placed it upon.  Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, once said, and truly said, that when this Government was established, no one expected the institution of slavery to last until this day; and that the men who formed this Government were wiser and better than the men of these days; but the men of these days had experience which the fathers had not, and that experience had taught them the invention of the cotton-gin, and this had made the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a necessity in this country.  Judge Douglas could not let it stand upon the basis on which our fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it upon the cotton-gin basis.  It is a question, therefore, for him and his friends to answer—­why they could not let it remain where the fathers of the Government originally placed it.

In these debates Lincoln often seemed like one transfigured—­carried away by his own eloquence and the force of his conviction.  He said to a friend during the canvass:  “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 shall 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.”  Again, at the first encounter at Alton, he uttered these pregnant sentences: 

On this subject of treating slavery as a wrong, and limiting its spread, let me say a word.  Has anything ever threatened the existence of this Union save and except this very institution of slavery?  What is it that we hold most dear among us?  Our own liberty and prosperity.  What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity, save and except this institution of slavery?  If this is true, how do you propose to improve the condition of things by enlarging slavery?—­by spreading it out and making it bigger?  You may have a wen or cancer upon your person, and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed, to death; but surely it is no way to cure it to ingraft it and spread it over your whole body—­that is no proper way of treating what you regard a wrong.  This peaceful way of dealing with it as a wrong—­restricting the spread of it, and not allowing it to go into new countries where it has not already existed—­that is the peaceful way, the old-fashioned way, the way in which the fathers themselves set us the example.  Is slavery wrong?  That is the real issue.  That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent.  It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—­right and wrong—­throughout the world.  They are two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle.  The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings.  It is the same principle, in whatever shape it develops itself.  It is the same spirit that says: