ritory. The President had declared Kansas to
be already practically a slave State. Douglas had announced that he did
not care whether slavery was voted down or voted up. Adding to these
many other indications of current politics, Mr. Lincoln proceeded:

"Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche,
which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision
declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a
State to exclude slavery from its limits.... Such a decision is all that
slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.... We shall
lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the
verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality,
instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

To avert this danger, Mr. Lincoln declared it was the duty of
Republicans to overthrow both Douglas and the Buchanan political
dynasty.

"Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen
hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of
resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against
us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from
the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the
constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we
brave all then to falter now?--now, when that same enemy is wavering,
dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not
fail--if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate
or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to
come."

Lincoln's speech excited the greatest interest everywhere throughout the
free States. The grave peril he so clearly pointed out came home to the
people of the North almost with the force of a revelation; and
thereafter their eyes were fixed upon the Illinois senatorial campaign
with undivided attention. Another incident also drew to it the equal
notice and interest of the politicians of the slave States.

Within a month from the date of Lincoln's speech, Douglas returned from
Washington and began his campaign of active speech-making in Illinois.
The fame he had acquired as the champion of the Nebraska Bill, and, more
recently, the prominence into which his opposition to the Lecompton
fraud had lifted him in Congress, attracted immense crowds to his
meetings, and for a few days it seemed as if the