man, woman, and child felt that it was unanswerable.”  In speaking of the same occasion, Mr. Lamon says:  “Many fine speeches were made upon the one absorbing topic; but it is no shame to any one of these orators that their really impressive speeches were but slightly appreciated or long remembered beside Mr. Lincoln’s splendid and enduring performance,—­enduring in the memory of his auditors, although preserved upon no written or printed page.”

A few days after this encounter, Douglas spoke in Peoria, and was followed by Lincoln with the same crushing arguments that had served him at the State Fair, and with the same triumphant effect.  His Peoria speech was written out by him and published after its delivery.  A few specimens will show its style and argumentative power.

Argue as you will, and as long as you will, this is the naked front and aspect of the measure; and in this aspect it could not but produce agitation.  Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature; opposition to it, in his love of justice.  These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks, throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.  Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history,—­you still cannot repeal human nature.  It still will be the abundance of man’s heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak....  When Mr. Pettit, in connection with his support of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declaration of Independence ‘a self-evident lie,’ he only did what consistency and candor require all other Nebraska men to do.  Of the forty-odd Nebraska Senators who sat present and heard him, no one rebuked him....  If this had been said among Marion’s men, Southerners though they were, what would have become of the man who said it?  If this had been said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said it would probably have been hung sooner than Andre was.  If it had been said in old Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the very doorkeeper would have throttled the man, and thrust him into the street....  Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit of that early age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and toleration only by necessity.  But now it is to be transformed into a ‘sacred right.’  Nebraska brings it forth, places it on the high road to extension and perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says to it:  ‘Go, and God speed you.’  Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation, the very figurehead of the ship of state.  Little by little, but steadily as man’s march to the grave, we have been giving the old for the new faith.  Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to that other declaration, ’that for some men to enslave others is a sacred right of self-government.’