is new kite. He knows he was then expecting from day to day to turn
Republican, and place himself at the head of our organization. He has
found that these despised "Black Republicans" estimate him by a standard
which he has taught them none too well. Hence he is crawling back into his
old camp, and you will find him eventually installed in full fellowship
among those whom he was then battling, and with whom he now pretends to be
at such fearful variance.

THIRD JOINT DEBATE, AT JONESBORO,

SEPTEMBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--There is very much in the principles that Judge
Douglas has here enunciated that I most cordially approve, and over which
I shall have no controversy with him. In so far as he has insisted that
all the States have the right to do exactly as they please about all their
domestic relations, including that of slavery, I agree entirely with him.
He places me wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I repeat it
again and again, insisting that I have no difference with him upon this
subject. I have made a great many speeches, some of which have been
printed, and it will be utterly impossible for him to find anything that
I have ever put in print contrary to what I now say upon this subject. I
hold myself under constitutional obligations to allow the people in all
the States, without interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as
they please; and I deny that I have any inclination to interfere with
them, even if there were no such constitutional obligation. I can only say
again that I am placed improperly--altogether improperly, in spite of all
I can say--when it is insisted that I entertain any other view or purposes
in regard to that matter.

While I am upon this subject, I will make some answers briefly to certain
propositions that Judge Douglas has put. He says, "Why can't this Union
endure permanently half slave and half free?" I have said that I supposed
it could not, and I will try, before this new audience, to give briefly
some of the reasons for entertaining that opinion. Another form of his
question is, "Why can't we let it stand as our fathers placed it?" That is
the exact difficulty between us. I say that Judge Douglas and his friends
have changed it from the position in which our fathers originally placed
it. I say, in the way our father's originally left the slavery question,
the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the
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