Response to the Journal.

2

Thursday, September 30, 1858.

The editor of the Journal waxes wroth because we published a resolution passed at Springfield in 1854, in favor of the abrogation of the Fugitive Slave Law, against the admission of any new state whose constitution recognized slavery, &c., and said that Mr. Lincoln was a member of the committee which drafted the resolutions, and thinks it was very naughty in us to make the publication after Lincoln's statement that he had nothing to do with the meeting referred to. We published Mr. Lincoln's speech at this place, (more than the Journal has dared to do for Judge Douglas,) and thus gave him the benefit of this denial. But yet the facts remain the same. A convention was held in Springfield, in October, 1854, at which the resolution as published by us was adopted. That convention was called a republican convention, and so published at the time. Mr. Lincoln acknowledged at Ottawa that his name was on a committee in that Convention, but said that it was there without his authority. [We believe it is unusual, in the formation of committees on such occasions, to ask permission to use the names of gentlemen – it is sufficient to know that they favor the purpose of the meeting.] Mr. Lincoln was in Springfield at that time, and made a speech in the Hall of the House of Representatives, and immediately upon the conclusion of his speech Mr. Codding requested all the delegates to the republican convention to withdraw to the Senate Chamber, which they did, and there passed the resolution referred to. All this was published at the time, and in Mr. Lincoln's own town. If he did not take any part in the convention, if he did not sympathize with, and endorse its action, why did he not at once repudiate it, and particularly so, when his name was published as one of the committee on resolutions? The reason is obvious. He approved of the resolution, and his denial now will avail him nothing.

With these facts before us, substantiated by parties quite as worthy of credence as Mr. Lincoln, we felt that we were justified in making the statement complained of. The twaddle of the editor of the Journal will not disturb our repose in the least.