Douglas, however, did his best to recover his ground by accusing Lincoln of shifting his principles as he passed from the northern counties to Egypt; the principles of his party in the north were "jet-black," in the center, "a decent mulatto," and in lower Egypt "almost white." Lincoln then dared him to point out any difference between his speeches. Blows now fell thick and fast, both speakers approaching dangerously near the limit of parliamentary language. Reverting to his argument that slavery must be put in the course of ultimate extinction, Lincoln made this interesting qualification: "I do not mean that when it takes a turn toward ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in God's own good time, I have no doubt."^[746]

Douglas was now feeling the full force of the opposition within his own party. The Republican newspapers of the State had seized upon his Freeport speech to convince the South and the administration that he was false to their creed. The Washington Union had from the first denounced him as a renegade, with whom no self-respecting Democrat would associate.^[747] Slidell was active in Illinois, spending money freely to defeat him.^[748] The Danites in the central counties plotted incessantly to weaken his following. Daniel S. Dickinson of New York sent "a Thousand Greetings" to a mass-meeting of Danites in Springfield,—a liberal allowance, commented some Douglasite, as each delegate would receive about ten greetings.^[749] Yet the dimensions of this movement were not easily ascertained. The declination of Vice-President Breckinridge to come to the aid of Douglas was a rebuff not easily laughed down, though to be sure, he expressed a guarded preference for Douglas over Lincoln. The coolness of Breckinridge was in a measure offset by the friendliness of Senator Crittenden, who refused to aid Lincoln, because he believed Douglas's re-election "necessary as a rebuke to the administration and a vindication of the great cause of popular rights and public justice."^[750] The most influential Republican papers in the East gave Lincoln tardy support, with the exception of the New York Times.^[751]

Unquestionably Douglas drew upon resources which Lincoln could not command. The management of the Illinois Central Railroad was naturally friendly toward him, though there is no evidence that it countenanced any illegitimate use of influence on his behalf. If Douglas enjoyed special train service, which Lincoln did not, it was because he drew upon funds that exceeded Lincoln's modest income. How many thousands of dollars Douglas devoted from his own exchequer to his campaign, can now only be conjectured. In all probability, he spent all that remained from the sale of his real estate in Chicago, and more which he borrowed in New York by mortgaging his other holdings in Cook County.^[752] And not least among his assets was the constant companionship of Mrs. Douglas, whose tact, grace, and beauty placated feelings which had been ruffled by the rude vigor of "the Little Giant."^[753]

When the rivals met three weeks later at Galesburg, they were disposed to drop personalities. Indeed, both were aware that they were about to address men and women who demanded an intelligent discussion of the issues of the hour. Lincoln had the more sympathetic hearing, for Knox County was consistently Republican; and the town with its academic atmosphere and New England traditions shared his hostility to slavery. Vast crowds braved the cold, raw winds of the October day to listen for three hours to this debate.^[754] From a platform on the college campus, Douglas looked down somewhat defiantly upon his hearers, though his words were well-chosen and courteous. The circumstances were much the same as at Ottawa; and he spoke in much the same vein. He rang the changes upon his great fundamental principle; he defended his course in respect to Lecomptonism; he denounced the Republican party as a sectional organization whose leaders were bent upon "outvoting, conquering, governing, and controlling the South." Douglas laid great stress upon this sectional aspect of Republicanism, which made its southward extension impossible. "Not only is this Republican party unable to proclaim its principles alike in the North and in the South, in the free States and in the slave States, but it cannot even proclaim them in the same forms and give them the same strength and meaning in all parts of the same State. My friend Lincoln finds it extremely difficult to manage a debate in the center part of the State, where there is a mixture of men from the North and the South."^[755]

Here Douglas paused to read from Lincoln's speeches at Chicago and at Charleston, and to ask his hearers to reconcile the conflicting statements respecting negro equality. He pronounced Lincoln's doctrine, that the negro and the white man are made equal by the Declaration of Independence and Divine Providence, "a monstrous heresy."

