tablished a settled doctrine for the
country."

Let Douglas cry "awful," "anarchy," "revolution," as much as he would,
Lincoln's arguments against the Dred Scott decision appealed to common
sense and won him commendation all over the country. Even the radical
leaders of the party in the East--Seward, Sumner, Theodore
Parker--began to notice him, to read his speeches, to consider his
arguments.

With every month of 1857 Lincoln grew stronger, and his election in
Illinois as United States senatorial candidate in 1858 against Douglas
would have been insured if Douglas had not suddenly broken with
Buchanan and his party in a way which won him the hearty sympathy and
respect of a large part of the Republicans of the North. By a
flagrantly unfair vote the pro-slavery leaders of Kansas had secured
the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution allowing slavery in the
State. President Buchanan urged Congress to admit Kansas with her
bogus Constitution. Douglas, who would not sanction so base an
injustice, opposed the measure, voting with the Republicans steadily
against the admission. The Buchananists, outraged at what they called
"Douglas's apostasy," broke with him. Then it was that a part of the
Republican party, notably Horace Greeley at the head of the New York
"Tribune," struck by the boldness and nobility of Douglas's
opposition, began to hope to win him over from the Democrats to the
Republicans. Their first step was to counsel the leaders of their
party in Illinois to put up no candidate against Douglas for the
United States senatorship in 1858.

Lincoln saw this change on the part of the Republican leaders with
dismay. "Greeley is not doing me right," he said. "... I am a true
Republican, and have been tried already in the hottest part of the
anti-slavery fight; and yet I find him taking up Douglas, a veritable
dodger,--once a tool of the South, now its enemy,--and pushing him to
the front." He grew so restless over the returning popularity of
Douglas among the Republicans that Herndon, his law-partner,
determined to go East to find out the real feeling of the Eastern
leaders towards Lincoln. Herndon had, for a long time, been in
correspondence with the leading abolitionists and had no difficulty in
getting interviews. The returns he brought back from his canvass were
not altogether reassuring. Seward, Sumner, Phillips, Garrison,
Beecher, Theodore Parker, all spoke favorably of Lincoln and Seward
sent him word that t