[161]
Extract from Mr. Trumbull's speech made at Alton, referred to by Mr. Lincoln in his opening at Charleston.
I come now to another extract from a speech of Mr. Douglas, made at Beardstown, and reported in the Missouri Republican. This extract has reference to a statement made by me at Chicago, wherein I charged that an agreement had been entered into by the very persons now claiming credit for opposing a Constitution not submitted to the people, to have a Constitution formed and put in force without giving the people of Kansas an opportunity to pass upon it. Without meeting this charge, which I substantiated by a reference to the record, my colleague is reported to have said:For when this charge was once made in a much milder form, in the Senate of the United States, I did brand it as a lie in the presence of Mr. Trumbull, and Mr. Trumbull sat and heard it thus branded, without daring to say it was true. I tell you he knew it to be false when he uttered it at Chicago ; and yet he says he is going to cram the lie down his throat until he should cry enough. The miserable craven-hearted wretch! he would rather have both ears cut, off than to use that language in my presence, where I could call him to account. I see the object is to draw me into a personal controversy, with the hope thereby of concealing from the public the enormity of the principles to which they are committed. I shall not allow much of my time in this canvass to be occupied by these personal assaults — I have none to make on Mr. Lincoln ; I have none to make on Mr. Trumbull; I have none to make on any other political opponent. If I cannot stand on my own public record, on my own private and public character as history will record it, I will not attempt to rise by traducing the character of other men. I will not make a blackguard of myself by imitating the course they have pursued against me. I have no charges to make against them.This is a singular statement taken altogether. After indulging in language which would disgrace a loafer in the filthiest purlieus of a fish-market, he winds up by saying that he will not make a blackguard of himself, that he has no charges to make against me. So I suppose he considers, that to say of another that he knew a thing to be false when he uttered it, that he was a “miserable craven-hearted wretch,” does not amount to a personal assault, and does not make a man a blackguard. A discriminating public will judge of that for themselves ; but as he says he has “no charges to make on Mr. Trumbull,” I suppose politeness requires I should believe him. At the risk of again offending this mighty man of war, and losing something more than my ears, I shall have the audacity to again read the record upon him and prove and pin upon him, so that he cannot escape it, the truth of every word I uttered at Chicago. You, fellow-citizens, are the judges to determine whether I do this. My colleague says he is willing to stand on his public record. By that he shall be tried, and if he had been able to discriminate between the exposure of a public act by the record, and a personal attack upon the individual, he would have discovered that there was nothing personal in my Chicago remarks, unless the condemnation of himself by his own public record is personal, and then you must judge who is most to blame for the torture his public record inflicts upon him; he for making, or I for reading it after it was made. As an individual I care very little about Judge Douglas one way or the other. It is his public acts with which I have to do, and if they condemn, disgrace and consign him to oblivion, he has only himself; not me, to blame. Now, the charge is that there was a plot entered into to have a Constitution formed for Kansas, and put in force, without giving the people an opportunity to pass upon it, and that Mr. Douglas was in the plot. This is as susceptible of proof by the record as is the fact that the State of Minnesota was admitted into the Union at the last session of Congress. On the 25th of June, 1856, a bill was pending in the United States Senate to
