot pile another on.  Then all these
gentlemen had to do was to vote Chase's on, and then, in the
amended form in which the whole stood, add their own amendment to
it, if they wanted to put it in that shape.  This was all they
were obliged to do, and the ayes and noes show that there were
thirty-six who voted it down, against ten who voted in favor of
it.  The thirty-six held entire sway and control.  They could in
some form or other have put that bill in the exact shape they
wanted.  If there was a rule preventing their amending it at the
time, they could pass that, and then, Chase's amendment being
merged, put it in the shape they wanted.  They did not choose to
do so, but they went into a quibble with Chase to get him to add
what they knew he would not add, and because he would not, they
stand upon the flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued
was the meaning and intent of their own bill.  They left room
thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make
slavery national throughout the United States.

I pass one or two points I have, because my time will very soon
expire; but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs
again, as he did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity
of Lincoln, an insignificant individual like Lincoln,--upon his
ipse dixit charging a conspiracy upon a large number of members
of Congress, the Supreme Court, and two Presidents, to
nationalize slavery.  I want to say that, in the first place, I
have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse dixit.  I have only
arrayed the evidence tending to prove it, and presented it to the
understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but
giving you the means of judging whether it proves it or not.
This is precisely what I have done.  I have not placed it upon my
ipse dixit at all.  On this occasion, I wish to recall his
attention to a piece of evidence which I brought forward at
Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made substantially the
same charge against substantially the same persons, excluding his
dear self from the category.  I ask him to give some attention to
the evidence which I brought forward that he himself had
discovered a "fatal blow being struck" against the right of the
people to exclude slavery from their limits, which fatal blow he
assumed as in evidence in an article in the Washington Union,
published "by authority."  I ask by whose authority?  He
discovers a similar or identical provision in the Lecompton
Constitution.  Made by whom?  The framers of that Constitution.
Advocated by whom?  By all the members of the party in the
nation, who advocated the introduction of Kansas into the Union
under the Lecompton Constitution.  I have asked his attention to
the evidence that he arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was
being struck, and to the facts which he brought forward in
support of that charge,--being identical with the one which he
thinks so villainous in me.  He pointed it, not at a newspaper
editor merely, but at the President and his Cabinet and the
members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution and
those framing that instrument.  I must again be permitted to
remind him that although my ipse dixit may not be as great as
his, yet it somewhat reduces the force of his calling my
attention to the enormity of my making a like charge against him.

Go on, Judge Douglas.




Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.

MY FRIENDS:--It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half
an hour, notice all the things that so able a man as Judge
Douglas can say in an hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if
there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to
hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you
will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility for
me to go over his whole ground.  I can but take up some of the
points that he has dwelt upon, and employ my half-hour specially
on them.

The first thing I have to say to you is a word in regard to Judge
Douglas's declaration about the "vulgarity and blackguardism" in
the audience, that no such thing, as he says, was shown by any
Democrat while I was speaking.  Now, I only wish, by way of reply
on this subject, to say that while I was speaking, I used no
"vulgarity or blackguardism" toward any Democrat.

Now, my friends, I come to all this long portion of the Judge's
speech,--perhaps half of it,--which he has devoted to the various
resolutions and platforms that have been adopted in the different
counties in the different Congressional districts, and in the
Illinois legislature, which he supposes are at variance with the
positions I have assumed before you to-day.  It is true that many
of these resolutions are at variance with the positions I have
here assumed.  All I have to ask is that we talk reasonably and
rationally about it.  I happen to know, the Judge's opinion to
the contrary notwithstanding, that I have never tried to conceal
my opinions, nor tried to deceive any one in reference to them.
He may go and examine all the members who voted for me for United
States Senator in 1855, after the election of 1854.  They were
pledged to certain things here at home, and were determined to
have pledges from me; and if he will find any of these persons
who will tell him anything inconsistent with what I say now, I
will resign, or rather retire from the race, and give him no more
trouble.  The plain truth is this: At the introduction of the
Nebraska policy, we believed there was a new era being introduced
in the history of the Republic, which tended to the spread and
perpetuation of slavery.  But in our opposition to that measure
we did not agree with one another in everything.  The people in
the north end of the State were for stronger measures of
opposition than we of the central and southern portions of the
State, but we were all opposed to the Nebraska doctrine.  We had
that one feeling and that one sentiment in common.  You at the
north end met in your conventions and passed your resolutions.
We in the middle of the State and farther south did not hold such
conventions and pass the same resolutions, although we had in
general a common view and a common sentiment.  So that these
meetings which the Judge has alluded to, and the resolutions he
has read from, were local, and did not spread over the whole
State.  We at last met together in 1886, from all parts of the
State, and we agreed upon a common platform.  You, who held more
extreme notions, either yielded those notions, or, if not wholly
yielding them, agreed to yield them practically, for the sake of
embodying the opposition to the measures which the opposite party
were pushing forward at that time.  We met you then, and if there
was anything yielded, it was for practical purposes.  We agreed
then upon a platform for the party throughout the entire State of
Illinois, and now we are all bound, as a party, to that platform.

And I say here to you, if any one expects of me--in case of my
election--that I will do anything not signified by our Republican
platform and my answers here to-day, I tell you very frankly that
person will be deceived.  I do not ask for the vote of any one
who supposes that I have secret purposes or pledges that I dare
not speak out.  Cannot the Judge be satisfied?  If he fears, in
the unfortunate case of my election, that my going to Washington
will enable me to advocate sentiments contrary to those which I
expressed when you voted for and elected me, I assure him that
his fears are wholly needless and groundless.  Is the Judge
really afraid of any such thing?  I'll tell you what he is afraid
of.  He is afraid we'll all pull together.  This is what alarms
him more than anything else.  For my part, I do hope that all of
us, entertaining a common sentiment in opposition to what appears
to us a design to nationalize and perpetuate slavery, will waive
minor differences on questions which either belong to the dead
past or the distant future, and all pull together in this
struggle.  What are your sentiments?  If it be true that on the
ground which I occupy--ground which I occupy as frankly and
boldly as Judge Douglas does his,--my views, though partly
coinciding with yours, are not as perfectly in accordance with
your feelings as his are, I do say to you in all candor, go for
him, and not for me.  I hope to deal in all things fairly with
Judge Douglas, and with the people of the State, in this contest.
And if I should never be elected to any office, I trust I may go
down with no stain of falsehood upon my reputation,
notwithstanding the hard opinions Judge Douglas chooses to
entertain of me.

The Judge has again addressed himself to the Abolition tendencies
of a speech of mine made at Springfield in June last.  I have so
often tried to answer what he is always saying on that melancholy
theme that I almost turn with disgust from the discussion,--from
the repetition of an answer to it.  I trust that nearly all of
this intelligent audience have read that speech.  If you have, I
may venture to leave it to you to inspect it closely, and see
whether it contains any of those  "bugaboos" which frighten Judge
Douglas.

