Lincoln began his canvass at Beardstown, the spot where, twenty-five years before, he had taken his military company for rendezvous before starting out for the Black Hawk war. After making a speech here, he went up the Illinois River to Havana and Bath in Mason County, to Lewistown and Canton in Fulton County, and to Peoria and Henry in Marshall County, making speeches at each place, and attracting immense audiences. Mr. Douglas was equally busy, and equally fortunate in attracting the people to listen to his utterances upon the great questions of the day. At Clinton, in DeWitt County, he found it no longer possible to pass in silence the charge of Mr. Lincoln that he had "left a niche in the Nebraska bill to receive the Dred Scott decision," which declared in effect, that a territorial legislature could not abolish slavery. Mr. Douglas here stated that his self-respect alone prevented him from calling this charge a falsehood. Subsequently, at Beardstown, he broke over his restraints, and called it "an infamous lie." To this Mr. Lincoln responded on a subsequent occasion as follows:

"I say to you, gentlemen, that it would be more to the purpose for Judge Douglas to say that he did not repeal the Missouri compromise; that he did not make slavery possible where it was impossible before; that he did not leave a niche in the Nebraska bill for the Dred Scott decision to rest in; that he did not vote down a clause giving the people the right to exclude slavery if they wanted to; that he did not refuse to give his individual opinion whether a territorial legislature could exclude slavery; that he did not make a report to the senate in which he said that the rights of the people in this regard were held in abeyance, and could not be immediately exercised; that he did not make a hasty indorsement of the Dred Scott decision over at Springfield; that he does not now indorse that decision; that that decision does not take away from the territorial legislature the power to exclude slavery; and that he did not in the original Nebraska bill so couple the words 'state' and 'territory' together that what the Supreme Court has done in forcing open all the territories for slavery, it may yet do in forcing open all the states;-I say it would be vastly more to the point, for Judge Douglas to say he did not do some of these things, did not forge some of these links of overwhelming testimony, than to go to vociferating about the country that possibly he may be obliged to hint that somebody is a liar."

The first meeting of the series agreed upon was held at Ottawa according to appointment. A concourse of citizens estimated at twelve thousand had assembled. Mr. Douglas had the opening speech, and in this speech he resorted to an expedient for placing Mr. Lincoln on the defensive which was either very weak, or very wicked. He made a charge against Mr. Lincoln which, if he knew it to be false, was foul, and which, if he did not know to be true, was most impolitic. He charged that Mr. Lincoln, on the part of the whigs, and Mr. Trumbull, on the part of the democrats, entered into an arrangement in 1854, for the dissolution of the two parties, and the fusing of both in the republican party, for the purpose of giving Lincoln Shields' place in the Senate, and Trumbull, his (Douglas') own. Furthermore, that the parties met at Springfield in October of that year, and, in convention of their friends, laid down a platform of the principles upon which the new party was constructed. He then proceeded to read what he called "the most important and material resolutions of the abolition platform." What these resolutions were, will appear in Mr. Lincoln's replies to the questions which Mr. Douglas based upon them. His object in asking these questions was, as he said, in order that when he should "trot him (Lincoln) down" to lower Egypt (southern Illinois) he might put the same questions to him there.

The hearty reception which the audience gave to the principles of this platform as he pronounced them, did not please Mr. Douglas. He wished to see whether they would "bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro." "I have a right," said Mr. Douglas, "to an answer, for I quote from the platform of the republican party, made by himself (Lincoln) and others at the time that party was formed, and the bargain made by Mr. Lincoln to dissolve and kill the old whig party, and transfer its members, bound hand and foot, to the abolition party, under the direction of Giddings and Fred Douglass."

Mr. Douglas went on then to comment on Mr. Lincoln's Springfield speech, which had come to be known as "the house-divided-against-itself speech," and slid, as usual, into

ence.

his talk about the inferiority of the negro. Speaking of Mr. Lincoln and the "abolition orators," he said, "he and they maintain that negro equality is guarantied by the laws of God, and that it is asserted in the Declaration of IndependIf they think so, of course they have a right to say so, and so vote. I do not question Mr. Lincoln's conscientious belief that the negro was made his equal, and, hence, his brother; but for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever."

And here it may be said, because it will be impossible to describe with particularity all the speeches of the campaign, that the staple of the speeches of Mr. Douglas, as well as those of Mr. Lincoln, related to a very few points, which may be summed up in a brace of paragraphs.

