d not answer these
questions. At last I said frankly, I wish you to answer them, because when
I get them up here where the color of your principles are a little darker
than in Egypt, I intend to trot you down to Jonesboro. The very notice
that I was going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble in his knees
so that he had to be carried from the platform. He laid up seven days, and
in the meantime held a consultation with his political physicians; they
had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders of the Abolition party,
they consulted it all over, and at last Lincoln came to the conclusion
that he would answer, so he came up to Freeport last Friday."

Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for philosophical
contemplation. I have been treating it in that way, and I have really come
to the conclusion that I can explain it in no other way than by believing
the Judge is crazy. If he was in his right mind I cannot conceive how he
would have risked disgusting the four or five thousand of his own friends
who stood there and knew, as to my having been carried from the platform,
that there was not a word of truth in it.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Did n't they carry you off?]

There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas exactly.
He smiles now, and says, "Did n't they carry you off?" but he said then
"he had to be carried off"; and he said it to convince the country that
he had so completely broken me down by his speech that I had to be carried
away. Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, "Did n't they carry you off?"
Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, why didn't you tell the truth? I would
like to know why you did n't tell the truth about it. And then again "He
laid up seven days." He put this in print for the people of the country to
read as a serious document. I think if he had been in his sober senses he
would not have risked that barefacedness in the presence of thousands of
his own friends who knew that I made speeches within six of the seven days
at Henry, Marshall County, Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough
County, including all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport
at the end of the six days. Now I say there is no charitable way to look
at that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy. There is
another thing in that statement that alarmed me very greatly as he states
it, that he was going to "trot me down to Egypt." Thereby he would have
you infer that I wou