and widely circulated, in which he ventured the remarkable prophecy that Douglas would beat Lincoln for the senatorship but would be beaten by him in 1860 for the presidency.

Lincoln, inferior to Douglas in nimble fencing, although no mean hand at that game himself, relied mainly on his power to hit straight blows. His manner as well as his mind accomplished y much when it was earnest. It was when his

shrill voice grew warm with conviction, and his dark yellow face lighted up with intensity, that he struck the listeners with a kind of confidence never given by his opponent. Horace Greeley, certainly not too favorable, said that Lincoln became the foremost convincer of his time, the one who could do his cause more good and less harm than any other living man. In this campaign canvassing, in these stump battles before all sorts of men, the speaker, if his statement of the case does not produce conviction, "justifies, varies, reenforces it," and while he educates his hearers he educates himself. In this kind of struggle, where the subject was thrashed out between the orators and the audience, Lincoln's native love of truth made him grow more strong and clear with every speech, both in his comprehension of the various aspects of the great issue, and in that understanding of the average American mind which lay at the foundation of his greatness as a war president,

The first of the joint debates was held at Ottawa, on August 21. Douglas, in accepting the challenge, had chosen to open and close four times to his rival's three, but Lincoln was too eager for the fray to be stopped by such an advantage. Douglas in this first joint debate charged that in 1854 "Lincoln went to work to abolitionize the old Whig party all over the state." He showered the term " Black Republican" on him and his associates. He accused him of hostility to the Mexican War, and even went off into side-tracks of misrepresentation to amuse his audience and waste his opponent's time in reply. He told with mock admiration how nobly Lincoln presided at fist-fights and horse-races, and how he "could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together."

The audience at such an encounter was not overburdened with awe or etiquette, but both speakers knew how to manage it. While Lincoln was trying to explain the speech which he had made in the contest of 1854, a voice in the crowd cried, "Put on your specs." "Yes, sir,” replied Lincoln, "I am obliged to; I am no longer a young man." Not only disrespectful jests but searching questions were likely to be shouted out of the throng at any moment, and each combatant had to be either fertile in resources or certain of his ground. Douglas was

one. Lincoln was both. It is not difficult, in reading the speeches now, in cold blood, with a knowledge of the issue, to see the superiority of Lincoln's, nor is it difficult to see the brilliant skill with which Douglas kept the contest on the points most dangerous to his adversary. One of the lighter replies in this first battle has a particular flavor of Lincoln's character. Douglas had spoken of him, in his superior way, as a “kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman." Lincoln pretended to be overjoyed with such praise from such a source, and likened himself to the hoozier who said he reckoned he loved gingerbread better than any other man, and got less of it.

The second meeting took place August 27, at Freeport. The state of public feeling in Illinois is indicated by the stress that the judge thought it wise to put on the fact that the negro Fred Douglass had been seen driving with a white woman. It was apparently one of the most excited of the meetings, with interruptions which led Douglas to charge one element of the crowd with vulgarity and blackguardism. Lincoln replied that he should not receive any vulgarity and blackguardism himself because he would not inflict any. Personalities were pretty severe in this debate, and also in the next, September 15, at Janesboro, containing an elaborately disputed

question of veracity. In the fourth debate at Charlestown, September 18, Lincoln explained clearly that he was not in favor of giving the negroes votes, the right to sit on juries, or any sort of social equality; but just as clearly in the sixth, October 13, at Quincy, he insisted on the moral foundation of the whole political question. + Throughout Lincoln's whole career, two points of view must be kept in mind, and then his attitude will be seen to be surprisingly consistent. One aspect is what he wished for in the end, and that was universal freedom, but only such political and social equality as progress by the negroes should invite. The other aspect is what he would advise doing under the immediate circumstances, and in treating that side he went so far as to say he would not have all fugitive slave laws done away with, and, of course, he would not interfere with slavery in slave states. The hardest question Douglas pressed in the whole debate was one that Lincoln long hesitated to answer, finally acknowledging that he would vote to admit to the Union, under slave constitution, territory owned by the United States, provided the inhabitants desired to have slavery. Douglas also gave Lincoln trouble over the Dred Scott decision, for while it was easy, consistent, and reasonable to hold that the law must be recognized as long as it existed, but that it would probably

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some time cease to be law, this was not an easy distinction to force through all the intricacies of debate. Douglas, on the other hand, was troubled by Lincoln's questions about the right of the people in a territory to exclude slavery prior to the formation of a state constitution, and about the right of slaveholders in territories to have their property protected by Congress. Over the first question he wriggled furiously and created the Freeport Doctrine" of popular sovereignty, which ultimately destroyed him. When the second was put he exclaimed, “Repeat that; I want to answer that question." But he never did. It should be remembered that the combatants chose their points not solely for the crowd in front of them, but for leisurely readers of the newspapers, and in the end it was by them that the answers of Douglas were weighed and found wanting.

The last debate was at Alton, on October 15. The election followed soon, and Douglas won. In popular vote the Republicans had a small plurality, but the legislature, which elected the senator was slightly Democratic in both branches. On November 15, Lincoln wrote: 'Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest. No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in har