came the sweeter to me.  I was rather like the Hoosier, with the gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better than any other man, and got less of it.  As the Judge had so flattered me, I could not make up my mind that he meant to deal unfairly with me; so I went to work to show him that he misunderstood the whole scope of my speech, and that I really never intended to set the people at war with one another.  As an illustration, the next time I met him, which was at Springfield, I used this expression, that I claimed no right under the Constitution, nor had I any inclination, to enter into the slave States and interfere with the institutions of slavery.  He says upon that:  Lincoln will not enter into the slave States, but will go to the banks of the Ohio, on this side, and shoot over!  He runs on, step by step, in the horse-chestnut style of argument, until in the Springfield speech he says:  “Unless he shall be successful in firing his batteries until he shall have extinguished slavery in all the States the Union shall be dissolved.”  Now, I don’t think that was exactly the way to treat “a kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman.”  I know if I had asked the Judge to show when or where it was I had said that, if I didn’t succeed in firing into the slave States until slavery should be extinguished, the Union should be dissolved, he could not have shown it.  I understand what he would do.  He would say:  I don’t mean to quote from you, but this was the result of what you say.  But I have the right to ask, and I do ask now, Did you not put it in such a form that an ordinary reader or listener would take it as an expression from me?

In a speech at Springfield, on the night of the 17th, I thought I might as well attend to my own business a little, and I recalled his attention as well as I could to this charge of conspiracy to nationalize slavery.  I called his attention to the fact that he had acknowledged in my hearing twice that he had carefully read the speech, and, in the language of the lawyers, as he had twice read the speech, and still had put in no plea or answer, I took a default on him.  I insisted that I had a right then to renew that charge of conspiracy.  Ten days afterward I met the Judge at Clinton,—­that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the discussion,—­and heard him make a speech.  Then he comes in with his plea to this charge, for the first time; and his plea when put in, as well as I can recollect it, amounted to this:  that he never had any talk with Judge Taney or the President of the United States with regard to the Dred Scott decision before it was made.  I (Lincoln) ought to know that the man who makes a charge without knowing it to be true falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood; and, lastly, that he would pronounce the whole thing a falsehood; but, he would make no personal application of the charge of falsehood, not because of any regard for the “kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman,”