t to any great evil to avoid a greater
one."

The debates between Lincoln and Douglas, especially those of the year
1858, were unquestionably the most important in American history. The
speeches of Mr. Lincoln, as well as of the "Little Giant" who opposed
him, were circulated and read throughout the Union, and did more than
any other agency to create the public opinion which prepared the way for
the overthrow of slavery. As another has said, "The speeches of John
Quincy Adams and of Charles Sumner were more scholarly; those of Lovejoy
and Wendell Phillips were more vehement and impassioned; Senators
Seward, Hale, Trumbull, and Chase spoke from a more conspicuous forum;
but Lincoln's were more philosophical, while as able and earnest as any,
and his manner had a simplicity and directness, a clearness of statement
and felicity of illustration, and his language a plainness and
Anglo-Saxon strength, better adapted than any other to reach and
influence the common people,--the mass of the voters."

From 1847 to March 4, 1849, Mr. Lincoln served a term in Congress,
where he acted with his party in opposing the Mexican war. In 1855 he
was a prominent candidate for the United States Senate, but was
defeated. From the ruins of the old Whig party and the acquisition of
the Abolitionists, the Republican had been formed, and of this party, in
Illinois, Mr. Lincoln became, in 1858, the senatorial candidate. Again
he was defeated, by his adversary Mr. Douglas. Lincoln felt aggrieved,
for he had carried the popular vote of his State by nearly 4,000 votes.
When questioned by a friend upon this delicate point, he said that he
felt "like the boy that stumped his toe,--it hurt him too much to laugh,
and he was too big to cry."

In his speech at Springfield, with which the campaign of 1858 opened,
Mr. Lincoln made the compromisers of his party tremble by enunciating
a doctrine which, they claimed, provoked defeat. He said: "'A house
divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this Government cannot
permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union
to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it
will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other;
either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it,
and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is
in a course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
forward till it shall