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relative." This gentleman says, "The Todd-Stuart-Edwards family, with preacher and priest, dogs and servants, got mad at Mr. Lincoln because he made The House-divided-againstitself Speech.' He flinched, dodged, said he would explain, and did explain, in the Douglas debates."

But it was difficult to explain: explanations of the kind are generally more hurtful than the original offence. Accordingly, Mr. Herndon reports in his broad, blunt way, that " Mr. Lincoln met with many cold shoulders for some time, nay, during the whole canvass with Douglas." At the great public meetings which characterized that campaign, "you could hear, from all quarters in the crowd, Republicans saying, 'Damn that fool speech! it will be the cause of the death of Lincoln and the Republican party. Such folly! such nonsense! Damn it!

Since 1840 Lincoln and Douglas had appeared before the people, almost as regularly as the elections came round, to discuss, the one against the other, the merits of parties, candidates, and principles. Thus far Mr. Lincoln had been in a certain sense the pursuer : he had lain in wait for Mr. Douglas; he had caught him at unexpected turns and upon sharp points; he had mercilessly improved the advantage of Mr. Douglas's long record in Congress to pick apart and to criticise, while his own was so much more humble and less extensive. But now at last they were abreast, candidates for the same office, with a fair field and equal opportunities. It was the great crisis in the lives of both. Let us see what they thought of each other; and, in the extracts which convey the information, we may also get a better idea of the character of each for candor, generosity, and truthfulness.

Dr. Holland quotes from one of Mr. Lincoln's unpublished manuscripts as follows:

"Twenty-two years ago, Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted: we were both young then, he a trifle younger than I. Even then we were both ambitious, — I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me the race of ambition has been a failure, a flat failure; with him it has been one

of splendid success. His name fills the nation, and is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminente he has reached, so reached that the oppressed of my species might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow."

Again, in the pending campaign, Mr. Lincoln said, “There is still another disadvantage under which we labor, and to which I will invite your attention. It arises out of the relative positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate. Senator Douglas is of worldwide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who had been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen, in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargéships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but, with greedier anxiety, they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what, even in the days of his highest prosperity, they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages, all taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and principle alone."

Now hear Mr. Douglas. In their first joint debate at Ottawa, he said, "In the remarks I have made on this platform, and the position of Mr. Lincoln upon it, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got

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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 grocery-keeper 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 every thing which they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I could; and, when a cabinet-maker, I made a good bedstead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than with any thing else; but I believe that Lincoln was always more successful in business than I, for his business enabled him to get into the Legislature. I met him there, however, and had a sympathy with him, because of the up-hill struggle we both had in life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling, or running a foot-race, in pitching quoits, or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor than all of the boys of the town together; and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse-race or fist-fight excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody that was present and participated. I sympathized with him because he was struggling with difficulties; and so was I. Mr. Lincoln served with me in the Legislature in 1836, when we both retired, and he subsided, or became submerged; and he was lost sight of as a public man for some years. In 1846, when Wilmot introduced his celebrated proviso, and the abolition tornado swept over the country, Lincoln again turned up as a member of Congress from the Sangamon district. I was then in the Senate of the United States, and was glad to welcome my old friend and companion. Whilst in Congress, he distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican War, taking the side of the common enemy against his own country; and, when he returned home, he found that the indignation of the people followed him everywhere, and he was again submerged, or obliged to retire into private life, forgotten by his former friends. He came up again in 1854, just

in time to make this abolition or Black Republican platform, in company with Giddings, Lovejoy, Chase, and Fred. Douglas, for the Republican party to stand upon. Trumbull, too, was one of our own contemporaries.”

Previous pages of this book present fully enough for our present purpose the issues upon which this canvass was made to turn. The principal speeches, the joint debates, with five separate and independent speeches by Mr. Lincoln, and three by Mr. Douglas, have been collected and published under Mr. Lincoln's supervision in a neat and accessible volume. It is, therefore, unnecessary, and would be unjust, to reprint them here. They obtained at the time a more extensive circulation than such productions usually have, and exerted an influence which is very surprising to the calm reader of the present day.

Mr. Douglas endeavored to prove, from Mr. Lincoln's Springfield speech, that he (Mr. Lincoln) was a self-declared Disunionist, in favor of reducing the institutions of all the States "to a dead uniformity," in favor of abolishing slavery everywhere, an old-time abolitionist, a negropolist, an amalgamationist. This, with much vaunting of himself for his opposition to Lecompton, and a loud proclamation of "popular sovereignty," made the bulk of Mr. Douglas's speeches.

Mr. Lincoln denied these accusations; he had no "thought of bringing about civil war," nor yet uniformity of institutions: he would not interfere with slavery where it had a lawful existence, and was not in favor of negro equality or miscegenation. He did, however, believe that Congress had the right to exclude slavery from the Territories, and ought to exercise it. As to Mr. Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty, there could be no issue concerning it; for everybody agreed that the people of a Territory might, when they formed a State constitution, adopt or exclude slavery as they pleased. But that a Territorial Legislature possessed exclusive power, or any power at all, over the subject, even Mr Douglas could not assert, inasmuch as the Dred-Scott Decis

ion was plain and explicit the other way; and Mr. Douglas boasted that decision as the rule of his political conduct, and sought to impose it upon all parties as a perfect definition of the rights and duties of government, local and general.

At Ottawa, Mr. Douglas put to Mr. Lincoln a series of questions, which, upon their next meeting (at Freeport), Mr. Lincoln answered as follows:

I have supposed myself, since the organization of the Republican party at Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by the platforms of the party, then and since. If, in any interrogatories which I shall answer, I go beyond the scope of what is within these platforms, it will be perceived that no one is responsible but myself.

Having said thus much, I will take up the judge's interrogatories as I find them printed in "The Chicago Times," and answer them seriatim. In order that there may be no mistake about it, I have copied the interrogatories in writing, and also my answers to them. The first one of these interrogatories is in these words:

Question 1.—“I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive-Slave Law." Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive-Slave Law.

Q. 2. "I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more Slave States into the Union, even if the people want them."

A.

▲. — “I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more Slave States into the Union.

Q. 3. "I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make."

A.—I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union, with such a constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make.

Q. 4. "I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia."

A.- I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Q. 5. "I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States."

A.—I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States.