plainly
declared that ours is a white man's government. Lincoln admitted such an
inferiority in negroes as would forever prevent the two races from
living together on terms of perfect social and political equality, and
if there must be inequality he was in favor of his own race having the
superior place. He could only contend, therefore, for the negro's
equality in those rights which are set forth in the Declaration.
Douglas made the most of this, and of Lincoln's failure, through a
neglect to study the economic character of slavery, to show clearly how
the mere restriction of it would lead to its extinction.

But Douglas did not, and perhaps he could not, follow Lincoln when he
passed from the Declaration and the Constitution to the "higher law,"
from the question of rights to the question of right and wrong; for
there Lincoln rose not merely above Douglas, but above all that sort of
politics which both he and Douglas came out of. There, indeed, was the
true difference between these men and their causes. Douglas seems to
shrink backward into the past, and Lincoln to come nearer and grow
larger as he proclaims it: "That is the real issue. That is the issue
which 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."

Nevertheless, Douglas won the senatorship and kept his hold on the
Northern Democrats. Immediately, he made a visit to the South. He got a
hearing there, and so made good his boast that he could proclaim his
principles anywhere in the Union; but when he returned to Washington he
found that the party caucus, controlled by Buchanan and the Southerners,
had deposed him from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories,
which he had held so many years, and from this time he was constantly
engaged with the enemies he had made by his course on Lecompton and by
his Freeport Doctrine. His Northern opponents were no longer in his way.
He had overmatched Sumner and Seward in the Senate, and beaten the
administration, and held his own with Lincoln, but the unbending and
relentless Southerners he could neither beat nor placate. It was men
like Jefferson Davis in the Senate, and Yancey at Southern barbecues and
conventions, who stood now between him and his ambition. That very slave
power which he had served so well was upreared to crush him because he
had come to the limit of