e made a speech that has not been
recorded but which is a tradition for moving oratory. That same year a
considerable number of votes were cast for Lincoln for Vice-President in
the Republican National Convention.

But all these were mere details. The great event of the years between
1854 and 1860 was his contest with Douglas. It was a battle of wits,
a great literary duel. Fortunately for Lincoln, his part was played
altogether on his own soil, under conditions in which he was entirely at
his ease, where nothing conspired with his enemy to embarrass him.

Douglas had a far more difficult task. Unforeseen complications rapidly
forced him to change his policy, to meet desertion and betrayal in his
own ranks. These were terrible years when fierce events followed
one another in quick succession--the rush of both slave-holders and
abolitionists into Kansas; the cruel war along the Wakarusa River; the
sack of Lawrence by the pro-slavery party; the massacre by John Brown
at Pottawatomie; the diatribes of Sumner in the Senate; the assault on
Sumner by Brooks. In the midst of this carnival of ferocity came the
Dred Scott decision, cutting under the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, denying to
the people of a Territory the right to legislate on slavery, and giving
to all slave-holders the right to settle with their slaves anywhere they
pleased outside a Free State. This famous decision repudiated Douglas's
policy of leaving all such questions to local autonomy and to private
enterprise. For a time Douglas made no move to save his policy. But when
President Buchanan decided to throw the influence of the Administration
on the side of the pro-slavery party in Kansas, Douglas was up in
arms. When it was proposed to admit Kansas with a constitution favoring
slavery, but which had not received the votes of a majority of the
inhabitants, Douglas voted with the Republicans to defeat admission.
Whereupon the Democratic party machine and the Administration turned
upon him without mercy. He stood alone in a circle of enemies. At no
other time did he show so many of the qualities of a great leader.
Battling with Lincoln in the popular forum on the one hand, he was
meeting daily on the other assaults by a crowd of brilliant opponents in
Congress. At the same time he was playing a consummate game of political
strategy, struggling against immense odds to recover his hold on
Illinois. The crisis would come in 1858 when he would have to go before
the Legis