planned it. It had
only produced strife, anger, heart-burning, hatred. It had added
many drops to the cup of bitterness between North and South, and
had filled it to overflowing. It produced evil only, and that
continually. The repeal, in the judgment of the North, was a great
conspiracy against human freedom. In the Southern States it was
viewed as an honest effort to recover rights of which they had been
unjustly deprived. Each section held with firmness to its own
belief, and the four years of agitation had separated them so widely
that a return to fraternal feeling seemed impossible. Confidence,
the plant of slowest growth, had been destroyed. Who could restore
it to life and strength?

Douglas had, in large degree, redeemed himself in the North from
the obloquy to which he had been subjected since the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise. The victory for free Kansas was perhaps to
an undue extent ascribed to him. The completeness of that victory
was everywhere recognized, and the lawless intruders who had worked
so hard to inflict slavery on the new Territory gradually withdrew.
In the South, Douglas was covered with maledictions. But for his
influence, Southern men felt that Kansas would have been admitted
with a pro-slavery constitution, and the senatorial equality of
the South firmly re-established. Northern Republicans, outside of
Illinois, were in a forgiving frame of mind toward Douglas; and he
had undoubtedly regained a very large share of his old popularity.
But Illinois Republicans were less amiable towards him. They would
not forget that he had broken down an anti-slavery barrier which
had been reared with toil and sanctified by time. He had not, as
they alleged, turned back from any test exacted by the South, until
he had reached the point where another step forward involved
political death to himself. They would not credit his hostility
to the Lecompton Constitution to any nobler motive than the instinct
of self-preservation. This was a harsh judgment, and yet a most
natural one. It inspired the Republicans of Illinois, and they
prepared to contest the return of Douglas to the Senate by formally
nominating Abraham Lincoln as an opposing candidate.

The contest that ensued was memorable. Douglas had an herculean
task before him. The Republican party was young, strong, united,
conscious of its power, popular, growing. The Democratic party
was rent with faction, and the Administration w