Equality, and Fraternity." On one side of the altar stands winged Victory, with her right hand resting upon a sword and her left holding a civic wreath. On the other side stand two emancipated slaves -the younger, a lad, offering a palm branch, and the elder pointing him to the American eagle, bearing the shield, the olive-branch, and the lightning, with the motto of the Union. The older freedman

holds the musket of the militia-man. Near them are the emblems of industry and progress. Over the altar is a triangle, emblematic of trinity-the trinity of man's inalienable rights-liberty, equality, and fraternity.

speech of Senator Douglas, which is given in full in the article on that statesman, and the reply of Abraham Lincoln, which here follows, constitute what is known as the first Douglas and Lincoln debate. It was opened in Ottawa, Ill., Aug. 21, 1858.

My fellow-citizens, when a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him--at least, I find it so with

myself, but, when misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse him. The first thing I see fit to notice is the fact that Judge Douglas alleges, after running through the history of the old Democratic and the old Whig parties, that Judge Trumbull and myself made an arrangement in 1854 by which I was to have the place of General Shields in the United States Senate, and Judge Trumbull was to have the place of Judge Douglas. Now all I have to say upon that subject is that I think no man-not even Judge Douglas-can prove it, because it is not true. I have no doubt he is "conscientious" in saying it. As to those resolutions that he took such a length of time to read, as being the platform of the Republican party in 1854, I say I never had anything to do with them; and I think Trumbull never had. Judge Douglas cannot show that either of us ever did have anything to do with them. I believe this is true about those resolutions. There was a call for a convention to form a Republican party at Springfield; and I think that my friend Mr. Lovejoy, who is here upon this stand, had a hand in it. I think this is true; and I think, if he will remember accurately, he will be able to recollect that he tried to get me into it,

and I would not go in. I believe it is also true that I went away from Springfield, when the convention was in session, to attend court in Tazewell county. It is true they did place my name, though withcut authority, upon the committee, and afterwards wrote me to attend the meetReply to Stephen A. Douglas.-The ing of the committee; but I refused to do

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at that time in selling out and abolitionizing the Old Whig party, I hope you will permit me to read a part of a printed speech that I made then at Peoria, which will show altogether a different view of the position I took in that contest of 1854. [Voice: "Put on your specs."] Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so. I am no longer a young man.

"This is the repeal of the Missouri

not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it we have before us the chief materials enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.

so, and I never had anything to do with that organization. This is the plain truth about all that matter of the resolutions. Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells of Trumbull bargaining to sell out the old Democratic party, and Lincoln agreeing to sell out the Old Whig party, I have the means of knowing about that: Judge Douglas cannot have; and I know there is no substance to it whatever. Yet I have no doubt he is con- Compromise. The foregoing history may scientious" about it. I know that, after Mr. Lovejoy got into the legislature that winter, he complained of me that I had told all the Old Whigs of his district that the Old Whig party was good enough for them, and some of them voted against him because I told them so. Now I have no means of totally disproving such charges as this which the judge makes. A man cannot prove a negative; but he has a right to claim that, when a man makes an affirmative charge, he must offer some proof to show the truth of what he says. I certainly cannot introduce testimony to show the negative about things; but I have a right to claim that, if a man says he knows a thing, then he must show how he knows it. I always have a right to claim this, and it is not satisfactory to me that he may be "conscientious" on the subject.

Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things, but in regard to that general abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes when he says that I was engaged

"I think and shall try to show that it is wrong-wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.

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This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many

really good men among ourselves into be in their situation. If slavery did not an open war with the very fundamental now exist among them, they would not principles of civil liberty-criticising the introduce it. If it did now exist among Declaration of Independence, and insisting us, we should not instantly give it up. that there is no right principle of action This I believe of the masses North and but self-interest. South. Doubtless there are individuals "Before proceeding, let me say I think on both sides who would not hold slaves I have no prejudice against the Southern under any circumstances; and others who people. They are just what we would would gladly introduce slavery anew if

1

it were out of existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North, and become tip-top abolitionists; while some Northern ones go South, and become most cruel slave-masters.

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likely to carry a free man into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.

the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter."

I have reason to know that Judge Douglas knows that I said this. I think he has the answer here to one of the questions he put to me. I do not mean to allow him to catechise me unless he pays back for it in kind. I will not an

he reciprocates; but as he has made this inquiry, and I have answered it before, he has got it without my getting any. thing in return. He has got my answer on the fugitive-slave law.

"But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting When Southern people tell us they slavery to go into our own free territory are no more responsible for the origin of than it would for reviving the African slavery than we are, I acknowledge the slave-trade by law. The law which forfact. When it is said that the institu- bids the bringing of slaves from Africa, tion exists, and that it is very difficult and that which has so long forbidden to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia-to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that, whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there swer questions, one after another, unless may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but, for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren in the South.

Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any great length; but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it; and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and, inasmuch as "When they remind us of their con- it becomes a necessity that there must be stitutional rights, I acknowledge them, a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and am in favor of the race to which I beI would give them any legislation for long having the superior position. I have the reclaiming of their fugitives which never said anything to the contrary, but should not, in its stringency, be more I hold that, notwithstanding all this,

ing opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War. The judge did not make his charge very distinctly; but I tell you what he can prove, by referring to the record. You remember I was an Old Whig; and, whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But, whenever they asked for any money or land-warrants or anything to pay the soldiers

there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respectscertainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, there, during all that time, I gave the

he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies. The judge is wofully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a "grocery-keeper." I don't think that it would be a great sin if I had been; but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little still-house up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my friend, the judge, is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress of hav

same vote that Judge Douglas did. You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent. Such is the truth; and the judge has the right to make all he can out of it. But when he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican War, or did anything else to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.

As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I will dwell a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics upon which the judge has