The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XIII

Mr. Lincoln wanted closer work than Mr. Douglas had given him. He desired to address the same audiences with his antagonist, and to show to those whom he addressed the fallacy of his reasoning and the groundlessness of his charges. Accordingly, on the twenty-fourth of July, he dispatched the following note:--

--My Dear Sir: Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences the present canvass? Mr. Judd, who will hand you this, is authorized to receive your answer; and, if agreeable to you, to enter into the terms of such arrangement.

"Your obedient servant,

To this Mr. Douglas replied, stating that recent events had interposed difficulties in the way of such an arrangement. In connection with the State Central Committee at Springfield, he had made a series of appointments extending over nearly the whole period that remained before the election, and the people of the various localities had been notified of the times and places of the meetings. The candidates for Congress, the legislature and other offices would desire to speak at these meetings, and thus all the time would be occupied. Then he proceeded to give, as a further reason for his refusal, that it was intended to bring out another candidate for United States senator, to divide the democratic vote for the benefit of Mr. Lincoln, and that he (the third candidate) would also claim a chance in the joint debates, so that he (said third candidate) and Mr. Lincoln would have the opening and closing speech in every instance. While, therefore, he declined the general invitation, he declared himself ready to make an arrangement for seven joint debates in the congressional districts respectively where they had not already spoken, and at the following places, viz: Freeport, Ottawa, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton, Jonesboro and Charleston. This letter was published in the Chicago Times, and read there by Mr. Lincoln before he received the autograph by mail.

To this letter Mr. Lincoln responded, denying, of course, the foolish charge of intended unfairness in bringing in a third candidate to divide the time to the disadvantage of Mr. Douglas, and agreeing to speak in the seven places mentioned. There is other matter in these letters which thoroughly discovers the characteristics of the two writers, but it must be left behind.

Mr. Douglas replied to this second letter of Mr. Lincoln, designating the time and places of the debate as they follow:

"Ottawa, LaSalle County, August 21st, 1858; Freeport, Stephenson County, August 27th; Jonesboro, Union County, September 15th; Charleston, Coles County, September 18th; Galesburg, Knox County, October 7th; Quincy, Adams County, October 13th; Alton, Madison County, October 15th."

The terms proposed in this letter and accepted in a subsequent note by Mr. Lincoln, were, that at Ottawa, Mr. Douglas should speak an hour, then Mr. Lincoln an hour and a half; Mr. Douglas having the closing speech of half an hour. At the next place, Mr. Lincoln should open and close in the same way, and so on, alternately, to the conclusion of the arrangement.

As about three weeks intervened between the date of this agreement for joint debates and the first appointment, both parties engaged zealously in their independent work. Mr. Lincoln began his canvass at Beardstown, the spot where, twenty-five years before, he had taken his military company for rendezvous before starting out for the Black Hawk war. After making a speech here, he went up the Illinois River to Havana and Bath in Mason County, to Lewistown and Canton in Fulton County, and to Peoria and Henry in Marshall County, making speeches at each place, and attracting immense audiences. Mr. Douglas was equally busy, and equally fortunate in attracting the people to listen to his utterances upon the great questions of the day. At Clinton, in DeWitt County, he found it no longer possible to pass in silence the charge of Mr. Lincoln that he had "left a niche in the Nebraska bill to receive the Dred Scott decision," which declared in effect, that a territorial legislature could not abolish slavery. Mr. Douglas here stated that his self-respect alone prevented him from calling this charge a falsehood. Subsequently, at Beardstown, he broke over his restraints, and called it "an infamous lie." To this Mr. Lincoln responded on a subsequent occasion as follows:

