"My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky, to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin,' writin', and cipherin'' to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

"I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk war, and I was elected a Captain of Volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went [through] the campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten-the only time I have ever been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this legislative period I had studied law and removed to Springfield to practise it. In 1846 I was once elected to the Lower

House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practised law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

"If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am in height six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected. "Yours, very truly,

"A. LINCOLN."

Not long before the opening of the debate between Lincoln and Douglas, the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice Taney delivering the opinion, had decided virtually that, by virtue of the Constitution of the republic, slavery existed in all the Territories, and that Congress had no right to prohibit it. This was known as the Dred Scott decision. A negro of that name sued for his freedom. and that of his wife and children, claiming that by his having been carried by his owner into a Territory north of the northern boundary of Missouri, wherein slavery was excluded by the Missouri Compromise, he had become freed by the operation of the law. This decision made slavery national, freedom local.

Obviously, then, the two important topics before the country were the effect that the Dred Scott decision would have upon slavery and freedom, and the struggle in Kansas. Although Douglas was now

an Anti-Lecompton Democrat, he was to be taken to task before the country for the result in Kansas of his advocacy of what he called popular sovereignty. This had made the Lecompton infamy possible. He also approved the Dred Scott decision; but the dogma laid down in that decision effectually killed his own doctrine of popular sovereignty. It put slavery into all the Territories of the United States before the people of those Territories could have an opportunity of saying whether it should be voted up or down.

Replying to Douglas's speech in which that orator accused Lincoln of advocating disunion of the States, Lincoln said that he believed that the framers of the Constitution expected that, in course of time, slavery would become extinct; they had decreed that slavery should not go into territory where it had not already gone, and that when he had said that the opponents of slavery would place that institution where the public mind would rest in the expectation of its ultimate extinction, he only meant to say that they would place it where the fathers of the Republic originally placed it. In Douglas's speech, as was common in those days, when men were cornered for want of logical answers to Republican arguments, the speaker had intimated that Lincoln was in favor of a complete equality of the black and the white races. In his reply, Lincoln said: "I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I

need not have her for either; but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby."

This was the opening of the great debate in Chicago in the summer of 1858. A few days later Douglas spoke at Bloomington, and then in Springfield, on each occasion devoting himself to Lincoln's previous speeches. Lincoln spoke in Springfield also; and, addressing himself to the expectation that Douglas would, some day, be President of the United States, and that the anxious politicians of his party were waiting for that event with great hopefulness, Lincoln said:

"They have seen, in his round, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargéships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out, in wonderful luxuriance, 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."

All this, however, was a contest at which both disputants were, so to speak, at arm's length from each other. Lincoln wanted a closer wrestle with

the "Little Giant." Accordingly, he addressed a note to Douglas asking him if he would agree to a joint canvass of the State, each speaking from the same platform and each having his own quota of time allotted him. Douglas objected to this arrangement, several reasons, satisfactory to himself, being given. But, after some negotiation, arrangements were made by which a joint debate was fixed for seven different points, the first being at Ottawa, August 21, 1858, and the last at Alton, October 15th. Meanwhile both speakers were industriously canvassing the State, each in his own way and independently of the other.

The joint debate between these two men attracted the attention of the entire country. It was a battle of the giants. Nothing like it has ever before or since been seen in the Republic. The gravest issues -those of freedom and slavery-were involved in the discussion. All men saw that this debate was likely to settle the greatest question that had come before the people since the adoption of the Constitution; not that it would settle it as a judicial decree would settle it, but it was seen that out of this contest must issue the ultimate truth, the truth on which parties in future must stand or fall. Lincoln travelled in an unostentatious and inexpensive manner. Douglas moved from point to point on a special railway train, accompanied by a brass band and cannon, with the blare and volleying of which his entrance to town was heralded. Douglas did not always observe the proprieties of debate; and too often the unmannerly followers of the "Little