Lincoln protested that nothing was farther from his purpose than to "advance hypocritical and deceptive and contrary views in different portions of the country." As for the charge of sectionalism, Judge Douglas was himself fast becoming sectional, for his speeches no longer passed current south of the Ohio as they had once done. "Whatever may be the result of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas and myself, I see the day rapidly approaching when his pill of sectionalism, which he has been thrusting down the throats of Republicans for years past, will be crowded down his own throat."^[756]

And Lincoln again scored on his opponent, when he pointed out that his political doctrine rested upon the major premise, that there was no wrong in slavery. "If you will take the Judge's speeches, and select the short and pointed sentences expressed by him,—as his declaration that he 'don't care whether slavery is voted up or down'—you will see at once that this is perfectly logical, if you do not admit that slavery is wrong.... Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong."^[757]

Those who now read these memorable debates dis-passionately, will surely acquit Lincoln of inconsistency in his attitude toward the negro. His speech at Charleston supplements the speech at Chicago; at Galesburg, he made an admirable re-statement of his position. Nevertheless, there was a marked difference in point of emphasis between his utterances in Northern and in Southern Illinois. Even the casual reader will detect subtle omissions which the varying character of his audience forced upon Lincoln. In Chicago he said nothing about the physical inferiority of the negro; he said nothing about the equality of the races in the Declaration of Independence, when he spoke at Charleston. Among men of anti-slavery leanings, he had much to say about the moral wrong of slavery; in the doubtful counties, Lincoln was solicitous that he should not be understood as favoring social and political equality between whites and blacks.

Feeling keenly this diplomatic shifting of emphasis, Douglas persisted in accusing Lincoln of inconsistency: "He has one set of principles for the Abolition counties and another set for the counties opposed to Abolitionism." If Lincoln had said in Coles County what he has to-day said in old Knox, Douglas complained, "it would have settled the question between us in that doubtful county."^[758] And in this Douglas was probably correct.

At Quincy, Douglas was in his old bailiwick. Three times the Democrats of this district had sent him to Congress; and though the bounds of the congressional district had since been changed, Adams County was still Democratic by a safe majority. Among the people who greeted the speakers, however, were many old-time Whigs, for whose special benefit the Republicans of the city carried on a pole, at the head of their procession, a live raccoon. With a much keener historic sense, the Democrats bore aloft a dead raccoon, suspended by its tail.^[759]

Lincoln again harked back to his position that slavery was "a moral, a social, and a political wrong" which the Republican party proposed to prevent from growing any larger; and that "the leading man—I think I may do my friend Judge Douglas the honor of calling him such—advocating the present Democratic policy, never himself says it is wrong."^[760]

The consciousness that he was made to seem morally obtuse, cut Douglas to the quick. Even upon his tough constitution this prolonged campaign was beginning to tell. His voice was harsh and broken; and he gave unmistakable signs of nervous irritability, brought on by physical fatigue. When he rose to reply to Lincoln, his manner was offensively combative. At the outset, he referred angrily to Lincoln's "gross personalities and base insinuations."^[761] In his references to the Springfield resolutions and to his mistake, or rather the mistake of his friends at the capital, he was particularly denunciatory. "When I make a mistake," he boasted, "as an honest man, I correct it without being asked to, but when he, Lincoln, makes a false charge, he sticks to it and never corrects it."^[762]

But Douglas was too old a campaigner to lose control of himself, and no doubt the rude charge and counter-charge were prompted less by personal ill-will than by controversial exigencies. Those who have conceived Douglas as the victim of deep-seated and abiding resentment toward Lincoln, forget the impulsive nature of the man. There is not the slightest evidence that Lincoln took these blows to heart. He had himself dealt many a vigorous blow in times past. It was part of the game.

Douglas found fault with Lincoln's answers to the Ottawa questions: "I ask you again, Lincoln, will you vote to admit New Mexico, when she has the requisite population with such a constitution as her people adopt, either recognizing slavery or not, as they shall determine!" He was well within the truth when he asserted that Lincoln's answer had been purposely evasive and equivocal, "having no reference to any territory now in existence."^[763] Of Lincoln's Republican policy of confining slavery within its present limits, by prohibiting it in the Territories, he said, "When he gets it thus confined, and surrounded, so that it cannot spread, the natural laws of increase will go on until the negroes will be so plenty that they cannot live on the soil. He will hem them in until starvation seizes them, and by starving them to death, he will put slavery in the course of ultimate extinction."^[764] A silly argument which Douglas's wide acquaintance with Southern conditions flatly contradicted and should have kept him from repeating.