"'I say to you, gentlemen, that it would be more to the purpose for Judge Douglas to say that he did not repeal the Missouri compromise; that he did not make slavery possible where it was impossible before; that he did not leave a niche in the Nebraska bill for the Dred Scott decision to rest in; that he did not vote down a clause giving the people the right to exclude slavery if they wanted to; that he did not refuse to give his individual opinion whether a territorial legislature could exclude slavery; that he did not make a report to the senate in which he said that the rights of the people in this regard were held in abeyance, and could not be immediately exercised; that he did not make a hasty indorsement of the Dred Scott decision over at Springfield; that he does not now indorse that decision; that that decision does not take away from the territorial legislature the power to exclude slavery; and that he did not in the original Nebraska bill so couple the words 'state' and 'territory' together that what the Supreme Court has done in forcing open all the territories for slavery, it may yet do in forcing open all the state;--I say it would be vastly more to the point, for Judge Douglas to say he did not do some of these things, did not forge some of the links of overwhelming testimony, than to go to vociferating about the country that possibly he may be obliged to hint that somebody is a liar.'"

The first meeting of the series agreed upon was held at Ottawa according to appointment. A concourse of citizens estimated at twelve thousand had assembled. Mr. Douglas had the opening speech, and in this speech he resorted to an expedient for placing Mr. Lincoln on the defensive which was either very weak, or very wicked. He made a charge against Mr. Lincoln which, if he knew it to be false, was foul, and which, if he did not know to be true, was most impolitic. He charged that Mr. Lincoln, on the part of the whigs, and Mr. Trumbull, on the part of the democrats, entered into an arrangement in 1854, for the dissolution of the two parties, and the fusing of both in the republican party, for the purpose of giving Lincoln Shields' place in the Senate, and Trumbull, his (Douglas') own. Furthermore, that the parties met at Springfield in October of that year, and, in convention of their friends, laid down a platform of the principles upon which the new party was constructed. He then proceeded to read what he called "the most important and material resolutions of the abolition platform." What these resolutions were, will appear in Mr. Lincoln's replies to the questions which Mr. Douglas based upon them. His object in asking these questions was, as he said, in order that when he should "trot him (Lincoln) down" to lower Egypt (southern Illinois) he might put the same questions to him there.

The hearty reception which the audience gave to the principles of this platform as he pronounced them, did not please Mr. Douglas. He wished to see whether they would "bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro." "I have a right," said Mr. Douglas, "to an answer, for I quote from the platform of the republican party, made by himself (Lincoln) and others at the time that party was formed, and the bargain made by Mr. Lincoln to dissolve and kill the old whig party, and transfer its members, bound hand and foot, to the abolition party, under the direction of Giddings and Fred Douglass."

Mr. Douglas went on then to comment on Mr. Lincoln's Springfield speech, which had come to be known as "the house-divided-against-itself speech," and slid, as usual, into his talk about the inferiority of the negro. Speaking of Mr. Lincoln and the "abolition orators," he said, "he and they maintain that negro equality is guaranteed by the laws of God, and that it is asserted in the Declaration of Independence. If they think so, of course they have a right to say so, and so vote.  I do not question Mr. Lincoln's conscientious belief that the negro was made his equal, and, hence, his brother; but for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever."

And here it may be said, because it will be impossible to describe with particularity all the speeches of the campaign, that the staple of the speeches of Mr. Douglas, as well as those of Mr. Lincoln, related to a very few points, which may be summed up in a brace of paragraphs.

Mr. Douglas did not believe in natural negro equality, and did believe that every state had the right to say just what rights she would confer upon the negro; that the people of every territory had a right to decide as to what their institutions should be, while he bowed, at the same time, to the Dred Scott decision, which declared that they had no right to abolish slavery; and that the country could endure half slave and half free as well for all coming time as it had for the previous eighty years, while slavery itself, to him, was a matter of indifference--an institution which might be "voted up or voted down," without any appeal to his preferences.

