l
Richard M. Johnson. I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am
not going to enter at large upon this subject), that I have never had the
least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was
no law to keep them from it; but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem
to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep
them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very
last stand by the law of this State which forbids the marrying of white
people with negroes. I will add one further word, which is this: that I do
not understand that there is any place where an alteration of the social
and political relations of the negro and the white man can be made, except
in the State Legislature,--not in the Congress of the United States; and
as I do not really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and
as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror that some such danger is
rapidly approaching, I propose as the best means to prevent it that the
Judge be kept at home, and placed in the State Legislature to fight the
measure. I do not propose dwelling longer at this time on this subject.

When Judge Trumbull, our other Senator in Congress, returned to Illinois
in the month of August, he made a speech at Chicago, in which he made what
may be called a charge against Judge Douglas, which I understand proved to
be very offensive to him. The Judge was at that time out upon one of his
speaking tours through the country, and when the news of it reached him,
as I am informed, he denounced Judge Trumbull in rather harsh terms for
having said what he did in regard to that matter. I was traveling at that
time, and speaking at the same places with Judge Douglas on subsequent
days, and when I heard of what Judge Trumbull had said of Douglas, and
what Douglas had said back again, I felt that I was in a position where
I could not remain entirely silent in regard to the matter. Consequently,
upon two or three occasions I alluded to it, and alluded to it in no other
wise than to say that in regard to the charge brought by Trumbull against
Douglas, I personally knew nothing, and sought to say nothing about it;
that I did personally know Judge Trumbull; that I believed him to be a
man of veracity; that I believed him to be a man of capacity sufficient to
know very well whether an assertion he was making, as a conclusion drawn
from a set of facts, was true or false; and as a conc