"Before delivering his speech he invited a dozen or so of his friends to the library of the State-House, where he read and submitted it to them. After the reading he asked each man for his opinion. Some condemned and no one endorsed it. Having patiently listened to these various criticisms from his friends, all of which, with a single exception, were adverse, he rose from his chair, and after alluding to the careful study and intense thought he had given the question, he answered all their objections substantially as follows: 'Friends, this thing has been retarded long enough. The time has come when those sentiments should be uttered; and if it is decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to the truth--let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right.'" After completing its routine work, the Convention adjourned to meet in the Hall of Representatives at Springfield that evening to hear Lincoln's speech, and it was anticipated with intense interest and anxiety because the gentlemen whom Lincoln had taken into his confidence had let it be known that he was to take a very radical position. It was the most carefully prepared speech he ever made, although he delivered it from memory, and after a few opening sentences he uttered this bold and significant declaration which evoked an enthusiastic response from all of the free States of the Union: "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." Shortly after this event, Senator Douglas returned from Washington and took the stump, attracting immense crowds and exciting great enthusiasm. His speeches, however, were evasive and contained much special pleading as well as misstatement. Lincoln watched him closely, and, recognizing that Douglas was fighting unfairly, decided to bring him to terms. Hence he addressed him a challenge to joint debate. Judge Weldon, who was living in Illinois at the time, tells the story as follows: "We wrote Mr. Lincoln he had better come and hear Douglas speak at Clinton, which he did. There was an immense crowd for a country town, and on the way to the grove where the speaking took place, Mr. Lincoln said to me,-- "'Weldon, I have challenged Judge Douglas for a discussion. What do you think of it?' "I replied, 'I approve your judgment in whatever you do.'