In the struggle over the Lecompton Constitution, the country had reached this point: the South was determined to impose slavery upon Kansas without her consent (since the people were opposed to it), and here was where the administration was unable to carry such a measure through Congress, while the North had such respect for the popular vote, and regarded it as so fundamental in our form of government, that they never would allow it to be overridden, especially when it was to be done to perpetuate and extend slavery. Mr. Douglas's political course could never have been satisfactory to the South, had he not aided them in their great purpose. He was the author of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and approved of the Dred Scott Decision, and the Fugitive Slave Laws, and so he might properly expect the support of the South in his aspirations after the presidency, for which his prospects were the fairest of any member of the Democratic party. But how about the North, and the party in his own State? Would they indorse such positions, and especially force slavery upon a people that repudiated it? At another time they might have suffered it, but not then, after the fierce discussions and dangerous measures resorted to, to accomplish such a purpose, for the last ten years. So while his public record made him popular at the South, it was going to embarrass him, if not defeat his re-election to the Senate, proud as his party at home were of his ability and ready to follow his leadership. So here he made much of his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution because it had been repudiated by the people. It was a brave and noble thing in him, in spite of his record, and in opposition to the President and almost the whole Democratic party in Congress, to take and maintain as he did such a distinctively Northern position. True, it removed him from the leadership of his party, and robbed him of the presidency, or at least of a favorable nomination for it and a probable election. The

President and his party in Congress turned bitterly against him, and when his claims were urged upon the Presidential Convention at Charleston, the convention was divided and broken up, and when it reassembled at Baltimore, his defeat was only made sure. But it was only this that secured his re-election to the Senate in 1858, from Illinois. He planted himself squarely upon "State Sovereignty," a happy phrase of his own coining, and which was popularly translated into "Squatter Sovereignty," or the sovereignty which the first settlers, or "squatters," acquire over the land they settle, and made such use of it as seemingly to meet all the demands of a liberty-loving people in respect to this fundamental and all-important popular right. But how was this to satisfy the South and their expectations. from the next President, especially when he invented another phrase, "unfriendly legislation," as unfortunate for him at the South as the other had been fortunate at the North? By this was meant that, while the people had the right to vote slavery out, or vote it into their State, they might still by police regulations and "unfriendly legislation" prevent its existence there, as some of the free States were doing by their Personal Liberty Bills, virtually defeating the Fugitive Slave Law. And if this could satisfy the liberty-loving North, what so fitted to awaken the suspicions and bitterest hostility of the slave-holding South as such jugglery, admitting what the law requires and then teaching how to break it.

Thus, in those great debates between Mr. Douglas and Mr. Lincoln, so ably conducted and long continued over the whole State, the former found himself in a dangerous dilemma, of which the latter could not fail to avail himself. Indeed, Mr. Lincoln perceived at once the weak point in all his defenses, and resolved to press him there. So in the course of these debates, when they were allowed to ask each other questions and were required to answer them. Mr.

Lincoln proposed four, three of them harmless enough, but the other interpolated among the rest, was this: "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its own limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?" The meaning of it was: What right has a State to legislate slavery out, where by the Constitution and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the Dred-Scott Decision, it has a right to go in? Mr. Douglas's answer was: "It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question, whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce or exclude it, as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local Legislature, or if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst." Such a transparent sophism, that a thing "may be lawfully driven away from a place where it has a lawful right to go," his opponent did not fail to expose and hold up to popular ridicule, which, while it did not rob Douglas of the support of his party to whom he was an ideal leader, did blast his prospects for the presidency elsewhere. Indeed, Mr. Lincoln seems to have correctly forecast the results of that political canvass from the first, for he told his friends that his opponent must impale himself upon one horn or the other of that dilemma. If he says, "Yes," he loses his Southern support, and if he says, "No," he loses the support of the North. He said, "Yes," and carried his State and secured his senatorship, but he lost the country and the presidency, while Mr. Lincoln went home with neither a senatorship nor at this time any

prospect of the presidency. His position, however, was the right one, and he showed such ability and trustworthiness and moral earnestness-this last the very quality in which Mr. Douglas was most deficient-that he soon came to be appreciated, and when the time called for such a man he was put in nomination and triumphantly elected to the presidency. As some one has justly characterized these men:

"The difference in this respect between the two men is well illustrated in their discussions of the subject of slavery. The former never treats slavery as if it had anything right or wrong in it, anything objectionable in it any more than freedom, and if the Constitution and the laws allowed its restriction or prohibition, he had no more objection to its being voted into a State or Territory than to its being voted out, if the people wanted it. He cared not whether 'it was voted up or voted down,' as he said, while Mr. Lincoln made this the 'real issue, the eternal struggle between these two principles, right and wrong."

As for Mr. Douglas, the position he had taken cost him the regular nomination. All the Southern elements of his party turned against him, and a section of his party at the North. The President and his cabinet bitterly resented his opposition to their favorite measure of forcing slavery upon Kansas without regard to the wishes of the people. So when he was returned to the Senate he found himself deposed from the chairmanship of the committee on territories, the position which he had long held, and where he had framed and advocated some of the most objectionable measures of the administration in respect to slavery in Kansas. And when the Democratic National Convention assembled in April at Charleston, S. C., instead of finding his claims to the presidency generally admitted, as they might have been before his Illinois campaign, they were so strenuously and bitterly opposed, that the delegations from several of the Southern States withdrew and utterly refused to have anything to do with the nomination of such a candidate. Finally, after fifty-seven ballots, in which it was

impossible to secure Mr. Douglas's nomination, though he always led his competitors, the convention adjourned to reassemble in Baltimore in June. Here in a convention where eight of the Southern States were not represented, he was nominated, and the ticket thus presented to the people read: Hon. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, President, Hon. Herschell V. Johnson of Georgia, Vice-President. This ticket represented that portion of the Democratic party who held that slavery was not to be imposed upon the people of any territory without their consent, though they accepted, with Mr. Douglas, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Dred-Scott Decision, and the Fugitive Slave Law.

The Seceders' Convention, which met first at Richmond, the same month, and then adjourned to Baltimore, agreed upon this ticket: Hon. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, President, and Gen. Joseph Lane of Oregon, Vice-President. They held that a slaveholder might take his slaves into any territory or free State, and that the government was bound to protect his right to such property there, in spite of the votes and laws of such a State or territory.

When the Republican Convention came together at Chicago in May, Mr. Lincoln was not regarded as so likely to secure their nomination as some others, particularly Mr. Seward of New York. The latter was sure to carry his own State, with her great vote of seventy delegates, while his ability and public record were altogether in his favor, and on the first ballot he led all others. But upon the third ballot Mr. Lincoln was found to have received the requisite majority, which the New York delegation, through Mr. William M. Evarts, generously proposed to make unanimous, and this was done with great heartiness. Hon. Hannibal Hamlin was put upon the same ticket, so that it stood: Hon. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, President, and Hon. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Vice-President. And