"I am informed that my distinguished friend yesterday became a little excited, nervous(?) perhaps, and that he said something about fighting, as though looking to a personal encounter between himself and me. Did anybody in this audience hear him use such language? ['Yes, yes.'] I am informed, further, that somebody in his audience, rather more excited or nervous than himself, took off his coat and offered to take the job off Judge Douglas's hands and fight Lincoln himself. Did anybody here witness that warlike proceeding? [Laughter and cries of 'Yes.'] Well, I merely desire to say that I shall fight neither Judge Douglas nor his second. I shall not do this for two reasons, which I will explain. In the first place, a fight would prove nothing which is in issue in this election. It might establish that Judge Douglas is a more muscular man than myself, or it might show that I am a more muscular man than Judge Douglas; but that subject is not referred to in the Cincinnati platform, nor in either of the Springfield platforms. Neither result would prove him right nor me wrong. And so of the gentleman who offered to do his fighting for him. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything, it would certainly prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder. My second reason for not having a personal encounter with Judge Douglas is that I don't believe he wants it himself. He and I are about the best friends in the world, and when we get together he would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. Therefore when the Judge talked about fighting he was not giving vent to any ill-feeling of his own, but was merely trying to excite--well, let us say enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience. And, as I find he was tolerably successful in this, we will call it quits." The crisis of the debate came at Freeport on August 27, 1858, when Lincoln proposed a series of questions for Douglas to answer. At the previous meeting at Ottawa, Douglas propounded a series of questions for Lincoln which were designed to commit him to strong abolition doctrines. He asked whether Lincoln was pledged to the repeal of the fugitive-slave law, to resist the admission of any more slave States, to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the States, to the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, and to oppose the acquisition of any new Territory unless slavery was prohibited therein. Lincoln replied with great candor that he was pledged to no proposition except the prohibition of slavery in all the Territories of the United States. It was then that he turned upon Douglas with four questions, the second of which was laden with the most tremendous consequences not only to the debaters personally, but to the entire nation and the cause of human freedom: