e, and if the people are
opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who
will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction
of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their
legislature will favor its extension."

His democratic constituents went wild over the clever way in which
Douglas had escaped Lincoln's trap. He now practically had his
election. The Republicans shook their heads. Lincoln only was serene.
He alone knew what he had done. The Freeport debate had no sooner
reached the pro-slavery press than a storm of protest went up.
Douglas had betrayed the South. He had repudiated the Supreme Court
decision. He had declared that slavery could be kept out of the
territories by other legislation than a State Constitution. "The
Freeport doctrine," or "the theory of unfriendly legislation," as it
became known, spread month by month, and slowly but surely made
Douglas an impossible candidate in the South. The force of the
question was not realized in full by Lincoln's friends until the
Democratic party met in Charleston, S. C., in 1860, and the Southern
delegates refused to support Douglas because of the answer he gave to
Lincoln's question in the Freeport debate of 1858.

"Do you recollect the argument we had on the way up to Freeport two
years ago over the question I was going to ask Judge Douglas?" Lincoln
asked Mr. Joseph Medill, when the latter went to Springfield a few
days after the election of 1860.

"Yes," said Medill, "I recollect it very well."

"Don't you think I was right now?"

"We were both right. The question hurt Douglas for the Presidency, but
it lost you the senatorship."

"Yes, and I have won the place he was playing for."

From the beginning of the campaign Lincoln supplemented the strength
of his arguments by inexhaustible good humor. Douglas, physically
worn, harassed by the trend which Lincoln had given the discussions,
irritated that his adroitness and eloquence could not so cover the
fundamental truth of the Republican position but that it would up
again, often grew angry, even abusive. Lincoln answered him with most
effective raillery. At Havana, where he spoke the day after Douglas,
he said:

"I am informed that my distinguished friend yesterday became a little
excited--nervous, perhaps--and he said something about fighting, as
though referring to a pugilistic encounter between him and myself. Did
anybody in this audience he