The first of the joint debates was held at Ottawa, on August 21. Douglas, in accepting the challenge, had chosen to open and close four times to his rival's three, but Lincoln was too eager for the fray to be stopped by such an advantage. Douglas in this first joint debate charged that in 1854 “Lincoln went to work to abolitionize the old Whig party all over the state." He showered the term "Black Republican Ion him and his associates. He accused him of hostility to the Mexican War, and even went off into side-tracks of misrepresentation to amuse his audience and waste his opponent's time in reply. He told with mock admiration how nobly Lincoln presided at fist-fights and horse-races, and how he "could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together."

The audience at such an encounter was not overburdened with awe or etiquette, but both speakers knew how to manage it. While Lincoln was trying to explain the speech which he had made in the contest of 1854, a voice in the crowd cried, "Put on your specs." "Yes, sir," replied Lincoln, "I am obliged to; I am no longer a young man." Not only disrespectful jests but searching questions were likely to be shouted out of the throng at any moment, and each combatant had to be either fertile in resources or certain of his ground. Douglas was

one. Lincoln was both. It is not difficult, in reading the speeches now, in cold blood, with a knowledge of the issue, to see the superiority of Lincoln's, nor is it difficult to see the brilliant skill with which Douglas kept the contest on the points most dangerous to his adversary. One of the lighter replies in this first battle has a particular flavor of Lincoln's character. Douglas had spoken of him, in his superior way, as a “kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman." Lincoln pretended to be overjoyed with such praise from such a source, and likened himself to the hoozier who said he reckoned he loved gingerbread better than any other man, and got less of it.

The second meeting took place August 27, at Freeport. The state of public feeling in Illinois is indicated by the stress that the judge thought it wise to put on the fact that the negro Fred Douglass had been seen driving with a white woman. It was apparently one of the most excited of the meetings, with interruptions which led Douglas to charge one element of the crowd with vulgarity and blackguardism. Lincoln replied that he should not receive any vulgarity and blackguardism himself because he would not inflict any. Personalities were pretty severe in this debate, and also in the next, September 15, at Janesboro, containing an elaborately disputed

question of veracity. In the fourth debate at Charlestown, September 18, Lincoln explained clearly that he was not in favor of giving the negroes votes, the right to sit on juries, or any sort of social equality; but just as clearly in the sixth, October 13, at Quincy, he insisted on the moral foundation of the whole political question. Throughout Lincoln's whole career, two points of view must be kept in mind, and then his attitude will be seen to be surprisingly consistent. One aspect is what he wished for in the end, and that was universal freedom, but only such political and social equality as progress by the negroes should invite. The other aspect is what he would advise doing under the immediate circumstances, and in treating that side he went so far as to say he would not have all fugitive slave laws done away with, and, of course, he would not interfere with slavery in slave states. The hardest question Douglas pressed in the whole debate was one that Lincoln long hesitated to answer, finally acknowledging that he would vote to admit to the Union, under slave constitution, territory owned by the United States, provided the inhabitants desired to have slavery. Douglas also gave Lincoln trouble over the Dred Scott decision, for while it was easy, consistent, and reasonable to hold that the law must be recognized as long as it existed, but that it would probably

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some time cease to be law, this was not an easy distinction to force through all the intricacies of debate. Douglas, on the other hand, was troubled by Lincoln's questions about the right of the people in a territory to exclude slavery prior to the formation of a state constitution, and about the right of slaveholders in territories to have their property protected by Congress. Over the first question he wriggled furiously and created the Freeport Doctrine of popular sovereignty, which ultimately destroyed him. When the second was put he exclaimed, “Repeat that; I want to answer that question." But he never did. It should be remembered that the combatants chose their points not solely for the crowd in front of them, but for leisurely readers of the newspapers, and in the end it was by them that the answers of Douglas were weighed and found wanting.

The last debate was at Alton, on October 15. The election followed soon, and Douglas won. In popular vote the Republicans had a small plurality, but the legislature, which elected the senator was slightly Democratic in both branches. On November 15, Lincoln wrote: Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest. No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in har

mony long. Another explosion will soon come." Horace Greeley says that on the real issue fought out between Lincoln and Douglas, Illinois was about equally divided, and that in the autumn Douglas was elected after borrowing and disbursing in the canvass $80,000, a debt which weighed him down to the grave, while Lincoln, who had spent less than $1000, came out stronger politically than he went in. Herndon tells us about George B. McClellan's taking Douglas around in a special train, while Lincoln sometimes found it hard to secure a seat when he was exhausted. Whatever details counted in the result, there seems to be little doubt that the fight was carried on with such ability that each combatant gained admiration from his party and the country, although it is probably also true that the thorough airing given to the views of Douglas did much to deprive him in 1860 of Southern support on the one hand and Northern support on the other.

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After this campaign Lincoln found himself hard pressed for money. His income from the law, according to his partner, was not over $3000, and there were current political expenses. tried lecturing, one address on "Inventions being delivered in several towns, but his failure was so evident that he soon abandoned the experiment. While he did some law work, he kept very actively in politics. He had tried to get the