Compromise, throwing open once more
to slavery a vast amount of territory from which it had been shut out,
could not fail to move him deeply. His sense of justice and his strong
powers of reasoning were equally stirred, and from that time until
slavery came to its end through his own act, he gave his time and all
his energies to the cause of freedom.

Two points served to make the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of
special interest to Lincoln. The first was personal, in that the man who
championed the measure, and whose influence in Congress alone made it
possible, was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had been his neighbor in
Illinois for many years.

The second was deeper. He realized that the struggle meant much more
than the freedom or bondage of a few million black men: that it was in
reality a struggle for the central idea of our American republic--the
statement in our Declaration of Independence that "all men are created
equal." He made no public speeches until autumn, but in the meantime
studied the question with great care, both as to its past history and
present state. When he did speak it was with a force and power that
startled Douglas and, it is said, brought him privately to Lincoln with
the proposition that neither of them should address a public meeting
again until after the next election.

Douglas was a man of great ambition as well as of unusual political
skill. Until recently he had been heartily in favor of keeping slavery
out of the Northwest Territory; but he had set his heart upon being
President of the United States, and he thought that he saw a chance of
this if he helped the South to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and thus
gained its gratitude and its votes. Without hesitation he plunged into
the work and labored successfully to overthrow this law of more than
thirty years' standing.

Lincoln's speech against the repeal had made a deep impression in
Illinois, where he was at once recognized as the people's spokesman
in the cause of freedom. His statements were so clear, his language so
eloquent, the stand he took so just, that all had to acknowledge his
power. He did not then, nor for many years afterward, say that the
slaves ought to be immediately set free. What he did insist upon was
that slavery was wrong, and that it must not be allowed to spread into
territory already free; but that, gradually, in ways lawful and just to
masters and slaves alike, the country should strive to get rid