of any one else, she is my equal and the equal of all others."(2) Any false move made by Douglas, any rash assertion, was sure to be seized upon by that watchful enemy in Illinois.  In attempting to defend himself on two fronts at once, defying both the Republicans and the Democratic machine, Douglas made his reckless declaration that all he wanted was a fair vote by the people of Kansas; that for himself he did not care how they settled the matter, whether slavery was voted up or voted down.  With relentless skill, Lincoln developed the implications of this admission, drawing forth from its confessed indifference to the existence of slavery, a chain of conclusions that extended link by link to a belief in reopening the African slave trade.  This was done in his speech accepting the Republican nomination for the Senate.  In the same speech he restated his general position in half a dozen sentences that became at once a classic statement for the whole Republican party:  “A house divided against itself can not stand.  I believe this government can not endure permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved.  I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.  Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."(3)

The great duel was rapidly approaching its climax.  What was in reality no more than the last round has appropriated a label that ought to have a wider meaning and is known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.  The two candidates made a joint tour of the State, debating their policies in public at various places during the summer and autumn of 1858.

Properly considered, these famous speeches closed Lincoln’s life as an orator.  The Cooper Union speech was an isolated aftermath in alien conditions, a set performance not quite in his true vein.  His brief addresses of the later years were incidental; they had no combative element.  Never again was he to attempt to sway an audience for an immediate stake through the use of the spoken word.  “A brief description of Mr. Lincoln’s appearance on the stump and of his manner when speaking,” as Herndon aptly remarks, “may not be without interest.  When standing erect, he was six feet four inches high.  He was lean in flesh and ungainly in figure.  Aside from his sad, pained look, due to habitual melancholy, his face had no characteristic or fixed expression.  He was thin through the chest and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. . . .  At first he was very awkward and it seemed a real labor to adjust himself to his surroundings.  He struggled for a time under a feeling of apparent diffidence and sensitiveness, and these only added