Trumbull a month before
Harris tried them on Norton; that Harris had the opportunity of learning
it from him, rather than he from Harris. I now ask his attention to that
part of the record on the case. My friends, I am not disposed to detain
you longer in regard to that matter.

I am told that I still have five minutes left. There is another matter I
wish to call attention to. He says, when he discovered there was a mistake
in that case, he came forward magnanimously, without my calling his
attention to it, and explained it. I will tell you how he became so
magnanimous. When the newspapers of our side had discovered and published
it, and put it beyond his power to deny it, then he came forward and made
a virtue of necessity by acknowledging it. Now he argues that all
the point there was in those resolutions, although never passed at
Springfield, is retained by their being passed at other localities. Is
that true? He said I had a hand in passing them, in his opening speech,
that I was in the convention and helped to pass them. Do the resolutions
touch me at all? It strikes me there is some difference between holding
a man responsible for an act which he has not done and holding him
responsible for an act that he has done. You will judge whether there
is any difference in the "spots." And he has taken credit for great
magnanimity in coming forward and acknowledging what is proved on him
beyond even the capacity of Judge Douglas to deny; and he has more
capacity in that way than any other living man.

Then he wants to know why I won't withdraw the charge in regard to a
conspiracy to make slavery national, as he has withdrawn the one he made.
May it please his worship, I will withdraw it when it is proven false on
me as that was proven false on him. I will add a little more than that,
I will withdraw it whenever a reasonable man shall be brought to believe
that the charge is not true. I have asked Judge Douglas's attention to
certain matters of fact tending to prove the charge of a conspiracy to
nationalize slavery, and he says he convinces me that this is all untrue
because Buchanan was not in the country at that time, and because the Dred
Scott case had not then got into the Supreme Court; and he says that I say
the Democratic owners of Dred Scott got up the case. I never did say that
I defy Judge Douglas to show that I ever said so, for I never uttered
it. [One of Mr. Douglas's reporters gesticulated affirmatively at Mr