Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious.  I leave this branch of the subject to take hold of another.  I take up that part of Judge Douglas’s speech in which he respectfully attended to me.

Judge Douglas made two points upon my recent speech at Springfield.  He says they are to be the issues of this campaign.  The first one of these points he bases upon the language in a speech which I delivered at Springfield, which I believe I can quote correctly from memory.  I said that “we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.  ’A house divided against itself cannot stand.’  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,”—­I am quoting from my speech,—­“I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.  Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new; North as well as South.”

That is the paragraph!  In this paragraph which I have quoted in your hearing, and to which I ask the attention of all, Judge Douglas thinks he discovers great political heresy.  I want your attention particularly to what he has inferred from it.  He says I am in favour of making all the States of this Union uniform in all their internal regulations; that in all their domestic concerns I am in favour of making them entirely uniform.  He draws this inference from the language I have quoted to you.  He says that I am in favour of making war by the North upon the South for the extinction of slavery; that I am also in favour of inviting (as he expresses it) the South to a war upon the North for the purpose of nationalizing slavery.  Now, it is singular enough, if you will carefully read that passage over, that I did not say that I was in favour of anything in it.  I only said what I expected would take place.  I made a prediction only,—­it may have been a foolish one, perhaps.  I did not even say that I desired that slavery should be put in course of ultimate extinction.  I do say so now, however; so there need be no longer any difficulty about that.  It may be written down in the great speech.

Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine was probably carefully prepared.  I admit that it was.  I am not master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it.  But I don’t care about a quibble in regard to words.  I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can explain it to them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph.