things indeed, that Lincoln would not do, but most of which he approved. Early and late the junior partner was busy writing editorials, working tricks on pro-slavery papers,' organizing clubs, feeling the popular pulse for which he had a rare gift and looking up facts, dates, and history for his chief. Again and again Lincoln telegraphed or wrote to the office for information, and Herndon was invariably ready with it. No task was too difficult, none too exacting or exhausting, for him to undertake in behalf of the cause and its leader, with an enthusiasm inspired equally by political principle and personal friendship. Besides, he found time to do some very effective work on the stump, journeying all over central Illinois and speaking to vast throngs.

As an orator Herndon was picturesque and impressive, of resonant voice and dignified bearing, rapid in his thought, vivid in his imagery, multi-colored in his rhetoric; less logical than Lincoln, but more facile; more restrained than Lovejoy, but hardly less radical; a man who held great audiences and swayed them with ease. On a sultry summer evening early in the campaign he spoke at Petersburg, when Donati's comet, then touring the sky, was visible in unusual splendor. After speaking for nearly three hours, he turned to the comet and addressed it in a graphic peroration. Sketching the state of society when it had last appeared, and the changes wrought during its absence, he appealed to the heavenly pilgrim to inform its sisterhood of the things about to be done in the name of God and human liberty. Those who heard him that evening went away instructed, solemnized, and exalted. But he could be argumentative also, as witness the speech referred to in his letter to Mr. Parker:

Friend Parker.

Springfield, Ill., July 28, 1858.

Dear Sir: I told you a few days ago of a speech that I made to our Republican club here. I send you a line cut from the Illinois Journal, which gives one phase of that speech. I really think it is law, and am going to urge it on the stump, ready to back it up by analogy, reason, and the 1 Abraham Lincoln, by Herndon and Weik, Vol. II, pp. 38-9.

constitution. If the Democracy can carry this case, the inhumanity to the blacks, and the denial of the constitutional rights of the whites, if they can enslave all the Territories under the title of "sacred right of self-government," and if they can do as they have done in Kansas for four years in the name of constitutional law, then they can enslave the white man and deshrine God under the name of Democracy. I send you these clippings to let you know that I am on duty. Will soon take the stump and go over the State, or at least the central part of it.

Yours truly,

W. H. HERNDON.

In brief, his argument was that by act of Congress, in 1789, the Federal courts were given cognizance of suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity, where the suit was between citizens of different States. But the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, had decided that a negro was not a citizen, and for that reason could not sue. As, however, by the terms of the act, both parties to the suit must be citizens, if the negro was incapable of suing, he was equally incapable of being sued. So that, if a negro in Illinois owed a white man in Missouri a sum of money, which he refused to pay, there was no recourse at law. Thus the Dred Scott decree, by placing a disability upon negroes, had worked a glaring outrage upon the white man, leaving him without remedy in the Federal courts, while it made the negro wholly irresponsible for his contracts. And with this point Herndon goaded his Democratic foes until the votes were cast.

At Springfield Douglas had noticed, for the first time, the charge of Lincoln that he and his party leaders were conspirators plotting to make slavery national, remarking that he did not think so badly of the President and the Supreme Court. Thereupon Lincoln had made the charge more specific by adding that Douglas had "left a niche in the Nebraska Bill to receive the Dred Scott decision," which declared that a Territorial Legislature could not abolish slavery. Douglas was not slow to discover that the charge, left in this shape, was beginning to hurt. So, at Clinton, he read the charge to his audience, and said that his self-respect alone prevented him

from calling it a falsehood. But at Beardstown, a few days later, his self-respect had broken down, and with wild and angry gestures he pronounced it "an infamous lie!" Three hours afterward Lincoln was on the same spot summing up the evidence for his charge in a passage which for cumulative force and acumen could not be surpassed, followed quickly by another pitched in that tone of half-sad soliloquy and appeal, so often heard during the debates:

Think nothing of me: take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed those sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity - the Declaration of American Independence.

III

It is not easy to be just to Senator Douglas during the contest of 1858.1 Not only in the methods he employed, but in his very bearing and in the spirit he displayed, he had every aspect of a model demagogue. One expects hard hitting and rough speech at such times, though Douglas was unnecessarily offensive; but that is not so much the ground of complaint as the fact that he persistently evaded the real issue, and when

1 Of course, in the bitterness of political acrimony, many things were said and writen of Senator Douglas which were unjust. Even his personal habits were exaggerated and he was pictured as a coarse, vulgar, and almost brutal man. - Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin, Vol. I, pp. 177-8 (1907). Partisan eyes saw little that was admirable in him. - Reminiscences, by Carl Schurz, Vol. II, p. 95 (1909). On the other side are the portrayals by such men as Koerner and Clark E. Carr, who knew him, and the picture is more engaging, because more true. Stephen A. Douglas, by C. E. Carr, pp. 41-52 (1909).

he could not evade it he deliberately beclouded it. We have to remember, however, that he entered the field in face of an alert and powerful foe, disappointed that there was to be a contest at all, with defection and betrayal in the rear, and that he was fighting for his political life. If this did not excuse some of the methods and tactics to which he resorted, it may mitigate a too severe judgment of the man.

On his personal side, Senator Douglas was a man of many admirable and lovable traits, which won for him the loyalty of thousands who had no thought of favors past or to come. Of short and stocky figure, a little corpulent, though not too much so, he was agile, graceful, athletic, and a dynamo of vitality. His head was massive, crowned with rich brown hair, sprinkled with grey; his forehead high, open, and finely shaped; his eyebrows thick and heavy; his eyes large, deeply set, of dark blue, flashing fire when stirred; his mouth cleanly cut and very expressive; his chin square and full, with eddying dimples-every line bespeaking energy, audacity, and power. Affable, gracious, and winning, he was a good mixer who never forgot a name, an incessant smoker, at times convivial but rarely to excess; equally at home in the Senate or on the stump; a man who never turned his back to a foe or upon a friend. Of indomitable pluck, he was truly kindhearted, and a man of great ability. If he had been one degree more refined he would perhaps have been many degrees less popular.

In that peculiar style of oratory, which, in its intensity, resembles physical combat, Douglas had no equal. His presence was dominating, his personality compact and impressive, his voice strong, but not well modulated. Calm in stating facts, he was passionate in attack, disdainful when forced to defend, and without scruple when pushed to the wall. In assertion bold, in denunciation bitter- yet repenting a poisoned shaft as soon as it left his bow - not caring to persuade so much as to force the assent of his hearers, he was the Danton, not the Mirabeau, of oratory. Fluent in speech, facile in 1 Twenty Years of Congress, by J. G. Blaine, Vol. I, p. 144 (1884).