With regard to some of these subjects Lincoln modified his position at a later period, and it has been suggested that he would have professed more advanced principles in his debates with Douglas, had he not feared thereby to lose votes.  This view can hardly be sustained.  Lincoln had the courage of his opinions, but he was not a radical.  The man who risked his election by delivering, against the urgent protest of his friends, the speech about “the house divided against itself” would not have shrunk from the expression of more extreme views, had he really entertained them.  It is only fair to assume that he said what at the time he really thought, and that if, subsequently, his opinions changed, it was owing to new conceptions of good policy and of duty brought forth by an entirely new set of circumstances and exigencies.  It is characteristic that he continued to adhere to the impracticable colonization plan even after the Emancipation Proclamation had already been issued.

But in this contest Lincoln proved himself not only a debater, but also a political strategist of the first order.  The “kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman,” as Douglas had been pleased to call him, was by no means as harmless as a dove.  He possessed an uncommon share of that worldly shrewdness which not seldom goes with genuine simplicity of character; and the political experience gathered in the Legislature and in Congress, and in many election campaigns, added to his keen intuitions, had made him as far-sighted a judge of the probable effects of a public man’s sayings or doings upon the popular mind, and as accurate a calculator in estimating political chances and forecasting results, as could be found among the party managers in Illinois.  And now he perceived keenly the ugly dilemma in which Douglas found himself, between the Dred Scott decision, which declared the right to hold slaves to exist in the Territories by virtue of the Federal Constitution, and his “great principle of popular sovereignty,” according to which the people of a Territory, if they saw fit, were to have the right to exclude slavery therefrom.  Douglas was twisting and squirming to the best of his ability to avoid the admission that the two were incompatible.  The question then presented itself if it would be good policy for Lincoln to force Douglas to a clear expression of his opinion as to whether, the Dred Scott decision notwithstanding, “the people of a Territory could in any lawful way exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution.”  Lincoln foresaw and predicted what Douglas would answer:  that slavery could not exist in a Territory unless the people desired it and gave it protection by territorial legislation.  In an improvised caucus the policy of pressing the interrogatory on Douglas was discussed.  Lincoln’s friends unanimously advised against it, because the answer foreseen would sufficiently commend Douglas to the people of Illinois to insure his re-election