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James, for instance-and when we see these timbers joined together, and see that they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting and all the lengths and proportions exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan drawn before the first blow was struck."

The convention nominated him as candidate for Senator, but the delegates went home with heavy hearts, fearing the sentiments expressed would not be acceptable to the Republicans of the State.

"The first ten lines of your speech will bring about your defeat," wrote his friend Swett from Chicago.

"You have made a great mistake," the words of another.

"If I had," wrote Mr. Lincoln in reply, "to draw my pen across my

LEONARD SWETT.

record and erase my whole life from sight, and if I had one poor choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world as it is."

Douglas and Lincoln both visited Chicago. A great crowd assembled in front of the Tremont House to listen to a speech from the former. He had many ardent friends who admired his great abilities and his winning ways. He knew Mr. Lincoln

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was in the city and courteously invited him to take a seat on the platform. It was a gracious act. The invitation was accepted. The thousands in the street had an opportunity of seeing the two foremost men of the State, both of them in the full vigor of manhood.

“I take great pleasure," said Douglas, " in saying that I have known personally and intimately, for about a quarter of a century, the worthy gentleman who has been nominated for my place, and I will say that I regard him as a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman-a good citizen and an honorable opponent; and whatever may be the issue I may have with him it will be of principle and not of personalities."

He read the opening sentences of the speech of Lincoln at Springfield, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," and said:

"Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the Free States against the Slave States, a war of extermination to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the States shall either become free or become slave."

He had ut

Mr. Lincoln had not indicated a desire to see any such contest, but had stated what would be the probable course of events. tered a prophecy, nothing more.

Douglas did not notice the allusion to the political carpenters and house-builders, Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James. He boldly announced his support of the decision rendered by the Supreme Court in relation to Dred and Harriet Scott.

...

"This Government is founded on the white basis. It was made for the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by the white men as they shall determine. . . . Kentucky has the right to say that her negroes shall be slaves, Illinois that her negroes shall not vote, New York that hers may vote, when qualified by property, and Maine that the negro is equal at the polls to the white man."

las.

The next evening Abraham Lincoln stood upon the same platform, looking down upon a sea of faces. He made a vigorous reply to DougA week later both candidates were in Bloomington. Douglas had misrepresented his opponent, but Lincoln was not irritated. With good-humor he spoke of those who supported Douglas. "They are looking upon him as certain at no distant day to be President. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, Cabinet appointments, chargéships, and foreign missions bursting and sprouting out in wonderful luxuriance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. . . . On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has seen any cabbages sprouting out."

...

"Challenge Douglas to a joint debate," said some of Lincoln's

friends.

"Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you and myself to divide the time and address the same audiences the present canvass?" read a note from Lincoln. It lead ultimately to an arrangement for a joint discussion in some of the principal towns in different parts of the State.

"It never will do for Lincoln to meet Douglas on the same platform," said timid friends.

The hotel of Mr. Chenery in Springfield was crowded with the friends of Lincoln, and he was there to meet them. The old-time sadness was on his face, for he knew many of them were fearful that he would be no match for Douglas.

"We are looking forward with some anxiety to your proposed debate," the remark of one who had ridden the circuit with him.

"Sit down; let me tell you a story. Have you and I not seen two men about to fight, one noisy and boastful, jumping, striking his fists together, telling what he is going to do, trying hard to skeer the other fellow, who don't say anything? His arms hang down, but his fists are clinched, his teeth are set, his muscles rigid. You may be sure he will whip. Good-bye. Remember what I say."

The sadness was gone; his face was beaming with smiles.

The arrangements were made. The first debate was at Ottawa, attended by 20,000 people. No hall could hold the multitudes who gathered to hear the two men who had risen from obscurity to be the foremost political debaters of the State. Douglas had a series of questions for which he demanded answers. Mr. Lincoln answered them unhesitatingly. Before the next meeting came, which was to be held at Freeport, Lincoln prepared four questions for Douglas to answer. was the third question propounded :

This

"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 code of political action?"

Douglas," said Lincoln's friends, "will reply by affirming this decision as an abstract principle, but denying its political application." "If he does that he can never be President," said Lincoln. "That is not your lookout; you are after the Senatorship." "No, gentlemen; I am killing larger game. The battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."

Mr. Douglas saw the dilemma in which he would be placed, and evaded answering the question. Throughout the campaign he trav

elled from town to town in a railway car decorated with flags, accompanied by his friends and a brass band.

Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, travelled alone. No trumpeter heralded his coming. He knew there was not much chance for him to win, but he was battling for great principles.

"Why don't you tell funny stories, and make people laugh and cheer you?" asked a friend.

"The occasion is too serious and the issue too grave. I do not seek applause, or to amuse the people," the reply.

"Somehow," said one who heard them both, "while Douglas was greeted with constant cheers, when Lincoln closed, the people seemed serious and thoughtful, and could be heard all through the crowd gravely and anxiously discussing the subjects on which he had been. speaking." (")

Mr. Douglas stated that he did not care whether slavery was voted into or out of the Territories; the negro was not his equal; the Declaration of Independence was not intended to include the negro. Far different is the following statement of Mr. Lincoln's convictions:

"The men who signed the Declaration of Independence said that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights-life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This was their lofty and wise and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures - yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of posterity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began; so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

"Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty-let me entreat you to come back.

Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me; take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity: the Declaration of American Independence."

It was a wearying campaign. Besides the seven debates with Douglas, Mr. Lincoln made many speeches throughout the State. Mr. Douglas travelled in a saloon car, luxuriously fitted up for his accommodation, where he could rest undisturbed after the fatigue of the day. The Superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad, George B. McClellan, was a Democrat, and Mr. Douglas's personal friend. Mr. Lincoln had been retained as an attorney for the railroad, but could obtain no accommodation from the officials of the company, who were in sympathy with Douglas, and who used their influence to secure his election.

The majority of votes was more than four thousand in Lincoln's favor, but the Democrats, through an unfair districting of the State, secured the election of a majority of the Legislature favorable to Douglas.

"I am glad," he said to a friend, "that I made the race. It gave me a hearing on the questions of the age which I could have had in no other way, and though I may sink entirely out of view and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of liberty after I am gone." (°)

The old-time depression returned. It was a natural sequence to the exhausting labors of the campaign. He was no longer receiving the

1858.

applause of listening thousands. The enthusiasm which susDec., tained him as he set forth the great questions involving the future welfare of the country no longer thrilled him. Pernicious political principles were in the ascendent; truth and justice had gone down in the conflict. Friends would soon forget that he had ever lived. Discouraged and downcast, he walked the streets. Little did he know how divine Providence had planned comfort and consolation. He heard sweet music-a melody and chorus. He stopped and listened to the enchanting strains floating upon the evening air. He was soothed by the music and enraptured by the words. They awakened tender

memories.

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