or, at all events, till her constitution was fully prepared and ready for submission to Congress for admission."

Now, do you suppose that Mr. Trumbull supposed that that clause prohibited the Convention from submitting the constitution to the people, when, in his speech in the Senate, he declared that the Convention had a right to submit it? In his Alton speech, as will be seen by the extract which I have read, he declared the clause put it out of the power of the Convention to submit the constitution, and in his speech in the Senate he said:

"There is nothing said in this bill, so far as I have discovered, about submitting the constitution which is to be formed to the people, for their sanction or rejection. Perhaps the Convention would have the right to submit it, if it should think proper, but it is certainly not compelled to do so according to the provisions of the bill."

Thus you see that, in Congress, he declared the bill to be silent on the subject, and a few days since, at Alton, he made a speech and said that there was a provision in the bill prohibiting submission.

I have two answers to make to that. In the first place, the amendment which he quotes as depriving the people of an opportunity to vote upon the constitution was stricken out on my motion,-absolutely stricken out, and not voted on at all! In the second place, in lieu of it, a provision was voted in, authorizing the Convention to order an election whenever it pleased. I will read. After Trumbull had made his speech in the Senate, declaring that the constitution would probably be submitted to the people, although the bill was silent upon that subject, I made a few remarks, and offered two amendments, which you may find in the Appendix to

the Congressional Globe, volume thirty-three, first session of the Thirty-fourth Congress, page 795. I quote:

"Mr. DOUGLAS: I have an amendment to offer from the Committee on Territories. On page 8, section II, strike out the words 'until the complete execution of this act no other election shall be held in said Territory,' and insert the amendment which I hold in my hand.”

The amendment was as follows:

"That all persons who shall possess the other qualifications prescribed for voters under this Act, and who shall have been bona fide inhabitants of said Territory since its organization, and who shall have absented themselves therefrom in consequence of the disturbances therein, and who shall return before the first day of October next, and become bona fide inhabitants of the Territory, with the intent of making it their permanent home, and shall present satisfactory evidence of these facts to the Board of Commissioners, shall be entitled to vote at said election, and shall have their names placed on said corrected list of voters for that purpose.

That amendment was adopted unanimously. After its adoption, the record shows the following:

"Mr. DOUGLAS: I have another amendment to offer from the Committee, to follow the one which has been adopted. The bill reads now, 'And until the complete execution of this Act, no other election shall be held in said Territory.' It has been suggested that it should be modified in this way, 'And to avoid all conflict in the complete execution of this Act, all other elections in said Territory are hereby postponed until such time as said Convention shall appoint,' so that they can appoint the day in the event that there should be a failure to come into the Union."

This amendment was also agreed to, without dissent.

Thus you see that the amendment quoted by Trumbull at Alton as evidence against me, instead of being put into the bill by me, was stricken out on my motion, and never became a part thereof at all. You also see that the substituted clause expressly authorized the Convention to appoint such day of election as it should deem proper.

Mr. Trumbull when he made that speech knew these facts. He forged his evidence from beginning to end, and by falsifying the record he endeavors to bolster up his false charge. I ask you what you think of Trumbull thus going around the country, falsifying and garbling the public records. I ask you whether you will sustain a man who will descend to the infamy of such conduct.

Mr. DOUGLAS proceeded to remark that he should not hereafter occupy his time in refuting such charges made by Trumbull, but that, Lincoln having indorsed the character of Trumbull for veracity, he should hold him [Lincoln] responsible for the slanders.

FIFTH JOINT DEBATE, AT GALESBURGH,

OCTOBER 7, 1858.

MR. DOUGLAS'S SPEECH.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Four years ago I appeared before the people of Knox County for the purpose of defending my political action upon the Compromise measures of 1850 and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Those of you before me who were present then will remember that I vindicated myself for supporting those two measures by the fact that they 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 upon them. I then called upon the people of Illinois to decide whether that principle of self-government was right or wrong. If it was and is right, then the Compromise measures of 1850 were right, and consequently, the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, based upon the same principle, must necessarily have been right.

The Kansas and Nebraska Bill declared, in so many words, that it was the true intent and meaning of the act not to legislate slavery into any State or

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Territory, 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. For the last four years I have devoted all my energies, in private and public, to commend that principle to the American people. Whatever else may be said in condemnation or support of my political course I apprehend that no honest man will doubt the fidelity with which, under all circumstances, I have stood by it.

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. And I can appeal to all men, friends and foes, Democrats and Republicans, Northern men and Southern men, that during the whole of that fight I carried the banner of popular sovereignty aloft, and never allowed it to trail in the dust, or lowered my flag until victory perched upon our arms. 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