or this vexation Lincoln could
find no remedy, and it was in vain that he again and again called
attention to the fact that he had expressed neither a "doctrine," nor an
"invitation," nor any "purpose" or policy whatsoever. But as it seemed
not altogether courageous to leave his position in doubt, he said: "Now,
it is singular enough, if you will carefully read that passage over,
that I did not say in it that I was in favor of anything. I only said
what I expected would take place.... I did not even say that I desired
that slavery should be put in course of ultimate extinction. I do say so
now, however, so there need be no longer any difficulty about that." He
felt that nothing short of such extinction would surely prevent the
revival of a dispute which had so often been settled "_forever_." "We
can no more foretell," he said, "where the end of this slavery agitation
will be than we can see the end of the world itself.... There is no way
of putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back
upon the basis where our fathers placed it.... Then the public mind will
rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction."

There was much of this eloquence about "the fathers," much evocation of
the shades of the great departed, who, having reached the eternal
silence, could be claimed by both sides. The contention was none the
less strenuous because it was entirely irrelevant; since the opinion of
"the fathers" could not make slavery right or wrong. Many times
therefore did Douglas charge Lincoln with having said "that the Union
could not endure divided as our fathers made it, with free and slave
States;" as though this were a sort of blasphemy against the national
demigods. Lincoln aptly retorted that, as matter of fact, these same
distinguished "fathers"--"Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison,
Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day"--did not _make_, but
_found_, the nation half slave and half free; that they set "many clear
marks of disapprobation" upon slavery, and left it so situated that the
popular mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction. Unfortunately it had not been allowed to remain as they had
left it; but on the contrary, "all the trouble and convulsion has
proceeded from the efforts to spread it over more territory."

Pursuing this line, Lincoln alleged the purpose of the pro-slavery men
to make slavery "perpetual and universal" and "nati