ry Senator of the United
States, but that his name has become of world-wide renown,--it is most
extraordinary that he should so far forget all the suggestions of justice
to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the
assertion of that which the slightest investigation would have shown him
to be wholly false. I can only account for his having done so upon the
supposition that that evil genius which has attended him through his life,
giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, such as to lead very
many good men to doubt there being any advantage in virtue over vice,--I
say I can only account for it on the supposition that that evil genius has
as last made up its mind to forsake him.

And I may add that another extraordinary feature of the Judge's conduct in
this canvass--made more extraordinary by this incident--is, that he is in
the habit, in almost all the speeches he makes, of charging falsehood upon
his adversaries, myself and others. I now ask whether he is able to find
in anything that Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything
that I have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in
this instance, for that sort of vulgarity.

I have been in the habit of charging as a matter of belief on my part
that, in the introduction of the Nebraska Bill into Congress, there was
a conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and national. I have arranged from
time to time the evidence which establishes and proves the truth of this
charge. I recurred to this charge at Ottawa. I shall not now have time to
dwell upon it at very great length; but inasmuch as Judge Douglas, in
his reply of half an hour, made some points upon me in relation to it, I
propose noticing a few of them.

The Judge insists that, in the first speech I made, in which I very
distinctly made that charge, he thought for a good while I was in fun!
that I was playful; that I was not sincere about it; and that he only
grew angry and somewhat excited when he found that I insisted upon it as
a matter of earnestness. He says he characterized it as a falsehood so far
as I implicated his moral character in that transaction. Well, I did
not know, till he presented that view, that I had implicated his moral
character. He is very much in the habit, when he argues me up into a
position I never thought of occupying, of very cosily saying he has no
doubt Lincoln is "conscientious" in saying so. He should remember that I
did not kn