MR. LINCOLN'S CLOSING.

In closing the Joint-debate at Charleston, Mr. Lincoln said: "Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from me an answer to the question whether I am in favor of Negro citizenship. So far as I know, the Judge never asked me the question before. He shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I am not in favor of Negro citizenship. * * * My opinion is that the different States have the power to make a Negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States if they choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If the State of Illinois had that power I should be opposed to the exercise of it. That is all I have to say about it."

Touching Judge Douglas's declaration that Lincoln's speeches differed in sentiment at different points, North and South, Mr. Lincoln said: "I will not charge upon Judge Douglas that he willfully misrepresents me, but I call upon every fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him to point out any difference between my speeches North and South."

Then referring to Mr. Douglas's closing remarks, he continued: "Have we ever had any peace on this Slavery Question? When are we to have peace upon it if it is kept in the position it now occupies? How are we ever to have peace upon it? That is an important question. To be sure, if we will all stop, and allow Judge Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career, until they plant the Institution all over the Nation, here and everywhere else our flag waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be peace.

"But let me ask Judge Douglas how he is going to get the People to do that? They have been wrangling over this question for at least forty years. This was the cause of the agitation resulting in the Missouri Compromise this produced the troubles at the Annexation of Texas, in the Acquisition of the territory acquired in the Mexican War. Again, this was the trouble which was quieted by the Compromise of 1850, when it was settled forever,' as both the great political parties declared in their National Conventions. That 'forever' turned out to be just four years, when Judge Douglas himself re-opened it. When is it likely to come to an end?

“He introduced the Nebraska Bill in 1854 to put another end to the Slavery agitation. He promised that it would finish it all up immediately, and he has never made a speech since, until he got into a quarrel with the President about the Lecompton Constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at the end of the Slavery agitation. * Now he tells us again that it is all over, and the people of Kansas have voted down the Lecompton Constitution. How is it over? The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the Earth's surface, this vexed question would still be among us.

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"I say then, there is no way of putting an end to the Slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back upon the basis where our Fathers placed it; no way but to keep it out of our new Territories-to restrict it forever to the old States where it now exists. That is one way of putting an end to the Slavery agitation. The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his friends have their way and plant Slayery over all the States-cease speaking of it as in any way a wrong-regard Slavery as one of the common matters of property, and speak of Negroes as we do of our horses and cattle.

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But while it drives on, in its state of progress, as it is now driving, and as it has driven for the last five years, I have ventured the opinion, and I say to-day, that we will have no end to the Slavery Question until it takes one turn or the other. I do not mean that when it takes a turn toward ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a

year, nor in two years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in God's own good time, I have no doubt.”

Touching the alleged Lincoln-Trumbull-Senatorial bargain, Mr. Lincoln designated it as a "cock and bull story," and, said he, **I have twice told Judge Douglas to his face. that from beginning to end there is not one word of truth in it. I have called upon him for the proof, and he does not all meet me, as Trumbull met him, upon that of which we were just talking, by producing the record. He didn't bring the record. because there was no record to bring. When he asks if I am ready to indorse Trumbull's veracity after he has broken a bargain with me. I reply that if Trumbull had broken a bargain with me, I would not be likely to indorse his veracity; but I am ready to indorse his veracity because neither in that thing, nor in any other, in all the years that I have known Lyman Trumbull, have I known him to fail of his word or tell a falsehood, large or small. It is for that reason that I indorse Lyman Trumbull.

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"Judge Douglas complains, at considerable length, about a disposition on the part of Trumbull and myself to attack him personally. * Judge Douglas, in a general way, without putting it in a direct shape, revives the old charge against me in reference to the Mexican War. * * * That charge is ten years old. He complains of Trumbull and myself, because he says we bring charges against him one or two years old. He knows too that, in regard to the Mexican War story, the more respectable papers of his own Party throughout the State have been compelled to take it back and acknowledge that it was a lie. When that charge was brought forward by the Chicago Times, the Springfield Register (Douglas's organ) reminded the Times that the charge really applied to John Henry; and I do know that John Henry is now making speeches and fiercely battling for Judge Douglas. If the Judge now says that he offers this as a sort of set-off to what I said to-day in reference to Trumbull's charge, then I remind him that he made this charge before I said a word about Trumbull's. He brought this forward at Ottawa, the first time we met face to face; and in the opening speech that Judge Douglas made, he attacked me, in regard to a matter ten years old. Isn't he a pretty man to be whining about people making charges against him, only two years old! After saying that "The Judge thinks it altogether wrong that I should have dwelt upon this charge of Trumbull's at all," Mr. Lincoln referred to Douglas's speech at Jacksonville-in which the Judge had declared that “Lincoln, having indorsed the character of Trumbull for veracity, he should hold him (Lincoln) responsible for the slanders,”— and, speaking of himself in the third person, asked: "What was Lincoln to do? Did he not do right when he had the fit opportunity of meeting Judge Douglas here, to tell him he was ready for the responsibility? * * Having done so, I ask * whether I have succeeded in sustaining the charge, and whether Judge Douglas has at all succeeded in rebutting it?

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"You all heard me call upon him to say which of these pieces of evidence was a forgery? Does he say that what I present as a copy of the original Toombs Bill is a forgery? Does he say that what I present as a copy of the Bill reported by himself is a forgery? Or what is presented as a transcript, from the Globe, of the quotations from Bigler's speech, is a forgery? Does he say the quotations from his own speech are forgeries? Does he say this transcript from Trumbull's speech is a forgery? [A VOICE--"He didn't deny one of them."] I would, then, like to know how it comes about, that when each piece of a story is true, the whole story turns out false? I take it these people have some sense;

they see plainly that Judge Douglas is playing cuttle-fish-a small species of fish that has no mode of defending himself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes. Ain't the Judge playing cuttle-fish?

"Now I would ask very special attention to the consideration of Judge Douglas's speech at Jacksonville; and when you shall read his speech of to-day, I ask you to watch closely and see which of these pieces of testimony, every one of which he says is a forgery, he has shown to be such. Not one of them has he shown to be a forgery. Then I ask the original question, if each of the pieces of testimony is true, how is it possible that the whole is a falsehood?

"In regard to Trumbull's charge that he (Douglas) inserted a provision into the Bill to prevent the Constitution being submitted to the people, what was his answer? He comes here and reads from the Congressional Globe to show that on his motion that provision was struck out of the Bill. Why, Trumbull has not said it was not stricken out, but Trumbull says he (Douglas) put it in, and it is no answer to the charge to say he afterward took it out. Both are perhaps true.

"It was in regard to that thing precisely that I told him he had dropped the cub. Trumbull shows you that, by his introducing the Bill, it was his cub. It is no answer to that assertion, to call Trumbull a liar, merely because he did not specially say that Douglas struck it out. Suppose that were the case, does it answer Trumbull? I assert that you (pointing to an individual) are here to-day, and you undertook to prove me a liar, by showing that you were in Mattoon yesterday. I say that you took your hat off your head, and you prove me a liar by putting it on your head! That is the whole force of Douglas's argument.

In concluding, Mr. Lincoln said: "Now I want to come back to my original question. Trumbull says that Judge Douglas had a Bill with a provision in it for submitting a Constitution to be made, to a vote of the people of Kansas. Does Judge Douglas deny that fact? Does he deny that the provision which Trumbull reads was put in that Bill? Then Trumbull says he struck it out. Does he dare to deny that? He does not, and I have the right to repeat the question-why Judge Douglas took it out?

'Bigler has said there was a combination of certain Senators, among whom he did not include Judge Douglas, by which it was agreed that the Kansas Bill should have a clause in it not to have the Constitution formed under it submitted to a vote of the people. He did not say that Douglas was among them, but we prove by another source that, about the same time, Douglas comes into the Senate with that provision stricken out of the Bill. Although Bigler cannot say they were all working in concert, yet it looks very much as if the thing was agreed upon and done with a mutual understanding after the conference; and while we do not know that it was absolutely so, yet it looks so probable, that we have a right to call upon the man who knows the true reason why it was done, to tell what the true reason was. When he will not tell what the true reason was, he stands in the attitude of an accused thief who has stolen goods in his possession, and when called to account, refuses to tell where he got them.

"Not only is this the evidence, but when he comes in with the Bill having the provision stricken out, he tells us in a speech, not then, but since, that these alterations and modifications in the Bill had been made by HIM, in consultation with Toombs, the originator of the Bill. He tells us the same to-day. He says there were certain modifications made in the Bill, in Committee, that he did not vote for. I ask you to remember, while certain amendments were made which he disapproved of, but which a majority of the Committee voted in, he has himself

told us that in this particular the alterations and modifications were made by him upon consultation with Toombs.

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We have his own word that these alterations were made by him and not by the Committee. Now, I ask what is the reason Judge Douglas is so chary about coming to the exact question? What is the reason he will not tell you anything about HOW it was made, BY WHOM it was made, or that he remembers it being made at all? Why does he stand playing upon the meaning of words, and quibbling around the edges of the evidence? If he can explain all this, but leaves it unexplained, I have a right to infer that Judge Douglas understood it was the purpose of his Party, in engineering that Bill through, to make a Constitution, and have Kansas come into the Union with that Constitution, without its being submitted to a vote of the people.

