he two
senatorships from Illinois, and that Trumbull had broken faith with
Lincoln. Lincoln in turn made a charge that Douglas had conspired with
Presidents Pierce and Buchanan and Chief Justice Taney to spread slavery
and make it universal. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was their first step, the
Dred Scott decision the second; but one more step, and slavery could be
fastened upon States as they had already fastened it upon Territories.
Douglas protesting that to bring such a charge, incapable of proof or
disproof, was indecent, Lincoln pointed out that Douglas had similarly
charged the administration with conspiring to force a slave constitution
upon Kansas; and afterwards took up a charge of Trumbull's that Douglas
himself had at first conspired with Toombs and other senators to prevent
any reference to the people of whatsoever constitution the Kansas
convention might adopt. When they moved southward, Douglas charged
Lincoln with inconsistency in that he changed his stand to suit the
leanings of different communities. Of all these charges and
counter-charges, however, none was absolutely proved, and no one now
believes those which Douglas brought. But he made them serve, and
Lincoln's, though he sustained them with far better evidence, and
pressed them home with a wonderful clearness of reasoning,--once, he
actually threw his argument into a syllogism,--did no great harm to
Douglas.
It was Douglas, too, who began the sparring for a political advantage.
He knew that Lincoln's following was heterogeneous. "Their principles,"
he jeered, "in the north are jet black, in the centre they are in color
a decent mulatto, and in lower Egypt they are almost white." His aim,
therefore, was to fix upon Lincoln such extreme views as would alarm the
more moderate of his followers, since the extremists must take him
perforce, as a choice of two evils, even though he fell far short of
their radical standard. To this end, Douglas produced certain
resolutions which purported to have been adopted by an Anti-Nebraska
convention at Springfield in 1854, and would have held Lincoln
responsible for them. In a series of questions, he asked whether Lincoln
were still opposed to a fugitive slave law, to the admission of any more
slave States, and to acquiring any more territory unless the Wilmot
Proviso were applied to it, and if he were still for prohibiting slavery
outright in all the Territories and in the District of Columbia, and
for prohibiting
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