"Mr. Lincoln's individual campaign began at Beardstown, Cass county, August 12th. Douglas had been there the previous day, and I had heard him. His speech had consisted mainly of tedious repetitions of 'popular sovereignty,' but he had taken occasion to notice Lincoln's conspiracy charge, and had called it 'an infamous lie.' He had also alluded to Senator Trumbull's charge that he (Douglas) had, two years earlier, been engaged in a plot to force a bogus constitution on the people of Kansas without giving them an opportunity to vote upon it. 'The miserable, craven-hearted wretch,' said Douglas, 'he would rather have both ears cut off than to use that language in my presence, where I could call him to account.' Before entering upon this subject, Douglas turned to his reporters and said 'Take this down.' They did so and it was published a few days later in the St. Louis Republican. This incident furnished the text of the Charleston joint debate on the 18th of September. "Mr. Douglas's meeting at Beardstown was large and enthusiastic, but was composed of a lower social stratum than the Republican meeting of the following day. Mr. Lincoln came up the Illinois River from the town of Naples in the steamer _Sam Gaty_. Cass county and the surrounding region was by no means hopeful Republican ground. Yet Mr. Lincoln's friends mustered forty horsemen and two bands of music, beside a long procession on foot to meet him at the landing. Schuyler county sent a delegation of three hundred, and Morgan county was well represented. These were mostly Old Line Whigs who had followed Lincoln in earlier days. Mr. Lincoln's speech at Beardstown was one of the best he ever made in my hearing, and was not a repetition of any other. In fact, he never repeated himself except when some remark or question from the audience led him back upon a subject that he had already discussed. Many times did I marvel to see him get on a platform at some out-of-the-way place and begin an entirely new speech, equal, in all respects, to any of the joint debates, and continue for two hours in a high strain of argumentative power and eloquence, without saying anything that I had heard before. After the Edwardsville meeting I said to him that it was wonderful to me that he could find new things to say everywhere, while Douglas was parroting his popular sovereignty speech at every place. He replied that Douglas was not lacking in versatility, but that he had a theory that the popular sovereignty speech was the one to win on, and that the audiences whom he addressed would hear it only once and would never know whether he made the same speech elsewhere or not, and would never care. Most likely, if their attention were called to the subject, they would think that was the proper thing to do. As for himself, he said that he could not repeat to-day what he had said yesterday. The subject kept enlarging and widening in his mind as he went on, and it was much easier to make a new