"If he will explain his action on this question, by giving a better reason for the facts that happened, than he has done, it will be satisfactory. But until he does that-until he gives a better or more plausible reason than he has offered against the evidence in the caseI suggest to him it will not avail him at all that he swells himself up, takes on dignity, and calls people liars. Why, sir, there is not a word in Trumbull's speech that depends on Trumbull's veracity at all. He has only arrayed the evidence, and told you what follows as a matter of reasoning. There is not a statement in the whole speech that depends on Trumbull's word. If you have ever studied geometry, you remember that, by a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right-angles. Euclid has shown you how to work it out. Now, if you undertake to disprove that Proposition, and to show that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar?"

FIFTH JOINT-DEBATE—AT GALESBURGH, ILL., OCT. 7, 1858. MR. DOUGLAS'S OPENING.

In opening the fifth Joint-debate at Galesburgh, October 7th, Mr. Douglas adverted to the political Campaign of 1854, when he had defended his "political action upon the Compromise Measures of 1850, and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill," in that those measures "rested upon the great fundamental principle that the people of each State and each Territory of this Union have the right, and ought to be permitted to exercise the right, of regulating their own domestic concerns in their own way, subject to no other limitation or restriction than that which the Constitution of the United States imposes on them."

Coming down to later times, he said: "During the last year a question arose in the Congress of the United States whether or not that principle would be violated by the admission of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution. In my opinion, the attempt to force Kansas in, under that Constitution, was a gross violation of the principle enunciated in the Compromise Measures of 1850 and Kansas and Nebraska Bill of 1854, and therefore I led off in the fight against the Lecompton Constitution, and conducted it until the effort to carry that Constitution through Congress was abandoned.

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"When the Lecompton Constitution was defeated, the question arose in the minds of those who had advocated it, what they should next resort to, in order to carry out their views. They devised a measure known as the English Bill,' and granted a general amnesty and pardon to all men who had fought against the Lecompton Constitution, provided they would support that Bill. I for one did not choose to accept the pardon, or to avail myself of the amnesty granted on that

condition. The fact that the supporters of Lecompton were willing to forgive all differences of opinion at that time, in the event those who opposed it, favored the English Bill, was an admission that they did not think that opposition to Lecompton impaired a man's standing in the Democratic Party.

"Now the question arises what was that English Bill which certain men are now attempting to make a test of political orthodoxy in this Country. It provided, in substance, that the Lecompton Constitution should be sent back to the people of Kansas for their adoption or rejection, at an election which was held in August last; and in case they declined admission under it, that Kansas should be kept out of the Union until she had 93,420 inhabitants.

"I was in favor of sending the Constitution back, in order to enable the people to say whether or not it was their act and deed, and em bodied their will; but the other proposition, that if they refused to come into the Union under it, they should be kept out until they had double or treble the population they then had, I never would sanction by my vote. ** I then said in my place in the Senate, as I now say to you, that whenever Kansas has population enough for a Slave State she has population enough for a Free State.

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"I have never yet given a vote, and I never intend to record one, making an odious and unjust distinction between the different States of this Union. I hold it to be a fundamental principle in our Republican form of Government that all the States of this Union, old and new, Free and Slave, stand on an exact equality. Equality among the different States is a cardinal principle on which all our institutions rest. Whenever, therefore, you make a discrimination, saying to a Slave State that it shall be admitted with 35,000 inhabitants, and to a Free State that it shall not be admitted until it has 93,000 or 100,000 inhabitants, you are throwing the whole weight of the Federal Government into the scale in favor of one class of States against the other. "Nor would I, on the other hand, any sooner sanction the doctrine that a Free State could be admitted into the Union with 35,000 people, while a Slave State was kept out until it had 93,000. I have always declared in the Senate my willingness, and I am willing now to adopt the rule, that no Territory shall ever become a State, until it has the requisite population for a Member of Congress, according to the then existing ratio. But while I have always been, and am now willing to adopt that general rule, I was not willing, and would not consent, to make an exception of Kansas, as a punishment for her obstinacy, in demanding the right to do as she pleased in the formation of her Constitution.

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Mr. Douglas proceeded to complain of eff rts made by Federal officials to defeat him because he "would not sanction a discrimination between Slave and Free States by voting for the English Bill;" adverted to the fact that in other Free States, leading Democrats who had favored the English Bill now repudiated it; "and yet," said he, "notwithstanding the fact, that every Lecompton and Anti-Lecompton Democrat in the Free States has abandoned the English Bill, you are told that it is to be made a test upon me, while the power and patronage of the Government are all exerted to elect men to Congress in the other States who occupy the same position, with reference to it, that I do!

"It seems that my political offense consists in the fact that I first did not vote for the English Bill, and thus pledge myself to keep Kansas out of the Union until she had a population of 93,420, and then return home, violate that pledge, repudiate the Bill, and take the opposite ground! If I had done this, perhaps the Administration would now be advocating my re-election, as it is that of the others who have pursued this course. I did not choose to give that pledge, for the reason that I did not intend to carry out that principle. I never will consent, for the