in any lawful way, against the wish of any
citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to
the formation of a State Constitution?"(5) In other words, is the Dred
Scott decision good law? Is it true that a slave-holder can take his
slaves into Kansas if the people of Kansas want to keep him out?

Douglas saw the trap. With his instantaneous facility he tried to cloud
the issue and extricate himself through evasion in the very manner Mrs.
Stowe has described. While dodging a denial of the court's authority,
he insisted that his doctrine of local autonomy was still secure because
through police regulation the local legislature could foster or strangle
slavery, just as they pleased, no matter "what way the Supreme Court may
hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may
not go into a Territory under the Constitution."

As Lincoln's friends had foreseen, this matchless performance of
carrying water on both shoulders caught the popular fancy; Douglas was
reelected to the Senate. As Lincoln had foreseen, it killed him as a
Democratic leader; it prevented the reunion of the Democratic party. The
result appeared in 1860 when the Republicans, though still a minority
party, carried the day because of the bitter divisions among the
Democrats. That was what Lincoln foresaw when he said to his fearful
friends while they argued in vain to prevent his asking the question at
Free-port. "I am killing larger game; the great battle of 1860 is worth
a thousand of this senatorial race."(6)

X. THE DARK HORSE

One of the most curious things in Lincoln is the way his confidence
in himself came and went. He had none of Douglas's unwavering
self-reliance. Before the end, to be sure, he attained a type of
self-reliance, higher and more imperturbable. But this was not the
fruit of a steadfast unfolding. Rather, he was like a tree with its
alternating periods of growth and pause, now richly in leaf, now
dormant. Equally applicable is the other familiar image of the
successive waves.

The clue seems to have been, in part at least, a matter of vitality.
Just as Douglas emanated vitality--so much so that his aura filled the
whole Senate chamber and forced an unwilling response in the gifted but
hostile woman who watched him from the gallery--Lincoln, conversely,
made no such overpowering impression. His observers, however much they
have to say about his humor, his seasons of Shakespearian mirt