On the other hand, Mr. Lincoln placed himself on the broad ground of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, and are by heaven endowed with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He recognized the negro as a man, coming within the broad sweep of this Declaration. He believed thoroughly in Mr. Douglas' doctrine of popular sovereignty, without the Dred Scott qualification, which was a direct denial of the sovereignty; but he believed the abrogation of the Missouri compromise, which Mr. Douglas himself had effected, an unspeakable wrong, a foul breach of faith, by which it was rendered possible for the people of a territory to choose slavery, and by which the forcing of slavery upon them was rendered practicable. Furthermore, he saw in that "piece of machinery," made up of congressional legislation, Supreme Court decisions and executive and party connivance, an attempt to nationalize and perpetuate slavery, which he felt must logically ultimate in that result, or end in universal emancipation. Slavery, he believed, had lived by the side of freedom, and in partnership with it, simply because freedom had regarded itself as eternal, while it had regarded slavery as ephemeral. Thus the fathers regarded and treated slavery. They had curtailed its territory. They had forbidden the importation of slaves. All their arrangements looked to an early end of slavery; and Mr. Lincoln quoted the champions of slavery to sustain his views on this point. When the policy of the government changed, and it was proposed to nationalize slavery and make it perpetual--to confer upon it the same rights with freedom--nay, to make it impossible for freedom to abolish it--then he foresaw a conflict which could only end by its utter overthrow, or its universal prevalence. He did not believe the house would fall; he did believe that it would cease to be divided.

The seven joint debates rang their changes on these points, as they were held and maintained by the debaters. Mr. Douglas did not seem to be as fertile in thought and expression as his antagonist. He was more given to diversions, to the ordinary clap-trap of campaign speaking, to appeals to prejudices, to the springing of false issues, to quibbles and tricks. Mr. Lincoln, on the contrary, was in thorough earnest, and stuck with manly tenacity to the great questions he had in hand. He stripped every objectionable proposition and every specious argument of the disguises in which the ingenious language of Mr. Douglas had clothed them, and refused to be led away, by a hair's breadth, from the real, naked issues of the campaign.

In replying to Judge Douglas at Ottawa, he simply said that the story of his bargain with Mr. Trumbull was not true, and that he was so far from having had anything to do with the convention to which the Senator had alluded that he was attending court, off in Tazewell County, when it was held. That was all there was of Mr. Douglas' charges. They had not an inch of truth to stand upon; and it was discovered immediately after the debate that the resolutions which Mr. Douglas had quoted had not been passed in Springfield at all, by any convention, and that, although they had been uttered by a local convention in the town of Aurora, they were, for the purposes used, and under the circumstances, essentially a forgery, for which Mr. Douglas or his friends were guiltily responsible. The charge that Mr. Lincoln was in the convention, that he made a bargain with Mr. Trumbull, that he was responsible for a certain set of anti-slavery resolutions, and that the resolutions which he read were passed by the convention that was held at Springfield, was false in every particular. Did Mr. Douglas know it to be so? Perhaps the only reply that it is proper to make to this question is that he ought to have known it to be so.

In Mr. Lincoln's reply, he quoted from his Peoria speech made in 1854, to which allusion has been made in this history, to show his exact position on the subject of slavery in the states where it existed. He said in that speech that he had no prejudice against the southern people. They were just what we should be under their circumstances. "If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up." He understood how difficult it was to get rid of slavery, and he did not blame them for not doing what he should not know how to do himself. He acknowledged his constitutional obligations, and went so far as to say that he would be willing to give them a law for reclaiming fugitives, provided a law could be made which would not be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one. This, notwithstanding he hated slavery for the monstrous injustice of slavery itself, and for its disgrace to democratic institutions. But all these facts had no effect upon his mind when he came to consider the question of extending slavery over territory now free. There was no more excuse, in his opinion, for permitting slavery to go into free territory, than for reviving the African slave-trade by law. "The law which forbids the bringing a slave from Africa," said Mr. Lincoln, "and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished, on any moral principle." The principal point urged against Judge Douglas in this speech touched his devotion to Supreme Court decisions. A decision of this Court was to him a "Thus saith the Lord." There was no appeal from it; and the next decision of this same Court, whatever it might be, was indorsed in advance. It is simply for the Supreme Court to say that no state under the Constitution can exclude slavery, and he must bow to the decision, just as when it says no territory can thus exclude it. Mr. Lincoln closed his remarks on this point by an argumentum ad hominem, equally characteristic and clever:

