Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas 1897.
Page 32
Let us, however, put that proposition another way. The Republicans could not have done it without Judge Douglas. Could he have done it without them? Which could have come the nearest to doing it without the other?
MR. LINCOLN: Ground was taken against it by the Republicans long before Douglas did it. The proportion of opposition to that measure is about five to one.
MR. LINCOLN: You don’t know what you are talking about, my friend. I am quite willing to answer any gentleman in the crowd who asks an intelligent question.
Now who, in all this country, has ever found any of our friends of Judge Douglas’s way of thinking, and who have acted upon this main question, that has ever thought of uttering a word in behalf of Judge Trumbull?
MR. LINCOLN: I defy you to show a printed resolution passed in a Democratic meeting—I take it upon myself to defy any man to show a printed resolution of a Democratic meeting, large or small—in favor of Judge Trumbull, or any of the five-to-one Republicans who beat that bill. Every thing must be for the Democrats! They did every thing, and the five to the one that really did the thing, they snub over, and they do not seem to remember that they have an existence upon the face of the earth.
Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious. I leave this branch of the subject to take hold of another. I take up that part of Judge Douglas’s speech in which he respectfully attended to me.
Judge Douglas made two points upon my recent speech at Springfield. He says they are to be the issues of this campaign. The first one of these points he bases upon the language in a speech which I delivered at Springfield, which I believe I can quote correctly from memory. I said there that “we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed object, and with the confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy, that agitation had not only not ceased, but had constantly augmented.”
