truly is by a recurrence to the speech itself.  I spoke of the Dred Scott decision in my Springfield speech, and I was then endeavoring to prove that the Dred Scott decision was a portion of a system or scheme to make slavery national in this country.  I pointed out what things had been decided by the court.  I mentioned as a fact that they had decided that a negro could not be a citizen; that they had done so, as I supposed, to deprive the negro, under all circumstances, of the remotest possibility of ever becoming a citizen and claiming the rights of a citizen of the United States under a certain clause of the Constitution.  I stated that, without making any complaint of it at all.  I then went on and stated the other points decided in the case; namely, that the bringing of a negro into the State of Illinois and holding him in slavery for two years here was a matter in regard to which they would not decide whether it would make him free or not; that they decided the further point that taking him into a United States Territory where slavery was prohibited by Act of Congress did not make him free, because that Act of Congress, as they held, was unconstitutional.  I mentioned these three things as making up the points decided in that case.  I mentioned them in a lump, taken in connection with the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, and the amendment of Chase, offered at the time, declaratory of the right of the people of the Territories to exclude slavery, which was voted down by the friends of the bill.  I mentioned all these things together, as evidence tending to prove a combination and conspiracy to make the institution of slavery national.  In that connection and in that way I mentioned the decision on the point that a negro could not be a citizen, and in no other connection.

Out of this Judge Douglas builds up his beautiful fabrication of my purpose to introduce a perfect social and political equality between the white and black races.  His assertion that I made an “especial objection” (that is his exact language) to the decision on this account is untrue in point of fact.

Now, while I am upon this subject, and as Henry Clay has been alluded to, I desire to place myself, in connection with Mr. Clay, as nearly right before this people as may be.  I am quite aware what the Judge’s object is here by all these allusions.  He knows that we are before an audience having strong sympathies southward, by relationship, place of birth, and so on.  He desires to place me in an extremely Abolition attitude.  He read upon a former occasion, and alludes, without reading, to-day to a portion of a speech which I delivered in Chicago.  In his quotations from that speech, as he has made them upon former occasions, the extracts were taken in such a way as, I suppose, brings them within the definition of what is called garbling,—­taking portions of a speech which, when taken by themselves, do not present the entire sense of the speaker as expressed at the time.  I propose, therefore, out of that same speech, to show how one portion of it which he skipped over (taking an extract before and an extract after) will give a different idea, and the true idea I intended to convey.  It will take me some little time to read it, but I believe I will occupy the time that way.