troduced a bill extending the line and prohibiting slavery in the northern edge of the new State.'

"And you voted against the bill,' said Douglas.

Precisely so,' replied Lincoln; 'I was in favor of running the line a great deal farther South.'

"About this time,' the speaker continued, 'my distinguished friend introduced me to a particular friend of his, one David Wilmot of Pennsylvania,’ (Laughter.)

"I thought,' said Douglas, 'you would find him congenial company.'

“So I did,' replied Lincoln. 'I had the pleasure of voting for his Proviso, in one way and another about forty times. It was a Democratic measure then, I believe. At any rate, General Cass scolded Honest John Davis, of Massachusetts, soundly, for taking away the last hours of the session so that he (Cass) couldn't crowd it through. Apropos of General Cass: if I am not greatly mistaken, he has a prior claim to my distinguished friend, to the authorship of Popular Sovereignty. The old general has an infirmity for writing letters. Shortly after the scolding he gave John Davis, he wrote his Nicholson letter-’

"Douglas (solemnly)—' God Almighty placed man on the earth, and told him to choose between good and evil. That was the origin of the Nebraska bill!'

"Lincoln-Well, the priority of invention being settled, let us award all credit to Judge Douglas for being the first to discover it.'

"It would be impossible, in these limits, to give an idea of the strength of Mr. Lincoln's argument. We deemed it by far the ablest effort of the campaign—from

whatever source.

The occasion was a

great one, and

The effect proNo one who was

the speaker was every way equal to it. duced on the listeners was magnetic. present will ever forget the power and vehemence of the following passage:

66 6

My distinguished friend says it is an insult to the emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska to suppose they are not able to govern themselves. We must not slur over an argument of this kind because it happens to tickle the ear. It must be met and answered. I admit that the emigrant to Kansas and Nebraska is competent to govern himself, but,' the speaker rising to his full height, 'I deny his right to govern any other person WITHOUT THAT PERSON'S CONSENT.' The applause which followed this triumphant refutation of a cunning falsehood, was but an earnest of the victory at the polls which followed just one month from that day..

"When Mr. Lincoln had concluded, Mr. Douglas strode hastily to the stand. As usual, he employed ten minutes in telling how grossly he had been abused. Recollecting himself, he added, though in a perfectly courteous manner '-abused in a perfectly courteous manner! He then devoted half an hour to showing that it was indispensably necessary to California emigrants, Sante Fe traders and others, to have organic acts provided for the territories of Kansas and Nebraska-that being precisely the point which nobody disputed. Having established this premiss to his satisfaction, Mr. Douglas launched forth into an argument wholly apart from the positions taken by Mr. Lincoln. He had about half finished at six o'clock, when an adjournment to tea was effected. The speaker insisted.

strenuously upon his right to resume in the evening, but we believe the second part of that speech has not been delivered to this day. After the Springfield passage, the two speakers went to Peoria, and tried it again, with identically the same results. A friend, who listened to the Peoria debate, informed us that after Lincoln had finished, Douglas 'hadn't much to say'-which we presume to have been Mr. Douglas' view of the case also, for the reason that he ran away from his antagonist and kept out of the way during the remainder of the campaign.

"During this exciting campaign Mr. Lincoln pressed the slavery issue upon the people of Central and Southern Illinois, who were largely made up of the emigration from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina, with all the powers of his mind. He felt the force of the moral causes that must influence the question, and he never failed to appeal to the moral sentiment of the people in aid of the argument drawn from political sources, and to illuminate his theme with the lofty inspirations of an eloquence, pleading for the rights of humanity. A revolution swept the State. For the first time a majority of the Legislature of Illinois was opposed to the Democratic administration of the federal government. A United States Senator was to be elected in place of General Shields who had yielded to the influence of his less scrupulous colleague, and, against his own better judgment, had voted for the Kansas-Nebraska act. The election came on, and a number of ballots were taken, the almost united opposition voting steadily for Lincoln, but the anti-Nebraska Democrats for Trumbull. Mr. Lincoln became ap

prehensive that those men who had been elected as Democrats, though opposed to Judge Douglas, would turn upon some third candidate, of less decided convictions than Judge Trumbull, and possibly elect a Senator who had little or nothing in common with the then inchoate Republican party. To prevent such a consummation, he went personally to his friends, and by strong persuasion, induced them to vote for Trumbull.

"He thus secured, by an act of generous self-sacrifice, a triumph for the cause of right, and an advocate of it on the floor of the Senate, not inferior, in earnest zeal for the principles of Republicanism, to any member of that body.

"Some of his friends on the floor of the Legislature wept like children when constrained by Mr. Lincoln's personal appeals to desert him and unite on Trumbull. It is proper to say in this connection, that between Trumbull and Lincoln the most cordial relations have always existed, and that the feeling of envy or rivalry is not to be found in the breast of either."

At the Peoria debate alluded to above, the arrangement was that Douglas should speak as long as he pleased, then that Lincoln should do the same, and that Douglas should have an hour to close. Douglas commenced at 2 o'clock and spoke till six, wearing away the time in a tedious speech, hoping that the farmers, who had come in from the country, would not stay to hear Mr. Lincoln's reply. As soon as Douglas had concluded his speech, the vast crowd who had patiently listened to him divided, the Democrats at once leaving in great numbers for the country, while the Whigs and Free-Soilers remained and loudly called for Lincoln.

Mr. L., nothing vexed by the consumption by Douglas of the whole afternoon, when no one expected that he would occupy more than an hour and a half or two hours, proposed that the crowd adjourn for tea, which they very reluctantly did. After half an hour the crowd again assembled, and Mr. Lincoln took the stand, and for three hours continued to entrance his hearers by irresistible logic and strains of eloquence never before excelled in any of his public efforts. The whole territorial history of the country was reviewed, and the Kansas-Nebraska bill, then recently passed, was dissected in a manner such as has never been surpassed in the halls of Congress. Never since, in all the discussions, innumerable and interminable, of that subject in the intervening six years, have the inconsistencies of Judge Douglas been shown up as they were then, but all in the utmost good nature. Since then Douglas has invented new subterfuges, but before that audience, all his political tricks and dodges in connection with that bill were thoroughly exposed.

About half-past nine, Douglas rose to take his hour. It was evident he had no heart for the undertaking. He beat a most handsome retreat. He complained of his voice, which he said would not permit of his occupying his hour; he complimented the city of Peoria -the intelligence of its citizens, and the natural beauty of its location, which, of course, brought down cheers for him; he complimented Lincoln; he spoke of the fact that in the cemetery adjacent to the city rested the remains of the lamented Governor Ford-in short, he devoted a quarter of an hour to putting the audience in good humor with him, and then, without at