mere contagion of
popular enthusiasm would submerge all intelligent political discussion.
To counteract this, Mr. Lincoln, at the advice of his leading friends,
sent him a letter challenging him to joint public debate. Douglas
accepted the challenge, but with evident hesitation; and it was arranged
that they should jointly address the same meetings at seven towns in the
State, on dates extending through August, September, and October. The
terms were, that, alternately, one should speak an hour in opening, the
other an hour and a half in reply, and the first again have half an hour
in closing. This placed the contestants upon an equal footing before
their audiences. Douglas's senatorial prestige afforded him no
advantage. Face to face with the partizans of both, gathered in immense
numbers and alert with critical and jealous watchfulness, there was no
evading the square, cold, rigid test of skill in argument and truth in
principle. The processions and banners, the music and fireworks, of both
parties, were stilled and forgotten while the audience listened with
high-strung nerves to the intellectual combat of three hours' duration.

It would be impossible to give the scope and spirit of these famous
debates in the space allotted to these pages, but one of the
turning-points in the oratorical contest needs particular mention.
Northern Illinois, peopled mostly from free States, and southern
Illinois, peopled mostly from slave States, were radically opposed in
sentiment on the slavery question; even the old Whigs of central
Illinois had to a large extent joined the Democratic party, because of
their ineradicable prejudice against what they stigmatized as
"abolitionism." To take advantage of this prejudice, Douglas, in his
opening speech in the first debate at Ottawa in northern Illinois,
propounded to Lincoln a series of questions designed to commit him to
strong antislavery doctrines. He wanted to know whether Mr. Lincoln
stood pledged to the repeal of the fugitive-slave law; against the
admission of any more slave States; to the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia; to the prohibition of the slave trade between
different States; to prohibit slavery in all the Territories; to oppose
the acquisition of any new territory unless slavery were first
prohibited therein.

In their second joint debate at Freeport, Lincoln answered that he was
pledged to none of these propositions, except the prohibition of slavery
in