Lincoln had found at last a mode and an opportunity for concentrating all his powers in a way that could have results.
He had discovered himself as a man of letters.The great speeches of 1854were not different in a way from the previous speeches that were without results.And yet they were wholly different.Just as Lincoln's version of an old tale made of that tale a new thing,so Lincoln's version of an argument made of it a different thing from other men's versions.The oratory of 1854was not state-craft in any ordinary sense.It was art Lincoln the artist,who had slowly developed a great literary faculty,had chanced after so many rebuffs on good fortune.His cause stood in urgent need of just what he could give.It was one of those moments when a new political force,having not as yet any opening for action,finds salvation in the phrase-maker,in the literary artist who can embody it in words.
During the next five years and more,Lincoln was the recognized offset to Douglas.His fame spread from Illinois in both directions.He was called to Iowa and to Ohio as the advocate of all advocates who could undo the effect of Douglas.His fame traveled eastward.The culmination of the period of literary leadership was his famous speech at Cooper Union in February,1860.
It was inevitable that he should go along with the antislavery coalition which adopted the name of the Republican party.But his natural deliberation kept him from being one of its founders.An attempt of its founders to appropriate him after the triumph at Springfield,in October,1854,met with a rebuff.[1]Nearly a year and a half went by before he affiliated himself with the new party.But once having made up his mind,he went forward wholeheartedly.At the State Convention of Illinois Republicans in 1856he made a speech that has not been recorded but which is a tradition for moving oratory.That same year a considerable number of votes were cast for Lincoln for Vice-President in the Republican National Convention.
But all these were mere details.The great event of the years between 1854and 1860was his contest with Douglas.It was a battle of wits,a great literary duel.Fortunately for Lincoln,his part was played altogether on his own soil,under conditions in which he was entirely at his ease,where nothing conspired with his enemy to embarrass him.
Douglas had a far more difficult task.Unforeseen complications rapidly forced him to change his policy,to meet desertion and betrayal in his own ranks.These were terrible years when fierce events followed one another in quick succession--the rush of both slave-holders and abolitionists into Kansas;the cruel war along the Wakarusa River;the sack of Lawrence by the pro-slavery party;the massacre by John Brown at Pottawatomie;the diatribes of Sumner in the Senate;the assault on Sumner by Brooks.In the midst of this carnival of ferocity came the Dred Scott decision,cutting under the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,denying to the people of a Territory the right to legislate on slavery,and giving to all slave-holders the right to settle with their slaves anywhere they pleased outside a Free State.This famous decision repudiated Douglas's policy of leaving all such questions to local autonomy and to private enterprise.For a time Douglas made no move to save his policy.But when President Buchanan decided to throw the influence of the Administration on the side of the pro-slavery party in Kansas,Douglas was up in arms.When it was proposed to admit Kansas with a constitution favoring slavery,but which had not received the votes of a majority of the inhabitants,Douglas voted with the Republicans to defeat admission.Whereupon the Democratic party machine and the Administration turned upon him without mercy.He stood alone in a circle of enemies.At no other time did he show so many of the qualities of a great leader.Battling with Lincoln in the popular forum on the one hand,he was meeting daily on the other assaults by a crowd of brilliant opponents in Congress.
At the same time he was playing a consummate game of political strategy,struggling against immense odds to recover his hold on Illinois.The crisis would come in 1858when he would have to go before the Legislature for reelection.He knew well enough who his opponent would be.At every turn there fell across his path the shadow of a cool sinister figure,his relentless enemy.It was Lincoln.On the struggle with Lincoln his whole battle turned.
