ht he was the only man with whom they could win. In a
canvass his friends had to do all the management. He knew nothing of how
to reach the people except by addressing their reason. If the situation
had been reversed--Lincoln representing the majority and Douglas the
minority--I think it most likely Lincoln would never have had the place.
He had no heart for a fight with friends."

The Hon. James G. Blaine has given a masterly description and analysis
of the comparative powers of the two illustrious debaters. Douglas, says
Mr. Blaine, "was everywhere known as a debater of singular skill. His
mind was fertile in resources. He was a master of logic. No man
perceived more quickly than he the strength or the weakness of an
argument, and no one excelled him in the use of sophistry and fallacy.
Where he could not elucidate a point to his own advantage, he would
fatally becloud it for his opponent. In that peculiar style of debate
which in intensity resembles a physical combat, he had no equal. He
spoke with extraordinary readiness. There was no halting in his phrase.
He used good English, terse, vigorous, pointed. He disregarded the
adornments of rhetoric--rarely used a simile. He was utterly destitute
of humor, and had slight appreciation of wit. He never cited historical
precedents except from the domain of American politics. Inside that
field his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical; beyond it his
learning was limited. He was not a reader. His recreations were not in
literature. In the whole range of his voluminous speaking, it would be
difficult to find either a line of poetry or a classical allusion. But
he was by nature an orator, and by long practice a debater. He could
lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions. He could, if he
wished, incite a mob to desperate deeds. He was, in short, an able,
audacious, almost unconquerable opponent in public discussion. It would
have been impossible to find any man of the same type able to meet him
before the people of Illinois. Whoever attempted it would probably have
been destroyed in the first encounter. But the man who was chosen to
meet him, who challenged him to the combat, was radically different in
every phase of character. Scarcely could two men be more unlike in
mental and moral constitution than Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A.
Douglas. Lincoln was calm and philosophic. He loved the truth for the
truth's sake. He would not argue from a false premise, o