"'The next decision, as much as this, will be a Thus saith the Lord. There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this decision. It is nothing that I point out to him that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force of decisions.  It is nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe.  I have said that I have often heard him approve of Jackson's course in disregarding the decision of the Supreme Court pronouncing a national bank constitutional.   He says I did not hear him say so.  He denies the accuracy of my recollection.  I say he ought to know better than I, but I will make no question about this thing, though it still seems to me that I heard him say it twenty times.  I will tell him though, that he now claims to stand on the Cincinnati platform, which affirms that Congress cannot charter a national bank, in the teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a bank. And I remind him of another piece of history on the question of respect for judicial decisions, and it is a piece of Illinois history, belonging to a time when the large party to which Judge Douglas belonged were displeased with a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois, because they had decided that a Governor could not remove a Secretary of State. You will find the whole story in Ford's History of Illinois; and I know that Judge Douglas will not deny that he was then in favor of overslaughing that decision by the mode of adding five new Judges, so as to vote down the four old ones. Not only so, but it ended in the Judge's sitting down on that very bench as one of the five new Judges to break down the four old ones. It was in this way precisely that he got his title of Judge. Now, when the Judge tells me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members of a court, will have to be catechised beforehand upon some subject, I say, 'You know, Judge; you have tried it.' When he says a court of this kind will lose the confidence of all men, will be prostituted and disgraced by such a proceeding, I say, 'You knoW best, Judge; you have been through the mill.'  But I cannot shake Judge Douglas' teeth loose from the Dred Scott decision. Like some obstinate animal (I mean no disrespect,) that will hang on when he has once got his teeth fixed; you may cut off a leg, or you may tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold. And so I may point out to the Judge, and say that he is bespattered all over, from the beginning of his political life to the present time, with attacks upon judicial decisions--I may cut off limb after limb of his public record, and strive to wrench him from a single dictum of the court--yet I cannot divert him from it. He hangs, to the last, to the Dred Scott decision. These things show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he adheres to this decision, and for which he will adhere to all other decisions of the same court.'"

At the close of the half hour which Mr. Douglas employed in his reply to Mr. Lincoln, the latter was literally borne away upon the shoulders of his friends, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, a fact to which Mr. Douglas made playful allusion a few days afterwards, in the statement that Mr. Lincoln was so much frightened that he had to be taken from the stand, and was laid up for seven days. Mr. Lincoln was too simple, too much in earnest, and too sensitive, to take this badinage gracefully. He really supposed there might be persons who would believe it, as appeared in a subsequent speech, in which he made it a matter of complaint.

At the Freeport meeting, Mr. Lincoln had the opening speech, and commenced by answering the interrogatories which Mr. Douglas had addressed to him at Ottawa, based upon the declarations of the Aurora resolutions. Mr. Douglas asked him if he stood pledged now to the same details of policy that he did in 1854--details which he drew from the resolutions he had read; and to his questions Mr. Lincoln made these replies, seriatim: that he was not then, and never had been pledged to the unconditional repeal of the fugitive slave law; that he was not then, and had never been, pledged against the admission of any more slave states; that he did 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; that he did not stand pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; that he did not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different states; and that he was pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States territories. After saying that he had replied in terms to the Judge, and that he was not "pledged" to any of these principles or measures, he further said that he would not hang upon the form of the questions, but utter what he did think on all the subjects involved in them. He believed the southern people were entitled, under the Constitution, to a congressional fugitive slave law; said that he should be very sorry to see any more slave states applying for admission to the Union, and declared that he would not only be glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia, but he believed that Congress had the constitutional power to abolish it there. Having answered Mr. Douglas' questions--these and the remainder--in accordance with opinions with which the reader is already familiar, he was ready to turn questioner, and give the Judge something to do, in the same line of effort. He had already consulted with his friends concerning the matter, and, in his conversation on the subject, had dropped an expression which showed that he was looking beyond the senatorial contest for the grand results of the discussion. In Mr. Lincoln's view the principal point of debate was Mr. Douglas' doctrine of popular sovereignty, in connection with the Dred Scott decision--the two things in his judgment being in direct antagonism, and being, in reality, a shameful fraud. This antagonism Mr. Lincoln proposed to present in the form of interrogatories, but his friends remonstrated. "If you put that question to him," they said, "he will perceive that an answer, giving practical force and effect to the Dred Scott decision in the territories, inevitably loses him the battle; and he will therefore reply by offering the decision as an abstract principle, but denying its practical application." "But," said Mr. Lincoln, "if he does that, he can never be President." His friends replied, "that is not your lookout; you are after the senatorship." "No, gentlemen," said he, "I am killing larger game. The battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."

