Senator Douglas was an eloquent orator. While he was talking, some of Abe's friends would worry. Would Old Abe be able to answer? Would he be able to hold his own? Then Abe would unfold his long legs and stand up. "The Giant Killer" towered so high above "the Little Giant" that a titter ran through the crowd.
When he came to the serious part of his speech, there was silence. His voice reached to the farthest corners of the crowd, as he reminded them what slavery really meant. He summed it up in a few words: "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it."
Both men worked hard to be elected. And Douglas won. "I feel like the boy," said Abe, "who stubbed his toe. It hurts too bad to laugh, and I am too big to cry."
All of those who loved him—Mary, his wife, in her neat white house; Sarah, his stepmother, in her little cabin, more than a hundred miles away; and his many friends—were disappointed. But not for long. The part he took in the Lincoln-Douglas debates made his name known throughout the United States.
Abe Lincoln's chance was coming.
15
During the next two years Abraham Lincoln was asked to make many speeches. "Let us have faith that right makes might," he told one audience in New York, "and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."