The Famous Contest for the Senatorship—A Battle of Giants-Douglas and Lincoln Compared - Two Self-Made Men Lincoln's Autobiography-A Series of Famous Debates-The Country Intent on the Struggle-A Great Lesson in American Politics.

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NCE more were Lincoln and Douglas to be pitted against each other. In 1858, the senatorial term. of Douglas was drawing to a close. He desired to be reelected and to have the endorsement of the people of Illinois. Seeing how the Lecompton constitution had been lawlessly framed, and realizing that slavery thus forced upon Kansas had already made hosts of converts to the Republican party, he had begun to differ, personally, with the President. He soon, by his votes in the Senate, showed that he was opposed to the Lecompton constitution. It was inconsistent for him to labor against that which his own Kansas-Nebraska Bill had made possible. But this he did, and not a few Republicans in the Eastern States thought that he would hereafter be with them. They advised that the Illinois Republicans should vote for him. He was now an anti-Lecompton Democrat, as the phrase went; he was sure, so they thought, for

freedom as against slavery. The Republicans of Illinois knew Douglas better. They refused to trust him, and when their convention met, June 16, 1858, they declared that Abraham Lincoln was their first and only choice for the United States Senate to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas' term of office. The anti-Lecompton Democrats of the State, two months before, had similarly nominated Douglas to succeed himself.

Lincoln realized that this was to be a mighty struggle. None better than he understood and appreciated the great abilities and craftiness of Douglas. None better than he knew how tender the people of Illinois yet were on the subject of human slavery, half afraid of the stale epithet of" Abolitionist." He framed his speech to the convention that had nominated him, putting into it his final platform, the platform from which he was to speak to the people during the coming canvass. The men who were to choose a Senator-himself or Douglas-were not yet chosen, except a few in the upper house, who held over from the previous year. It was to the people who elected Senators and Representatives in the Legislature that he and Douglas were to appeal. Lincoln read the manuscript of his speech to his partner, Mr. W. H. Herndon. That gentleman was somewhat dismayed by the very first paragraph. It was almost an endorsement of the old anti-slavery doctrine of disunion; for in it was the sincefamous declaration : "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure per

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manently, half slave and half free." Mr. Herndon said this was all true; but he was doubtful if it was discreet to say so at that time. Alluding to the phrase "a house divided,” etc., Lincoln said: "The proposition has been true for six thousand years. I will deliver this speech as it is written." And he did.

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In the course of that address he said : I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become lawful in all States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

When Douglas opened the campaign, as he did in Chicago early in the following month, he promptly took up this utterance of Lincoln's as admitting, and even advocating, a war of sections, North against the South. We shall see later on how Lincoln answered this misrepresentation.

When this memorable debate began, Lincoln and Douglas were both in the full maturity of their physical and intellectual powers. Douglas was forty-five years old, and Lincoln was forty-nine. Douglas was a native of Vermont. He had been apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, and had migrated at the age of twenty to Illinois, where he earned his first money as a clerk at an auction sale. Like Lincoln, then, he was a self-made man, risen to eminence

by the sheer force of character and genius. At the age of twenty-two he was elected Attorney-General of the young State. Resigning this office, he was chosen to the State Legislature, where he speedily made his mark as a shrewd politician, a ready debater, and a thoroughly "good fellow." Here it was that he first met LincolnLincoln who was to be his life-long adversary in the field of American politics. Subsequently he was elected Representative in Congress three times in succession. Before

the time came for him to take his seat in the House of Representatives, after his third election, Douglas was chosen Senator of the United States from Illinois. He was now at the end of his second term as Senator, and was ready to appeal to the people to choose members of the Legislature who should return him to the Senate. Douglas was frank, hearty, and affable in his manners. Although in debate he was overbearing and imperious, towards his friends he was familiar, and even affectionate. He was a bold, dashing, and fearless debater, fluent, never hesitating for a word or phrase, aggressive, and sometimes arrogant, full of all manner of guile, yet impressing every one with his apparent sincerity and transparency of character. So attractive was he that he bound his friends to him, as it were, with hooks of steel. Small of stature, with long and grizzled hair, at the time this chapter of history opens his admirers called him "The Little Giant of Illinois.” This was the man who was to meet Lincoln in a popular canvass, in which the whole State was to be traversed.

LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

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Lincoln was, as we know, of almost herculean build. His head was massive, poised on a very long neck, with stiff and obstinate hair that usually stood up in irregular waves. His face was dark and seamed, his eyes deep-set beneath overhanging and shaggy brows, beardless, and with a far-away look on his often-sad features at times that struck even the most casual observer as profoundly pathetic. His manner, when he was alert, was bright, and when with his congenial associates, even jovial. In speaking he impressed every one with his directness, simplicity, good-sense, clearness of statement, wit and humor, and purity and accuracy of language. At this time he was asked for a brief biographical sketch of himself. He complied with the following, which is inserted here at a point that must be reckoned as one of the crises in the history of Abraham Lincoln, son of the Kentucky backwoods

man:

"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon, counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or '2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.