The Judge complains that I did not fully answer his questions.
If I have the sense to comprehend and answer those questions, I
have done so fairly.  If it can be pointed out to me how I can
more fully and fairly answer him, I aver I have not the sense to
see how it is to be done.  He says I do not declare I would in
any event vote for the admission of a slave State into the Union.
If I have been fairly reported, he will see that I did give an
explicit answer to his interrogatories; I did not merely say that
I would dislike to be put to the test, but I said clearly, if I
were put to the test, and a Territory from which slavery had been
excluded should present herself with a State constitution
sanctioning slavery,--a most extraordinary thing, and wholly
unlikely to happen,--I did not see how I could avoid voting for
her admission.  But he refuses to understand that I said so, and
he wants this audience to understand that I did not say so.  Yet
it will be so reported in the printed speech that he cannot help
seeing it.

He says if I should vote for the admission of a slave State I
would be voting for a dissolution of the Union, because I hold
that the Union cannot permanently exist half slave and half free.
I repeat that I do not believe this government can endure
permanently half slave and half free; yet I do not admit, nor
does it at all follow, that the admission of a single slave State
will permanently fix the character and establish this as a
universal slave nation.  The Judge is very happy indeed at
working up these quibbles.  Before leaving the subject of
answering questions, I aver as my confident belief, when you come
to see our speeches in print, that you will find every question
which he has asked me more fairly and boldly and fully answered
than he has answered those which I put to him.  Is not that so?
The two speeches may be placed side by side, and I will venture
to leave it to impartial judges whether his questions have not
been more directly and circumstantially answered than mine.

Judge Douglas says he made a charge upon the editor of the
Washington Union, alone, of entertaining a purpose to rob the
States of their power to exclude slavery from their limits.  I
undertake to say, and I make the direct issue, that he did not
make his charge against the editor of the Union alone.  I will
undertake to prove by the record here that he made that charge
against more and higher dignitaries than the editor of the
Washington Union.  I am quite aware that he was shirking and
dodging around the form in which he put it, but I can make it
manifest that he leveled his "fatal blow" against more persons
than this Washington editor.  Will he dodge it now by alleging
that I am trying to defend Mr. Buchanan against the charge?  Not
at all.  Am I not making the same charge myself?  I am trying to
show that you, Judge Douglas, are a witness on my side.  I am not
defending Buchanan, and I will tell Judge Douglas that in my
opinion, when he made that charge, he had an eye farther north
than he has to-day.  He was then fighting against people who
called him a Black Republican and an Abolitionist.  It is mixed
all through his speech, and it is tolerably manifest that his eye
was a great deal farther north than it is to-day.  The Judge says
that though he made this charge, Toombs got up and declared there
was not a man in the United States, except the editor of the
Union, who was in favor of the doctrines put forth in that
article.  And thereupon I understand that the Judge withdrew the
charge.  Although he had taken extracts from the newspaper, and
then from the Lecompton Constitution, to show the existence of a
conspiracy to bring about a "fatal blow," by which the States
were to be deprived of the right of excluding slavery, it all
went to pot as soon as Toombs got up and told him it was not
true.  It reminds me of the story that John Phoenix, the
California railroad surveyor, tells.  He says they started out
from the Plaza to the Mission of Dolores.  They had two ways of
determining distances.  One was by a chain and pins taken over
the ground.  The other was by a "go-it-ometer,"--an invention of
his own,--a three-legged instrument, with which he computed a
series of triangles between the points.  At night he turned to
the chain-man to ascertain what distance they had come, and found
that by some mistake he had merely dragged the chain over the
ground, without keeping any record.  By the "go-it-ometer," he
found he had made ten miles.  Being skeptical about this, he
asked a drayman who was passing how far it was to the Plaza.  The
drayman replied it was just half a mile; and the surveyor put it
down in his book,--just as Judge Douglas says, after he had made
his calculations and computations, he took Toombs's statement.  I
have no doubt that after Judge Douglas had made his charge, he
was as easily satisfied about its truth as the surveyor was of
the drayman's statement of the distance to the Plaza.  Yet it is
a fact that the man who put forth all that matter which Douglas
deemed a "fatal blow" at State sovereignty was elected by the
Democrats as public printer.

Now, gentlemen, you may take Judge Douglas's speech of March 22,
1858, beginning about the middle of page 21, and reading to the
bottom of page 24, and you will find the evidence on which I say
that he did not make his charge against the editor of the Union
alone.  I cannot stop to read it, but I will give it to the
reporters.  Judge Douglas said:

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and
apparently authoritatively, and every man who questions any of
them is denounced as an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic.
The propositions are, first, that the primary object of all
government at its original institution is the protection of
persons and property; second, that the Constitution of the United
States declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether
organic or otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State
from settling in another with their slave property, and
especially declaring it forfeited, are direct violations of the
original intention of the Government and Constitution of the
United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of the slaves
of the Northern States was a gross outrage on the rights of
property, in as much as it was involuntarily done on the part of
the owner.

"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the
17th of November, and on the 18th appeared the first article
giving the adhesion of the Union to the Lecompton Constitution.
It was in these words:

"'KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled.
The problem is solved.  The dead point of danger is passed.  All
serious trouble to Kansas affairs is over and gone...."

"And a column, nearly, of the same sort.  Then, when you come to
look into the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine
incorporated in it which was put forth editorially in the Union.
What is it?

"'ARTICLE 7, Section i.  The right of property is before and
higher than any constitutional sanction; and the right of the
owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and
as invariable as the right of the owner of any property
whatever.'

"Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be
amended after 1864 by a two-thirds vote.

"'But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property
in the ownership of slaves.'

"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution
that they are identical in spirit with this authoritative article
in the Washington Union of the day previous to its indorsement of
this Constitution.

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November,
followed by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on
the 18th of November, and this clause in the Constitution
asserting the doctrine that a State has no right to prohibit
slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow
being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."

Here he says, "Mr. President, you here find several distinct
propositions advanced boldly, and apparently authoritatively."
By whose authority, Judge Douglas?  Again, he says in another
place, "It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton
Constitution that they are identical in spirit with this
authoritative article."  By whose authority,--who do you mean to
say authorized the publication of these articles?  He knows that
the Washington Union is considered the organ of the
Administration.  I demand of Judge Douglas by whose authority he
meant to say those articles were published, if not by the
authority of the President of the United States and his Cabinet?
I defy him to show whom he referred to, if not to these high
functionaries in the Federal Government.  More than this, he says
the articles in that paper and the provisions of the Lecompton
Constitution are "identical," and, being identical, he argues
that the authors are co-operating and conspiring together.  He
does not use the word "conspiring," but what other construction
can you put upon it?  He winds up:

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November,
followed by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on
the 18th of November, and this clause in the Constitution
asserting the doctrine that a State has no right to prohibit
slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow
being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."

