in training and experience for the contest. As firmly he believed that these would make him an easy victor, and that he would entangle Mr. Lincoln in the mazes of detailed party discriminations, personal debates, and leave him an unhorsed, confounded, and deserted leader.

He reckoned this on the ground that Lincoln would take and confine himself to the Republican policy, that was in principle and fact little different from his own doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty." It was a plan of advanced expediency against slavery extension, as results proved, while the Republican party opposed the extension of slavery by excluding it by some Act of Congress. This was no more than Douglas had done, and he came home to make his contest for reelection with the authoritative proof of prominent Republican leaders that he had done so. With this understanding it was small wonder that he believed Mr. Lincoln would fail for want of an issue, if no more.

Mr. Lincoln gave the subject deep and profound study. He realized all that Douglas had anticipated. He knew, as well as any one, that if he followed the usual routinism of party defense with no better contention against Douglas than opposition to the extension of slavery, which was the Republican creed, he would fail, and be the victim. But with deeper thought and wisdom he developed himself a statesman and leader beyond controversy, and confounded Douglas, his friends, and the Republican outsiders. He boldly took God's side of the question, going to the root of the evil when he arraigned slavery as a system that could not exist in a free democracy.

On this plane of fearless assertion of the truth, and with equal or surpassing strength, voice, capacity, and argument, he proved himself a master. He did it so decisively and emphatically that it was soon realized throughout the land what a great achievement he had won, and that no other living American could have done it. He took a position in which he

did not plead for an issue, but made it. Continuing in his Springfield speech, he said: "How can Douglas oppose the advances of slavery? He do n't care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the public heart to care nothing about it. For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take Negro slaves into the new territory. Can he possibly show that it is a less sacred right to buy them where they can be bought the cheapest? Unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property. Now as ever I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle, so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle; but clearly he is not now with us, he does not pretend to be, he does not promise ever to be."

In his humorous way he sketched some of the difficulties. No audience ever tired of his drollery and wit, in which his dramatic performance always better illustrated the humor, the argument, or the strength of his story. In his close at Springfield, he said: "Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly at no distant day to be President of the United States. They have seen in his jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, marshalships, land-offices, and Cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they can not in the little distraction that has taken place bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, and give him the marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond even

what in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my lean, poor, lank face no one has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are the disadvantages all taken together that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone."

CHAPTER XXXV.

HE Republicans of Illinois were aware that the peculiar

TH

nature of the contest over the election of a senator in

volved national issues, with defection at home and outside interference in favor of Douglas. They knew that they must make as strong and determined opposition to the return of Douglas as lay in their power, otherwise the State would probably be carried by the Democracy at the Presidential election. Without division or discussion all had full confidence in Lincoln, and believed that if any man could meet and contend with Douglas he was the man. In this consideration a joint discussion was arranged for at Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesborough, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton, seven smaller cities of the State, so selected as to give the people in all parts of it the opportunity to meet and hear these prominent leaders.

By the agreement in detail Douglas had the advantage of the opening and closing at four places, while Lincoln had three. The meetings were so largely attended that the average ran above twenty thousand. Douglas, in his conditon of voice and strength, could not be heard by more than five thousand out-doors; while Lincoln, in his full vigor and strength and perfect voice, could be heard by most of them. Hence the advantage of one opening and one closing was more than compensated for by Douglas's inability to be heard by these outdoor multitudes.

A reporter who was with them, talking of it afterward, said, making an estimate: "The meetings averaged twenty thousand. Douglas could only be well heard by about five

thousand, and many times he spoke under a continual strain, with a failing voice. This would give him at the seven meetings thirty-five thousand who heard him; whereas, Lincoln talked to all of them, with no sign of flagging, but rather increasing strength. This gave him an audience, all told, of one hundred and forty thousand, or four times as many." In the meetings held this was no exaggeration, as it appeared, at all, and gave Mr. Lincoln a very decided advantage.

Douglas and his friends throughout the State were wrought up to their best energies, and a very excited condition of things prevailed in many localities, inflamed and aggravated by the meddlesome interference of Buchanan's Administration, so that receptions, processions, street displays, brass bands, awkward men on untrained, galloping horses in hundreds, were common where the country boys were turning out in thousands.

Before the opening up of the contest between them, Lincoln made his Springfield address, which, from the bold assertion that slavery and freedom were incompatible conditions that would divide or destroy the Nation, or that one would prevail, attracted general and widespread attention. Douglas at once recognized this, and saw the gravity of the assertion. He knew that it would eventually reduce the slavery debate to two contending parties, one for and the other as positively against slavery, removing altogether the middle position, on which so many statesmen and others had hammered, trimmed, pounded, and compromised over for some fifty years. Notwithstanding all the contests and the threatening conditions at the time, great progress had been made. Free speech had been restored in the free States, when, in 1858, Mr. Lincoln triumphantly announced that "The battle had to be fought on principle, and principle alone." This obvious principle was that slavery was wrong, and that as such it could be discussed and debated in every part of the State as it could not have been ten years previously.