was introduced, and the question was raised and discussed, whether the
constitution, when formed, should be submitted to a vote of the people. It
was held by those most intelligent on the subject that, in view of all the
difficulties surrounding that Territory, the danger of any experiment at
that time of a popular vote, it would be better there should be no such
provision in the Toomb's bill; and it was my understanding, in all the
intercourse I had, that the Convention would make a constitution, and send
it here, without submitting it to the popular vote."
Then Trumbull follows on:
"In speaking of this meeting again on the 21st December, 1857
[Congressional Globe, same vol., page 113], Senator Bigler said:
"'Nothing was further from my mind than to allude to any social or
confidential interview. The meeting was not of that character. Indeed, it
was semi-official, and called to promote the public good. My recollection
was clear that I left the conference under the impression that it had
been deemed best to adopt measures to admit Kansas as a State through the
agency of one popular election, and that for delegates to this Convention.
This impression was stronger because I thought the spirit of the bill
infringed upon the doctrine of non-intervention, to which I had great
aversion; but with the hope of accomplishing a great good, and as no
movement had been made in that direction in the Territory, I waived this
objection, and concluded to support the measure. I have a few items of
testimony as to the correctness of these impressions, and with their
submission I shall be content. I have before me the bill reported by
the senator from Illinois on the 7th of March, 1856, providing for the
admission of Kansas as a State, the third section of which reads as
follows:
"That the following propositions be, and the same are hereby offered to
the said Convention of the people of Kansas, when formed, for their free
acceptance or rejection; which, if accepted by the Convention and ratified
by the people at the election for the adoption of the constitution, shall
be obligatory upon the United States and the said State of Kansas."
The bill read in his place by the senator from Georgia on the 25th of
June, and referred to the Committee on Territories, contained the same
section word for word. Both these bills were under consideration at the
conference referred to; but, sir, when the senator from Illinois reported
the Toombs bill to the Senate with amendments, the next morning, it did
not contain that portion of the third section which indicated to the
Convention that the constitution should be approved by the people. The
words "and ratified by the people at the election for the adoption of the
constitution" had been stricken out.
Now, these things Trumbull says were stated by Bigler upon the floor
of the Senate on certain days, and that they are recorded in the
Congressional Globe on certain pages. Does Judge Douglas say this is a
forgery? Does he say there is no such thing in the Congressional Globe?
What does he mean when he says Judge Trumbull forges his evidence from
beginning to end? So again he says in another place that Judge Douglas,
in his speech, December 9, 1857 (Congressional Globe, part I., page 15),
stated:
"That during the last session of Congress, I [Mr. Douglas] reported a bill
from the Committee on Territories, to authorize the people of Kansas to
assemble and form a constitution for themselves. Subsequently the senator
from Georgia [Mr. Toombs] brought forward a substitute for my bill, which,
after having been modified by him and myself in consultation, was passed
by the Senate."
Now, Trumbull says this is a quotation from a speech of Douglas, and is
recorded in the Congressional Globe. Is it a forgery? Is it there or
not? It may not be there, but I want the Judge to take these pieces of
evidence, and distinctly say they are forgeries if he dare do it.
[A voice: "He will."]
Well, sir, you had better not commit him. He gives other
quotations,--another from Judge Douglas. He says:
"I will ask the senator to show me an intimation, from any one member of
the Senate, in the whole debate on the Toombs bill, and in the Union, from
any quarter, that the constitution was not to be submitted to the
people. I will venture to say that on all sides of the chamber it was so
understood at the time. If the opponents of the bill had understood it
was not, they would have made the point on it; and if they had made it,
we should certainly have yielded to it, and put in the clause. That is a
discovery made since the President found out that it was not safe to take
it for granted that that would be done, which ought in fairness to have
been done."
Judge Trumbull says Douglas made that speech, and it is recorded. Does
Judge Douglas say it is a forgery, and was not true? Trumbull says
somewhere, and I propose to skip it, but it will be found by any one who
will read this debate, that he did distinctly bring it to the notice of
those who were engineering the bill, that it lacked that provision; and
then he goes on to give another quotation from Judge Douglas, where Judge
Trumbull uses this language:
"Judge Douglas, however, on the same day and in the same debate, probably
recollecting or being reminded of the fact that I had objected to the
Toombs bill when pending that it did not provide for a submission of the
constitution to the people, made another statement, which is to be found
in the same volume of the Globe, page 22, in which he says: 'That the bill
was silent on this subject was true, and my attention was called to that
about the time it was passed; and I took the fair construction to be, that
powers not delegated were reserved, and that of course the constitution
would be submitted to the people.'
"Whether this statement is consistent with the statement just before made,
that had the point been made it would have been yielded to, or that it was
a new discovery, you will determine."
