uity to be supported in the late contest both as
the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest," he
wrote. "No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in harmony
long. Another explosion will soon occur." His whole attention was
given to conserving what the Republicans had gained--"We have some one
hundred and twenty thousand clear Republican votes. That pile is worth
keeping together;" to consoling his friends--"You are feeling badly,"
he wrote to N. B. Judd, Chairman of the Republican Committee, "and
this too shall pass away, never fear"; to rallying for another
effort,--"The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the
end of one or even one hundred defeats."

If Lincoln had at times a fear that his defeat would cause him to be
set aside, it soon was dispelled. The interest awakened in him was
genuine, and it spread with the wider reading and discussion of his
arguments. He was besieged by letters from all parts of the Union,
congratulations, encouragements, criticisms. Invitations for lectures
poured in upon him, and he became the first choice of his entire party
for political speeches.

The greater number of these invitations he declined. He had given so
much time to politics since 1854 that his law practice had been
neglected and he was feeling poor; but there were certain of the calls
which could not be resisted. Douglas spoke several times for the
Democrats of Ohio in the 1859 campaign for governor and Lincoln
naturally was asked to reply. He made but two speeches, one at
Columbus on September 16 and the other at Cincinnati on September 17,
but he had great audiences on both occasions. The Columbus speech was
devoted almost entirely to answering an essay by Douglas which had
been published in the September number of "Harper's Magazine," and
which began by asserting that--"Under our complex system of government
it is the first duty of American statesmen to mark distinctly the
dividing-line between Federal and Local authority." It was an
elaborate argument for "popular sovereignty" and attracted national
attention. Indeed, at the moment it was the talk of the country.
Lincoln literally tore it to bits.

"What is Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty?" he asked. "It is, as a
principle, no other than that if one man chooses to make a slave of
another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to
object. Applied in government, as he seeks to apply it, it is this:
If, in