"Gentlemen, I cannot afford to spend my time in quibbles. I take the
responsibility of asserting the truth myself, relieving Judge Douglas
from the necessity of his impertinent corrections." This silenced his
opponent, and he spoke without further interruption to the end, his
speech being three hours and ten minutes long.

The effect of the speech was wonderful. The scene, as described next
day in the Springfield _Journal_, is worth quoting:

"Lincoln quivered with feeling and emotion. The whole house was as
still as death. He attacked the bill with unusual warmth and energy,
and all felt that a man of strength was its enemy, and that he meant to
blast it if he could by strong and manly efforts. He was most
successful; and the house approved the glorious triumph of truth by
loud and long-continued huzzas.... Mr. Lincoln exhibited Douglas in all
the attitudes he could be placed in a friendly debate. He exhibited
the bill in all its aspects to show its humbuggery and falsehoods, and
when thus torn to rags, cut into slips, held up to the gaze of the vast
crowd, a kind of scorn was visible upon the face of the crowd, and upon
the lips of the most eloquent speaker.... At the conclusion of the
speech, every man felt that it was unanswerable--that no human power
could overthrow it or trample it under foot. The long and repeated
applause evinced the feelings of the crowd, and gave token, too, of the
universal assent to Lincoln's whole argument; and every mind present
did homage to the man who took captive the heart and broke like a sun
over the understanding."

The speech itself, and the manner of its reception, could not other
than rouse Douglas to a tempest of wrath. It was a far more severe
punishment than to be hooted from the stage, as he had been in Chicago.