d
some that he dares not to do.

[A voice: It is the same thing with you.]

Yes, sir, it is the same thing with me. I do dare to say forgery when it
is true, and don't dare to say forgery when it is false. Now I will say
here to this audience and to Judge Douglas I have not dared to say he
committed a forgery, and I never shall until I know it; but I did dare
to say--just to suggest to the Judge--that a forgery had been committed,
which by his own showing had been traced to him and two of his friends.
I dared to suggest to him that he had expressly promised in one of his
public speeches to investigate that matter, and I dared to suggest to him
that there was an implied promise that when he investigated it he would
make known the result. I dared to suggest to the Judge that he could not
expect to be quite clear of suspicion of that fraud, for since the time
that promise was made he had been with those friends, and had not kept his
promise in regard to the investigation and the report upon it. I am not
a very daring man, but I dared that much, Judge, and I am not much scared
about it yet. When the Judge says he would n't have believed of Abraham
Lincoln that he would have made such an attempt as that he reminds me of
the fact that he entered upon this canvass with the purpose to treat
me courteously; that touched me somewhat. It sets me to thinking. I was
aware, when it was first agreed that Judge Douglas and I were to have
these seven joint discussions, that they were the successive acts of a
drama, perhaps I should say, to be enacted, not merely in the face of
audiences like this, but in the face of the nation, and to some extent,
by my relation to him, and not from anything in myself, in the face of the
world; and I am anxious that they should be conducted with dignity and in
the good temper which would be befitting the vast audiences before which
it was conducted. But when Judge Douglas got home from Washington and made
his first speech in Chicago, the evening afterward I made some sort of
a reply to it. His second speech was made at Bloomington, in which he
commented upon my speech at Chicago and said that I had used language
ingeniously contrived to conceal my intentions, or words to that effect.
Now, I understand that this is an imputation upon my veracity and my
candor. I do not know what the Judge understood by it, but in our first
discussion, at Ottawa, he led off by charging a bargain, somewhat corrupt
in its