by a formal popular
vote. He "did not care," he said, "whether slavery be voted up or down,"
but there must be a fair vote of the people. Thus he drew upon himself
the hostility of the Buchanan administration, which was controlled by
the proslavery interest, but he saved his Northern following. More
than this, not only did his Democratic admirers now call him "the true
champion of freedom," but even some Republicans of large influence,
prominent among them Horace Greeley, sympathizing with Douglas in his
fight against the Lecompton Constitution, and hoping to detach him
permanently from the proslavery interest and to force a lasting breach
in the Democratic party, seriously advised the Republicans of Illinois
to give up their opposition to Douglas, and to help re-elect him to the
Senate. Lincoln was not of that opinion. He believed that great popular
movements can succeed only when guided by their faithful friends, and
that the antislavery cause could not safely be entrusted to the keeping
of one who "did not care whether slavery be voted up or down." This
opinion prevailed in Illinois; but the influences within the Republican
party over which it prevailed yielded only a reluctant acquiescence, if
they acquiesced at all, after having materially strengthened Douglas's
position. Such was the situation of things when the campaign of 1858
between Lincoln and Douglas began.

Lincoln opened the campaign on his side at the convention which
nominated him as the Republican candidate for the senatorship, with
a memorable saying which sounded like a shout from the watchtower of
history: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not
expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but
I expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or
all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates
will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States,--old as well as new, North as well as South." Then he proceeded
to point out that the Nebraska doctrine combined with the Dred Scott
decision worked in the direction of making the nation "all slave." Here
was the "irrepressible conflict" spoken of by Seward a short time later,
in a speech made fam