Whether Mr. Lincoln then expected to be the republican candidate for the presidency in 1860, there are no means of judging; but that he intended the discussion to damage Mr. Douglas' presidential prospects there is no doubt. So Mr. Lincoln put his questions, which, in their order, were as they follow:

"1. If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a state constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the English bill--some ninety-three thousand--will you vote to admit them?

"2. 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 limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?

"3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that states cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting and following such decision, as a rule of political action?

"4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?"

To the first question Mr. Douglas replied that he held it a sound role, of universal application, to require a territory to contain the requisite population for a member of Congress, before it is admitted as a state into the Union; but it having been decided by Congress that Kansas had population enough for a slave state, he held that she had enough for a free state. His answer to the second question was in brief this: "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 it, 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; and 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." The third question he answered by stating that a decision of the Supreme Court that states could not exclude slavery from their limits, would "be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench would ever descend to." The thing in his view was simply impossible. This left the real question unanswered. Mr. Lincoln had not asked him whether the Supreme Court would or could make such a decision, but had inquired what he would do in the event that it should. To the fourth interrogatory he replied, "Whenever it becomes necessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, I am in favor of it, without reference to the question of slavery; and when we have acquired it I will leave the people free to do as they please--either to make it slave or free territory as they prefer."

To the answer to the second question Mr. Lincoln responded by charging Mr. Douglas with changing his ground; and referred to the record to prove his charge. He referred to the inquiry made by Judge Trumbull of Judge Douglas in the United States Senate, on this very point, when the former asked the latter whether the people of a territory had the lawful power to exclude slavery, prior to the formation of a constitution. The Judge's reply then was that it was a question to be decided by the Supreme Court. The question has been decided by the Supreme Court, and now the Judge, by saying that the people can exclude slavery if they choose, virtually says that it is not a question for the Supreme Court but a question for the people. The proposition that "slavery cannot exist a day or an hour without local police regulations" is historically false, even in the case of Dred Scott himself, who was held in Minnesota territory not only without police regulations, but in the teeth of Congressional legislation, supposed to be valid at the time. The absurdity of adhering to the Dred Scott decision and maintaining popular sovereignty at the same time, he put into a single sentence in a subsequent speech, made in Ohio--a sentence which contained the whole argument. It was declaring, he said, "no less than that a thing may lawfully be driven away from a place where it has a lawful right to be."

It is impossible to follow to their conclusion this series of debates in the pages of this volume. Enough has been written to reveal the ground of the two antagonists, the merits of the questions they discussed and their modes of conducting debate. Into the side questions which sprang up on every fresh occasion, and which were connected with persons and local politics, it is not possible, and, perhaps, not desirable, to follow the debaters. They kept their appointments, and fulfilled the terms of their arrangement. They attracted to them immense crowds, wherever they appeared; and the whole nation looked on with an intense interest. There has never been a local canvass since the formation of the government which so attracted the attention of the politicians of other states as this. It was the key note of the coming presidential campaign. It was a thorough presentation of the issues upon which the next national battle was to be fought. The eyes of all the eastern states were turned to the west where young republicanism and old democracy were establishing the dividing lines of the two parties, and preparing the ground for the great struggle soon to be begun.

