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because she had not 93,420 people, although her population was larger than that of Kansas, he stands pledged against the admission of both Oregon and Kansas until they have 93,420 inhabitants. I would like Mr. Lincoln to answer this question. I would like him to take his own medicine. If he differs with Mr. Trumbull, let him answer his argument against the admission of Oregon, instead of poking questions at me.

"The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is, Can the people of a territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state Constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state Constitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska Bill on that principle all over the state in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery can not exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local Legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point.

"In this connection I will notice the charge which he has introduced in relation to Mr. Chase's amendment. I thought that I had chased that amendment out of Mr. Lincoln's brain at Ottawa; but it seems that it still haunts his imagination, and he is not yet satisfied. I had supposed that he would be ashamed to press that question further. He is a lawyer, and has been a member of Congress, and has occupied his time and amused you by telling you about parliamentary proceedings. He ought to have known better than to try to palm off his miserable impositions upon this intelligent audience. The Nebraska Bill provided that the legislative power, and authority of the said territory, should extend to all rightful subjects of legislation consistent with the organic act and the Constitution of the United States. It did not make any exception as to slavery, but gave all the power that it was possible for Congress to give, without violating the Constitution, to the territorial Legislature, with no exception or limitation on the subject of slavery at all. The language of that bill which I have quoted gave the full power and the full authority over the subject of slavery, affirmatively and negatively, to introduce it or exclude it so far as the Constitution of the United States would permit. What more could Mr. Chase give by his amendment? Nothing. He offered his amendment for the identical purpose for which Mr. Lincoln is using it, to enable demagogues in the country to try and deceive the people. His amendment was to this effect. It provided that the Legislature should have the power to exclude slavery; and General Cass suggested, 'Why not give the power to introduce as well as exclude ?' The answer was, they have the power already in the bill to do both. Chase was afraid his amendment would be adopted if he put the alternative proposition and so make it fair both ways, but would not yield. He offered it for the purpose of having it rejected. He offered it, as he has himself avowed over

and over again, simply to make capital out of it for the stump. He expected that it would be capital for small politicians in the country, and that they would make an effort to deceive the people with it, and he was not mistaken, for Lincoln is carrying out the plan admirably. Lincoln knows that the Nebraska Bill, without Chase's amendment, gave all the power which the Constitution would permit. Could Congress confer any more? Could Congress go beyond the Constitution of the country? We gave all, a full grant, with no exception in regard to slavery one way or the other. We left that question as we left all others, to be decided by the people for themselves, just as they pleased. I will not occupy my time on this question. I have argued it before all over Illinois. I have argued it in this beautiful city of Freeport; I have argued it in the North, the South, the East, and the West, avowing the same sentiments and the same principles. I have not been afraid to avow my sentiments up here for fear I would be trotted down into Egypt.

"The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is, If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that a state of this Union can not exclude slavery from its own limits, will I submit to it? I am amazed that Lincoln should ask such a question. ('A school-boy knows better.') Yes, a schoolboy does know better. Mr. Lincoln's object is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. He knows that there never was but one man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency, who ever for a moment pretended such a thing. It is true that the Washington Union, in an article published on the 17th of last November, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article on the floor of the Senate in a speech which Mr. Lincoln now pretends was against the President. The Union had claimed that slavery had a right to go into the free states, and that any provision in the Constitution or laws of the free states to the contrary were null and void. I denounced it in the Senate, as I said before, and I was the first man who did. Lincoln's friends, Trumbull, and Seward, and Hale, and Wilson, and the whole Black Republican side of the Senate were silent. They left it to me to denounce it. And what was the reply made to me on that occasion ? Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up and undertook to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to have deemed the article worthy of notice, and ought not to have replied to it; that there was not one man, woman, or child South of the Potomac, in any slave state, who did not repudiate any such pretension. Mr. Lincoln knows that that reply was made on the spot, and yet now he asks this question. He might as well ask me, suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal a horse, would I sanction it; and it would be as genteel in me to ask him, in the event he stole a horse, what ought to be done with him. He casts an imputation upon the Supreme Court of the United States by supposing that they would violate the Constitution of the United States. I tell him that such a thing is not possible. It would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to. Mr. Lincoln himself would never, in his partizan feelings, so far forget what was right as to be guilty of such an act.

"The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is, Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory in disregard as to how such acquisition may affect the Union on the slavery question? This question is very ingeniously and cunningly put. The Black Republican creed lays it down expressly, that under no circumstances shall we acquire any more territory unless slavery is first prohibited in the country. I ask Mr. Lincoln whether he is in favor of that proposition. Are you (addressing Mr. Lincoln) opposed to the acquisition of any more territory, under any circumstances, unless slavery is prohibited in it? That he does not like to answer. When I ask him whether he stands up to that article in the platform of his party, he turns, Yankee-fashion, and

without answering it, asks me whether I am in favor of acquiring territory without regard to how it may affect the Union on the slavery question. I answer that whenever it becomes necessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, that I am in favor of it, without reference to the question of slavery, and when we have acquired it, I will leave the people free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free territory, as they prefer.

This was the origin and history of the famous questions put to Mr. Douglas at Freeport, and of his reply. The answers were not exactly what the allies desired. They would have preferred that he should repudiate popular sovereignty, because they had southern authority and his own entire record to produce against him. The fidelity of Mr. Douglas to his own and oft-repeated doctrines-to the doctrines he had proclaimed in every county in the state during 1856, was looked upon by the allies as unpardonable. The scheme to entrap him had failed. His reply to Lincoln had a startling effect upon that gentleman. Douglas had refused to bid for the Danite vote by repudiating his own principles. Lincoln's half-hour rejoinder was a failure. He had expected a different answer, and had evidently intended in that half hour to expose Douglas' abandonment of popular sovereignty, and perhaps to quote upon him Mr. ORR's speech, Mr. Buchanan's letter, and a long list of other Democratic authorities.

