Rich and Rare Development.

2

August 25, 1858.

From the Chicago Press and Tribune.
The Back-Bone and Muscle of Douglas' Ottawa Speech Proved to be a Lie and a Fraud.
A SENATOR IN A TIGHT PLACE.

The desperation which animates Senator Douglas is admitted by his friends. A cause which had its origin in a humbug that has been bolstered up by lies without number, and frauds without end, and that is about to culminate in defeat and disgrace, needs extraordinary measures to support it. But frantic as the man is — goaded as he is by the ugly record that springs up against him whichsoever way he turns — infuriate as he has become by attacks that he is powerless to repel, by facts that he dare not deny, by the sure approach of that fate which has been his due since he first turned traitor to his State — we hoped that in the conduct of the campaign he would remember to observe the decencies which are due to his exalted station; that, in addition to the disgrace which his treason to freedom has entailed upon the State that made him what he is, he would not descend to the personal degradation and dishonor of such we are about to convict him. But we are mistaken. The man's baser and meaner passions have entire possession of him, and he stoops, though sure of immediate detection, to conduct which, if practiced upon and individual for the sake of gain, would consign him to a cell in the County Jail. At the meeting in Ottawa, on Saturday, the Senator read a series of radical resolutions, which he assured his hearers were passed by a Republican State Convention in 1854, at Springfield; that they constituted the platform of the party at that day, and that they represented the views of his distinguished competitor, who, he said, took part in the proceeding of which the resolutions were a share. THE RESOLUTIONS WERE FRAUDS AND FORGERIES FROM FIRST TO LAST. No such series was ever presented to, hence never adopted by and State Republican Convention, in Illinois! and in making the assertion, Mr. Douglas knew that he basely, maliciously and wilfully LIED. He not only lied circumstantially and wickedly, but he spent the first part of his speech in elaborating the lie with which he set out, and the entire latter part, in giving the lie application and effect. The resolutions which he read were adopted by a one horse meeting at Aurora, in Kane county, with which Mr. Lincoln had nothing to do, which he was not near, which he poossibly never heard of except through the public prints.

Men of Illinois, here is your Senator! The lion's skin is stripped off his back, and he proves to be a petty prevaricator, who complains that his opponents are abusing him. Here is the man who is traversing the State, from end to end, in pursuit of votes, bellowing, as he goes — "You lie! you lie!" We will not here characterize his baseness in the terms which it deserves. We leave it to the honest supporteres of Mr. Douglas to deal with him as honest men should. Those of them who listened to his Ottawa harangue will see how limp and feeble it becomes now that the lie which was its backbone and muscle is taken up. And this lie — this fraud — this forgery — the act of a Senator of the United States! It is afit defense of the cause which it was invented to support. It is worthy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and its author.

The following is the platform adopted by the State Convention, at Springfield, in October, 1854. Compare it with the resoultion read by Mr. Douglas, which is embodied in his speech, and see the fraud of which the little consiprator was guilty:
WHEREAS: That the present Congress, by a majority of the members elected to the House, has deliberately and wantonly re-opened the controversy respecting the extension of slavery under our national jurisdiction, which a majority of the people had understood to be closed forever by the successive compromises of 1820 and 1850; and

WHEREAS, This Congress, aided and impelled by the Federal Executive, has, by the act currently known as the Nebraska bill, designedly subverted so much of the compact commonly termed the Missouri Compromise as excluded slavery from that vast region of our continent stretching from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, and from the parallel of 36 deg. 80 min. to the northern boundary of our Union, the State of Missouri alone being excepted; therefore

Resolved, That the State of Illinois affirms and maintains the right and the duty of the general government to prohibit and preclude the extension, establishment or perpetuation of human slavery in any and every Territory of the United States, and in any territory, possession and country over which this country now has or may hereafter acquire exclusive jurisdiction.

Resolved, That the doctrine affirmed by the Nebraska bill, and gilded over by its advocates with the specious phrases of non-intervention and popular sovereignty, is really and clearly a complete surrender of all the ground hitherto assured and maintained by the federal government, with respect to the limitation of slavery, is a plain confession of the right of the slaveholder to transfer his human chattels to any part of the public domain, and there hold them as slaves as long as the inclination or interest may dictate; that this is an attempt totally to reverse the doctrine hitherto uniformly held by statesmen and jurists, that slavery is the creature of local and State law, and to make it a national institution.

Resolved, That as freedom is national and slavery sectional and local, the absence of all law upon the subject of slavery presumes the existence of a state of freedom alone, while slavery existed only by virtue of positive law.

Resolved, That slavery can exist in territory only by usurpation and in violation of law, and we believe that Congress has the right, and should prohibit its extension into such territory, so long as it remains under the guardianship of the general government.

Resolved, That we willingly concede to neighboring States all the legal rights on our soil included in the sacred compact of the Constitution, but we regard the trial by jury, and the writ of habeas corpus, as safeguards of personal liberty so necessary, that no interests of any citizen of our own Stat ever are or can be permitted to suspend them; and therefore no citizens of other States can faqirly ask us to consent to their abrogation.

Resolved, That we recognize no antagonism of national interests between us and the citizens of southern States, nor do we entertain any feelings of hostility towards them, but we recognize them as kindred and brethren of the same national family, having a common origin, and we hope a common and glorious destiny.

Resolved, That in that fraternal spirit, we call upon them to aid us in restoring the action of the Government to its primitive usage, under which we have so long enjoyed prosperity and peace, as the only guarantee of future harmony, and a certain, if not the only means of perpetuation of the Union.

Resolved, That the river and harbor improvements when necessary to the safety and convenience of commerce with foreign nations, or among the several States, are objects of national concern, and it is the duty of Congress, in the exercise of its constitutional power, to provide for the same.

Resolved, That we heartily approve the course of the freemen of Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, New York, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine, postponing or disregarding their minor differences of opinion or preferences, and acting together cordially and trustingly in the same cause of freedom, of free labor and free soil, and we commend their spirit to the freemen of this and other States, exhorting each to renounce his party whenever and wherever that party proves unfaithful to human freedom.

FORGERY NO. 2 — The Chicago Tribune of yesterday charges that "Douglas' unblushing platform forgery in his Ottawa speech, was followed by another more base, more cowardly, everyway more like Douglas, in the Chicago Times. We refer to his shameful mutilation of Lincoln's speech, as published in that sheet of yesterday morning. A more cowardly and knavish trick was never undertaken by a desperate politician. Not daring to give the readers of the Times a correct report of Mr. Lincoln's argument, he (Douglas) assisted by two Dred Scott lawyers, spend the whole day, Sunday, in dictating and suggesting interlineations, mutilations, destroying the sense and turning away the grammar of his adversary!

Mr. Lincoln remained in Ottawa, Saturday and Sunday; Douglas came to Chicago, to revise his own speech for the Times and to mangle the copy of Mr. Lincoln's.

In proof of this charge the Tribune gives a number of extracts from the speech as published in that paper contrasted with the same paragraphes as published in the Times, and the butchery is made plainly apparent. The meaning of this dastardly trick, to all intelligent minds, is that Douglas dared not let Lincoln's speech go before the readers of the Times, as Lincoln delivered it — any more than he dared to canvass the States with that gentleman and let all the people hear both sides of the question. A coward to the last!

AT FREEPORT. — The next public debate between Lincoln and Douglas takes place at Freeport, in the First Congressional District, on Friday of this week. Let the people of the glorious old North District turn out en masse.