[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 4-5.

In the evenly balanced and sensitive condition of Illinois politics this ungracious outside interference may be said to have insured Lincoln’s defeat.  While it gave him pain to be thus wounded in the house of his friends, he yet more deeply deplored the inexcusable blunder of leaders whose misplaced sympathy put in jeopardy the success of a vital political principle.  In his convention speech he had forcibly stated the error and danger of such a step.  “How can he [Douglas] oppose the advances of slavery?  He don’t care anything about it.  His avowed mission is impressing the ‘public heart’ to care nothing about it....  For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories.  Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest?  And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia.  He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property....  Now as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him.  Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle.  But clearly he is not now with us—­he does not pretend to be—­he does not promise ever to be.”

  [Sidenote] Lincoln, Springfield Speech, July 17, 1858.  Debates,
  p. 55.

Lincoln in nowise underrated the severity of the political contest in which he was about to engage.  He knew his opponent’s strong points as well as his weak ones—­his energy, his adroitness, the blind devotion of his followers, his greater political fame.  “Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown,” he said.  “All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly at no distant day to be the President of the United States.  They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.  And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor.  On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.  In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.  These are disadvantages all taken together, that the Republicans labor under.  We have to fight this battle upon principle, and principle alone.”