Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 4: the Lincoln-Douglas debates eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 134 pages of information about Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 4.

Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 4: the Lincoln-Douglas debates eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 134 pages of information about Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 4.
concert, yet it looks very much as if the thing was agreed upon and done with a mutual understanding after the conference; and while we do not know that it was absolutely so, yet it looks so probable that we have a right to call upon the man who knows the true reason why it was done to tell what the true reason was.  When he will not tell what the true reason was, he stands in the attitude of an accused thief who has stolen goods in his possession, and when called to account refuses to tell where he got them.  Not only is this the evidence, but when he comes in with the bill having the provision stricken out, he tells us in a speech, not then but since, that these alterations and modifications in the bill had been made by him, in consultation with Toombs, the originator of the bill.  He tells us the same to-day.  He says there were certain modifications made in the bill in committee that he did not vote for.  I ask you to remember, while certain amendments were made which he disapproved of, but which a majority of the committee voted in, he has himself told us that in this particular the alterations and modifications were made by him, upon consultation with Toombs.  We have his own word that these alterations were made by him, and not by the committee.  Now, I ask, what is the reason Judge Douglas is so chary about coming to the exact question?  What is the reason he will not tell you anything about How it was made, by whom it was made, or that he remembers it being made at all?  Why does he stand playing upon the meaning of words and quibbling around the edges of the evidence?  If he can explain all this, but leaves it unexplained, I have the right to infer that Judge Douglas understood it was the purpose of his party, in engineering that bill through, to make a constitution, and have Kansas come into the Union with that constitution, without its being submitted to a vote of the people.  If he will explain his action on this question, by giving a better reason for the facts that happened than he has done, it will be satisfactory.  But until he does that—­until he gives a better or more plausible reason than he has offered against the evidence in the case—­I suggest to him it will not avail him at all that he swells himself up, takes on dignity, and calls people liars.  Why, sir, there is not a word in Trumbull’s speech that depends on Trumbull’s veracity at all.  He has only arrayed the evidence and told you what follows as a matter of reasoning.  There is not a statement in the whole speech that depends on Trumbull’s word.  If you have ever studied geometry, you remember that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles.  Euclid has shown you how to work it out.  Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, and to show that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar?  They tell me that my time is out, and therefore I close.

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Writings of Abraham Lincoln, the — Volume 4: the Lincoln-Douglas debates from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.