Another kindred question had already been put by Lincoln:  “Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a State Constitution?” Friends advised him not to force this, as it seemed against the immediate policy of the present campaign.  But it was never his way to subordinate his own deliberate opinion to the opinions of advisers; and on this occasion he was merciless in pressing this question.  A story has been very generally repeated that he told the protesters that, whatever might be the bearing on the senatorship, Douglas could not answer that question and be elected President of the United States in 1860.  “I am killing larger game,” he said; “the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."[86] A few legends of this kind are extant, which tend to indicate that Lincoln already had in mind the presidential nomination, and was fighting the present fight with an eye to that greater one in the near future.  It is not easy to say how much credit should be given to such tales; they may not be wholly inventions, but a remark which is uttered with little thought may later easily take on a strong color in the light of subsequent developments.

In presenting the Republican side of the question Lincoln seemed to feel a duty beyond that of merely outarguing his opponent.  He bore the weighty burden of a responsibility graver than personal success.  He might prevail in the opinions of his fellow citizens; without this instant triumph he might so present his cause that the jury of posterity would declare that the truth lay with him; he might even convince both the present and the coming generations; and though achieving all these triumphs, he might still fall far short of the peculiar and exacting requirement of the occasion.  For the winning of the senatorship was the insignificant part of what he had undertaken; his momentous charge was to maintain a grand moral crusade, to stimulate and to vindicate a great uprising in the cause of humanity and of justice.  His full appreciation of this is entirely manifest in the tone of his speeches.  They have an earnestness, a gravity, at times even a solemnity, unusual in such encounters in any era or before any audiences, but unprecedented “on the stump” before the uproarious gatherings of the West at that day.  Repeatedly he stigmatized slavery as “a moral, a social, a political evil.”  Very impressively he denounced the positions of an opponent who “cared not whether slavery was voted down or voted up,” who said that slavery was not to be differentiated from the many domestic institutions and daily affairs which civilized societies control by police regulations.  He said that slavery could not be treated as “only equal to the cranberry laws of Indiana;” that slaves could not be put “upon a par with onions and potatoes;” that to Douglas he supposed that the institution really “looked small,”