I ask him if all this fuss was made over the editor of this
newspaper.  It would be a terribly "fatal blow" indeed which a
single man could strike, when no President, no Cabinet officer,
no member of Congress, was giving strength and efficiency to the
movement.  Out of respect to Judge Douglas's good sense I must
believe he did n't manufacture his idea of the "fatal" character
of that blow out of such a miserable scapegrace as he represents
that editor to be.  But the Judge's eye is farther south now.
Then, it was very peculiarly and decidedly north.  His hope
rested on the idea of visiting the great "Black Republican"
party, and making it the tail of his new kite.  He knows he was
then expecting from day to day to turn Republican, and place
himself at the head of our organization.  He has found that these
despised "Black Republicans" estimate him by a standard which he
has taught them none too well.  Hence he is crawling back into
his old camp, and you will find him eventually installed in full
fellowship among those whom he was then battling, and with whom
he now pretends to be at such fearful variance.




THIRD JOINT DEBATE, AT JONESBORO,

SEPTEMBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--There is very much in the principles that
Judge Douglas has here enunciated that I most cordially approve,
and over which I shall have no controversy with him.  In so far
as he has insisted that all the States have the right to do
exactly as they please about all their domestic relations,
including that of slavery, I agree entirely with him.  He places
me wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I repeat it again
and again, insisting that I have no difference with him upon this
subject.  I have made a great many speeches, some of which have
been printed, and it will be utterly impossible for him to find
anything that I have ever put in print contrary to what I now say
upon this subject.  I hold myself under constitutional
obligations to allow the people in all the States, without
interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as they please;
and I deny that I have any inclination to interfere with them,
even if there were no such constitutional obligation.  I can only
say again that I am placed improperly--altogether improperly, in
spite of all I can say--when it is insisted that I entertain any
other view or purposes in regard to that matter.

While I am upon this subject, I will make some answers briefly to
certain propositions that Judge Douglas has put.  He says, "Why
can't this Union endure permanently half slave and half free?" I
have said that I supposed it could not, and I will try, before
this new audience, to give briefly some of the reasons for
entertaining that opinion.  Another form of his question is, "Why
can't we let it stand as our fathers placed it?" That is the
exact difficulty between us.  I say that Judge Douglas and his
friends have changed it from the position in which our fathers
originally placed it.  I say, in the way our father's originally
left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of
ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief
that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.  I say when
this government was first established it was the policy of its
founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new
Territories of the United States, where it had not existed.  But
Judge Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and
placed it upon a new basis, by which it is to become national and
perpetual.  All I have asked or desired anywhere is that it
should be placed back again upon the basis that the fathers of
our government originally placed it upon.  I have no doubt that
it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but
readopted the policy of the fathers, by restricting it to the
limits it has already covered, restricting it from the new
Territories.

I do not wish to dwell at great length on this branch of the
subject at this time, but allow me to repeat one thing that I
have stated before.  Brooks--the man who assaulted Senator Sumner
on the floor of the Senate, and who was complimented with
dinners, and silver pitchers, and gold-headed canes, and a good
many other things for that feat--in one of his speeches declared
that when this government was originally established, nobody
expected that the institution of slavery would last until this
day.  That was but the opinion of one man, but it was such an
opinion as we can never get from Judge Douglas or anybody in
favor of slavery, in the North, at all.  You can sometimes get it
from a Southern man.  He said at the same time that the framers
of our government did not have the knowledge that experience has
taught us; that experience and the invention of the cotton-gin
have taught us that the perpetuation of slavery is a necessity.
He insisted, therefore, upon its being changed from the basis
upon which the fathers of the government left it to the basis of
its perpetuation and nationalization.

I insist that this is the difference between Judge Douglas and
myself,--that Judge Douglas is helping that change along.  I
insist upon this government being placed where our fathers
originally placed it.

I remember Judge Douglas once said that he saw the evidences on
the statute books of Congress of a policy in the origin of
government to divide slavery and freedom by a geographical line;
that he saw an indisposition to maintain that policy, and
therefore he set about studying up a way to settle the
institution on the right basis,--the basis which he thought it
ought to have been placed upon at first; and in that speech he
confesses that he seeks to place it, not upon the basis that the
fathers placed it upon, but upon one gotten up on "original
principles."  When he asks me why we cannot get along with it in
the attitude where our fathers placed it, he had better clear up
the evidences that he has himself changed it from that basis,
that he has himself been chiefly instrumental in changing the
policy of the fathers.  Any one who will read his speech of the
22d of last March will see that he there makes an open
confession, showing that he set about fixing the institution upon
an altogether different set of principles.  I think I have fully
answered him when he asks me why we cannot let it alone upon the
basis where our fathers left it, by showing that he has himself
changed the whole policy of the government in that regard.

Now, fellow-citizens, in regard to this matter about a contract
that was made between Judge Trumbull and myself, and all that
long portion of Judge Douglas's speech on this subject,--I wish
simply to say what I have said to him before, that he cannot know
whether it is true or not, and I do know that there is not a word
of truth in it.  And I have told him so before.  I don't want any
harsh language indulged in, but I do not know how to deal with
this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be utterly
without truth.  It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a
charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to
establish it, and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was
dropped.  I don't know how to meet this kind of an argument.  I
don't want to have a fight with Judge Douglas, and I have no way
of making an argument up into the consistency of a corn-cob and
stopping his mouth with it.  All I can do is--good-humoredly--to
say that, from the beginning to the end of all that story about a
bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a word of
truth in it.  I can only ask him to show some sort of evidence of
the truth of his story.  He brings forward here and reads from
what he contends is a speech by James H.  Matheny, charging such
a bargain between Trumbull and myself.  My own opinion is that
Matheny did do some such immoral thing as to tell a story that he
knew nothing about.  I believe he did.  I contradicted it
instantly, and it has been contradicted by Judge Trumbull, while
nobody has produced any proof, because there is none.  Now,
whether the speech which the Judge brings forward here is really
the one Matheny made, I do not know, and I hope the Judge will
pardon me for doubting the genuineness of this document, since
his production of those Springfield resolutions at Ottawa.  I do
not wish to dwell at any great length upon this matter.  I can
say nothing when a long story like this is told, except it is not
true, and demand that he who insists upon it shall produce some
proof.  That is all any man can do, and I leave it in that way,
for I know of no other way of dealing with it.

[In an argument on the lines of: "Yes, you did.  --No, I did
not."   It bears on the former to prove his point, not on the
negative to "prove" that he did not--even if he easily can do
so.]

