That address inaugurated a discussion which has no exact parallel in history—certainly no equal in American political history. It introduced Mr. Lincoln to the country at large, and prepared the way for his nomination to the Presidency two years later. On the declaration above quoted Mr. Douglas based many arguments, in vain attempts to prove that Mr. Lincoln was a disunionist.
During this period Douglas addressed an enthusiastic assemblage at Chicago, and in the course of his speech adverted to the arraignment of himself by Mr. Lincoln. He took direct issue with that gentleman on his proposition that, as to Freedom and Slavery, "the Union will become all one thing or all the other," and maintained strenuously that "it is neither desirable nor possible that there should be uniformity in the local institutions and domestic regulations of the different States of this Union."
An announcement that Mr. Lincoln would reply to Mr. Douglas on the following evening brought out another assemblage, July 10, which was awakened, before the speaker had concluded, to an enthusiasm at least equal to that which the eloquence of Douglas had aroused.
The issues involved in this famous series of debates are too familiar to all students of our Nation's political history to be considered at length in these pages. Mr. Lincoln analyzed and answered the various arguments advanced by Mr. Douglas the evening before; and the closing paragraphs of his reply to the insistent reminders "that this Government was made for white men," were memorable:
"Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their conditions will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says: 'You work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the fruits of it.'"
Six days thereafter, July 16, Senator Douglas in a great speech again tried to break the force of his opponent's facts and logic. This was at Bloomington, and Mr. Lincoln was again a careful listener. On the evening following, July 17, at Springfield, before an enthusiastic audience, he proceeded to dissect the matters so plausibly presented.
At the same hour Douglas was addressing a Springfield audience of his own, ridiculing especially Mr. Lincoln's alleged attitude toward the Supreme Court.
Contrasting the disadvantages under which, by reason of an unfair apportionment of State Legislature representation and otherwise, the Republicans labored in that campaign, Mr. Lincoln on that occasion said in the course of his talk:
"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargé-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out."
He affirmed that Popular Sovereignty, "the great staple" of the Douglas campaign, was "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community."