To the charge of moral obliquity on the slavery question, Douglas made a dignified and worthy reply. "I hold that the people of the slave-holding States are civilized men as well as ourselves; that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God and their posterity, and not to us. It is for them to decide, therefore, the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits."^[765]

On the following day both Lincoln and Douglas took passage on a river steamer for Alton. The county of Madison had once been Whig in its political proclivities. In the State legislature it was now represented by two representatives and a senator who were Native Americans; and in the present campaign, the county was classed as doubtful. In Alton and elsewhere there was a large German vote which was likely to sway the election.

Douglas labored under a physical disadvantage. His voice was painful to hear, while Lincoln's betrayed no sign of fatigue.^[766] Both fell into the argument ad hominem. Lincoln advocated holding the Territories open to "free white people" the world over—to "Hans, Baptiste, and Patrick." Douglas contended that the equality referred to in the Declaration of Independence, was the equality of white men—"men of European birth and European descent." Both conjured with the revered name of Clay. Douglas persistently referred to Lincoln as an Abolitionist, knowing that his auditors had "strong sympathies southward," as Lincoln shrewdly guessed; while Lincoln sought to unmask that "false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that everybody does care the most about."^[767]

Douglas made a successful appeal to the sympathy of the crowd, when he said of his conduct in the Lecompton fight, "Most of the men who denounced my course on the Lecompton question objected to it, not because I was not right, but because they thought it expedient at that time, for the sake of keeping the party together, to do wrong. I never knew the Democratic party to violate any one of its principles, out of policy or expediency, that it did not pay the debt with sorrow. There is no safety or success for our party unless we always do right, and trust the consequences to God and the people. I chose not to depart from principle for the sake of expediency on the Lecompton question, and I never intend to do it on that or any other question."^[768]

Both at Quincy and at Alton, Douglas paid his respects to the "contemptible crew" who were trying to break up the party and defeat him. At first he had avoided direct attacks upon the administration; but the relentless persecution of the Washington Union made him restive. Lincoln derived great satisfaction from this intestine warfare in the Democratic camp. "Go it, husband! Go it, bear!" he cried.

"That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world.... I was glad to express my gratitude at Quincy, and I re-express it here, to Judge Douglas,—that he looks to no end of the institution of slavery. That will help the people to see where the struggle really is."^[769]

To the mind of Douglas, the issue presented itself in quite another form. "He [Lincoln] says that he looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished everywhere. I look forward to a time when each State shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business,—not mine. I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Christendom. I would not endanger the perpetuity of this Union, I would not blot out the great inalienable rights of the white men, for all the negroes that ever existed."^[770]

With this encounter at Alton, the joint debates, but not the campaign closed. Douglas continued to speak at various strategic points, in spite of inclement weather and physical exhaustion, up to the eve of the election.^[771] The canvass had continued just a hundred days, during which Douglas had made one hundred and thirty speeches.^[772] During the last weeks of the campaign, election canards designed to injure Douglas were sedulously circulated, adding no little uncertainty to the outcome in doubtful districts. The most damaging of these stories seems to have emanated from Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, whose midsummer sojourn in Illinois has already been noted. A Chicago journal published the tale that Douglas's slaves in the South were "the subjects of inhuman and disgraceful treatment—that they were hired out to a factor at fifteen dollars per annum each—that he, in turn, hired them out to others in lots, and that they were ill-fed, over-worked, and in every way so badly treated that they were spoken of in the neighborhood where they are held as a disgrace to all slave-holders and the system they support." The explicit denial of the story came from Slidell some weeks after the election, when the slander had accomplished the desired purpose.^[773]

All signs pointed to a heavy vote for both tickets. As the campaign drew to a close, the excitement reached a pitch rarely equalled even in presidential elections. Indeed, the total vote cast exceeded that of 1856 by many thousands,—an increase that cannot be wholly accounted for by the growth of population in these years.^[774] The Republican State ticket was elected by less than four thousand votes over the Democratic ticket. The relative strength of the rival candidates for the senatorship, however, is exhibited more fully in the vote for the members of the lower house of the State legislature.. The avowed Douglas candidates polled over 174,000, while the Lincoln men received something over 190,000. Administration candidates received a scant vote of less than 2,000. Notwithstanding this popular majority, the Republicans secured only thirty-five seats, while the Democratic minority secured forty. Out of fifteen contested senatorial seats, the Democrats won eight with a total of 44,826 votes, while the Republicans cast 53,784 votes and secured but seven. No better proof could be offered of Lincoln's contention that the State was gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats. Still, this was part of the game; and had the Republicans been in office, they would have undoubtedly used an advantage which has proved too tempting for the virtue of every American party.