So I say. I do not know whether Judge Douglas will dispute this, and yet
maintain his position that Trumbull's evidence "was forged from beginning
to end." I will remark that I have not got these Congressional Globes
with me. They are large books, and difficult to carry about, and if Judge
Douglas shall say that on these points where Trumbull has quoted from them
there are no such passages there, I shall not be able to prove they are
there upon this occasion, but I will have another chance. Whenever he
points out the forgery and says, "I declare that this particular thing
which Trumbull has uttered is not to be found where he says it is," then
my attention will be drawn to that, and I will arm myself for the contest,
stating now that I have not the slightest doubt on earth that I will find
every quotation just where Trumbull says it is. Then the question is, How
can Douglas call that a forgery? How can he make out that it is a forgery?
What is a forgery? It is the bringing forward something in writing or in
print purporting to be of certain effect when it is altogether untrue. If
you come forward with my note for one hundred dollars when I have never
given such a note, there is a forgery. If you come forward with a letter
purporting to be written by me which I never wrote, there is another
forgery. If you produce anything in writing or in print saying it is so
and so, the document not being genuine, a forgery has been committed. How
do you make this forgery when every piece of the evidence is genuine?
If Judge Douglas does say these documents and quotations are false and
forged, he has a full right to do so; but until he does it specifically,
we don't know how to get at him. If he does say they are false and
forged, I will then look further into it, and presume I can procure the
certificates of the proper officers that they are genuine copies. I have
no doubt each of these extracts will be found exactly where Trumbull says
it is. Then I leave it to you if Judge Douglas, in making his sweeping
charge that Judge Trumbull's evidence is forged from beginning to end,
at all meets the case,--if that is the way to get at the facts. I repeat
again, if he will point out which one is a forgery, I will carefully
examine it, and if it proves that any one of them is really a forgery,
it will not be me who will hold to it any longer. I have always wanted
to deal with everyone I meet candidly and honestly. If I have made any
assertion not warranted by facts, and it is pointed out to me, I will
withdraw it cheerfully. But I do not choose to see Judge Trumbull
calumniated, and the evidence he has brought forward branded in general
terms "a forgery from beginning to end." This is not the legal way of
meeting a charge, and I submit it to all intelligent persons, both friends
of Judge Douglas and of myself, whether it is.
The point upon Judge Douglas is this: The bill that went into his hands
had the provision in it for a submission of the constitution to the
people; and I say its language amounts to an express provision for a
submission, and that he took the provision out. He says it was known that
the bill was silent in this particular; but I say, Judge Douglas, it was
not silent when you got it. It was vocal with the declaration, when you
got it, for a submission of the constitution to the people. And now, my
direct question to Judge Douglas is, to answer why, if he deemed the bill
silent on this point, he found it necessary to strike out those particular
harmless words. If he had found the bill silent and without this
provision, he might say what he does now. If he supposes it was implied
that the constitution would be submitted to a vote of the people, how
could these two lines so encumber the statute as to make it necessary to
strike them out? How could he infer that a submission was still implied,
after its express provision had been stricken from the bill? I find the
bill vocal with the provision, while he silenced it. He took it out, and
although he took out the other provision preventing a submission to a vote
of the people, I ask, Why did you first put it in? I ask him whether he
took the original provision out, which Trumbull alleges was in the bill.
If he admits that he did take it, I ask him what he did it for. It looks
to us as if he had altered the bill. If it looks differently to him,--if
he has a different reason for his action from the one we assign him--he
can tell it. I insist upon knowing why he made the bill silent upon that
point when it was vocal before he put his hands upon it.
I was told, before my last paragraph, that my time was within three
minutes of being out. I presume it is expired now; I therefore close.
Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.
FELLOW-CITIZENS: It follows as a matter of course that a half-hour answer
to a speech of an hour and a half can be but a very hurried one. I shall
only be able to touch upon a few of the points suggested by Judge Douglas,
and give them a brief attention, while I shall have to totally omit others
for the want of time.
Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from me an
answer to the question whether I am in favor of negro citizenship. So far
as I know the Judge never asked me the question before. He shall have no
occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I am not
in favor of negro citizenship. This furnishes me an occasion for saying a
few words upon the subject. I mentioned in a certain speech of mine, which
has been printed, that the Supreme Court had decided that a negro could
not possibly be made a citizen; and without saying what was my ground of
complaint in regard to that, or whether I had any ground of complaint,
Judge Douglas has from that thing manufactured nearly everything that he
ever says about my disposition to produce an equality between the negroes
and the white people. If any one will read my speech, he will find I
mentioned that as one of the points decided in the course of the Supreme
Court opinions, but I did not state what objection I had to it. But Judge
Douglas tells the people what my objection was when I did not tell them
myself. Now, my opinion is that the different States have the power to
make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States if they
choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If
the State of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise
of it. That is all I have to say about it.
