's speeches of "squatter sovereignty" please you younger men,
but I tell you that with us older men it's a great question that faces
us. We've either got to keep slavery back or it's going to spread all
over the country. That's the real question that's behind all this.
Lincoln is right.' And that was the feeling that prevailed, I think,
among the majority, after the debate was over. People went home
talking about the danger of slavery getting a hold in the North. This
territory had been Democratic; La Salle County, the morning of the day
of the debate, was Democratic; but when the next day came around,
hundreds of Democrats had been made Republicans, owing to the light in
which Lincoln had brought forward the fact that slavery threatened."

It was among Lincoln's own friends, however, that his speeches
produced the deepest impression. They had believed him to be strong,
but probably there was no one of them who had not felt dubious about
his ability to meet Douglas. Many even feared a fiasco. Gradually it
began to be clear to them that Lincoln was the stronger. Could it be
that Lincoln really was a great man? The young Republican journalists
of the "Press and Tribune"--Scripps, Hitt, Medill--began to ask
themselves the question. One evening as they talked over Lincoln's
argument a letter was received. It came from a prominent Eastern
statesman. "Who is this man that is replying to Douglas in your
State?" he asked. "Do you realize that no greater speeches have been
made on public questions in the history of our country; that his
knowledge of the subject is profound, his logical unanswerable, his
style inimitable?" Similar letters kept coming from various parts of
the country. Before the campaign was over Lincoln's friends were
exultant. Their favorite was a great man, "a full-grown man," as one
of them wrote in his paper.

The country at large watched Lincoln with astonishment. When the
debates began there were Republicans in Illinois of wider national
reputation. Judge Lyman Trumbull, then Senator; was better known. He
was an able debater, and a speech which he made in August against
Douglas's record called from the New York "Evening Post" the remark:
"This is the heaviest blow struck at Senator Douglas since he took the
field in Illinois; it is unanswerable, and we suspect that it will be
fatal." Trumbull's speech the "Post" afterwards published in pamphlet
form. Besides Trumbull, Owen Lovejoy, Oglesby, and Palmer wer