ous mainly by that phrase. If there was any new
discovery in it, the right of priority was Lincoln's. This utterance
proved not only his statesmanlike conception of the issue, but also,
in his situation as a candidate, the firmness of his moral courage.
The friends to whom he had read the draught of this speech before he
delivered it warned him anxiously that its delivery might be fatal to
his success in the election. This was shrewd advice, in the ordinary
sense. While a slaveholder could threaten disunion with impunity, the
mere suggestion that the existence of slavery was incompatible with
freedom in the Union would hazard the political chances of any public
man in the North. But Lincoln was inflexible. "It is true," said he,
"and I will deliver it as written.... I would rather be defeated with
these expressions in my speech held up and discussed before the people
than be victorious without them." The statesman was right in his
far-seeing judgment and his conscientious statement of the truth, but
the practical politicians were also right in their prediction of the
immediate effect. Douglas instantly seized upon the declaration that a
house divided against itself cannot stand as the main objective point of
his attack, interpreting it as an incitement to a "relentless sectional
war," and there is no doubt that the persistent reiteration of this
charge served to frighten not a few timid souls.

Lincoln constantly endeavored to bring the moral and philosophical side
of the subject to the foreground. "Slavery is wrong" was the keynote of
all his speeches. To Douglas's glittering sophism that the right of the
people of a Territory to have slavery or not, as they might desire, was
in accordance with the principle of true popular sovereignty, he made
the pointed answer: "Then true popular sovereignty, according to Senator
Douglas, means that, when one man makes another man his slave, no
third man shall be allowed to object." To Douglas's argument that
the principle which demanded that the people of a Territory should be
permitted to choose whether they would have slavery or not "originated
when God made man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing him
to choose upon his own responsibility," Lincoln solemnly replied: "No;
God--did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his
choice. On the contrary, God did tell him there was one tree of the
fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of death." He did not