The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 3: The Lincoln-Douglas DebatesLincoln, Abraham
History
The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 3: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Ill., 1858
I pass one or two points I have, because my time will very soon expire;
but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he
did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln, an
insignificant individual like Lincoln,--upon his ipse dixit charging a
conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court,
and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery. I want to say that, in the
first place, I have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse dixit. I have
only arrayed the evidence tending to prove it, and presented it to the
understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but giving you
the means of judging whether it proves it or not. This is precisely what
I have done. I have not placed it upon my ipse dixit at all. On this
occasion, I wish to recall his attention to a piece of evidence which
I brought forward at Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made
substantially the same charge against substantially the same persons,
excluding his dear self from the category. I ask him to give some
attention to the evidence which I brought forward that he himself had
discovered a "fatal blow being struck" against the right of the people
to exclude slavery from their limits, which fatal blow he assumed as in
evidence in an article in the Washington Union, published "by authority."
I ask by whose authority? He discovers a similar or identical provision
in the Lecompton Constitution. Made by whom? The framers of that
Constitution. Advocated by whom? By all the members of the party in the
nation, who advocated the introduction of Kansas into the Union under the
Lecompton Constitution. I have asked his attention to the evidence that he
arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was being struck, and to the facts
which he brought forward in support of that charge,--being identical
with the one which he thinks so villainous in me. He pointed it, not at
a newspaper editor merely, but at the President and his Cabinet and
the members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution and those
framing that instrument. I must again be permitted to remind him that
although my ipse dixit may not be as great as his, yet it somewhat reduces
the force of his calling my attention to the enormity of my making a like
charge against him.
Go on, Judge Douglas.
Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.
MY FRIENDS:--It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour,
notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an
hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has
said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I
omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an
impossibility for me to go over his whole ground. I can but take up some
of the points that he has dwelt upon, and employ my half-hour specially on
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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