From Lincoln’s Reply to Judge Douglas at Galesburg, Illinois.  October 7, 1858

...  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 on 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 that 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 his 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 on 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.

...  I want to call to the Judge’s attention an attack he made upon me in the first one of these debates....  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, held at Springfield, Illinois, and he declared that I had taken a part in that convention.  It turned out that although a few men calling themselves an anti-Nebraska State Convention had sat at Springfield about that time, yet neither did I take any part in it, nor did it pass the resolutions or any such resolutions as Judge Douglas read.  So apparent had it become that the resolutions that he read had not been passed at Springfield at all, nor by any State Convention in which I had taken part, that seven days later at Freeport ...  Judge Douglas declared that he had been misled ... and promised ... that when he went to Springfield he would investigate the matter....  I have waited as I think a sufficient time for the report of that investigation.

...  A fraud, an absolute forgery, was committed, and the perpetration of it was traced to the three,—­Lanphier, Harris, and Douglas....  Whether it can be narrowed in any way, so as to exonerate any one of them, is what Judge Douglas’s report would probably show.  The main object of that forgery at that time was to beat Yates and elect Harris to Congress, and that object was known to be exceedingly dear to Judge Douglas at that time.