we may make to analyse a subtle character and in some
respects to trace its growth is certain to miss the exact mark. But it
is in any case plain that Abraham Lincoln left political life in 1849,
a praiseworthy self-made man with good sound views but with nothing
much to distinguish him above many other such, and at a sudden call
returned to political life in 1854 with a touch of something quite
uncommon added to those good sound views.

4. _The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise_.

The South had become captive to politicians, personally reputable and
of some executive capacity, who had converted its natural prejudice
into a definite doctrine which was paradoxical and almost inconceivably
narrow, and who, as is common in such instances of perversion and
fanaticism, knew hardly any scruple in the practical enforcement of
their doctrine. In the North, on the other hand, though there were
some few politicians who were clever and well-intentioned, public
opinion had no very definite character, and public men generally
speaking were flabby. At such a time the sheer adventurer has an
excellent field before him and perhaps has his appointed use.

Stephen Douglas, who was four years younger than Lincoln, had come to
Illinois from the Eastern States just about the time when Lincoln
entered the Legislature. He had neither money nor friends to start
with, but almost immediately secured, by his extraordinary address in
pushing himself, a clerkship in the Assembly. He soon became, like
Lincoln, a lawyer and a legislator, but was on the Democratic side. He
rapidly soared into regions beyond the reach of Lincoln, and in 1847
became a Senator for Illinois, where he later became Chairman of the
Committee on Territories, and as such had to consider the question of
providing for the government of the districts called Kansas and
Nebraska, which lay west and north-west of Missouri, and from which
slavery was excluded by the Missouri Compromise. He was what in
England is called a "Jingo," and was at one time eager to fight this
country for the possession of what is now British Columbia. His short
figure gave an impression of abounding strength and energy which
obtained him the nickname of "the little Giant." With no assignable
higher quality, and with the blustering, declamatory, shamelessly
fallacious and evasive oratory of a common demagogue, he was
nevertheless an accomplished Parliamentarian, and imposed himself as
effectiv