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.

The first thing I have to say to you is a word in regard to Judge
Douglas's declaration about the "vulgarity and blackguardism" in the
audience, that no such thing, as he says, was shown by any Democrat while
I was speaking. Now, I only wish, by way of reply on this subject, to say
that while I was speaking, I used no "vulgarity or blackguardism" toward
any Democrat.

Now, my friends, I come to all this long portion of the Judge's
speech,--perhaps half of it,--which he has devoted to the various
resolutions and platforms that have been adopted in the different counties
in the different Congressional districts, and in the Illinois legislature,
which he supposes are at variance with the positions I have assumed before
y