Mr. Douglas did not believe in natural negro equality, and did believe that every state had the right to say just what rights she would confer upon the negro; that the people of every territory had a right to decide as to what their institutions should be, while he bowed, at the same time, to the Dred Scott decision, which declared that they had no right to abolish slavery; and that the country could endure half slave and half free as well for all coming time as it had for the previous eighty years, while slavery itself, to him, was a matter of indifference-an institution which might be "voted up or voted down," without any appeal to his preferences.

On the other hand, Mr. Lincoln placed himself on the broad ground of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, and are by heaven endowed with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He recognized the negro as a man, coming within the broad sweep of this Declaration. He believed thoroughly in Mr. Douglas' doctrine of popular sovereignty, without the Dred Scott qualification, which was a direct denial of the sovereignty; but he believed the abrogation of the Missouri compromise, which Mr. Douglas himself had effected, an unspeakable wrong, a foul breach of faith, by which it was ren

dered possible for the people of a territory to choose slavery, and by which the forcing of slavery upon them was rendered practicable. Furthermore, he saw in that "piece of machinery," made up of congressional legislation, Supreme Court decisions and executive and party connivance, an attempt to nationalize and perpetuate slåvery, which he felt must logically ultimate in that result, or end in universal emancipation. Slavery, he believed, had lived by the side of freedom, and in partnership with it, simply because freedom had regarded itself as eternal, while it had regarded slavery as ephemeral. Thus the fathers regarded and treated slavery. They had curtailed its territory. They had forbidden the importation of slaves. All their arrangements looked to an early end of slavery; and Mr. Lincoln quoted the champions of slavery to sustain his views on this point. When the policy of the gov ernment changed, and it was proposed to nationalize slavery and make it perpetual-to confer upon it the same rights with freedom-nay, to make it impossible for freedom to abolish it-then he foresaw a conflict which could only end by its utter overthrow, or its universal prevalence. He did not believe the house would fall; he did believe that it would cease to be divided.

The seven joint debates rang their changes on these points, as they were held and maintained by the debaters. Mr. Douglas did not seem to be as fertile in thought and expression as his antagonist. He was more given to diversions, to the ordinary clap-trap of campaign speaking, to appeals to prejudices, to the springing of false issues, to quibbles and tricks. Mr. Lincoln, on the contrary, was in thorough earnest, and stuck with manly tenacity to the great questions he had in hand. He stripped every objectionable proposition and every specious argument of the disguises in which the ingenious language of Mr. Douglas had clothed them, and refused to be led away, by a hair's breadth, from the real, naked issues of the campaign.

In replying to Judge Douglas at Ottawa, he simply said that the story of his bargain with Mr. Trumbull was not

true, and that he was so far from having had anything to do with the convention to which the Senator had alluded that he was attending court, off in Tazewell County, when it was held. That was all there was of Mr. Douglas' charges. They had not an inch of truth to stand upon; and it was discovered immediately after the debate that the resolutions which Mr. Douglas had quoted had not been passed in Springfield at all, by any convention, and that, although they had been uttered by a local convention in the town of Aurora, they were, for the purposes used, and under the circumstances, essentially a forgery, for which Mr. Douglas or his friends were guiltily responsible. The charge that Mr. Lincoln was in the convention, that he made a bargain with Mr. Trumbull, that he was responsible for a certain set of anti-slavery resolutions, and that the resolutions which he read were passed by the convention that was held at Springfield, was false in every particular. Did Mr. Douglas know it to be so? Perhaps the only reply that it is proper to make to this question is that he ought to have known it to be so.

In Mr. Lincoln's reply, he quoted from his Peoria speech made in 1854, to which allusion has been made in this history, to show his exact position on the subject of slavery in the states where it existed. He said in that speech that he had no prejudice against the southern people. They were just what we should be under their circumstances. "If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up." He understood how difficult it was to get rid of slavery, and he did not blame them for not doing what he should not know how to do himself. He acknowledged his constitutional obligations, and went so far as to say that he would be willing to give them a law for reclaiming fugitives, provided a law could be made which would not be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one. This, notwithstanding he hated slavery for the monstrous injustice of slavery itself, and for its disgrace to democratic institutions. But all these facts had no effect upon