eat public
attention was paid to the answers to these interrogatories. The Dred
Scott judgments created a great difficulty for Douglas; he was bound to
treat them as right; but if they were right and Congress had no power
to prohibit slavery in a Territory, neither could a Territorial
Legislature with authority delegated by Congress have that power; and,
if this were made clear, it would seem there was an end of that free
choice of the people in the Territories of which Douglas had been the
great advocate. Douglas would use all his evasive skill in keeping
away from this difficult point. If, however, he could be forced to
face it Lincoln knew what he would say. He would say that slavery
would not be actually unlawful in a Territory, but would never actually
exist in it if the Territorial Legislature chose to abstain, as it
could, from passing any of the laws which would in practice be
necessary to protect slave property. By advocating this view Douglas
would fully reassure those of his former supporters in Illinois who
puzzled themselves on the Dred Scott case, but he would infuriate the
South. Lincoln determined to force Douglas into this position by the
questions which he challenged him to answer. When he told his friends
of his ambition, they all told him he would lose his election.
"Gentlemen," said Lincoln, "I am killing larger game; if Douglas
answers, he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a
hundred of this." The South was already angry with Douglas for his
action over the Kansas Constitution, but he would have been an
invincible candidate for the South to support in 1860, and it must have
told in his favour that his offence then had been one of plain honesty.
But in this fresh offence the Southern leaders had some cause to accuse
him of double dealing, and they swore he should not be President.

A majority of the new Illinois Legislature returned Douglas to the
Senate. Lincoln, however, had an actual majority of the votes of the
whole State. Probably also he had gained a hold on Illinois for the
future out of all proportion to the actual number of votes then given
against the popular Douglas, and above all he had gathered to him a
band of supporters who had unbounded belief in him. But his fall for
the moment was little noticed or regretted outside Illinois, or at any
rate in the great Eastern States, to which Illinois was, so to speak,
the provinces and he a provincial attorney.