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Lincoln and Douglas.
The Chicago papers contain a full report of the debate between Mssrs. LINCOLN and DOUGLAS on Saturday last. If ever a man was completely skinned-skinned from the roots of his hair to the point of his toes-Judge Douglas was on this occasion. If ever a man showed himself to be a liar, a knave, and a blackguard-an unblushing liar, a consummate knave, and a low flung blackguard-Judge Douglas did on Saturday last.
The contrast between the speeches of Lincoln and Douglas is most remarkable, and at the same time most gratifying to every Republican. Throughout, Mr. Lincoln preserved his usual courteous, affable, gentlemanly manner- sending home every argument with telling force and unerring certainty. Douglas, on the contrary, lost his temper, and talked a bar-room bully.
Among other lies uttered by him uopn the occasion, was the assertion that the following resolution was adopted by the Republican State Convention at Springfield, in October, 1854:
2. Resolved ,That the times imperatively demand the re-organization of parties, and repudiating all previous party attachments, names and predilections, we unite ourselves together in defence of the liberty and constitution of the country, and will hereafter co-operate as the Republican party, pledged to the accomplishment of the following purposes: To bring the administration of the government back to the control of first principles; to restore Kansas and Nebraska to the position of free territories; that, as the Constitution of the United States vest in the States, and not in Congres, the power to legislate for the extradition of fugitives from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive slave law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it restrict slavery to those States in which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all the territories over which the government has exclusive jurisdiction; and to resist the acquirement of any more territories unless the practice of slavery therein forever, shall have been prohibited.
What will the reader think of this man, when they learn that no such resolution was adopted by this Convention? The statement of Judge Douglas is an unmitigated falsehood. It has no foundation whatever in truth. We have before us the series of resolutions adopted at the State Convention of 1854, and no such a one as the above is among them!
Douglas seems to have reached the extremest point of desperation. The blows of Lincoln, followed up by those of Trumbull, have driven him mad; and in his important fury, he now regards neither truth nor decency. The snake has been scotched, and the ides of November will see him killed.
