These questions Mr. Lincoln answered as follows: "I do not now nor ever did stand pledged against the admission of any more slave states into the Union. "I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new state into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that state may see fit to make. "I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. "I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different states. "I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States territories. "I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and in any given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery question among ourselves." He then explained his answers more at length, disclaiming any intention to "hang upon the exact form of the interrogatory." He then proceeded to propound four interrogatories to Judge Douglas, as follows: "If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution and ask admission into the Union, under it, before they have the requisite number of inhabitants, according to the English bill-some ninety-three thousand -will you vote to admit them? "Can the people of a United States territory in any lawful manner, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution? "If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that states cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in adopting and following such decision as a rule of political action? "Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the question of slavery?" These questions Mr. Douglas answered as follows: "In reference to Kansas, it is my opinion that, as she has population enough to constitute a slave state, she has people enough for a free state; therefore I answer at once that, it having been decided that Kansas has people enough for a slave state, I hold that she has enough for a free state. I hope Mr. Lincoln is satisfied with my answer; and now I would like to get his answer to his own interrogatory-whether or not he will vote to admit Kansas before she has the requisite population? "The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is, Can the people of a territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution? I answer' emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution. "The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is, If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that a state of this Union cannot exclude slavery from its own limits, will I submit to it? I am amazed that Mr. Lincoln should ask such a question. Mr. Lincoln's object is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. He knows that there never was but one man in America claiming any degree of intelligence or decency who ever for one moment pretended such a thing. He might as well ask me, suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal a horse, would I sanction it; and it would be as genteel in me to ask him, in the event he stole a horse, what ought to be done with him. "Are you [addressing Mr. Lincoln] opposed to the acquisition of any more territory, under any circumstances, unless slavery is prohibited in it? That he does not like to answer. When I ask him whether he stands up to that article in the platform of his party, he turns, Yankee fashion, and, without answering it, asks me whether I am in favor of acquiring territory without regard to how it may affect the Union on the slavery question. I answer that, whenever it becomes necessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, I am in favor of it, without reference to the question of slavery, and when we have acquired it, I will leave the people free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free territory as they prefer." No better examples are needed or could be found to illustrate the efficacy of interrogatories in drawing the attention of your adversary to the main issues in debate and holding him strictly to them. In the selections here given events fully showed their vital importance; while the answer of Douglas to Lincoln's second question drove from him the peo ple of the South in his race for the presidency in 1860, the answer of Lincoln to Douglas' sixth allied him so closely to the antislavery or abolition sentiment that his election was the forerunner of the American Civil War, the greatest conflict of modern times. CHAPTER VII. ARRANGEMENT. -WIT.-HUMOR-RIDISARCASM.-IRONY.-INVECTIVE. ORDER AND WHEN the speaker has collected his arguments, prepared his thoughts and ideas, his next care should be to adopt a suitable order and arrangement for their presentation. It would be difficult to lay down an inflexible rule on this subject. It must in the main be left to the good sense and judgment of the orator himself. This was the opinion of Cicero. His judgment was doubtless based on the almost infinite variety of oratorical power. The speaker may be called upon to denounce and expose some secret danger to the State, when the vehemence of his action will more than offset a faulty arrangement, as in the case of the Catilinian orations; he may be summoned to arouse some strong political passion, where the earnestness of his manner will more than compensate a slight defect in the marshaling of his arguments; or, as in the case of most jury speeches, the interest and excitement of the contest will more than excuse a deviation from a fixed method when the speaker shows animation and fervor. The flexibility of language, too, goes far to aid a loose and |