law establishing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the slavery question." Upon the principle here declared, issue was joined by his political opponents, and the battle fought to the bitter end.

Although Douglas had met personal defeat in his aspiration to the Presidency, the principle of non-intervention by Congress in the affairs of the Territories, for which he had so earnestly contended, had been triumphant both in the convention of the party, and at the polls. This principle, in its application to Kansas, was soon to be put to the test. From its organization, that Territory had been a continuous scene of disorder, often of violence. In rapid succession three Governors appointed by the President had resigned and departed the Territory, each confessing his inability to maintain public order. The struggle for mastery between the Free State advocates and their adversaries arrested the attention of the entire country. It vividly recalled the bloody forays read of in the old chronicles of hostile clans upon the Scottish border.

The parting of the ways between Senator Douglas and President Buchanan was now reached. The latter had received the cordial support of Douglas in the election which elevated him to the Presidency. His determined opposition to the reëlection of Douglas became apparent as the Senatorial canvass progressed. The incidents now to be related will explain this hostility, as well as bring to the front one of the distinctive questions upon which much stress was laid in the subsequent debates between Douglas and Lincoln.

A statesman of national reputation, the Hon. Robert J. Walker, was at length appointed Governor of Kansas. During his brief administration a convention assembled without his coöperation at Lecompton, and formulated a Constitution under which application was soon made for the admission of Kansas into the Union. This convention was in part composed of non-residents, and in no sense reflected the wishes of the majority of the bona fide residents of the

Territory. The salient feature of the Constitution was that establishing slavery. The Constitution was not submitted by the convention to popular vote, but in due time forwarded to the President, and by him laid before Congress, accompanied by a recommendation for its approval, and the early admission of the new State into the Union.

When the Lecompton Constitution came before the Senate, it at once encountered the formidable opposition of Senator Douglas. In unmeasured terms he denounced it as fraudulent, as antagonistic to the wishes of the people of Kansas, and subversive of the basic principle upon which the Territory had been organized. In the attitude just assumed, Douglas at once found himself in line with the Republicans, and in opposition to the administration he had helped to place in power. The breach thus created was destined to remain unhealed. Moreover, his declaration of hostility to the Lecompton Constitution was the beginning of the end of years of close political affiliation with Southern Democratic statesmen. From that moment Douglas lost prestige as a national leader of his party. In more than one-half of the Democratic States he ceased to be regarded as a probable or even possible candidate for the Presidential succession. The hostility thus engendered followed him to the Charleston convention of 1860, and throughout the exciting Presidential contest which followed. But the humiliation of defeat-brought about, as he believed, by personal hostility to himself - was yet in the future. In the attempted admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, Douglas was triumphant over the administration and his former political associates from the South. Under what was known as the "English Amendment," the obnoxious Constitution was referred to the people of Kansas, and by them overwhelmingly rejected.

The close of this controversy in the early months of 1858 left Douglas in a position of much embarrassment. He had incurred the active hostility of the President, and in large measure of his adherents, without gaining the future aid of his late associates in the defeat of the Lecompton

Constitution. His Senatorial term was nearing its close, and his political life depended upon his reëlection. With a united and aggressive enemy, ably led, in his front; his own party hopelessly divided-one faction seeking his defeat -it can readily be seen that his political pathway was by no means one of peace. Such, in brief outline, were the political conditions when, upon the adjournment of Congress, Douglas returned to Illinois in July, 1858, and made public announcement of his candidacy for reëlection.

In his speech at Springfield, June 17, accepting the nomination of his party for the Senate, Mr. Lincoln had uttered the words which have since become historic. They are quoted at length, as they soon furnished the text for his severe arraignment by Douglas in debate. The words are:

"We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this country cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.'

This, at the time, was a bold utterance, and, it was believed by many, would imperil Mr. Lincoln's chances for election. Mr. Blaine in his "Twenty Years of Congress," says:

"Mr. Lincoln had been warned by intimate friends to whom he had communicated the contents of his speech in advance of its delivery, that he was treading on dangerous ground, that he would be misrepresented as a disunionist, and that he might fatally damage the Republican party by making its existence synonymous with a destruction of the Government."

The opening speech of Senator Douglas at Chicago a few

days later sounding the keynote of his campaign - was in the main an arraignment of his opponent for an attempt to precipitate an internecine conflict, and array in deadly hostility the North against the South. He said:

"In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free States against the slave States-a war of extermination— to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the States shall either become free or become slave."

The two speeches, followed by others of like tenor, aroused public interest in the State as it had never been before. The desire to hear the candidates from the same platform became general. The proposal for a joint debate came from Mr. Lincoln on July 24 and was soon thereafter accepted. Seven joint meetings were agreed upon, the first to be at Ottawa, August 21, and the last at Alton, October 15. The meetings were held in the open, and at each place immense crowds were in attendance. The friends of Mr. Lincoln largely preponderated in the northern portion of the State, those of Douglas in the southern, while in the centre the partisans of the respective candidates were apparently equal in numbers. The interest never flagged for a moment from the beginning to the close. The debate was upon a high plane; each candidate enthusiastically applauded by his friends, and respectfully heard by his opponents. The speakers were men of dignified presence, their bearing such as to challenge respect in any assemblage. There was nothing of the "grotesque" about the one, nothing of the "political juggler" about the other. Both were deeply impressed with the gravity of the questions at issue, and of what might prove their far-reaching consequence to the country.

Kindly reference by each speaker to the other characterized the debates from the beginning. "My friend Lincoln," and "My friend the Judge," were expressions of constant occurrence during the debates. While each mercilessly attacked the political utterances of the other, good feeling

in the main prevailed. Something being pardoned to the spirit of debate, the amenities were well observed. They had been personally well known to each other for many years; had served together in the Legislature when the State Capitol was at Vandalia, and at a later date, Lincoln had appeared before the Supreme Court when Douglas was one of the judges. The amusing allusions to each other were taken in good part. Mr. Lincoln's profound humor is now a proverb. It never appeared to better advantage than during these debates. In criticising Mr. Lincoln's attack upon Chief Justice Taney and his associates for the Dred Scott decision, Douglas declared it to be an attempt to secure a reversal of the high tribunal by an appeal to a town meeting. It reminded him of the saying of Colonel Strode that the judicial system of Illinois was perfect, except that "there should be an appeal allowed from the Supreme Court to two justices of the peace." Lincoln replied, “That was when you were on the bench, Judge." Referring to Douglas's allusion to him as a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, he said:

"Then as the Judge has complimented me with these pleasant titles, I was a little taken, for it came from a great man. I was not very much accustomed to flattery and it came the sweeter to me. I was like the Hoosier with the gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better and got less of it than any other man.'

In opening the debate at Ottawa, Douglas said:

"In the remarks I have made on the platform and the position of Mr. Lincoln, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I have known him for twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a schoolteacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocerykeeper in the town of Salem. He was more successful in his occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods. Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill everything which they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I could, and when a cabinetmaker I made a good bedstead and table, although my old boss