leaders wrath at his procedure succeeded amazement. The Washington Union, the organ of the Administration, called him "traitor," "renegade," "deserter." "I have very little doubt," wrote a journalist at Washington, "that if compelled to choose between Douglas and Seward for President, the whole band of pro-slavery fire-eaters, with Toombs at their head, would vote for the latter." But among the Northern leaders amazement gave way to perplexity. The Liberator, the organ of the New England Abolitionists, began to commend Douglas. The Republicans viewed him with curious speculation. He was now fighting their battle. He had broken from his own party. Could he be planning to join them, place himself at their head, and with them fight the growing power of slavery? It was a profoundly interesting possibility. It appealed to many prominent Republicans, like Horace Greeley and Anson G. Burlingame, who began to manifest unwonted friendliness. But Douglas, whatever dreams he may for a time have had, had fought the Lecompton conspiracy because it was a dishonorable betrayal of popular sovereignty. That principle, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, he still maintained as affording the best solution of the slavery problem. He did not care, any more than in 1854, "whether slavery were voted down or voted up.' Though he was now thwarting the advance of the slave power, he could not become a Republican. The Northern wing of his party comprehended his attitude and endorsed

his policy. Nevertheless, this uncertainty about his position, the glittering possibility of his conversion to the Republican party, was a factor of vital importance in adjusting the delicate political balance in the campaign of 1858.

When Douglas returned to Illinois to enter upon the contest for re-election to the Senate, the outlook in the state indicated a severe campaign. There was a powerful and growing anti-slavery party, though it was composed of heterogeneous elements that had been, not without difficulty, fused into agreement upon a specific policy. There was also a body of Buchanan Democrats who voiced the bitter antagonism of the Washington Administration against the destroyer of the Lecompton plot. On the other hand Douglas was now in enthusiastic favor with the mass of his party in Illinois, who sustained him in his revolt and applauded his continued maintenance of "popular sovereignty" and the Dred Scott decision, in the faith that the two were not irreconcilable. Besides this body of support, many national leaders of the Republican party openly advocated his return to the Senate, and out of admiration or gratitude for what he had done and hope for what he might become, deprecated opposition to him on the part of the Republicans of Illinois.

In this peculiar state of affairs the Republican state convention, on June 16, at Springfield, under circumstances of great enthusiasm tendered a unanimous nomination for the senatorial vacancy to

Abraham Lincoln. On the evening of that day! Mr. Lincoln opened the campaign with the speech which begins the series in this volume.

The candidate thus honored, one whose fame was only just beginning to creep beyond the confines of his state, was a man of lowly origin and of singular power. Educated in the constant companionship of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Euclid, he had no better opportunities for social or further mental culture than what came to him as a local surveyor or as a clerk in a country grocery. Grotesque in appearance, he was in character strangely compounded. He was lanky in body, abnormally tall, awkward in movement, physically indolent, and attired habitually in ill-fitting garments. In his mentality he conjoined the coarse thought and speech of the frontier tavern with absolute purity of personal morals, and inflexible honesty. In him dwelt also the extremes of melancholy and humor; the one bringing him in desperate wrestling at times to the verge of madness, the other leading him by beneficent reaction even to the length of buffoonery. He possessed a profoundly intuitive

1June 16 is given as the date of this speech by Nicolay and Hay in their history; by J. F. Rhodes (History of U. S., Vol. ii. p. 314); by J. T. Morse, in his life of Lincoln in the American Statesmen series; by Douglas himself in the Alton debate, and by other authorities. June 17 is given as the date in the edition of the speeches of 1858, revised by Lincoln for the campaign of 1860. Herndon, in his life of Lincoln, is not clear upon the matter, but seems also to indicate the latter date.

and sympathetic comprehension of the plain people, and through moral and philosophic insight perhaps more than any other man he knew and revered the Truth for its own sake. To these traits were added great power of concentration and an intense personal ambition.

Admitted to the bar as soon as his opportunities permitted, he came to be considered the best jury lawyer in Illinois; but in distinction from Douglas he was deemed a poor advocate in a bad cause. As a lawyer he was keen in analysis, and eminently fair in his statement of a case; so that his opponents could take no exception to his presentation of their position. Quaint parables and illustrations, and an inexhaustible fund of wit and humorous stories gave a strong popular appeal to logical argument that was habitually sound in its process.

His transition to political life was gradual, but natural. From 1834 to 1837 he served in the state legislature, and made at that time a public assertion that slavery was "founded on injustice and bad policy." In 1846 he began his service of a single term in Congress, and during the two years voted for the Wilmot Proviso forty-two times. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 recalled Lincoln from the practice of law to which he had returned at the end of his term in Congress, and he began to deliver speeches in opposition to Douglas, who quickly recognized in him an unusual opponent. In 1855 Lincoln was a strong Anti-Nebraska candidate for United States Senator, but

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under circumstances of rare magnanimity threw his support to Judge Lyman Trumbull, whose election was thereby assured. By 1856 his leadership of the new Republican Party in his state was assured, and he even received considerable support for the presidential nomination.

Such was the man, strangely in contrast with Douglas, who was now his opponent in the critical campaign about to begin. Douglas did not underrate his antagonist. "I shall have my hands full," he said. "He is the strong man of his party-full of wit, facts, dates-and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd; and if I beat him my victory will be hardly won."

Conditions at the beginning of the campaign favored Douglas. His incomparable prestige as the foremost American statesman made a handicap against which Lincoln struggled without success. As an attempt to offset the prestige of Douglas, Lincoln determined upon the bold plan of meeting him face to face in a series of joint debates. After some hesitation Douglas accepted the challenge, and seven meetings were agreed upon. The places settled upon for the debates were, in order: Ottawa and Freeport, in the Republican strongholds of Northern Illinois; Charleston, Galesburg, and Quincy, localities in Central Illinois, where the two parties were nearly of equal strength; and Jonesboro and Alton, in the strongly Democratic region of southern Illinois. The conditions of the first debate