igencies. Those who have
conceived Douglas as the victim of deep-seated and abiding resentment
toward Lincoln, forget the impulsive nature of the man. There is not
the slightest evidence that Lincoln took these blows to heart. He had
himself dealt many a vigorous blow in times past. It was part of the
game.

Douglas found fault with Lincoln's answers to the Ottawa questions: "I
ask you again, Lincoln, will you vote to admit New Mexico, when she
has the requisite population with such a constitution as her people
adopt, either recognizing slavery or not, as they shall determine!" He
was well within the truth when he asserted that Lincoln's answer had
been purposely evasive and equivocal, "having no reference to any
territory now in existence."[763] Of Lincoln's Republican policy of
confining slavery within its present limits, by prohibiting it in the
Territories, he said, "When he gets it thus confined, and surrounded,
so that it cannot spread, the natural laws of increase will go on
until the negroes will be so plenty that they cannot live on the soil.
He will hem them in until starvation seizes them, and by starving them
to death, he will put slavery in the course of ultimate
extinction."[764] A silly argument which Douglas's wide acquaintance
with Southern conditions flatly contradicted and should have kept him
from repeating.

To the charge of moral obliquity on the slavery question, Douglas made
a dignified and worthy reply. "I hold that the people of the
slave-holding States are civilized men as well as ourselves; that they
bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God
and their posterity, and not to us. It is for them to decide,
therefore, the moral and religious right of the slavery question for
themselves within their own limits."[765]

On the following day both Lincoln and Douglas took passage on a river
steamer for Alton. The county of Madison had once been Whig in its
political proclivities. In the State legislature it was now
represented by two representatives and a senator who were Native
Americans; and in the present campaign, the county was classed as
doubtful. In Alton and elsewhere there was a large German vote which
was likely to sway the election.

Douglas labored under a physical disadvantage. His voice was painful
to hear, while Lincoln's betrayed no sign of fatigue.[766] Both fell
into the argument _ad hominem_. Lincoln advocated holding the
Territories open to "free whi