Immediately the Republican papers of the state took up the matter: they were shocked that Democrats could support a man who did not believe the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a purely pro-slavery measure! They read Douglas out of the Democratic party!

The Washington Union took up the Republican cry, that Douglas had betrayed the Democratic party at Freeport, and the cry was continued from mouth to mouth, until, some time in the dog-days of 1859, it was heard for the last time in very feeble echoes, somewhere in the remote neighborhood of Grass Valley, California.

On the 23d of February, 1859, Mr. Douglas, in reply to a speech made by the Honorable A. G. Brown, of Mississippi, repeated the opinions expressed by him in his speeches in Illinois during 1856, 7, and 8, and in Congress from the time of the compromise measures of 1850. That speech has been widely circulated. Attached to the pamphlet edition is an appendix, making twenty-two pages of printed matter, in

which are grouped extracts from reports made by himself, and from speeches made by the Hon. W. A. Richardson, of Illinois, Hon. Louis Cass, Hon. Isaac Toucey, Hon. Howell Cobb, Hon. John C. Breckinridge, Hon. J. L. Orr, Hon. A. H. Stephens, Hon. J. P. Benjamin, Hon. J. M. Mason, Hon. J. A. Bayard, Hon. G. E. Badger, Hon. John Pettit, Hon. A. P. Butler, Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, Hon. Robert Toombs, Hon. J. A. Smith, Hon. A. C. Dodge, Hon. T. F. Bowie, Hon. G. W. Jones, Hon. J. N. Elliott, Hon. J. S. Caskie, Hon. A. G. Brown, Hon. W. C. Dawson, Hon. T. L. Clingman, Hon. Z. Kidwell, Hon. C. J. Faulkner, Hon. J. H. Lumpkin, Hon. A. G. Talbott, Hon. Moses Norris, Hon. J. B. Weller, Hon. W. H. English, Hon. M. Macdonald, Hon. J. R. Thomson, Hon. R. Brodhead, Hon. W. Bigler, Hon. L. O'B. Branch, and Hon. Harry Hibbard ; also from the Cincinnati platform, and the letter of Mr. Buchanan accepting the nomination-all showing the interpretation placed upon the Kansas-Nebraska Act by these gentlemen at the time of its passage and subsequently to its going into effect. That speech and appendix present a compendium of authority upon the proper construction to be placed upon the language of the act. Mr. Douglas demonstrates in that speech that the "unsound doctrines" of his Freeport address were not new, but were of very ancient date, and thoroughly understood by the Senate and the country.

The next joint debate took place at Jonesboro, in Egypt, on the 15th of September; the fourth at Charleston, in the seventh district, on the 18th. The fifth took place at Galesburg, in Knox county-strongly abolition-on October 7th; the sixth at Quincy, on the 13th, and the last at Alton, on

the 15th.

Between these periods both candidates were busily engaged. Lyman Trumbull was also at work. His speeches were neither argumentative nor poetical; they were not devoted to the advocacy of Lincoln or of Republicanism; they were fierce, malicious, vituperative, and scandalous denunciations of Judge Douglas personally. Trumbull neither served Lincoln nor damaged Douglas. He descended to the level of Lieb, Grund, and Carpenter; and at this day of intelligence the people of Illinois accept nothing on faith from men of that grade.

In the meantime the Republican papers kept constantly be

fore the people the famous declaration of the Washington Union:

"Upon the issue of Douglas or Lincoln, Lincoln or Douglas, we confess to a serene indifference."

Chase, of Ohio, Colfax, of Indiana, Blair, of Missouri, H. F. Douglas (negro), and other Republican orators, were in Illinois urging their friends to "kill Douglas" now, or he would be President in 1860.

The Danites were also busy. They had candidates for Congress in all the districts. They talked of Judge Breese and Judge Skinner for the Senate. They had candidates for the Legislature in every district, except those which were overwhelmingly Democratic, and in these districts they united with the Republicans. In the close districts they were particularly active, and, to their own eternal shame, succeeded in electing four Republicans to the Legislature, where by a united vote Democrats could have been chosen. It is but just, however, to say, that the major portion of these men have since regretted their conduct, and are now warm friends and supporters of the Democratic organization.

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The Washington Union throughout all this season continued its wholesale denunciation of Mr. Douglas. On the 3d of September it charged Douglas with degrading the office of senator by addressing the people of his own state in defense of his own official conduct, and in opposition to Republicanism. The Danites at an early day announced a tremendous mass meeting," to come off at the state capital on September 7th; and handbills, printed in a variety of colors, announced that the "Hon. John C. Breckinridge, Vice-President of the United States, would address the meeting," and denounce the Democracy of Illinois. The mass meeting came off, but beyond a few hundred office-holders and expectants, no one attended, not even to hear Mr. Breckinridge upon that subject. The use of Mr. Breckinridge's name by these disorganizers was wholly unauthorized. In October following he timidly published a letter declaring his earnest hope that the Democracy of Illinois would sustain their regular nominees, including Mr. Douglas. This letter of Mr. Breckinridge, as well as an eloquent and stirring one from Governor Wise, were both written and published long after the Freeport speech, the doctrines of

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