plete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point."

Lincoln's questioning brought so explicit and direct an answer at this time in spite of the Supreme Court's decision-as to make a positive impression at the South. Douglas in vain tried afterward to remove it even quoting from a speech made by Jefferson Davis in Maine, before the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed, as sustaining his own view. He was not forgiven, and on no one did his Freeport avowal take effect more adversely to Douglas than upon Jefferson Davis himself. By forcing Douglas to commit himself upon this question in exact terms, Lincoln counted on widening the breach in the Democratic party to the advantage of the Republican cause, whatever the first effect on himself. His sagacity in this will not now be disputed.

The other three questions have no interest in comparison with the second. In replying to the first one, Douglas said he preferred that no Territory should be admitted as a State without a population equal to that fixed as the ratio of representation, but numbers sufficient for a slave State were sufficient for a free State; and Kansas having been offered admission under the Lecompton constitution with only about one-third of such population, he would consent to its admission without increase as a free State. As to the third question, he scouted the idea of any such possibility as it implied, and gave no direct answer. As to acquiring any additional territory regardless of slavery (the fourth question), he answered that "whenever it becomes necessary, in due growth and progress, to acquire more territory," he was "in favor of it, without reference to the

question of slavery," leaving the people "free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free territory, as they prefer." With the zeal of an ardent expansionist he concluded on this point:

I tell you, increase and multiply and expand, is the law of this nation's existence. You can not limit this great Republic by mere boundary lines, saying, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Any one of you gentlemen might as well say to a son twelve years old that he is big enough, and must not grow any larger, and in order to prevent his growth put a hoop around him to keep him to his present size. What would be the result? Either the hoop must burst and be rent asunder, or the child must die. So it would be with this great nation. With our natural increase, growing with a rapidity unknown in any other part of the globe, with the tide of emigration that is fleeing from despotism in the old world to seek refuge in our own, there is a constant torrent pouring into this country that requires more land, more territory upon which to settle, and just as fast as our interests and our destiny require additional territory in the North, in the South, or on the islands of the ocean, I am for it, and when we acquire it, will leave the people, according to the Nebraska bill, free to do as they please on the subject of slavery and every other question.

The four interrogatories being disposed of, he assumed the defensive in regard to his spurious Republican State platform. Conceding that he had been in error, he sought to throw the responsibility on the editor of the Democratic organ at Springfield; but still used a great deal of special pleading to show that the resolutions of an Anti-Nebraska convention in Kane County, long before the Republican party was organized in Illinois, somehow compromised Lincoln.

In his rejoinder Lincoln said on this subject:

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.. . . We at last met together in 1856, from all parts of the State, and we agreed upon a platform. . . And I say here to you, if any one expects of me in the 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. Can not the Judge be satisfied? . I 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.

The most notable new point made in this closing half-hour speech was in connection with his rejoinder to the attempt of Douglas to explain away a speech of his in the Senate, construed by Lincoln as charging the Administration with aiming a "fatal blow" at the sovereignty of the States. After presenting documentary evidence in regard to the "fatal blow" feature of the Lecompton quarrel, Lincoln continued:

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.

The third joint discussion, on the 15th of September, was at Jonesboro - fairly "down in Egypt" at last. Douglas led off with his "Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties," and so forth, continuing on this line until he digressed to say of his opponents in the Anti-Nebraska canvass of the year named:

They were Republicans or Abolitionists in the North, anti-Nebraska men down about Springfield, and in this neighborhood they contented themselves with talking about the inexpediency of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. In the extreme northern counties they brought out men to canvass the State whose complexions suited their political creed, and hence Fred Douglass, the negro, was to be found there, following General Cass, and attempting to speak on behalf of Lincoln, Trumbull and Abolitionism against that illustrious Senator. Why, they brought Fred Douglas to Freeport, when I was addressing a meeting there, in a carriage driven by the white owner, the negro sitting inside with the white lady and her daughter. When I got through canvassing the northern counties that year, and progressed as far south as Springfield, I was met and opposed in discussion by Lincoln, Lovejoy, Trumbull and Sidney Breese, who were on one side. Father Giddings, the high-priest of Abolitionism, had just been there, and Chase came about the time I left.

Again resuming his staple speech for a while, he came to the Republican State Convention of the previous June, and went on through the old criticism of Lincoln's speech on that occasion. This brought the Senator to the close of his hour. In his reply Lincoln said at the outset:

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.

As to the indorsement of the Compromise of 1850 by the Whigs as a finality, he said:

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 today 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. . . . 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 foreborne 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?"

He then replied briefly to the onslaught on his 16th of June speech, and proceeded to notice his opponent's continual hammering at a set of extreme anti-slavery resolutions with which neither Lincoln nor the Republican party as such had anything to do. As a fair set-off to what was in itself so unfair, he produced the