y, and the other is wrong, then there is no
equality between the right and wrong; so that, turn it in anyway you can,
in all the arguments sustaining the Democratic policy, and in that policy
itself, there is a careful, studied exclusion of the idea that there is
anything wrong in slavery. Let us understand this. I am not, just here,
trying to prove that we are right, and they are wrong. I have been stating
where we and they stand, and trying to show what is the real difference
between us; and I now say that whenever we can get the question distinctly
stated, can get all these men who believe that slavery is in some of these
respects wrong to stand and act with us in treating it as a wrong,--then,
and not till then, I think we will in some way come to an end of this
slavery agitation.

Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.

MY FRIENDS:--Since Judge Douglas has said to you in his conclusion that he
had not time in an hour and a half to answer all I had said in an hour,
it follows of course that I will not be able to answer in half an hour all
that he said in an hour and a half.

I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public
annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his system of policy
in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall
last forever. We are getting a little nearer the true issue of this
controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge
Douglas asks you, Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why
cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made
it, forever? In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make
this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I
insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did
not make it so but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid
of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter
of choice, the fathers of the government made this nation part slave and
part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that:
when the fathers of the government cut off the source of slavery by the
abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from
the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed
it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in
the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it
cannot co