This sketch of Mr. Lincoln, though apparently friendly, was artfully calculated to stir up prejudice against him, and the backwoods statesman was not willing to leave it unanswered. Generally he was quite well able to take care of himself, and did not fail in the present instance. This is his reply: “The Judge is wofully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a grocery-keeper. I don’t know as it would be a great sin if I had been; but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little still-house up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my friend, the Judge, is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress with having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war. The Judge did not make his charge very distinctly, but I can tell you what he can prove by referring to the record. You remember I was an old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But whenever they asked for any money, or land-warrants, or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that time I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did. You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent. Such is the truth; and the Judge has a right to make all he can out of it. But when he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war, or did anything else to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.” Not content with defending himself, Mr. Lincoln essayed on his side to contrast his opponent and himself, and, like him, he indulged in personal reminiscences. “Twenty-two years ago Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted; we were both young then--he a trifle younger than I. Even then we were both ambitious,--I perhaps quite as much so as he. With me the race of ambition has been a failure,--a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation, and is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached,--so reached that the oppressed of my species might have shared with me in the elevation. I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch’s brow.”