while on this occasion. What has always been the evidence brought forward
to prove that the Republican party is a sectional party? The main one was
that in the Southern portion of the Union the people did not let the
Republicans proclaim their doctrines amongst them. That has been the main
evidence brought forward,--that they had no supporters, or substantially
none, in the Slave States. The South have not taken hold of our
principles as we announce them; nor does Judge Douglas now grapple with
those principles. We have a Republican State Platform, laid down in
Springfield in June last stating our position all the way through the
questions before the country. We are now far advanced in this canvass.
Judge Douglas and I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we have
now for the fifth time met face to face in debate, and up to this day I
have not found either Judge Douglas or any friend of his taking hold of
the Republican platform, or laying his finger upon anything in it that is
wrong. I ask you all to recollect that. Judge Douglas turns away from the
platform of principles to the fact that he can find people somewhere who
will not allow us to announce those principles. If he had great
confidence that our principles were wrong, he would take hold of them and
demonstrate them to be wrong. But he does not do so. The only evidence he
has of their being wrong is in the fact that there are people who won't
allow us to preach them. I ask again, is that the way to test the
soundness of a doctrine?

I ask his attention also to the fact that by the rule of nationality he
is himself fast becoming sectional. I ask his attention to the fact that
his speeches would not go as current now south of the Ohio River as they
have formerly gone there I ask his attention to the fact that he
felicitates himself to-day that all the Democrats of the free States are
agreeing with him, while he omits to tell us that the Democrats of any
slave State agree with him. If he has not thought of this, I commend to