in his desire to keep slavery out of the territories as Douglas is honest in his plan to let the territories decide the matter for themselves.  Both of these men are ambitious.  Lincoln is of the industrial faith which is backboning the Republican party, and Douglas is of the vaguer and less materialistic faith which for so long has appealed to American Democracy in terms and promises of all kinds of freedoms and independencies....  I would give my life almost to see you again, but somehow I do not know how to bring it about, while at the same time I am living in hope that it may be so, and trusting that you will see me in a different light, and that I can give you assurances which will justify your vision.  I am not very well and have been consulting a physician, since coming West, who seems to think that my nerves are in bad condition and that I am worn by striving and by life.  It is curious too that Douglas, though bulky and fat, seems to me a tired man.  Perhaps both of us have lost the way; and it may be true that later he will have the true vision as I did in you.  I wish you could call me back to you.  My mind wavers as I write.  Affectionately, James.”

With the exchange of these letters I merged my feelings into other things.  The roar of Illinois and of the country tended to keep my mind from brooding on Isabel.  There was a melancholy resignation in the words of Lincoln upon his own defeat for the Senatorship, which were in key with my own grief and helped me to sublimate it.  He had written to a friend who chanced to show me the letter:  “It gave me a hearing on the great and durable questions of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.”

The cause of civil liberty!  Had not Douglas stood for this too?  He had won against the terrific opposition of the Buchanan administration.  He had fought the slave constitution of Kansas and he had beaten down in this campaign the enmity which had risen up around him because he had fought that constitution.  The Republicans were exceedingly glad that Douglas’ contest had divided the support of his own party.  They had no thanks for him for what he had done for civil liberty in that regard.  They were glad of his election over Lincoln for the sinister reason that Douglas’ triumph, since Douglas was almost at one with Lincoln as to the matter of slavery, meant a decline and a division of the Democratic party as a whole.  At the same time there was talk now of Lincoln for the Presidency.  But Lincoln did not think he was worthy of the honor.  Lincoln was writing and saying:  “What is the use of talking of me whilst we have such men as Seward and Chase, and everybody knows them, and scarcely anybody outside of Illinois knows me; besides, as a matter of justice, is it not due to them?  I admit I am ambitious and would like to be President....  But there is no such good luck in store for me as the Presidency of these United States.”  There was a pathos about this man Lincoln which won my heart.