ham Lincoln, who had come in during the evening, would reply from the same platform.

II

Lincoln was losing interest in politics, as we learn from his oft-cited "Autobiography," when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise roused him. He was out on the Eighth Circuit when the news of the Repeal came, and Judge Dickey, who shared his room at the local tavern, reports that Lincoln sat on the edge of the bed and discussed the political situation until far into the night. At last Dickey fell asleep, but when he awoke in the morning Lincoln was still sitting up in bed, deeply absorbed in meditation. "I tell you, Dickey," he said, as though continuing the argument of the previous evening, "this nation cannot exist half-slave and half-free!" In one variant or another, this phrase began to recur in his letters and in his office conversation, which Herndon tells us became more animated and earnest. In his eulogy of Clay he had quoted something very like it, though in less sententious phrase, from Jefferson; but the words did not then have the force of tragic reality. Now" the Genius of Discord had done its work, and he saw the republic a house divided against itself and tottering to a fall. Still, for four years he kept his slogan in his heart, ruminating upon it and discussing it with his friends, waiting for the ripening of events.

At Chicago he made plea for a return to the Missouri Compromise, and in public he clung to that forlorn hope until the Dred Scott decision swept it away. But in his private thought he knew, as he said to Herndon, that the two forces, long kept apart like wild beasts chained, each growling and struggling to be free, meant inevitable conflict. Nor did any one who stood near him doubt on which side his sympathies were, though he held himself in reserve, coming forward to speak and act only when he was fully satisfied that the hour was ripe. Often his feelings-intense and almost volcanic at times-pressed hard for hot words and radical measures, but he bit his lips, to use his own language, and kept quiet, jotting down notes on scraps of paper and stowing them in his high

hat the handy receptacle for items to which he desired to have ready access. Some of these fugitive notes have been preserved, and they show with what keen and merciless logic he had gone to the bottom of the subject-passing the whole question through his silent thought, as though it were a case to be stated and argued. When at last he spoke his word, the whole man was in it, and the issue and the leader were alike disclosed.

Such was the mood in which Lincoln, now forty-five and in the prime of his powers, stood up to refute the dogma of Douglas and to challenge its champion. By a kind of instinct men recognized the new leader, and made way for him, though at the time there was no organized party, but only a few friends, to urge him forward. Just when he resolved to try again for office is not known; but it must be kept in mind that while Lincoln was a politician, wary, discreet, and shrewd, he was never a professional politician. That is, he did not live by holding office, but by the arduous labors of the law, and he returned to politics only at the call of a crisis-goaded also, it seems, by his ambitious little wife, who had been most unhappy during his subsidence. If he was a master of all the arts of politics, he brought them to the service of a great human cause, his very jealousy of Douglas serving the better to point his logic with tips of fire.

1

Early in October Senator Douglas delivered a speech in the State House at Springfield, during the week of the State Fair, to which, on the following day, in the same hall to no smaller audience, Lincoln addressed a reply. The occasion, notable in many ways, was in fact the beginning of a debate between the two men, memorable in the annals of the nation, which continued at intervals for five years. Douglas was at

1 Perhaps this fact, though noted by some of his biographers, has not been sufficiently emphasized. American Commonwealth, by James Bryce, Vol II, p. 68. Of the $200 contributed by his friends for his use in the canvass of 1846, he returned $199.90 unused. - Abraham Lincoln, by G. H. Putman, p. 16 (1909). In later years, besides contributing to the campaign fund, often to his own financial hurt, his friends contributed to his expenses. Abraham Lincoln, by Herndon and Weik, Vol. II, p. 71.

this time the most striking figure in the public eye-the most popular leader since Henry Clay- and in view of the estrangement of a large part of his constituency, he put forth all his powers of persuasion. He defended the Nebraska Bill by appeal to his panacea of "popular sovereignty," which, he said, only sought to establish in the Territories a policy already existing in the States. Why, he asked, should not the people of the Territories have the right to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way? Moving from their old homes to new ones did not incapacitate them for self-government. If the citizens of a Territory decided by vote to admit slaves as property, no State had a right to interfere. After this manner he argued, using all the arts at his command, and in ordinary times his eloquence would have been conclusive; but he had reckoned by the wrong star. His political compass, never very steady, had been deflected, perhaps unawares, by the subtle attraction of personal and partisan interest. His fallacy lay in the assumption that property in slaves did not differ from other kinds of property; and that the nation could deal with an historic evil by evasion. None the less his speech, delivered with great vitality and charm, swayed men by its blend of plausibility and

power.

