rid of it in any satisfactory
way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown
about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention
of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may
come to an end.

Judge Douglas has again, for, I believe, the fifth time, if not the
seventh, in my presence, reiterated his charge of a conspiracy or
combination between the National Democrats and Republicans. What evidence
Judge Douglas has upon this subject I know not, inasmuch as he never
favors us with any. I have said upon a former occasion, and I do not
choose to suppress it now, that I have no objection to the division in
the Judge's party. He got it up himself. It was all his and their work.
He had, I think, a great deal more to do with the steps that led to the
Lecompton Constitution than Mr. Buchanan had; though at last, when they
reached it, they quarreled over it, and their friends divided upon it. I
am very free to confess to Judge Douglas that I have no objection to the
division; but I defy the Judge to show any evidence that I have in any way
promoted that division, unless he insists on being a witness himself in
merely saying so. I can give all fair friends of Judge Douglas here
to understand exactly the view that Republicans take in regard to that
division. Don't you remember how two years ago the opponents of the
Democratic party were divided between Fremont and Fillmore? I guess you
do. Any Democrat who remembers that division will remember also that he
was at the time very glad of it, and then he will be able to see all there
is between the National Democrats and the Republicans. What we now think
of the two divisions of Democrats, you then thought of the Fremont and
Fillmore divisions. That is all there is of it.

But if the Judge continues to put forward the declaration that there is
an unholy and unnatural alliance between the Republicans and the National
Democrats, I now want to enter my protest against receiving him as an
entirely competent witness upon that subject. I want to call to the
Judge's attention an attack he made upon me in the first one of these
debates, at Ottawa, on the 21st of August. In order to fix extreme
Abolitionism upon me, Judge Douglas read a set of resolutions which he
declared had been passed by a Republican State Convention, in October,
1854, at Springfield, Illinois, and he declared I had taken part in that
Convention. It tu