of the State, but we were all opposed to the Nebraska doctrine.  We had that one feeling and one sentiment in common.  You at the north end met in your conventions, and passed your resolutions.  We in the middle of the State and further south did not hold such conventions and pass the same resolutions, although we had in general a common view and a common sentiment.  So that these meetings which the Judge has alluded to, and the resolutions he has read from, were local, and did not spread over the whole State.  We at last met together in 1856, from all parts of the State, and we agreed upon a common platform.  You who held more extreme notions, either yielded those notions, or if not wholly yielding them, agreed to yield them practically, for the sake of embodying the opposition to the measures which the opposite party were pushing forward at that time.  We met you then, and if there was anything yielded, it was for practical purposes.  We agreed then upon a platform for the party throughout the entire State of Illinois, and now we are all bound as a party to that platform.  And I say here to you, if any one expects of me in the case of my election, that I will do anything not signified by our Republican platform and my answers here to-day, I tell you very frankly, that person will be deceived.  I do not ask for the vote of any one who supposes that I have secret purposes or pledges that I dare not speak out....  If I should never be elected to any office, I trust I may go down with no stain of falsehood upon my reputation, notwithstanding the hard opinions Judge Douglas chooses to entertain of me.

From Lincoln’s Reply at Jonesboro’.  September 15, 1858

Ladies and Gentlemen, There is very much in the principles that Judge Douglas has here enunciated that I most cordially approve, and over which I shall have no controversy with him.  In so far as he insisted that all the States have the right to do exactly as they please about all their domestic relations, including that of slavery, I agree entirely with him.  He places me wrong in spite of all I tell him, though I repeat it again and again, insisting that I have made no difference with him upon this subject.  I have made a great many speeches, some of which have been printed, and it will be utterly impossible for him to find anything that I have ever put in print contrary to what I now say on the subject.  I hold myself under constitutional obligations to allow the people in all the States, without interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as they please, and I deny that I have any inclination to interfere with them, even if there were no such constitutional obligation.  I can only say again that I am placed improperly—­altogether improperly, in spite of all that I can say—­when it is insisted that I entertain any other view or purpose in regard to that matter.