It was therefore upon no ordinary occasion that Lincoln found himself pitted against his old adversary — his rival on many occasions and for many things. Much interest attached to his reply, not only from the fact that he was crossing swords with a famous debater, but because he was a candidate against James Shields his old dueling antagonistfor the Senate; and for the further reason that such a discussion involved, necessarily, a survey of slavery in all its phases. While he was known to be a Whig of anti-slavery leanings, up to this time there had been no demand that he declare himself on that question as a national political issue. He had now to define his position, and he did not hesitate to tell the plain truth, so far at least as the public mind was ready for the whole truth; and the telling of it made his speech one of the imperishable utterances of that critical

period, if not of our whole history. When he had finished men of all parties realized that a new leader had appeared, the equal of Douglas in debate, calm, strong, and fearless, with a sure grasp of the problem a man of genius ablaze with passion.

For four hours the circuit-riding lawyer unfolded and described the great issue with a mastery of facts, a logical strategy, and a penetration of insight that astonished even his friends. Evidence of careful study was apparent in the compactness of his thought and the lucidity of his style, and there was a total absence of the story-telling, of the grotesque humor, which had marred his earlier efforts. There were occasional playful passages, keen logical thrusts and bright metaphorical sallies, but as a whole the speech was charged with deep feeling, the speaker becoming at times intense and solemnly prophetic as the far-reaching nature of the issue was unveiled. Unlike the Abolition orators, he did not recite the cruelties of slavery, but held himself to the legal aspects of the question, arraigning Douglas and his party for violating the pledge of the Compromise, and for opening the way for the extension of slavery into new territory. While he did not plead for the abolition of slavery, he had none of the spirit of concession to property interests that had ruined Webster, and he spoke as one to whom the moral issue was vividly alive. Restrict slavery, he argued, and time would work its abolition by natural process. For the pet dogma of Douglas he had a profound scorn, and his epigrams pierced it like flashes of lightning. He turned it over and over, inside and out, tearing off its mask and exhibiting it in such a light that no one could fail to see the deception embodied in it. No political dogma ever received a more merciless exposure, while the Senator himself sat on a front bench, not twelve feet away, intently listening. There were warm, but for the most part goodhumored passages between them as the afternoon ran along. Lincoln kept his temper, even under the most provoking taunts, and his readiness and ease of retort delighted the immense audience. It was a great triumph, and thunders of applause greeted him; but what impressed men was the gran

itic solidity of his argument, made luminous by a passionate earnestness all the more effective for its restraint. One who was present has left this picture of the orator:

It was a warmish day in early October, and Mr. Lincoln was in his shirt sleeves when he stepped on the platform. I observed that, although awkward, he was not in the least embarrassed. He began in a slow and hesitating manner, but without any mistakes of language, dates, or facts. It was evident that he had mastered his subject, that he knew what he was going to say, and that he knew he was right. He had a thin, high-pitched, falsetto voice of much carrying power, and could be heard a long distance in spite of the bustle and tumult of the crowd. He had the accent and pronunciation peculiar to his native State, Kentucky. Gradually he warmed up with his subject, his angularity disappeared, and he passed into that attitude of unconscious majesty that is so conspicuous in Saint-Gaudens's statue at the entrance of Lincoln Park in Chicago. . . . Progressing with his theme, his words began to come faster and his face to light up with the rays of genius and his body to move in unison with his thoughts. His gestures were made with his body and head rather than with his arms. They were the natural expression of the man, and so perfectly adapted to what he was saying that anything different would have been quite inconceivable. Sometimes his manner was very impassioned, and he seemed transfigured with his subject. Perspiration would stream down his face, and each particular hair would stand on end. . . In such transfigured moments as these he was the type of the Hebrew prophet.

I heard the whole speech. It was superior to Webster's reply to Hayne, because its theme is loftier and its scope wider.... I think also that Lincoln's speech is the superior of the two as an example of English style. It lacks something of the smooth, compulsive flow which takes the intellect captive in the Websterian diction, but it excels in the simplicity, directness, and lucidity which appeal both to the intellect and to the heart. The speech made so profound an impression on me that I feel under its spell to this day.1

When Lincoln closed, Owen Lovejoy, the leader of the Abolitionists then holding a convention in the city-announced

1 Lincoln in 1854, by Horace White, pp. 9-11 (1908).