“Yours of the 13th was received some days ago.  The fight must go on.  The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats.  Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest, both as the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest.  No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in harmony long.  Another explosion will soon come.”

In his “House divided against itself” speech, Lincoln had emphatically cautioned Republicans not to be led on a false trail by the opposition Douglas had made to the Lecompton Constitution; that his temporary quarrel with the Buchanan administration could not be relied upon to help overthrow that pro-slavery dynasty.

“How can he oppose the advances of slavery?  He don’t care anything about it.  His avowed mission is impressing the ‘public heart’ to care nothing about it....  Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle.  But, clearly, he is not now with us—­he does not pretend to be—­he does not promise ever to be.  Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends—­those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result.”

Since the result of the Illinois senatorial campaign had assured the reelection of Douglas to the Senate, Lincoln’s sage advice acquired a double significance and value.  Almost immediately after the close of the campaign Douglas took a trip through the Southern States, and in speeches made by him at Memphis, at New Orleans, and at Baltimore sought to regain the confidence of Southern politicians by taking decidedly advanced ground toward Southern views on the slavery question.  On the sugar plantations of Louisiana he said, it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile.  He would say that between the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of the negro; but between the negro and the white man, he would go for the white man.  The Almighty had drawn a line on this continent, on the one side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor? on the other, by white labor.  That line did not run on 36 deg. and 30’ [the Missouri Compromise line], for 36 deg. and 30’ runs over mountains and through valleys.  But this slave line, he said, meanders in the sugar-fields and plantations of the South, and the people living in their different localities and in the Territories must determine for themselves whether their “middle belt” were best adapted to slavery or free labor.  He advocated the eventual annexation of Cuba and Central America.  Still going a step further, he laid down a far-reaching principle.

“It is a law of humanity,” he said, “a law of civilization that whenever a man or a race of men show themselves incapable of managing their own affairs, they must consent to be governed by those who are capable of performing the duty....  In accordance with this principle, I assert that the negro race, under all circumstances, at all times, and in all countries, has shown itself incapable of self-government.”