The Judge has gone over a long account of the old Whig and
Democratic parties, and it connects itself with this charge
against Trumbull and myself.  He says that they agreed upon a
compromise in regard to the slavery question in 1850; that in a
National Democratic Convention resolutions were passed to abide
by that compromise as a finality upon the slavery question.  He
also says that the Whig party in National Convention agreed to
abide by and regard as a finality the Compromise of 1850.  I
understand the Judge to be altogether right about that; I
understand that part of the history of the country as stated by
him to be correct I recollect that I, as a member of that party,
acquiesced in that compromise.  I recollect in the Presidential
election which followed, when we had General Scott up for the
presidency, Judge Douglas was around berating us Whigs as
Abolitionists, precisely as he does to-day,--not a bit of
difference.  I have often heard him.  We could do nothing when
the old Whig party was alive that was not Abolitionism, but it
has got an extremely good name since it has passed away.

[It almost a natural law that, when dead--no matter how bad we
were--we  are automatically beatified.]

When that Compromise was made it did not repeal the old Missouri
Compromise.  It left a region of United States territory half as
large as the present territory of the United States, north of the
line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, in which slavery was prohibited by
Act of Congress.  This Compromise did not repeal that one.  It
did not affect or propose to repeal it.  But at last it became
Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought (and I find no fault with
him), as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, to bring in a
bill for the organization of a territorial government,--first of
one, then of two Territories north of that line.  When he did so,
it ended in his inserting a provision substantially repealing the
Missouri Compromise.  That was because the Compromise of 1850 had
not repealed it.  And now I ask why he could not have let that
Compromise alone?  We were quiet from the agitation of the
slavery question.  We were making no fuss about it.  All had
acquiesced in the Compromise measures of 1850.  We never had been
seriously disturbed by any Abolition agitation before that
period.  When he came to form governments for the Territories
north of the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, why could he not have
let that matter stand as it was standing?  Was it necessary to
the organization of a Territory?  Not at all.  Iowa lay north of
the line, and had been organized as a Territory and come into the
Union as a State without disturbing that Compromise.  There was
no sort of necessity for destroying it to organize these
Territories.  But, gentlemen, it would take up all my time to
meet all the little quibbling arguments of Judge Douglas to show
that the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Compromise of
1850.  My own opinion is, that a careful investigation of all the
arguments to sustain the position that that Compromise was
virtually repealed by the Compromise of 1850 would show that they
are the merest fallacies.  I have the report that Judge Douglas
first brought into Congress at the time of the introduction of
the Nebraska Bill, which in its original form did not repeal the
Missouri Compromise, and he there expressly stated that he had
forborne to do so because it had not been done by the Compromise
of 1850.  I close this part of the discussion on my part by
asking him the question again, "Why, when we had peace under the
Missouri Compromise, could you not have let it alone?"

In complaining of what I said in my speech at Springfield, in
which he says I accepted my nomination for the senatorship
(where, by the way, he is at fault, for if he will examine it, he
will find no acceptance in it), he again quotes that portion in
which I said that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
Let me say a word in regard to that matter.

He tries to persuade us that there must be a variety in the
different institutions of the States of the Union; that that
variety necessarily proceeds from the variety of soil, climate,
of the face of the country, and the difference in the natural
features of the States.  I agree to all that.  Have these very
matters ever produced any difficulty amongst us?  Not at all.
Have we ever had any quarrel over the fact that they have laws in
Louisiana designed to regulate the commerce that springs from the
production of sugar?  Or because we have a different class
relative to the production of flour in this State?  Have they
produced any differences?  Not at all.  They are the very cements
of this Union.  They don't make the house a house divided against
itself.  They are the props that hold up the house and sustain
the Union.

But has it been so with this element of slavery?  Have we not
always had quarrels and difficulties over it?  And when will we
cease to have quarrels over it?  Like causes produce like
effects.  It is worth while to observe that we have generally had
comparative peace upon the slavery question, and that there has
been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the effort to
spread it into new territory.  Whenever it has been limited to
its present bounds, and there has been no effort to spread it,
there has been peace.  All the trouble and convulsion has
proceeded from efforts to spread it over more territory.  It was
thus at the date of the Missouri Compromise.  It was so again
with the annexation of Texas; so with the territory acquired by
the Mexican war; and it is so now.  Whenever there has been an
effort to spread it, there has been agitation and resistance.
Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political
friends), as national men, whether we have reason to expect that
the agitation in regard to this subject will cease while the
causes that tend to reproduce agitation are actively at work?
Will not the same cause that produced agitation in 1820, when the
Missouri Compromise was formed, that which produced the agitation
upon the annexation of Texas, and at other times, work out the
same results always?  Do you think that the nature of man will be
changed, that the same causes that produced agitation at one time
will not have the same effect at another?

This has been the result so far as my observation of the slavery
question and my reading in history extends.  What right have we
then to hope that the trouble will cease,--that the agitation
will come to an end,--until it shall either be placed back where
it originally stood, and where the fathers originally placed it,
or, on the other hand, until it shall entirely master all
opposition?  This is the view I entertain, and this is the reason
why I entertained it, as Judge Douglas has read from my
Springfield speech.

Now, my friends, there is one other thing that I feel myself
under some sort of obligation to mention.  Judge Douglas has here
to-day--in a very rambling way, I was about saying--spoken of the
platforms for which he seeks to hold me responsible.  He says,
"Why can't you come out and make an open avowal of principles in
all places alike?" and he reads from an advertisement that he
says was used to notify the people of a speech to be made by
Judge Trumbull at Waterloo.  In commenting on it he desires to
know whether we cannot speak frankly and manfully, as he and his
friends do.  How, I ask, do his friends speak out their own
sentiments?  A Convention of his party in this State met on the
21st of April at Springfield, and passed a set of resolutions
which they proclaim to the country as their platform.  This does
constitute their platform, and it is because Judge Douglas claims
it is his platform--that these are his principles and purposes--
that he has a right to declare he speaks his sentiments "frankly
and manfully."  On the 9th of June Colonel John Dougherty,
Governor Reynolds, and others, calling themselves National
Democrats, met in Springfield and adopted a set of resolutions
which are as easily understood, as plain and as definite in
stating to the country and to the world what they believed in and
would stand upon, as Judge Douglas's platform  Now, what is the
reason that Judge Douglas is not willing that Colonel Dougherty
and Governor Reynolds should stand upon their own written and
printed platform as well as he upon his?  Why must he look
farther than their platform when he claims himself to stand by
his platform?

Again, in reference to our platform: On the 16th of June the
Republicans had their Convention and published their platform,
which is as clear and distinct as Judge Douglas's.  In it they
spoke their principles as plainly and as definitely to the world.
What is the reason that Judge Douglas is not willing I should
stand upon that platform?  Why must he go around hunting for some
one who is supporting me or has supported me at some time in his
life, and who has said something at some time contrary to that
platform?  Does the Judge regard that rule as a good one?  If it
turn out that the rule is a good one for me--that I am
responsible for any and every opinion that any man has expressed
who is my friend,--then it is a good rule for him.  I ask, is it
not as good a rule for him as it is for me?  In my opinion, it is
not a good rule for either of us.  Do you think differently,
Judge?

