Mr. President, I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead, sir.

December 3, 1857, to president James Buchanan in a conversation about Bleeding Kansas after the latter warned Douglas "to remember that no democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed" and to "beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives", as recalled by Douglas in an October 13, 1860 campaign speech during the 1860 presidential election.

The earliest version of this anecdote to be published publicly was in a column by Republican journalist Henry Jarvis Raymond for The New York Times, March 26, 1858. In July 1860, Douglas described a different version of the December 3 meeting in which he said Buchanan told him "that if I did not obey him and vote to force that Lecompton Constitution on the people of Kansas against their will, that he would take off the head of every friend that I had in office", an accusation that Buchanan denied.