ch I have taken, reversing the order, by
beginning where he concluded.

The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted
that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a
slander upon the framers of that instrument to suppose that negroes
were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to believe that Mr.
Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself
applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held
a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them?
I only have to remark upon this part of the Judge's speech (and that, too,
very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for
any great length of time), that I believe the entire records of the world,
from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years
ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single
man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence;
I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that
Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member
of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever
said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic
party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will
remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson was the
owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject
he used the strong language that "he trembled for his country when he
remembered that God was just"; and I will offer the highest premium in
my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever
uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson.

The next thing to which I will ask your attention is the Judge's comments
upon the fact, as he assumes it to be, that we cannot call our public
meetings as Republican meetings; and he instances Tazewell County as one
of the places where the friends of Lincoln have called a public meeting
and have not dared to name it a Republican meeting. He instances Monroe
County as another, where Judge Trumbull and Jehu Baker addressed the
persons whom the Judge assumes to be the friends of Lincoln calling them
the "Free Democracy." I have the honor to inform Judge Douglas that he
spoke in that very county of Tazewell last Saturday, and I was there on
Tuesday last; and when he spoke