[Mr. DOUGLAS: I do not.]

Judge Douglas says he does not think differently.  I am glad of
it.  Then can he tell me why he is looking up resolutions of five
or six years ago, and insisting that they were my platform,
notwithstanding my protest that they are not, and never were my
platform, and my pointing out the platform of the State
Convention which he delights to say nominated me for the Senate?
I cannot see what he means by parading these resolutions, if it
is not to hold me responsible for them in some way.  If he says
to me here that he does not hold the rule to be good, one way or
the other, I do not comprehend how he could answer me more fully
if he answered me at greater length.  I will therefore put in as
my answer to the resolutions that he has hunted up against me,
what I, as a lawyer, would call a good plea to a bad declaration.
I understand that it is an axiom of law that a poor plea may be a
good plea to a bad declaration.  I think that the opinions the
Judge brings from those who support me, yet differ from me, is a
bad declaration against me; but if I can bring the same things
against him, I am putting in a good plea to that kind of
declaration, and now I propose to try it.

At Freeport, Judge Douglas occupied a large part of his time in
producing resolutions and documents of various sorts, as I
understood, to make me somehow responsible for them; and I
propose now doing a little of the same sort of thing for him.  In
1850 a very clever gentleman by the name of Thompson Campbell, a
personal friend of Judge Douglas and myself, a political friend
of Judge Douglas and opponent of mine, was a candidate for
Congress in the Galena District.  He was interrogated as to his
views on this same slavery question.  I have here before me the
interrogatories, and Campbell's answers to them--I will read
them:




INTERROGATORIES:

"1st.  Will you, if elected, vote for and cordially support a
bill prohibiting slavery in the Territories of the United States?

"2d.  Will you vote for and support a bill abolishing slavery in
the District of Columbia?

"3d.  Will you oppose the admission of any Slave States which may
be formed out of Texas or the Territories?

"4th.  Will you vote for and advocate the repeal of the Fugitive
Slave law passed at the recent session of Congress?

"5th.  Will you advocate and vote for the election of a Speaker
of the House of Representatives who shall be willing to organize
the committees of that House so as to give the Free States their
just influence in the business of legislation?

"6th.  What are your views, not only as to the constitutional
right of Congress to prohibit the slave-trade between the States,
but also as to the expediency of exercising that right
immediately?"




CAMPBELL'S REPLY.

"To the first and second interrogatories, I answer unequivocally
in the affirmative.

"To the third interrogatory I reply, that I am opposed to the
admission of any more Slave States into the Union, that may be
formed out of Texas or any other Territory.

"To the fourth and fifth interrogatories I unhesitatingly answer
in the affirmative.

"To the sixth interrogatory I reply, that so long as the Slave
States continue to treat slaves as articles of commerce, the
Constitution confers power on Congress to pass laws regulating
that peculiar COMMERCE, and that the protection of Human Rights
imperatively demands the interposition of every constitutional
means to prevent this most inhuman and iniquitous traffic.

"T.  CAMPBELL."




I want to say here that Thompson Campbell was elected to Congress
on that platform, as the Democratic candidate in the Galena
District, against  Martin P.  Sweet.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Give me the date of the letter.]

The time Campbell ran was in 1850.  I have not the exact date
here.  It was some time in 1850 that these interrogatories were
put and the answer given.  Campbell was elected to Congress, and
served out his term.  I think a second election came up before he
served out his term, and he was not re-elected.  Whether defeated
or not nominated, I do not know.  [Mr. Campbell was nominated for
re-election by the Democratic party, by acclamation.] At the end
of his term his very good friend Judge Douglas got him a high
office from President Pierce, and sent him off to California.  Is
not that the fact?  Just at the end of his term in Congress it
appears that our mutual friend Judge Douglas got our mutual
friend Campbell a good office, and sent him to California upon
it.  And not only so, but on the 27th of last month, when Judge
Douglas and myself spoke at Freeport in joint discussion, there
was his same friend Campbell, come all the way from California,
to help the Judge beat me; and there was poor Martin P.  Sweet
standing on the platform, trying to help poor me to be elected.
That is true of one of Judge Douglas's friends.

So again, in that same race of 1850, there was a Congressional
Convention assembled at Joliet, and it nominated R.  S.  Molony
for Congress, and unanimously adopted the following resolution:

"Resolved, That we are uncompromisingly opposed to the extension
of slavery; and while we would not make such opposition a ground
of interference with the interests of the States where it exists,
yet we moderately but firmly insist that it is the duty of
Congress to oppose its extension into Territory now free, by all
means compatible with the obligations of the Constitution, and
with good faith to our sister States; that these principles were
recognized by the Ordinance of 1787, which received the sanction
of Thomas Jefferson, who is acknowledged by all to be the great
oracle and expounder of our faith."

Subsequently the same interrogatories were propounded to Dr.
Molony which had been addressed to Campbell as above, with the
exception of the 6th, respecting the interstate slave trade, to
which Dr.  Molony, the Democratic nominee for Congress, replied
as follows:

"I received the written interrogatories this day, and, as you
will see by the La Salle Democrat and Ottawa Free Trader, I took
at Peru on the 5th, and at Ottawa on the 7th, the affirmative
side of interrogatories 1st and 2d; and in relation to the
admission of any more Slave States from Free Territory, my
position taken at these meetings, as correctly reported in said
papers, was emphatically and distinctly opposed to it.  In
relation to the admission of any more Slave States from Texas,
whether I shall go against it or not will depend upon the opinion
that I may hereafter form of the true meaning and nature of the
resolutions of annexation.  If, by said resolutions, the honor
and good faith of the nation is pledged to admit more Slave
States from Texas when she (Texas) may apply for the admission of
such State, then I should, if in Congress, vote for their
admission.  But if not so PLEDGED and bound by sacred contract,
then a bill for the admission of more Slave States from Texas
would never receive my vote.

"To your fourth interrogatory I answer most decidedly in the
affirmative, and for reasons set forth in my reported remarks at
Ottawa last Monday.

"To your fifth interrogatory I also reply in the affirmative most
cordially, and that I will use my utmost exertions to secure the
nomination and election of a man who will accomplish the objects
of said interrogatories.  I most cordially approve of the
resolutions adopted at the Union meeting held at Princeton on the
27th September ult.

"Yours, etc.,R.  S.  MOLONY."




