It will be remembered that the Abolitionists were never strongly national in sentiment.  In certain respects they remind one of the extreme “internationals” of to-day.  Their allegiance was not first of all to Society, nor to governments, but to abstract ideas.  For all such attitudes in political science, Lincoln had an instinctive aversion.  He was permeated always, by his sense of the community, of the obligation to work in terms of the community.  Even the prejudices, the shortsightedness of the community were things to be considered, to be dealt with tenderly.  Hence his unwillingness to force reforms upon a community not ripe to receive them.  In one of his greatest speeches occurs the dictum:  “A universal feeling whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded."(17) Anticipating such ideas, he made in his Clay oration, a startling denunciation of both the extreme factions of

“Those (Abolitionists) who would shiver into fragments the union of these States, tear to tatters its now ’venerated Constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible rather than slavery should continue a single hour; together with all their more halting sympathizers, have received and are receiving their just execration; and the name and opinion and influence of Mr. Clay are fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against them.  But I would also if I could, array his name, opinion and influence against the opposite extreme, against a few, but increasing number of men who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and ridicule the white man’s charter of freedom, the declaration that ‘all men are created free and equal.’"(18)

In another passage he stated what he conceived to be the central inspiration of Clay.  Had he been thinking of himself, he could not have foreshadowed more exactly the basal drift of all his future as a statesman: 

“He loved his country partly because it was his own country, and mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such the advancement, prosperity and glory of human liberty, human right and human nature."(19)

VIII.  A RETURN TO POLITICS

Meanwhile, great things were coming forward at Washington.  They centered about a remarkable man with whom Lincoln had hitherto formed a curious parallel, by whom hitherto he had been completely overshadowed.  Stephen Arnold Douglas was prosecuting attorney at Springfield when Lincoln began the practice of law.  They were in the Legislature together.  Both courted Mary Todd.  Soon afterward, Douglas had distanced his rival.  When Lincoln went to the House of Representatives as a Whig, Douglas went to the Senate as a Democrat.  While Lincoln was failing at Washington, Douglas was building a national reputation.  In the hubbub that followed the Compromise of 1850, while Lincoln, abandoning politics, immersed himself in the law, Douglas rendered a service to the country by defeating a movement in Illinois to reject the Compromise.  When the Democratic National Convention assembled in 1852, he was sufficiently prominent to obtain a considerable vote for the presidential nomination.