Lincoln then turned upon his opponent, with more aggressiveness than, he had hitherto exhibited, to drive home the charge which Trumbull had made earlier in the campaign.  Prompted by Trumbull, probably, Lincoln reviewed the shadowy history of the Toombs bill and Douglas’s still more enigmatical connection with it.  The substance of the indictment was, that Douglas had suppressed that part of the original bill which provided for a popular vote on the constitution to be drafted by the Kansas convention.  In replying to Trumbull, Douglas had damaged his own case by denying that the Toombs bill had ever contained such a provision.  Lincoln proved the contrary by the most transparent testimony, convicting Douglas not only of the original offense but of an untruth in connection with it.[742]

This was not a vague charge of conspiracy which could be treated with contempt, but an indictment, accompanied by circumstantial evidence.  While a dispassionate examination of the whole incident will acquit Douglas of any part in a plot to prevent the fair adoption of a constitution by the people of Kansas, yet he certainly took a most unfortunate and prejudicial mode of defending himself.[743] His personal retorts were so vindictive and his attack upon Trumbull so full of venom, that his words did not carry conviction to the minds of his hearers.  It was a matter of common observation that Democrats seemed ill at ease after the debate.[744] “Judge Douglas is playing cuttle-fish,” remarked Lincoln, noting with satisfaction the very evident discomfiture of his opponent, “a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."[745]

Douglas, however, did his best to recover his ground by accusing Lincoln of shifting his principles as he passed from the northern counties to Egypt; the principles of his party in the north were “jet-black,” in the center, “a decent mulatto,” and in lower Egypt “almost white.”  Lincoln then dared him to point out any difference between his speeches.  Blows now fell thick and fast, both speakers approaching dangerously near the limit of parliamentary language.  Reverting to his argument that slavery must be put in the course of ultimate extinction, Lincoln made this interesting qualification:  “I do not mean that when it takes a turn toward ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two years.  I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in God’s own good time, I have no doubt."[746]