hings which he
ascribes to me at all. I had no thought in the world that I was doing
anything to bring about a war between the free and slave States. I had
no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a
political and social equality of the black and white races. It never
occurred to me that I was doing anything or favouring anything to reduce
to a dead uniformity all the local institutions of the various States.
But I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing
something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better that I
did not mean it. It is just as fatal to the country, if I have any
influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not. But can it be
true that placing this institution upon the original basis--the basis
upon which our fathers placed it--can have any tendency to set the
Northern and the Southern States at war with one another, or that it can
have any tendency to make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane,
because they raise it in Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of
Illinois to cut pine logs on the Grand Prairie, where they will not
grow, because they cut pine logs in Maine, where they do grow? The Judge
says this is a new principle started in regard to this question. Does
the Judge claim that he is working on the plan of the founders of the
government? I think he says in some of his speeches--indeed, I have one
here now--that he saw evidence of a policy to allow slavery to be south
of a certain line, while north of it it should be excluded, and he saw
an indisposition on the part of the country to stand upon that policy,
and, therefore, he set about studying the subject upon original
principles, and upon original principles he got up the Nebraska bill! I
am fighting it upon these "original principles"--fighting it in the
Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, Madisonian fashion....

If I have brought forward anything not a fact, if he (Judge Douglas)
will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take it back. But if he
will not point out anything erroneous in the evidence, is it not rather
for him to show by a comparison of the evidence that I have reasoned
falsely, than to call the "kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar?

I want to ask your attention to a portion of the Nebraska bill which
Judge Douglas has quoted: "It being the true intent and meaning of this
act, not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to
exclude it theref