All I have to say in regard to Dr.  Molony is that he was the
regularly nominated Democratic candidate for Congress in his
district; was elected at that time; at the end of his term was
appointed to a land-office at Danville.  (I never heard anything
of Judge Douglas's instrumentality in this.) He held this office
a considerable time, and when we were at Freeport the other day
there were handbills scattered about notifying the public that
after our debate was over R. S. Molony would make a Democratic
speech in favor of Judge Douglas.  That is all I know of my own
personal knowledge.  It is added here to this resolution, and
truly I believe, that among those who participated in the Joliet
Convention, and who supported its nominee, with his platform as
laid down in the resolution of the Convention and in his reply as
above given, we call at random the following names, all of which
are recognized at this day as leading
Democrats:

"Cook County,--E. B. Williams, Charles McDonell, Arno Voss,
Thomas Hoyne, Isaac Cook."

I reckon we ought to except Cook.

"F. C. Sherman.
"Will,--Joel A. Matteson, S. W. Bowen.
"Kane,--B. F. Hall, G. W. Renwick, A. M. Herrington, Elijah
Wilcox.
"McHenry,--W. M. Jackson, Enos W. Smith, Neil Donnelly.
La Salle,--John Hise, William Reddick."

William Reddick!  another one of Judge Douglas's friends that
stood on the stand with him at Ottawa, at the time the Judge says
my knees trembled so that I had to be carried away.  The names
are all here:

"Du Page,--Nathan Allen.
"De Kalb,--Z. B. Mayo."

Here is another set of resolutions which I think are apposite to
the matter in hand.

On the 28th of February of the same year a Democratic District
Convention was held at Naperville to nominate a candidate for
Circuit Judge.  Among the delegates were Bowen and Kelly of Will;
Captain Naper, H. H. Cody, Nathan Allen, of Du Page; W. M.
Jackson, J. M. Strode, P. W. Platt, and Enos W. Smith of McHenry;
J. Horssnan and others of Winnebago.  Colonel Strode presided
over the Convention.  The following resolutions were unanimously
adopted,--the first on motion of P. W. Platt, the second on
motion of William M.  Jackson:

"Resolved, That this Convention is in favor of the Wilmot
Proviso, both in Principle and Practice, and that we know of no
good reason why any person should oppose the largest latitude in
Free Soil, Free Territory and Free speech.

"Resolved, That in the opinion of this Convention, the time has
arrived when all men should be free, whites as well as others."


[Judge DOUGLAS: What is the date of those resolutions?]


I understand it was in 1850, but I do not know it.  I do not
state a thing and say I know it, when I do not.  But I have the
highest belief that this is so.  I know of no way to arrive at
the conclusion that there is an error in it.  I mean to put a
case no stronger than the truth will allow.  But what I was going
to comment upon is an extract from a newspaper in De Kalb County;
and it strikes me as being rather singular, I confess, under the
circumstances.  There is a Judge Mayo in that county, who is a
candidate for the Legislature, for the purpose, if he secures his
election, of helping to re-elect Judge Douglas.  He is the editor
of a newspaper [De Kalb County Sentinel], and in that paper I
find the extract I am going to read.  It is part of an editorial
article in which he was electioneering as fiercely as he could
for Judge Douglas and against me.  It was a curious thing, I
think, to be in such a paper.  I will agree to that, and the
Judge may make the most of it:

"Our education has been such that we have been rather in favor of
the equality of the blacks; that is, that they should enjoy all
the privileges of the whites where they reside.  We are aware
that this is not a very popular doctrine.  We have had many a
confab with some who are now strong 'Republicans' we taking the
broad ground of equality, and they the opposite ground.

"We were brought up in a State where blacks were voters, and we
do not know of any inconvenience resulting from it, though
perhaps it would not work as well where the blacks are more
numerous.  We have no doubt of the right of the whites to guard
against such an evil, if it is one.  Our opinion is that it would
be best for all concerned to have the colored population in a
State by themselves [in this I agree with him]; but if within the
jurisdiction of the United States, we say by all means they
should have the right to have their Senators and Representatives
in Congress, and to vote for President.  With us 'worth makes the
man, and want of it the fellow.' We have seen many a 'nigger'
that we thought more of than some white men."

That is one of Judge Douglas's friends.  Now, I do not want to
leave myself in an attitude where I can be misrepresented, so I
will say I do not think the Judge is responsible for this
article; but he is quite as responsible for it as I would be if
one of my friends had said it.  I think that is fair enough.

I have here also a set of resolutions passed by a Democratic
State Convention in Judge Douglas's own good State of Vermont,
that I think ought to be good for him too:

"Resolved, That liberty is a right inherent and inalienable in
man, and that herein all men are equal.
"Resolved, That we claim no authority in the Federal Government
to abolish slavery in the several States, but we do claim for it
Constitutional power perpetually to prohibit the introduction of
slavery into territory now free, and abolish it wherever, under
the jurisdiction of Congress, it exists.
"Resolved, That this power ought immediately to be exercised in
prohibiting the introduction and existence of slavery in New
Mexico and California, in abolishing slavery and the slave-trade
in the District of Columbia, on the high seas, and wherever else,
under the Constitution, it can be reached.
"Resolved, That no more Slave States should be admitted into the
Federal Union.
"Resolved, That the Government ought to return to its ancient
policy, not to extend, nationalize, or encourage, but to limit,
localize, and discourage slavery."

At Freeport I answered several interrogatories that had been
propounded to me by Judge Douglas at the Ottawa meeting.  The
Judge has not yet seen fit to find any fault with the position
that I took in regard to those seven interrogatories, which were
certainly broad enough, in all conscience, to cover the entire
ground.  In my answers, which have been printed, and all have had
the opportunity of seeing, I take the ground that those who elect
me must expect that I will do nothing which will not be in
accordance with those answers.  I have some right to assert that
Judge Douglas has no fault to find with them.  But he chooses to
still try to thrust me upon different ground, without paying any
attention to my answers, the obtaining of which from me cost him
so much trouble and concern.  At the same time I propounded four
interrogatories to him, claiming it as a right that he should
answer as many interrogatories for me as I did for him, and I
would reserve myself for a future instalment when I got them
ready.  The Judge, in answering me upon that occasion, put in
what I suppose he intends as answers to all four of my
interrogatories.  The first one of these interrogatories I have
before me, and it is in these words:

"Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State
constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before
they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the
English bill, "-some ninety-three thousand,-" will you vote to
admit them?"

As I read the Judge's answer in the newspaper, and as I remember
it as pronounced at the time, he does not give any answer which
is equivalent to yes or no,--I will or I won't.  He answers at
very considerable length, rather quarreling with me for asking
the question, and insisting that Judge Trumbull had done
something that I ought to say something about, and finally
getting out such statements as induce me to infer that he means
to be understood he will, in that supposed case, vote for the
admission of Kansas.  I only bring this forward now for the
purpose of saying that if he chooses to put a different
construction upon his answer, he may do it.  But if he does not,
I shall from this time forward assume that he will vote for the
admission of Kansas in disregard of the English bill.  He has the
right to remove any misunderstanding I may have.  I only mention
it now, that I may hereafter assume this to be the true
construction of his answer, if he does not now choose to correct
me.

