THE DEFEAT THAT MADE LINCOLN FAMOUS

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HE man who dares to fight a superior foe has already won half the battle. When Lincoln stepped to the platform to stand beside Douglas, in his first great combat against brilliancy and wit, on that twenty-first day of August, in 1858, he stepped into greatCarloads of people from Chicago poured into the little villages of Illinois; the roads were filled with country folk, camping on the prairie, like an army in bivouac.

ness.

Douglas journeyed in state in a private car, from which floated the militant strains of a band playing the national airs; a cannon mounted on a flat car proclaimed his coming. Lincoln made his way from town to town by horse or foot, by slow trains or in the caboose of a freight.

Look at the two men as they stand before the cheering multitudes, the champions of the two greatest causes that have ever met in conflict in the annals of mankind-freedom and slavery. There stands Douglas, the "Little Giant," five feet four inches tall; his shoulders broad, his head massive and majestic. There stands Lincoln, his awkward figure, of six feet four inches, slightly stooped; his hair disheveled; his clothes uncouth; his sunken face furrowed by struggle. The throng is cheering and jeering. The strains of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," swell from ten thousand throats. The flags of the Republic flutter in the breeze.

The multitude becomes quiet. A deep, manly voice hushes them to silence: "I don't care whether slavery be voted up or voted down. I don't believe the negro is any kin of mine at all. Who among you expects to live, or have his children live, until slavery be established in Illinois or abolished in South Carolina?" It is the voice of Douglas, combative, forceful, decisive.

His lips

The tall, gaunt figure now rises before the multitude. part. "Is slavery wrong? It is the eternal struggle between these two principles-right and wrong-throughout the world. They are two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings." It is the voice of Lincoln, resonant, gentle, appealing.

The battle of human emotions rose and fell before seven vast audiences on the circuit of Illinois, with intense heat and fury. Then came the voice of the people-the ballot-the highest law in the land, in whose judgment there speaks an authority which no monarch in the world can overruleand Lincoln lost.

THE APPEAL OF HUMANITY THAT LINCOLN HEARD

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HE world loves a man who knows how to lose. No man has ever

yet gone through life without having to take his losses. That is one of the first lessons that we have to learn-and one of the severest. Abraham Lincoln probably had more setbacks than any man who reads these lines.

While Lincoln was walking home in the rain after his defeat for the United States Senate, he stumbled in the muddy street, but quickly regaining his balance, he naively muttered, "It is a slip and not a fall." The defeat had cost Lincoln nearly a thousand dollars—all the money that he possessed, and the loss of over six months from his law practice. He was left without money for even household expenses. It had cost Douglas eighty thousand dollars of his private fortune to save his seat in the United States Senate and to discover a new political power that was to rival him for the leadership of the American people.

"Though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten," remarked Lincoln, "I believe I have made some marks which will tell for civil liberty long after I am gone." "Let the past as nothing be. The fight must go on, and I shall fight in the ranks."

Lincoln returned to his work on the circuit to get a living. He carried his love for humanity into the court room and in defense of the fallen appealed to the forgiving spirit of brotherly love. His practice of law was almost wholly based on these principles.

There is an old saying that the truth never dies, and so it was with Lincoln's words. The fires that he had kindled in his campaign were spreading throughout the country. There came loud calls for him from distant cities. He found that his defeat was once again a victory, the stepping stone upon which he was to rise to greater heights.

"This is a world of compensation," was the message that he sent to New England, "He who would be no slave must be content to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."

These messages stirred the populace as had nothing else since the Declaration of Independence. His speeches were printed and given wide circulation. His neighbors gazed wonderingly on the growing fame of their townsman, who, to them, was but a simple, uncouth man who had no special position among them. It is the old story of the prophet being without honor in his own home.

This negative, taken in 1859, was destroyed in the Chicago Fire-Mrs. Lincoln considered it the best likeness of her husband that she had ever seen-It presents Lincoln as he appeared just before his nomination for the Presidency

Original negative by S. M. Fassett of Chicago, Illinois

Photograph owned by Mr. William Lloyd Garrison of Boston, Massachusetts Print in collection of Mr. H. W. Fay of DeKalb, Illinois