Judge Douglas has told me that he heard my speeches north and my speeches
south; that he had heard me at Ottawa and at Freeport in the north and
recently at Jonesboro in the south, and there was a very different cast of
sentiment in the speeches made at the different points. I will not charge
upon Judge Douglas that he wilfully misrepresents me, but I call upon
every fair-minded man to take these speeches and read them, and I dare him
to point out any difference between my speeches north and south. While I
am here perhaps I ought to say a word, if I have the time, in regard to
the latter portion of the Judge's speech, which was a sort of declamation
in reference to my having said I entertained the belief that this
government would not endure half slave and half free. I have said so, and
I did not say it without what seemed to me to be good reasons. It perhaps
would require more time than I have now to set forth these reasons in
detail; but let me ask you a few questions. Have we ever had any peace on
this slavery question? When are we to have peace upon it, if it is kept in
the position it now occupies? How are we ever to have peace upon it? That
is an important question. To be sure, if we will all stop, and allow Judge
Douglas and his friends to march on in their present career until they
plant the institution all over the nation, here and wherever else our flag
waves, and we acquiesce in it, there will be peace. But let me ask Judge
Douglas how he is going to get the people to do that? They have been
wrangling over this question for at least forty years. This was the cause
of the agitation resulting in the Missouri Compromise; this produced the
troubles at the annexation of Texas, in the acquisition of the territory
acquired in the Mexican War. Again, this was the trouble which was quieted
by the Compromise of 1850, when it was settled "forever" as both the great
political parties declared in their National Conventions. That "forever"
turned out to be just four years, when Judge Douglas himself reopened it.
When is it likely to come to an end? He introduced the Nebraska Bill in
1854 to put another end to the slavery agitation. He promised that it
would finish it all up immediately, and he has never made a speech
since, until he got into a quarrel with the President about the Lecompton
Constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at the end of
the slavery agitation. But in one speech, I think last winter, he did
say that he did n't quite see when the end of the slavery agitation would
come. Now he tells us again that it is all over and the people of Kansas
have voted down the Lecompton Constitution. How is it over? That was only
one of the attempts at putting an end to the slavery agitation--one
of these "final settlements." Is Kansas in the Union? Has she formed
a constitution that she is likely to come in under? Is not the slavery
agitation still an open question in that Territory? Has the voting down
of that constitution put an end to all the trouble? Is that more likely to
settle it than every one of these previous attempts to settle the slavery
agitation? Now, at this day in the history of the world we can no more
foretell where the end of this slavery agitation will be than we can see
the end of the world itself. The Nebraska-Kansas Bill was introduced four
years and a half ago, and if the agitation is ever to come to an end we
may say we are four years and a half nearer the end. So, too, we can say
we are four years and a half nearer the end of the world, and we can
just as clearly see the end of the world as we can see the end of this
agitation. The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If Kansas should
sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the earth's surface, this
vexed question would still be among us. I say, then, there is no way of
putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back upon
the basis where our fathers placed it; no way but to keep it out of our
new Territories,--to restrict it forever to the old States where it now
exists. Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction. That is one way of putting an end to the
slavery agitation.
The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his friends
have their way and plant slavery over all the States; cease speaking of
it as in any way a wrong; regard slavery as one of the common matters
of property, and speak of negroes as we do of our horses and cattle. But
while it drives on in its state of progress as it is now driving, and as
it has driven for the last five years, I have ventured the opinion, and
I say to-day, that we will have no end to the slavery agitation until
it takes one turn or the other. I do not mean that when it takes a turn
toward ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two
years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction
would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur
in the best way for both races, in God's own good time, I have no doubt.
But, my friends, I have used up more of my time than I intended on this
point.
Now, in regard to this matter about Trumbull and myself having made a
bargain to sell out the entire Whig and Democratic parties in 1854: Judge
Douglas brings forward no evidence to sustain his charge, except
the speech Matheny is said to have made in 1856, in which he told a
cock-and-bull story of that sort, upon the same moral principles that
Judge Douglas tells it here to-day. This is the simple truth. I do not
care greatly for the story, but this is the truth of it: and I have twice
told Judge Douglas to his face that from beginning to end there is not one
word of truth in it. I have called upon him for the proof, and he does
not at all meet me as Trumbull met him upon that of which we were just
talking, by producing the record. He did n't bring the record because
there was no record for him to bring. When he asks if I am ready to
indorse Trumbull's veracity after he has broken a bargain with me, I reply
that if Trumbull had broken a bargain with me I would not be likely to
indorse his veracity; but I am ready to indorse his veracity because
neither in that thing, nor in any other, in all the years that I have
known Lyman Trumbull, have I known him to fail of his word or tell a
falsehood large or small. It is for that reason that I indorse Lyman
Trumbull.
[Mr. JAMES BROWN (Douglas postmaster): "What does Ford's History say about
him?"]
Some gentleman asks me what Ford's History says about him. My own
recollection is that Ford speaks of Trumbull in very disrespectful terms
in several portions of his book, and that he talks a great deal worse of
Judge Douglas. I refer you, sir, to the History for examination.
Judge Douglas complains at considerable length about a disposition on the
part of Trumbull and myself to attack him personally. I want to attend to
that suggestion a moment. I don't want to be unjustly accused of dealing
illiberally or unfairly with an adversary, either in court or in a
political canvass or anywhere else. I would despise myself if I supposed
myself ready to deal less liberally with an adversary than I was willing
to be treated myself. Judge Douglas in a general way, without putting it
in a direct shape, revives the old charge against me in reference to the
Mexican War. He does not take the responsibility of putting it in a very
definite form, but makes a general reference to it. That charge is more
than ten years old. He complains of Trumbull and myself because he says
we bring charges against him one or two years old. He knows, too, that
in regard to the Mexican War story the more respectable papers of his
own party throughout the State have been compelled to take it back and
acknowledge that it was a lie.
[Here Mr. LINCOLN turned to the crowd on the platform, and, selecting HON.
ORLANDO B. FICKLIN, led him forward and said:]
I do not mean to do anything with Mr. FICKLIN except to present his face
and tell you that he personally knows it to be a lie! He was a member
of Congress at the only time I was in Congress, and [FICKLIN] knows
that whenever there was an attempt to procure a vote of mine which
would indorse the origin and justice of the war, I refused to give such
indorsement and voted against it; but I never voted against the supplies
for the army, and he knows, as well as Judge Douglas, that whenever a
dollar was asked by way of compensation or otherwise for the benefit of
the soldiers I gave all the votes that FICKLIN or Douglas did, and perhaps
more.
[Mr. FICKLIN: My friends, I wish to say this in reference to the matter:
Mr. Lincoln and myself are just as good personal friends as Judge Douglas
and myself. In reference to this Mexican War, my recollection is that
when Ashmun's resolution [amendment] was offered by Mr. Ashmun of
Massachusetts, in which he declared that the Mexican War was unnecessary
and unconstitutionally commenced by the President-my recollection is that
Mr. Lincoln voted for that resolution.]
That is the truth. Now, you all remember that was a resolution censuring
the President for the manner in which the war was begun. You know they
have charged that I voted against the supplies, by which I starved the
soldiers who were out fighting the battles of their country. I say that
FICKLIN knows it is false. When that charge was brought forward by the
Chicago Times, the Springfield Register [Douglas's organ] reminded the
Times that the charge really applied to John Henry; and I do know that
John Henry is now making speeches and fiercely battling for Judge Douglas.
If the Judge now says that he offers this as a sort of setoff to what I
said to-day in reference to Trumbull's charge, then I remind him that he
made this charge before I said a word about Trumbull's. He brought this
forward at Ottawa, the first time we met face to face; and in the opening
speech that Judge Douglas made he attacked me in regard to a matter
ten years old. Is n't he a pretty man to be whining about people making
charges against him only two years old!
The Judge thinks it is altogether wrong that I should have dwelt upon this
charge of Trumbull's at all. I gave the apology for doing so in my opening
speech. Perhaps it did n't fix your attention. I said that when Judge
Douglas was speaking at place--where I spoke on the succeeding day he used
very harsh language about this charge. Two or three times afterward I said
I had confidence in Judge Trumbull's veracity and intelligence; and my own
opinion was, from what I knew of the character of Judge Trumbull, that he
would vindicate his position and prove whatever he had stated to be true.
This I repeated two or three times; and then I dropped it, without saying
anything more on the subject for weeks--perhaps a month. I passed it by
without noticing it at all till I found, at Jacksonville, Judge Douglas
in the plenitude of his power is not willing to answer Trumbull and let
me alone, but he comes out there and uses this language: "He should not
hereafter occupy his time in refuting such charges made by Trumbull but
that, Lincoln having indorsed the character of Trumbull for veracity, he
should hold him [Lincoln] responsible for the slanders." What was Lincoln
to do? Did he not do right, when he had the fit opportunity of meeting
Judge Douglas here, to tell him he was ready for the responsibility? I
ask a candid audience whether in doing thus Judge Douglas was not the
assailant rather than I? Here I meet him face to face, and say I am ready
to take the responsibility, so far as it rests on me.