The second interrogatory that I propounded to him was this:

"Question 2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States,
exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State
Constitution?"

To this Judge Douglas answered that they can lawfully exclude
slavery from the Territory prior to the formation of a
constitution.  He goes on to tell us how it can be done.  As I
understand him, he holds that it can be done by the Territorial
Legislature refusing to make any enactments for the protection of
slavery in the Territory, and especially by adopting unfriendly
legislation to it.  For the sake of clearness, I state it again:
that they can exclude slavery from the Territory, 1st, by
withholding what he assumes to be an indispensable assistance to
it in the way of legislation; and, 2d, by unfriendly legislation.
If I rightly understand him, I wish to ask your attention for a
while to his position.

In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United States has
decided that any Congressional prohibition of slavery in the
Territories is unconstitutional; that they have reached this
proposition as a conclusion from their former proposition, that
the Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes
property in slaves, and from that other Constitutional provision,
that no person shall be deprived of property without due process
of law.  Hence they reach the conclusion that as the Constitution
of the United States expressly recognizes property in slaves, and
prohibits any person from being deprived of property without due
process of law, to pass an Act of Congress by which a man who
owned a slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him if
he took him on the other side, is depriving him of that property
without due process of law.  That I understand to be the decision
of the Supreme Court.  I understand also that Judge Douglas
adheres most firmly to that decision; and the difficulty is, how
is it possible for any power to exclude slavery from the
Territory, unless in violation of that decision?  That is the
difficulty.

In the Senate of the United States, in 1850, Judge Trumbull, in a
speech substantially, if not directly, put the same interrogatory
to Judge Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory had the
lawful power to exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
constitution.  Judge Douglas then answered at considerable
length, and his answer will be found in the Congressiona1 Globe,
under date of June 9th, 1856.  The Judge said that whether the
people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
constitution or not was a question to be decided by the Supreme
Court.  He put that proposition, as will be seen by the
Congressional Globe, in a variety of forms, all running to the
same thing in substance,--that it was a question for the Supreme
Court.  I maintain that when he says, after the Supreme Court
have decided the question, that the people may yet exclude
slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is
not a question for the Supreme Court.  He shifts his ground.  I
appeal to you whether he did not say it was a question for the
Supreme Court?  Has not the Supreme Court decided that question?
when he now says the people may exclude slavery, does he not make
it a question for the people?  Does he not virtually shift his
ground and say that it is not a question for the Court, but for
the people?  This is a very simple proposition,--a very plain and
naked one.  It seems to me that there is no difficulty in
deciding it.  In a variety of ways he said that it was a question
for the Supreme Court.  He did not stop then to tell us that,
whatever the Supreme Court decides, the people can by withholding
necessary "police regulations" keep slavery out.  He did not make
any such answer  I submit to you now whether the new state of the
case has not induced the Judge to sheer away from his original
ground.  Would not this be the impression of every fair-minded
man?

I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new
country without police regulations is historically false.  It is
not true at all.  I hold that the history of this country shows
that the institution of slavery was originally planted upon this
continent without these "police regulations," which the Judge now
thinks necessary for the actual establishment of it.  Not only
so, but is there not another fact: how came this Dred Scott
decision to be made?  It was made upon the case of a negro being
taken and actually held in slavery in Minnesota Territory,
claiming his freedom because the Act of Congress prohibited his
being so held there.  Will the Judge pretend that Dred Scott was
not held there without police regulations?  There is at least one
matter of record as to his having been held in slavery in the
Territory, not only without police regulations, but in the teeth
of Congressional legislation supposed to be valid at the time.
This shows that there is vigor enough in slavery to plant itself
in a new country even against unfriendly legislation.  It takes
not only law, but the enforcement of law to keep it out.  That is
the history of this country upon the subject.

I wish to ask one other question.  It being understood that the
Constitution of the United States guarantees property in slaves
in the Territories, if there is any infringement of the right of
that property, would not the United States courts, organized for
the government of the Territory, apply such remedy as might be
necessary in that case?  It is a maxim held by the courts that
there is no wrong without its remedy; and the courts have a
remedy for whatever is acknowledged and treated as a wrong.

Again: I will ask you, my friends, if you were elected members of
the Legislature, what would be the first thing you would have to
do before entering upon your duties?  Swear to support the
Constitution of the United States.  Suppose you believe, as Judge
Douglas does, that the Constitution of the United States
guarantees to your neighbor the right to hold slaves in that
Territory; that they are his property:  how can you clear your
oaths unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to
enable him to enjoy that property?  What do you understand by
supporting the Constitution of a State, or of the United States?
Is it not to give such constitutional helps to the rights
established by that Constitution as may be practically needed?
Can you, if you swear to support the Constitution, and believe
that the Constitution establishes a right, clear your oath,
without giving it support?  Do you support the Constitution if,
knowing or believing there is a right established under it which
needs specific legislation, you withhold that legislation?  Do
you not violate and disregard your oath?  I can conceive of
nothing plainer in the world.  There can be nothing in the words
"support the Constitution," if you may run counter to it by
refusing support to any right established under the Constitution.
And what I say here will hold with still more force against the
Judge's doctrine of "unfriendly legislation."  How could you,
having sworn to support the Constitution, and believing it
guaranteed the right to hold slaves in the Territories, assist in
legislation intended to defeat that right?  That would be
violating your own view of the Constitution.  Not only so, but if
you were to do so, how long would it take the courts to hold your
votes unconstitutional and void?  Not a moment.

Lastly, I would ask: Is not Congress itself under obligation to
give legislative support to any right that is established under
the United States Constitution?  I repeat the question: Is not
Congress itself bound to give legislative support to any right
that is established in the United States Constitution?  A member
of Congress swears to support the Constitution of the United
States: and if he sees a right established by that Constitution
which needs specific legislative protection, can he clear his
oath without giving that protection?  Let me ask you why many of
us who are opposed to slavery upon principle give our
acquiescence to a Fugitive Slave law?   Why do we hold ourselves
under obligations to pass such a law, and abide by it when it is
passed?  Because the Constitution makes provision that the owners
of slaves shall have the right to reclaim them.  It gives the
right to reclaim slaves; and that right is, as Judge Douglas
says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that will
enforce it.