To say that Mr. Lincoln was the victor in this contest, morally and intellectually, is simply to record the judgment of the world. To say that he was victor in every way before the people of Illinois it needs only to be recorded that he received a majority in the popular vote over Mr. Douglas of four thousand eighty-five. There is this to be said, however, in connection with these statements. Whatever the advantages of Mr. Douglas may have been, Mr. Lincoln had the great advantage of belonging to a new and aggressive party, which had started freshly in the strife for power, and had not been corrupted by power. It had not lived long enough to depart from the principles of truth and justice in which it had its birth. Standing on the ground that slavery was wrong and that its perpetuation would be a calamity, and its diffusion through new territory a crime, Mr. Lincoln not only felt, but knew, that he was right. This made him strong. Mr. Douglas was looking for the presidency, and knew that if he should ever reach and grasp the prize before him, he must do it through the aid of the slaveholding states. He knew that he could only secure this support by a certain degree of friendliness, or an entire indifference, to slavery. He intended to ride into power on the back of popular sovereignty, giving at least nominal equality to slavery and freedom in the territories, while, at the same time, endorsing the decision of the Supreme Court as to what the exact rights of slavery were, under the Constitution. His policy was not only that of the democratic party of Illinois, but essentially that of the whole North. He boasted of this on one occasion, upon which Mr. Lincoln retorted the charge of sectionalism. Mr. Douglas had been obliged to defer so much to the spirit of freedom and to the rights of free labor in the territories--had been obliged for fear of defeat to go so far from the original path he had marked out for himself--that Mr. Lincoln called his attention to the fact that his speeches would not pass current south of the Ohio so readily as they had formerly done. "Whatever may be the result of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas and myself," said he, "I see the day rapidly approaching when his pill of 'sectionalism,' which he has been thrusting down the throats of republicans for years past, will be crowded down his own throat." It was undoubtedly the grand aim of Mr. Lincoln, throughout the whole series of debates, to drive Mr. Douglas into such an open declaration for slavery as to secure his defeat for the senatorial office, or, failing in that, to compel him to such declarations on behalf of freedom as would spoil him as a southern candidate for the presidency. "The battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this," Mr. Lincoln had said to his friends before the Freeport debate. He saw further than they. He was "killing larger game" than the senatorship, and he certainly did kill, or assist in killing, Judge Douglas, as a southern candidate for the presidency.

These debates of these two champions, respectively of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of party policy, were published entire as a campaign document in the republican interest, when Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, without a word of comment, the people being left to form their own conclusions as to the merits of the controversy, and the relative ability of the men whom it represented.

It is in vain to look for any better presentation of the principles of the republican party, or a better definition of the issues which divided it from the democratic party of the time, than are to be found in these speeches of Mr. Lincoln. They cover the whole ground. They are clear, sound, logical, powerful and exhaustive; and, in connection with two or three speeches made afterwards in Ohio and New York, form the chief material on which his reputation as an orator and a debater must rest. The man who shall write the story of the great rebellion on behalf of human slavery must go back to these masterly speeches of an Illinois lawyer to find the clearest and most complete statement of those differences between the power of slavery, and the spirit of freedom--the policy of slavery and the policy of freedom--which ended, after expenditures of uncounted treasure and unmeasured blood, in the final overthrow of the accursed institution.

Mr. Lincoln was beaten in his contest for the seat of Mr. Douglas in the Senate, in consequence of the unfair apportionment of the legislative districts. When it came to a ballot in the legislature, it was found that there were fourteen democrats to eleven republicans in the Senate, and forty democrats to thirty-five republicans in the House. This re-instated Mr. Douglas; and the champion of the republican party was defeated after a contest fought by him with wonderful power and persistence, with unfailing fairness, good nature and magnanimity, and with a skill rarely if ever surpassed. He had visited every part of the state, made about sixty speeches, been received by the people everywhere with unbounded enthusiasm, had grown strong with every day's exercise, was conscious that he had worsted his antagonist in the intellectual struggle, and, when defeat came, he could not have been otherwise than disappointed. On being asked by a friend how he felt when the returns came in that insured his defeat, he replied that he felt, he supposed, very much like the stripling who had bruised his toe--"too badly to laugh and too big to cry." But the battle of 1860 was indeed worth a hundred of that, and to it, events will swiftly lead us.