nvention in Kane County as that at Springfield. I am as much responsible
for the resolutions at Kane County as those at Springfield,--the amount
of the responsibility being exactly nothing in either case; no more than
there would be in regard to a set of resolutions passed in the moon.

I allude to this extraordinary matter in this canvass for some further
purpose than anything yet advanced. Judge Douglas did not make his
statement upon that occasion as matters that he believed to be true,
but he stated them roundly as being true, in such form as to pledge his
veracity for their truth. When the whole matter turns out as it does, and
when we consider who Judge Douglas is, that he is a distinguished Senator
of the United States; that he has served nearly twelve years as such; that
his character is not at all limited as an ordinary Senator of the United
States, but that his name has become of world-wide renown,--it is most
extraordinary that he should so far forget all the suggestions of justice
to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the
assertion of that which the slightest investigation would have shown him
to be wholly false. I can only account for his having done so upon the
supposition that that evil genius which has attended him through his life,
giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, such as to lead very
many good men to doubt there being any advantage in virtue over vice,--I
say I can only account for it on the supposition that that evil genius has
as last made up its mind to forsake him.

And I may add that another extraordinary feature of the Judge's conduct in
this canvass--made more extraordinary by this incident--is, that he is in
the habit, in almost all the speeches he makes, of charging falsehood upon
his adversaries, myself and others. I now ask whether he is able to find
in anything that Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything
that I have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in
this instance, for that sort of vulgarity.

I have been in the habit of charging as a matter of belief on my part
that, in the introduction of the Nebraska Bill into Congress, there was
a conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and national. I have arranged from
time to time the evidence which establishes and proves the truth of this
charge. I recurred to this charge at Ottawa. I shall not now have time to
dwell upon it at very great length; but inasmuch as Judge Do