"Now are you going to take another worthless little paper?" I said
to her evasively, "I have not directed the paper to be left." From this,
in my absence, she sent the message to the carrier. This is the whole
story.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

RESPONSE TO A DOUGLAS SPEECH

SPEECH IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 26, 1857.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am here to-night partly by the invitation of some of
you, and partly by my own inclination. Two weeks ago Judge Douglas spoke
here on the several subjects of Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, and Utah.
I listened to the speech at the time, and have the report of it since.
It was intended to controvert opinions which I think just, and to assail
(politically, not personally) those men who, in common with me, entertain
those opinions. For this reason I wished then, and still wish, to make
some answer to it, which I now take the opportunity of doing.

I begin with Utah. If it prove to be true, as is probable, that the people
of Utah are in open rebellion to the United States, then Judge Douglas is
in favor of repealing their territorial organization, and attaching them
to the adjoining States for judicial purposes. I say, too, if they are in
rebellion, they ought to be somehow coerced to obedience; and I am not now
prepared to admit or deny that the Judge's mode of coercing them is not
as good as any. The Republicans can fall in with it without taking back
anything they have ever said. To be sure, it would be a considerable
backing down by Judge Douglas from his much-vaunted doctrine of
self-government for the Territories; but this is only additional proof
of what was very plain from the beginning, that that doctrine was a mere
deceitful pretense for the benefit of slavery. Those who could not
see that much in the Nebraska act itself, which forced governors, and
secretaries, and judges on the people of the Territories without their
choice or consent, could not be made to see, though one should rise from
the dead.

But in all this it is very plain the Judge evades the only question the
Republicans have ever pressed upon the Democracy in regard to Utah. That
question the Judge well knew to be this: "If the people of Utah peacefully
form a State constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit
them into the Union?" There is nothing in the United States Constitution
or law against polygamy; and why is it not a part of the Judge's "sacred
right of self-government" for