iples at another place,--I do not understand but what he
impeaches my honor, my veracity, and my candor; and because he does this,
I do not understand that I am bound, if I see a truthful ground for it,
to keep my hands off of him. As soon as I learned that Judge Douglas was
disposed to treat me in this way, I signified in one of my speeches that
I should be driven to draw upon whatever of humble resources I might
have,--to adopt a new course with him. I was not entirely sure that I
should be able to hold my own with him, but I at least had the purpose
made to do as well as I could upon him; and now I say that I will not be
the first to cry "Hold." I think it originated with the Judge, and when he
quits, I probably will. But I shall not ask any favors at all. He asks
me, or he asks the audience, if I wish to push this matter to the point of
personal difficulty. I tell him, no. He did not make a mistake, in one of
his early speeches, when he called me an "amiable" man, though perhaps he
did when he called me an "intelligent" man. It really hurts me very much
to suppose that I have wronged anybody on earth. I again tell him, no! I
very much prefer, when this canvass shall be over, however it may result,
that we at least part without any bitter recollections of personal
difficulties.

The Judge, in his concluding speech at Galesburgh, says that I was pushing
this matter to a personal difficulty, to avoid the responsibility for the
enormity of my principles. I say to the Judge and this audience, now, that
I will again state our principles, as well as I hastily can, in all their
enormity, and if the Judge hereafter chooses to confine himself to a war
upon these principles, he will probably not find me departing from the
same course.

We have in this nation this element of domestic slavery. It is a matter of
absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. It is the opinion
of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is
a dangerous element. We keep up a controversy in regard to it. That
controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion; and if we can
learn exactly--can reduce to the lowest elements--what that difference
of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the
different systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that
disturbing element. I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to
its lowest of terms, is no other than the difference between the