The mere declaration, "No person held to service or labor in one
State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in
consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due, "is powerless
without specific legislation to enforce it."  Now, on what ground
would a member of Congress, who is opposed to slavery in the
abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to
do?  Because there is a constitutional right which needs
legislation to enforce it.  And although it is distasteful to me,
I have sworn to support the Constitution; and having so sworn, I
cannot conceive that I do support it if I withhold from that
right any necessary legislation to make it practical.  And if
that is true in regard to a Fugitive Slave law, is the right to
have fugitive slaves reclaimed any better fixed in the
Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the Territories?
For this decision is a just exposition of the Constitution, as
Judge Douglas thinks.  Is the one right any better than the
other?  Is there any man who, while a member of Congress, would
give support to the one any more than the other?  If I wished to
refuse to give legislative support to slave property in the
Territories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it, holding
the view that the Constitution establishes that right.  If I did
it at all, it would be because I deny that this decision properly
construes the Constitution.  But if I acknowledge, with Judge
Douglas, that this decision properly construes the Constitution,
I cannot conceive that I would be less than a perjured man if I
should refuse in Congress to give such protection to that
property as in its nature it needed.

At the end of what I have said here I propose to give the Judge
my fifth interrogatory, which he may take and answer at his
leisure.  My fifth interrogatory is this:

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should
need and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of
their slave property in such Territory, would you, as a member of
Congress, vote for or against such legislation?

[Judge DOUGLAS: Will you repeat that?  I want to answer that
question.]

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should
need and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of
their slave property in such Territory, would you, as a member of
Congress, vote for or against such legislation?

I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge Douglas has made,
he has spoken as if he did not know or think that the Supreme
Court had decided that a Territorial Legislature cannot exclude
slavery.  Precisely what the Judge would say upon the subject--
whether he would say definitely that he does not understand they
have so decided, or whether he would say he does understand that
the court have so decided,--I do not know; but I know that in his
speech at Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not
decided yet; and in his answer to me at Freeport, he spoke of it,
so far, again, as I can comprehend it, as a thing that had not
yet been decided.  Now, I hold that if the Judge does entertain
that view, I think that he is not mistaken in so far as it can be
said that the court has not decided anything save the mere
question of jurisdiction.  I know the legal arguments that can be
made,--that after a court has decided that it cannot take
jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all that is before
it, and that is the end of it.  A plausib1e argument can be made
in favor of that proposition; but I know that Judge Douglas has
said in one of his speeches that the court went forward, like
honest men as they were, and decided all the points in the case.
If any points are really extra-judicially decided, because not
necessarily before them, then this one as to the power of the
Territorial Legislature, to exclude slavery is one of them, as
also the one that the Missouri Compromise was null and void.
They are both extra-judicial, or neither is, according as the
court held that they had no jurisdiction in the case between the
parties, because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a
suit in that court.  I want, if I have sufficient time, to show
that the court did pass its opinion; but that is the only thing
actually done in the case.  If they did not decide, they showed
what they were ready to decide whenever the matter was before
them.  What is that opinion?  After having argued that Congress
had no power to pass a law excluding slavery from a United States
Territory, they then used language to this effect:  That inasmuch
as Congress itself could not exercise such a power, it followed
as a matter of course that it could not authorize a Territorial
government to exercise it; for the Territorial Legislature can do
no more than Congress could do.  Thus it expressed its opinion
emphatically against the power of a Territorial Legislature to
exclude slavery, leaving us in just as little doubt on that point
as upon any other point they really decided.

Now, my fellow-citizens, I will detain you only a little while
longer; my time is nearly out.  I find a report of a speech made
by Judge Douglas at Joliet, since we last met at Freeport,--
published, I believe, in the Missouri Republican, on the 9th of
this month, in which Judge Douglas says:

"You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked him if he
concurred in each and all of the principles set forth in it.  He
would not answer these questions.  At last I said frankly, I wish
you to answer them, because when I get them up here where the
color of your principles are a little darker than in Egypt, I
intend to trot you down to Jonesboro.  The very notice that I was
going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble in his knees so
that he had to be carried from the platform.  He laid up seven
days, and in the meantime held a consultation with his political
physicians; they had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders
of the Abolition party, they consulted it all over, and at last
Lincoln came to the conclusion that he would answer, so he came
up to Freeport last Friday."

Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for
philosophical contemplation.  I have been treating it in that
way, and I have really come to the conclusion that I can explain
it in no other way than by believing the Judge is crazy.  If he
was in his right mind I cannot conceive how he would have risked
disgusting the four or five thousand of his own friends who stood
there and knew, as to my having been carried from the platform,
that there was not a word of truth in it.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Did n't they carry you off?]

There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas
exactly.  He smiles now, and says, "Did n't they carry you off?"
but he said then "he had to be carried off"; and he said it to
convince the country that he had so completely broken me down by
his speech that I had to be carried away.  Now he seeks to dodge
it, and asks, "Did n't they carry you off?" Yes, they did.  But,
Judge Douglas, why didn't you tell the truth?" I would like to
know why you did n't tell the truth about it.  And then again "He
laid up seven days."  He put this in print for the people of the
country to read as a serious document.  I think if he had been in
his sober senses he would not have risked that barefacedness in
the presence of thousands of his own friends who knew that I made
speeches within six of the seven days at Henry, Marshall County,
Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough County, including
all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport at the end
of the six days.  Now I say there is no charitable way to look at
that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy.
There is another thing in that statement that alarmed me very
greatly as he states it, that he was going to "trot me down to
Egypt."  Thereby he would have you infer that I would not come to
Egypt unless he forced me--that I could not be got here unless
he, giant-like, had hauled me down here.  That statement he
makes, too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the
stipulation to come down here and that he himself had been very
reluctant to enter into the stipulation.  More than all this:
Judge Douglas, when he made that statement, must have been crazy
and wholly out of his sober senses, or else he would have known
that when he got me down here, that promise--that windy promise--
of his powers to annihilate me, would n't amount to anything.
Now, how little do I look like being carried away trembling?  Let
the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour, I want
you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay and rot here;
and if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to
the hotel and put him to bed, let me stay here and rot.  I say,
then, here is something extraordinary in this statement.  I ask
you if you know any other living man who would make such a
statement?  I will ask my friend Casey, over there, if he would
do such a thing?  Would he send that out and have his men take it
as the truth?  Did the Judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt to
scare me to death?  Why, I know this people better than he does.
I was raised just a little east of here.  I am a part of this
people.  But the Judge was raised farther north, and perhaps he
has some horrid idea of what this people might be induced to do.
But really I have talked about this matter perhaps longer than I
ought, for it is no great thing; and yet the smallest are often
the most difficult things to deal with.  The Judge has set about
seriously trying to make the impression that when we meet at
different places I am literally in his clutches--that I am a
poor, helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do nothing at all.
This is one of the ways he has taken to create that impression.
I don't know any other way to meet it except this.  I don't want
to quarrel with him--to call him a liar; but when I come square
up to him I don't know what else to call him if I must tell the
truth out.  I want to be at peace, and reserve all my fighting
powers for necessary occasions.  My time now is very nearly out,
and I give up the trifle that is left to the Judge, to let him
set my knees trembling again, if he can.