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My Fellow-Citizens : A very large portion of the speech which
Judge Douglas has addressed to you has previously been delivered and put in print.
I do not mean that, for a hit upon the
Judge at all. If I had not been interrupted, I was going to say that such an answer as I was able to make to a very large portion of it, had already been more than once made and published.
There has been an opportunity afforded to the public to see our respective views upon the topics discussed in a large portion of the speech which he has just delivered.
I make these remarks for the purpose of excusing myself for not passing over the entire ground that the
Judge has traversed.
I however desire to take up some of the points that he has attended to, and ask your attention to them, and I shall follow him backwards upon some notes which 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 Raker 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 there he spoke under a call not venturing to use the word “Democrat.”
[Turning to
Judge Douglas.] What think you of this?
So again, there is another thing to which I would ask the
Judge's attention upon this subject.
In the contest of 1856 his party delighted to call themselves together as the “National Democracy,” but now, if there should be a notice put up any where for a meeting of the “National Democracy,”
Judge Douglas and his friends would not come.
They would not suppose themselves invited.
They would understand that it was a call for those hateful postmasters whom he talks about.
Now a few words in regard to these extracts from speeches of mine, which
Judge Douglas has read to you, and which he supposes are in very great contrast to
