answers, he can never be President, and the battle of
1860 is worth a hundred of this." The interrogatory was pressed upon
Douglas, and Douglas did answer that, no matter what the decision of
the Supreme Court might be on the abstract question, the people of
a Territory had the lawful means to introduce or exclude slavery by
territorial legislation friendly or unfriendly to the institution.
Lincoln found it easy to show the absurdity of the proposition that, if
slavery were admitted to exist of right in the Territories by virtue
of the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, it could be kept out or
expelled by an inferior law, one made by a territorial Legislature.
Again the judgment of the politicians, having only the nearest object in
view, proved correct: Douglas was reelected to the Senate. But Lincoln's
judgment proved correct also: Douglas, by resorting to the expedient
of his "unfriendly legislation doctrine," forfeited his last chance of
becoming President of the United States. He might have hoped to win, by
sufficient atonement, his pardon from the South for his opposition
to the Lecompton Constitution; but that he taught the people of the
Territories a trick by which they could defeat what the proslavery men
considered a constitutional right, and that he called that trick
lawful, this the slave power would never forgive. The breach between
the Southern and the Northern Democracy was thenceforth irremediable and
fatal.

The Presidential election of 1860 approached. The struggle in Kansas,
and the debates in Congress which accompanied it, and which not
unfrequently provoked violent outbursts, continually stirred the popular
excitement. Within the Democratic party raged the war of factions. The
national Democratic convention met at Charleston on the 23d of April,
1860. After a struggle of ten days between the adherents and the
opponents of Douglas, during which the delegates from the cotton States
had withdrawn, the convention adjourned without having nominated any
candidates, to meet again in Baltimore on the 18th of June. There was no
prospect, however, of reconciling the hostile elements. It appeared very
probable that the Baltimore convention would nominate Douglas, while
the seceding Southern Democrats would set up a candidate of their own,
representing extreme proslavery principles.

Meanwhile, the national Republican convention assembled at Chicago on
the 16th of May, full of enthusiasm and hope. The situ