the
National Platform. In June, 1858,--the present year,--the Republicans
of Illinois reassembled at Springfield, in State Convention, and adopted
again their platform, as I suppose not differing in any essential
particular from either of the former ones, but perhaps adding something in
relation to the new developments of political progress in the country.

The Convention that assembled in June last did me the honor, if it be one,
and I esteem it such, to nominate me as their candidate for the United
States Senate. I have supposed that, in entering upon this canvass, I
stood generally upon these platforms. We are now met together on the 13th
of October of the same year, only four months from the adoption of the
last platform, and I am unaware that in this canvass, from the beginning
until to-day, any one of our adversaries has taken hold of our platforms,
or laid his finger upon anything that he calls wrong in them.

In the very first one of these joint discussions between Senator Douglas
and myself, Senator Douglas, without alluding at all to these platforms,
or any one of them, of which I have spoken, attempted to hold me
responsible for a set of resolutions passed long before the meeting of
either one of these conventions of which I have spoken. And as a ground
for holding me responsible for these resolutions, he assumed that they had
been passed at a State Convention of the Republican party, and that I
took part in that Convention. It was discovered afterward that this was
erroneous, that the resolutions which he endeavored to hold me responsible
for had not been passed by any State Convention anywhere, had not been
passed at Springfield, where he supposed they had, or assumed that they
had, and that they had been passed in no convention in which I had taken
part. The Judge, nevertheless, was not willing to give up the point that
he was endeavoring to make upon me, and he therefore thought to still
hold me to the point that he was endeavoring to make, by showing that
the resolutions that he read had been passed at a local convention in the
northern part of the State, although it was not a local convention that
embraced my residence at all, nor one that reached, as I suppose, nearer
than one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles of where I was when it
met, nor one in which I took any part at all. He also introduced other
resolutions, passed at other meetings, and by combining the whole,
although they were all antece