The eyes of the crowd, however, sought rather the faces of the rival candidates.  Lincoln looked down upon them with eyes in which there was an expression of sadness, not to say melancholy, until he lost himself in the passion of his utterance.  There was not a regular feature in his face.  The deep furrows that seamed his countenance bore unmistakable witness to a boyhood of grim poverty and grinding toil.  Douglas surveyed the crowd from beneath his shaggy brows, with bold, penetrating gaze.  Every feature of his face bespoke power.  The deep-set eyes; the dark, almost sinister, line between them; the mouth with its tightly-drawn lips; the deep lines on his somewhat puffy cheeks—­all gave the impression of a masterful nature, accustomed to bear down opposition.  As men observed his massive brow with its mane of abundant, dark hair; his strong neck; his short, compact body; they instinctively felt that here was a personality not lightly to be encountered.  He was “the very embodiment of force, combativeness, and staying power."[710]

When Douglas, by agreement, opened the debate, he was fully conscious that he was addressing an audience which was in the main hostile to him.  With the instinct of a born stump speaker, he sought first to find common ground with his hearers.  Appealing to the history of parties, he pointed out the practical agreement of both Whig and Democratic parties on the slavery question down to 1854.  It was when, in accordance with the Compromise of 1850, he brought in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, that Lincoln and Trumbull entered into an agreement to dissolve the old parties in Illinois and to form an Abolition party under the pseudonym “Republican.”  The terms of the alliance were that Lincoln should have Senator Shields’ place in the Senate, and that Trumbull should have Douglas’s, when his term should expire.[711] History, thus interpreted, made not Douglas, but his opponent, the real agitator in State politics.

Douglas then read from the first platform of the Black Republicans.  “My object in reading these resolutions,” he said, “was to put the question to Abraham Lincoln this day, whether he now stands and will stand by each article in that creed and carry it out.  I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln to-day stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law.  I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the people want them.  I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make.  I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.  I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different States.  I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States, North as well as South of the Missouri Compromise line.  I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any more territory, unless slavery is prohibited therein."[712]