I never had anything to do with that organization. This is the plain truth about all that matter of the resolution.

"Now, about that 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 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:

"This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I presume it is sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it we have before us the chief material 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 effects, 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 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 open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but selfinterest.

"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 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 the 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 surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly powers 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 run, its sudden execution is impossible.

"If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish there in the next ten days-and there are not surplus 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 them 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 the great mass of white people will

not.

We can

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. not, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South; 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 revising the African slavetrade 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 his questions he puts to me; I do not mean to allow him to catechise me unless he pays me back 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 men can prove a horsechestnut 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; I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and 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 any respect, certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowments, 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 any living man.