avado nor misgiving. He had not sought these public
discussions; neither did he shrink from them. Throughout his whole
life he appears to have been singularly correct in his estimate of
difficulties to be encountered and of his own powers for overcoming
them. Each of these seven meetings, comprising both the Republican and
Democratic voters of the neighboring counties, formed a vast, eager,
and attentive assemblage. It needed only the first day's experience to
show the wisdom of the Republican leaders in forcing a joint
discussion upon Douglas. Face to face with his competitor, he could no
longer successfully assume airs of superiority, or wrap himself in his
Senatorial dignity and prestige. They were equal spokesmen, of equal
parties, on an equal platform, while applause and encouragement on one
side balanced applause and encouragement on the other.

In a merely forensic sense, it was indeed a battle of giants. In the
whole field of American politics no man has equaled Douglas in the
expedients and strategy of debate. Lacking originality and
constructive logic, he had great facility in appropriating by
ingenious restatement the thoughts and formulas of others. He was
tireless, ubiquitous, unseizable. It would have been as easy to hold a
globule of mercury under the finger's tip as to fasten him to a point
he desired to evade. He could almost invert a proposition by a
plausible paraphrase. He delighted in enlarging an opponent's
assertion to a forced inference ridiculous in form and monstrous in
dimensions. In spirit he was alert, combative, aggressive; in manner,
patronizing and arrogant by turns.

Lincoln's mental equipment was of an entirely different order. His
principal weapon was direct, unswerving logic. His fairness of
statement and generosity of admission had long been proverbial. For
these intellectual duels with Douglas, he possessed a power of
analysis that easily outran and circumvented the "Little Giant's" most
extraordinary gymnastics of argument. But, disdaining mere quibbles,
he pursued lines of concise reasoning to maxims of constitutional law
and political morals. Douglas was always forcible in statement and
bold in assertion; but Lincoln was his superior in quaint originality,
aptness of phrase, and subtlety of definition; and oftentimes
Lincoln's philosophic vision and poetical fervor raised him to flights
of eloquence which were not possible to the fiber and temper of his
opponent.

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