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ure concluded with an exhortation to Lincoln, at least, not to swerve a hair's breadth from the principles of the party. If he does so, "he is lost and all others sink down with him." Right as this advice was, to receive it now from Greeley's lips must have seemed exceedingly comical to Lincoln. In his speech before the state convention he had subjected the proposition made by Greeley and his associates to a destructive criticism; and he did not assign reasons of expediency only for its rejection, but gave his speech the character of a solemn protest, because the proposition involved a pusillanimous surrender of the principles of the party, for which no reason could be advanced, and which must have dangerous consequences, precisely because the struggle was one of principle, and because, therefore, fidelity to principle was an absolute precondition of success.

It was a noteworthy speech: so simple, in the formulation of its ideas, that even a child could understand it, and still of a statesman like depth incomparably greater than that of Seward's Rochester speech. The irrepressibleness of the conflict was the starting-point of his entire reasoning. He gave this idea such tangible definiteness that all that remained for Seward, four months afterwards, was to give the fact proved by Lincoln the name that most properly described it. Lincoln had not gone backwards since he had written the letter to Robertson, referred to; but his vision became clearer and clearer with the development of events. In his introductory sentences, he declared what Seward had stated would be certainly avoided, to be an imperative

of the letter, and therefore could not assert the truth of every word. As Greeley's handwriting was very illegible, it would be well, perhaps, to put an interrogation mark after the surprising conclusion: 'He (your elephant) is not very heavy after all."

necessity. Even he could not see, in all its frightfulness, what lay in the womb of the future; but he recog nized that an irrepressible conflict must end in a violent clash between the opposing forces, and could not gradually die out except after such a clash, as the waves of the sea of themselves gradually subside with the wind. "The agitation of the slavery question," he said, "will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government 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 till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new - North as well as South."1

Caviling Greeley still claimed, in 1860, that the republicans of Illinois" would have done wisely" to give their assent to Douglas's re-election; for "it would have been an act of magnanimity - a testimonial of admiring re. gard for his course on the Lecompton bill, which would have reflected honor alike on giver and receiver, and could have done harm to neither." The fundamental propositions of Lincoln's entire argument had led him to assert the very reverse on every point. How, he asked, could the republicans be placed under the slightest obligation of gratitude to Douglas because he quarreled with the president on a question on which he and they had always been of the same opinion? He had not advanced á single step towards them - he remained where he had

1 Debates between Lincoln and Douglas, p. 1.

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always been; and that made him an utterly worthless ally of the republicans. A journal with a leaning towards him had stated that his powerful aid would be needed to prevent the re-introduction of the African slave trade. But he had himself desisted from every pertinent argument against that evil by his attitude on principle towards slavery - an attitude which made him a caged lion so far as the aggressions of the slavocracy were concerned. It was plain that he did not now go with the republicans, that he did not even pretend to do so, and did not promise that he ever would. "I do not ask," he said, "whether slavery be voted up or voted down." Such was his confession of faith; that is, his "avowed mission" was to bring the people to look upon it as entirely indifferent whether slavery should gain or lose ground. “Our cause, then," said Lincoln, "must be intrusted to and conducted by its own undoubted friends-those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work — who do care for the result. We shall not fail-if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but the victory is sure to come."

Was Lincoln or Greeley right? Which of the two needed to be reminded that, in this struggle, everything depended on fidelity to principle? The conflict was irrepressible, because it was a conflict of opposing principles; and the victory of the one principle was to be promoted by its champion voluntarily making room for the man who, with boundless cynicism, proclaimed absolute indifference in the struggle of the two principles to be his supreme political maxim! It was, indeed, quite possible that the republicans might succeed in the next presidential election, only provided the democratic party was split into Douglas and anti-Douglas democrats; but their victory would have been worse than fruitless if they allowed

themselves to be converted to the utilitarian policy now preached by Greeley and his associates; for the consequence of that victory would necessarily be problems which never could be solved by a party which did not hesitate, for supposed reasons of expediency and with full consciousness, to play fast and loose with the principle on which their whole existence depended. If the republican party forgot that its opposition to the slavocracy was a struggle for a moral principle, it might well be considered dead; and it would have been guilty of such forgetfulness if it now favored Douglas. The urgent advocacy of Douglas's candidacy by the republican zealots of the east was the most dangerous crisis which the republican party had to meet up to the outbreak of the civil

war.

Many friends of the project had, as Wilson relates, been very much startled by the holding of the democratic state convention of Illinois; and the course of the campaign soon opened the eyes of nearly all so wide that they no longer regretted its failure. If they had been able immediately to rid themselves of the narrow-mindedness which dictated their original attitude towards the question, the holding of that convention and the course of the campaign would have convinced them that that project had led them to the verge of an abyss.

The campaign was, at first, conducted in the usual way; that is, the two opposing candidates spoke before party meetings. Afterwards (July 24), Douglas was challenged by Lincoln to hold common meetings at different places, in order that the views of the two parties might be developed and defended by their candidates immediately after each other and before the same audience. Douglas accepted the challenge, but stipulated for an advantage: he was to open and close the debates.

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The first of the seven common meetings took place on the 21st of August, in Ottawa, and the last on the 15th of October.

The position Douglas occupied in national politics in-. vested everything relating to the senatorial election in Illinois with so much importance that it was followed by the whole people with strained attention. But, before long, the oratorical tournament itself excited so much interest that the prize directly striven for seemed almost a matter of secondary importance. Douglas had so much at stake that he would certainly have done his best, if he were concerned only with making a perfectly sure victory as brilliant as possible. But it soon became evident that he had to employ all his strength and make use of all his art. Lincoln proved himself a foeman worthy of the steel of even the strongest and most skilful. The republicans were almost as much surprised as the democrats to discover that his mental powers were so well proportioned to the size and strength of his bodily members. If the magnates of the east had not believed that not much more than a vote would be gained by his election to the senate, they would probably have given a somewhat different and more correct decision to the question of Douglas's re-election. If the presumptive candidate had been called William H. Seward instead of Abraham Lincoln, they would never have asked that he should voluntarily retire in favor of Douglas. Notwithstanding the one hundred and ten votes which had been united on Lincoln as a candidate for the vice-presidency in the Philadelphia convention, he had, in their eyes, scarcely grown beyond the dimensions of a local magnate; and only the partiality of those immediately about him could see in him the ability that would enable him to play a really important part on the theatre of na