Had he been addressing a bench of judges, subject to a close limitation of minutes, he would have won credit by the combined economy and force which were displayed in these harangues to general assemblages.  To speak of the lofty tone of these speeches comes dangerously near to the distasteful phraseology of extravagant laudation, than which nothing else can produce upon honest men a worse impression.  Yet it is a truth visible to every reader that at the outset Lincoln raised the discussion to a very high plane, and held it there throughout.  The truth which he had to sustain was so great that it was perfectly simple, and he had the good sense to utter it with appropriate simplicity.  In no speech was there fervor or enthusiasm or rhetoric; he talked to the reason and the conscience of his auditors, not to their passions.  Yet the depth of his feeling may be measured by the story that once in the canvass he said to a friend:  “Sometimes, in the excitement of speaking, I seem to see the end of slavery.  I feel that the time is soon coming when the sun shall shine, the rain fall, on no man who shall go forth to unrequited toil.  How this will come, when it will come, by whom it will come, I cannot tell,—­but that time will surely come."[87] It is just appreciation, and not extravagance, to say that the cheap and miserable little volume, now out of print, containing in bad newspaper type, “The Lincoln and Douglas Debates,"[88] holds some of the masterpieces of oratory of all ages and nations.

The immediate result of the campaign was the triumph of Douglas, who had certainly made not only a very able and brilliant but a splendidly gallant fight, with Republicans assailing him in front and Administrationists in rear.[89] Lincoln was disappointed.  His feelings had been so deeply engaged, he had worked so strenuously, and the result had been so much in doubt, that defeat was trying.  But he bore it with his wonted resolute equanimity.  He said that he felt “like the boy that stumped his toe,—­’it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.’” In fact, there were encouraging elements.[90] The popular vote stood,[91] Republicans, 126,084; Douglas Democrats, 121,940; Lecompton Democrats, 5,091.  But the apportionment of districts was such that the legislature contained a majority for Douglas.[92] So the prestige of victory seemed separated from its fruits; for the nation, attentively watching this duel, saw that the new man had convinced upwards of four thousand voters more than had the great leader of the Democracy.  Douglas is reported to have said that, during his sixteen years in Congress, he had found no man in the Senate whom he would not rather encounter in debate than Lincoln.  If it was true that Lincoln was already dreaming of the presidency, he was a sufficiently shrewd politician to see that his prospects were greatly improved by this campaign.  He had worked hard for what he had gained; he had been traveling incessantly to and fro and delivering speeches in unbroken succession