post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.  And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor.  On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.  In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.  These are disadvantages all, taken together, that the Republicans labor under.  We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone.  I am, in a certain sense, made the standard-bearer in behalf of the Republicans.  I was made so merely because there had to be some one so placed,—­I being in nowise preferable to any other one of twenty-five, perhaps a hundred, we have in the Republican ranks.  Then I say I wish it to be distinctly understood and borne in mind that we have to fight this battle without many—­perhaps without any of the external aids which are brought to bear against us.  So I hope those with whom I am surrounded have principle enough to nerve themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can be fairly done to bring about the right result.

After Senator Douglas left Washington, as his movements were made known by the public prints, he tarried a considerable time in the city of New York; and it was heralded that, like another Napoleon, he was lying by and framing the plan of his campaign.  It was telegraphed to Washington City, and published in the Union, that he was framing his plan for the purpose of going to Illinois to pounce upon and annihilate the treasonable and disunion speech which Lincoln had made here on the 16th of June.  Now, I do suppose that the Judge really spent some time in New York maturing the plan of the campaign, as his friends heralded for him.  I have been able, by noting his movements since his arrival in Illinois, to discover evidences confirmatory of that allegation.  I think I have been able to see what are the material points of that plan.  I will, for a little while, ask your attention to some of them.  What I shall point out, though not showing the whole plan, are, nevertheless, the main points, as I suppose.

They are not very numerous.  The first is popular sovereignty.  The second and third are attacks upon my speech made on the 16th of June.  Out of these three points—­drawing within the range of popular sovereignty the question of the Lecompton Constitution—­he makes his principal assault.  Upon these his successive speeches are substantially one and the same.  On this matter of popular sovereignty I wish to be a little careful.  Auxiliary to these main points, to be sure, are their thunderings of cannon, their marching and music, their fizzlegigs and fireworks; but I will not waste time with them.  They are but the little trappings of the campaign.