passed at other localities. Is
that true? He said I had a hand in passing them, in his opening speech,
that I was in the convention and helped to pass them. Do the resolutions
touch me at all? It strikes me there is some difference between holding
a man responsible for an act which he has not done and holding him
responsible for an act that he has done. You will judge whether there
is any difference in the "spots." And he has taken credit for great
magnanimity in coming forward and acknowledging what is proved on him
beyond even the capacity of Judge Douglas to deny; and he has more
capacity in that way than any other living man.

Then he wants to know why I won't withdraw the charge in regard to a
conspiracy to make slavery national, as he has withdrawn the one he made.
May it please his worship, I will withdraw it when it is proven false on
me as that was proven false on him. I will add a little more than that,
I will withdraw it whenever a reasonable man shall be brought to believe
that the charge is not true. I have asked Judge Douglas's attention to
certain matters of fact tending to prove the charge of a conspiracy to
nationalize slavery, and he says he convinces me that this is all untrue
because Buchanan was not in the country at that time, and because the Dred
Scott case had not then got into the Supreme Court; and he says that I say
the Democratic owners of Dred Scott got up the case. I never did say that
I defy Judge Douglas to show that I ever said so, for I never uttered
it. [One of Mr. Douglas's reporters gesticulated affirmatively at Mr.
Lincoln.] I don't care if your hireling does say I did, I tell you myself
that I never said the "Democratic" owners of Dred Scott got up the case.
I have never pretended to know whether Dred Scott's owners were Democrats,
or Abolitionists, or Freesoilers or Border Ruffians. I have said that
there is evidence about the case tending to show that it was a made-up
case, for the purpose of getting that decision. I have said that that
evidence was very strong in the fact that when Dred Scott was declared to
be a slave, the owner of him made him free, showing that he had had the
case tried and the question settled for such use as could be made of that
decision; he cared nothing about the property thus declared to be his by
that decision. But my time is out, and I can say no more.

LAST DEBATE, AT ALTON, OCTOBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-