It is not without effort that we can now appreciate fully why this utterance was so momentous in the spring of 1858.[77] By it Lincoln came before the people with a plain statement of precisely that which more than nine hundred and ninety-nine persons in every thousand, especially at the North, were striving with all their might to stamp down as an untruth; he said to them what they all were denying with desperation, and with rage against the asserters.  Their bitterness was the greater because very many, in the bottom of their hearts, distrusted their own painful and strenuous denial.  No words could be more unpopular than that the divided house could not permanently stand, when the whole nation was insisting, with the intensity of despair, that it could stand, would stand, must stand.  Consequently occurrences soon showed his friends to be right so far as concerned the near, practical point:  that the paragraph would cost more voters in Illinois than Lincoln could lose without losing his election.  But beyond that point, a little farther away in time, much deeper down amid enduring results, Lincoln’s judgment was ultimately seen to rest upon fundamental wisdom, politically as well as morally.  For Lincoln was no idealist, sacrificing realities to abstractions; on the contrary, the right which he saw was always a practical right, a right which could be compassed.  In this instance, the story goes that he retorted upon some of those who grumbled about his “mistake,” that in time they “would consider it the wisest thing he ever said.”  In this he foretold truly; that daring and strong utterance was the first link in the chain of which a more distant link lay across the threshold of the White House.

A battle opened by so resounding a shot was sure to be furious.  Writers and speakers fell upon the fateful paragraph and tore it savagely.  They found in it a stimulus which, in fact, was not needed; for already were present all the elements of the fiercest struggle,—­the best man and the best fighter in each party at the front, and not unevenly matched; a canvass most close and doubtful; and a question which stirred the souls of men with the passions of crusading days.  Douglas added experience and distinction to gallantry in attack, adroitness in defense, readiness in personalities, and natural aptitude for popular oratory.  Lincoln frankly admitted his formidable qualifications.  But the Republican managers had a shrewd appreciation of both opponents; they saw that Lincoln’s forte lay in hitting out straight, direct, and hard; and they felt that blows of the kind he delivered should not go out into the air, but should alight upon a concrete object,—­upon Douglas.  They conceived a wise plan.  On July 24, 1858, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates.  Douglas accepted, and named seven meetings, which he so arranged that he opened and closed four times and Lincoln opened and closed three times; but Lincoln made no point of the inequality; the arrangement was completed, and this famous duel constituted another link in that White House chain.