he abolition of the
slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new
Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed
it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was
in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks
me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why
he and his friends could not let it remain as our friends made
it? It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the
institution of slavery, that it shall be placed upon the basis
that our fathers placed it upon. Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina,
once said, and truly said, that when this Government was
established, no one expected the institution of slavery to last
until this day; and that the men who formed this Government were
wiser and better than the men of these days; but the men of these
days had experience which the fathers had not, and that
experience had taught them the invention of the cotton-gin, and
this had made the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a
necessity in this country. Judge Douglas could not let it stand
upon the basis on which our fathers placed it, but removed it,
and put it upon the cotton-gin basis. It is a question,
therefore, for him and his friends to answer--why they could not
let it remain where the fathers of the Government originally
placed it.

In these debates Lincoln often seemed like one transfigured--carried
away by his own eloquence and the force of his conviction. He said to a
friend during the canvass: "Sometimes, in the excitement of speaking, I
seem to see the end of slavery. I feel that the time is soon coming when
the sun shall shine, the rain shall fall, on no man who shall go forth
to unrequited toil.... How this will come, when it will come, by whom it
will come, I cannot tell;--but that time will surely come." Again, at
the first encounter at Alton, he uttered these pregnant sentences:

On this subject of treating slavery as a wrong, and limiting its
spread, let me say a word. Has anything ever threatened the
existence of this Union save and except this very institution of
slavery? What is it that we hold most dear among us? Our own
liberty and prosperity. What has ever threatened our liberty and
prosperity, save and except this institution of slavery? If this
is true, how do yo