when they
reached it, they quarreled over it, and their friends divided upon it. I
am very free to confess to Judge Douglas that I have no objection to the
division; but I defy the Judge to show any evidence that I have in any way
promoted that division, unless he insists on being a witness himself in
merely saying so. I can give all fair friends of Judge Douglas here
to understand exactly the view that Republicans take in regard to that
division. Don't you remember how two years ago the opponents of the
Democratic party were divided between Fremont and Fillmore? I guess you
do. Any Democrat who remembers that division will remember also that he
was at the time very glad of it, and then he will be able to see all there
is between the National Democrats and the Republicans. What we now think
of the two divisions of Democrats, you then thought of the Fremont and
Fillmore divisions. That is all there is of it.

But if the Judge continues to put forward the declaration that there is
an unholy and unnatural alliance between the Republicans and the National
Democrats, I now want to enter my protest against receiving him as an
entirely competent witness upon that subject. I want to call to the
Judge's attention an attack he made upon me in the first one of these
debates, at Ottawa, on the 21st of August. 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, at Springfield, Illinois, and he declared I had taken 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 which he read had not been passed at Springfield at all,
nor by a State Convention in which I had taken part, that seven days
afterward, at Freeport, Judge Douglas declared that he had been misled by
Charles H. Lanphier, editor of the State Register, and Thomas L. Harris,
member of Congress in that district, and he promised in that speech that
when he went to Springfield he would investigate the matter. Since
then Judge Douglas has been to Springfield, and I presume has made the
investigation; but a month has passed since he has been there, and, so
far as I know, he has made no report of th