faltering in his former contest, and his success in the
canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, has cost him the
loss of the presidency of the United States."

In addition to the seven joint debates, both Lincoln and Douglas made
speeches at separate meetings of their own during almost every day of
the three months' campaign, and sometimes two or three speeches a day.
At the election which was held on November 2, 1858, a legislature was
chosen containing fifty-four Democrats and forty-six Republicans,
notwithstanding the fact that the Republicans had a plurality of
thirty-eight hundred and twenty-one on the popular vote. But the
apportionment was based on the census of 1850, and did not reflect
recent changes in political sentiment, which, if fairly represented,
would have given them an increased strength of from six to ten members
in the legislature. Another circumstance had great influence in causing
Lincoln's defeat. Douglas's opposition to the Lecompton Constitution in
Congress had won him great sympathy among a few Republican leaders in
the Eastern States. It was even whispered that Seward wished Douglas to
succeed as a strong rebuke to the Buchanan administration. The most
potent expression and influence of this feeling came, however, from
another quarter. Senator Crittenden of Kentucky, who, since Clay's death
in 1852, was the acknowledged leader of what remained of the Whig party,
wrote a letter during the campaign, openly advocating the reelection of
Douglas, and this, doubtless, influenced the vote of all the Illinois
Whigs who had not yet formally joined the Republican party. Lincoln's
own analysis gives, perhaps, the clearest view of the unusual political
conditions:

"Douglas had three or four very distinguished men of the most extreme
antislavery views of any men in the Republican party expressing their
desire for his reelection to the Senate last year. That would of itself
have seemed to be a little wonderful, but that wonder is heightened when
we see that Wise of Virginia, a man exactly opposed to them, a man who
believes in the divine right of slavery, was also expressing his desire
that Douglas should be reelected; that another man that may be said to
be kindred to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your
own State, was also agreeing with the antislavery men in the North that
Douglas ought to be reelected. Still to heighten the wonder, a senator
from Kentucky, whom I hav