The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, vol 4 | Page 7

of the
people. Trumbull admits that the language is not a direct provision for
submitting it, but it is a provision necessarily implied from another
provision. He asks you how it is possible to ratify the land proposition
at the election for the adoption of the constitution, if there was no
election to be held for the adoption of the constitution. And he goes on
to show that it is not any less a law because the provision is put in that
indirect shape than it would be if it were put directly. But I presume I
have said enough to draw attention to this point, and I pass it by also.
Another one of the points that Judge Douglas makes upon Trumbull,
and at very great length, is, that Trumbull, while the bill was pending,
said in a speech in the Senate that he supposed the constitution to be
made would have to be submitted to the people. He asks, if Trumbull
thought so then, what ground is there for anybody thinking otherwise
now? Fellow-citizens, this much may be said in reply: That bill had
been in the hands of a party to which Trumbull did not belong. It had
been in the hands of the committee at the head of which Judge Douglas
stood. Trumbull perhaps had a printed copy of the original Toomb's bill.
I have not the evidence on that point except a sort of inference I draw
from the general course of business there. What alterations, or what
provisions in the way of altering, were going on in committee,
Trumbull had no means of knowing, until the altered bill was reported
back. Soon afterwards, when it was reported back, there was a
discussion over it, and perhaps Trumbull in reading it hastily in the
altered form did not perceive all the bearings of the alterations. He was
hastily borne into the debate, and it does not follow that because there
was something in it Trumbull did not perceive, that something did not
exist. More than this, is it true that what Trumbull did can have any
effect on what Douglas did? Suppose Trumbull had been in the plot
with these other men, would that let Douglas out of it? Would it

exonerate Douglas that Trumbull did n't then perceive he was in the
plot? He also asks the question: Why did n't Trumbull propose to
amend the bill, if he thought it needed any amendment? Why, I believe
that everything Judge Trumbull had proposed, particularly in
connection with this question of Kansas and Nebraska, since he had
been on the floor of the Senate, had been promptly voted down by
Judge Douglas and his friends. He had no promise that an amendment
offered by him to anything on this subject would receive the slightest
consideration. Judge Trumbull did bring to the notice of the Senate at
that time the fact that there was no provision for submitting the
constitution about to be made for the people of Kansas to a vote of the
people. I believe I may venture to say that Judge Douglas made some
reply to this speech of Judge Trumbull's, but he never noticed that part
of it at all. And so the thing passed by. I think, then, the fact that Judge
Trumbull offered no amendment does not throw much blame upon him;
and if it did, it does not reach the question of fact as to what Judge
Douglas was doing. I repeat, that if Trumbull had himself been in the
plot, it would not at all relieve the others who were in it from blame. If
I should be indicted for murder, and upon the trial it should be
discovered that I had been implicated in that murder, but that the
prosecuting witness was guilty too, that would not at all touch the
question of my crime. It would be no relief to my neck that they
discovered this other man who charged the crime upon me to be guilty
too.
Another one of the points Judge Douglas makes upon Judge Trumbull
is, that when he spoke in Chicago he made his charge to rest upon the
fact that the bill had the provision in it for submitting the constitution to
a vote of the people when it went into his Judge Douglas's hands, that it
was missing when he reported it to the Senate, and that in a public
speech he had subsequently said the alterations in the bill were made
while it was in committee, and that they were made in consultation
between him (Judge Douglas) and Toomb's. And Judge Douglas goes
on to comment upon the fact of Trumbull's adducing in his Alton
speech the proposition that the bill not only came back with that
proposition stricken