rty; and then, and not till then, could they
perpetuate slavery in this country! To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by
his example and vast influence, doing that very thing in this
community, when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declaration of
Independence. Henry Clay plainly understood the contrary. Judge Douglas
is going back to the era of our Revolution, and, to the extent of his
ability, muzzling the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. When
he invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is
blowing out the moral lights around us. When he says he "cares not
whether slavery is voted down or up,"--that it is a sacred right of
self-government,--he is, in my judgment, penetrating the human soul and
eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American
people. And now I will only say that when, by all these means and
appliances, Judge Douglas shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to
an exact accordance with his own views; when these vast assemblages shall
echo back all these sentiments; when they shall come to repeat his views
and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says on these mighty
questions,--then it needs only the formality of the second Dred Scott
decision, which he indorses in advance, to make slavery alike lawful in
all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

My friends, that ends the chapter. The Judge can take his half-hour.

SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT,

AUGUST 27, 1858

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--On Saturday last, Judge Douglas and myself first
met in public discussion. He spoke one hour, I an hour and a half, and
he replied for half an hour. The order is now reversed. I am to speak an
hour, he an hour and a half, and then I am to reply for half an hour. I
propose to devote myself during the first hour to the scope of what was
brought within the range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa. Of course
there was brought within the scope in that half-hour's speech something
of his own opening speech. In the course of that opening argument Judge
Douglas proposed to me seven distinct interrogatories. In my speech of
an hour and a half, I attended to some other parts of his speech, and
incidentally, as I thought, intimated to him that I would answer the rest
of his interrogatories on condition only that he should agree to answer as
many for me. He made no intimation at the time of the proposition, nor
did he in his re