s seat; he rose and walked rapidly
up and down the platform, behind Lincoln, holding his watch in his hand,
and obviously impatient for the call of _'time.'_ A spectator says: 'He
was greatly agitated, his long grizzled hair waving in the wind, like
the shaggy locks of an enraged lion.' It was while Douglas was thus
exhibiting to the crowd his eager desire to stop Lincoln, that the
latter, holding the audience entranced by his eloquence, was striking
his heaviest blows. The instant the secondhand of his watch reached the
point at which Lincoln's time was up, Douglas, holding up the watch,
called out: 'Sit down, Lincoln, sit down! Your time is up!' Turning to
Douglas, Lincoln said calmly: 'I will. I _will_ quit. I believe my time
_is_ up.' 'Yes,' said a voice from the platform, 'Douglas has had
enough; it is time you let up on him.'"

The institution of slavery was, of course, the topic around which
circled all the arguments in these joint discussions. It was the great
topic of the hour--the important point of division between the
Republican and Democratic parties. Lincoln's exposition of the subject
was profound and masterly. At the meeting in Quincy the issue was
defined and the argument driven home with unsparing logic and
directness. In closing the debate, he said:

I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his
public annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his
system of policy in regard to the institution of slavery
contemplates that it shall last _forever_. We are getting a
little nearer the true issue of this controversy, and I am
profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge Douglas asks
you, 'Why cannot the institution of slavery, or, rather, why
cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our
fathers made it forever?' In the first place, I insist that our
fathers _did not_ make this nation half slave and half free, or
part slave and part free. I insist that they found the
institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so,
but they left it so, because they knew of no way to get rid of it
at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a
matter of choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation
part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a
_falsehood_. More than that; when the fathers of the Government
cut off the source of slavery by t