other than a central Illinois town for an audience, and such an essay would have attracted the interest only of those who could find pleasure in the weightier contributions to magazines and books. The lecture in question strikes one as deliberately juvenile in conception and presentation. It was seemingly designed to inspire in a popular audience the beginnings of interest in a subject of distinctly cultural value. Lincoln's own interest in the subject was of such a nature. With such a purpose, it was something more than naïveté that led him to use the Bible as one of his sources of information. One point he took from the Webster's Dictionary of that time; others from history, and still others from patent laws.

That Lincoln's purpose and aim were solely cultural would seem to be implied in some of the more seriously conceived sentences of the address. A few of these are worth quoting:

What one observes, and would himself infer nothing from, he tells to another, and that other at once sees a valuable hint in it.

* * * * * *

I will venture to consider it [invention of printing] the true termination of that period called "the dark ages."

They [the mass of men at the advent of printing] not only looked upon the educated few as superior beings, but they supposed themselves to be naturally incapable of rising to equality. To emancipate the mind from this false estimate of itself is the great task which printing came into the world to perform. . . It is, in this connection, a curious fact that a new country is most favorable-almost necessary to the emancipation of thought, and the consequent advancement of civilization and the arts.

This lecture contains but a single literary allusion, and that is a facetious application of two lines of Cato's soliloquy, in Addison's tragedy, "Cato," to Young America.

Lincoln continued to discuss the "doctrine of squatter sovereignty" and the Dred Scott decision in addresses which were but reverberant of the late contest with Douglas. At Chicago, at Columbus, Ohio, and at Cincinnati, as well as at various points in Kansas, he responded to invitations to continue the theme which had found in him its most effective expositor. Beyond the borders of his own State, he was beginning to be looked upon as the ablest interpreter of the new Republican party, which was now, everywhere north of the slavery line, gathering its forces together for the next national election. He

was looked upon with favor as a presidential possibility. Douglas was in the race for the Democratic nomination. The Ohio speeches were prelusive of the fateful campaign of the following year. At Columbus, where Douglas had previously spoken, Lincoln took occasion to clear up a current misrepresentation of his views on the political and social rights of the negro. He had been accused of favoring negro suffrage, and Douglas had interpreted him as advocating the social equality of black and white men. He quoted his remarks on this subject, made in reply to Douglas both at Ottawa and at Charleston, Ill. At Ottawa he said:

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose either directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that . . . there is no reason in the world

why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas, he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral and intellectual endowments. But in the right to eat bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Substantially the same declaration he quoted from his late speech at Charleston. His attitude on the subject was unequivocal, and it expressed the heart of the slavery controversy. The Columbus reply to Douglas was in every sense typical of Lincoln's plain and unerring power to outreason his opponent. The style was serious and unadorned, definite and coherent, though conversational in phrase. He answered Douglas's finesse in making a distinction between federal and local authority favorable to his "squatter sovereignty" doctrine by analyzing an article on the subject which Douglas had contributed to Harper's Magazine. This involved a very clear discussion of the divergence between the views of the two men on popular sovereignty. In regard to the government of a Territory, Lincoln had, of

course, no difficulty in showing that his opponent's own reasoning emerged inevitably in a recognition of Congress as the ultimate authority. Applied to a Territory, therefore, Douglas's view of popular sovereignty admitted the possibility of establishing slavery in it irrespective of the wishes of the slaves themselves or of the families inhabiting, or to inhabit, the same territory. In interpreting the attitude of the fathers, whom Douglas had aligned in support of his popular sovereignty views, Lincoln completely out-maneuvered the Senator by the simple process of showing "what these men did themselves do upon this very question of slavery in the Territories." This he accomplished by reciting plainly and accurately the history of the Ordinances of 1784 and 1787, specifically toward slavery; the relation of the Constitution to the later Ordinance, and the attitude of Thomas Jefferson toward slavery.

No more telling language was employed by Lincoln in this powerful Columbus speech than this, directed to Douglas :

I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him.

Judge Douglas ought to remember, when he is en