Abraham Lincoln: a History — Volume 01 by Hay, John, 1835-1905, Nicolay, John George, 1832-1901

The fame of this success brought Lincoln urgent calls from all the places where Douglas was expected to speak. Accordingly, twelve days afterwards, October 16, they once more met in debate, at Peoria. Lincoln, as before, gave Douglas the opening and closing speeches, explaining that he was willing to yield this advantage in order to secure a hearing from the Democratic portion of his listeners. The audience was a large one, but not so representative in its character as that at Springfield. The occasion was made memorable, however, by the fact that when Lincoln returned home he wrote out and published his speech. We have therefore the revised text of his argument, and are able to estimate its character and value. Marking as it does with unmistakable precision a step in the second period of his intellectual development, it deserves the careful attention of the student of his life.

After the lapse of more than a quarter of a century the critical reader still finds it a model of brevity, directness, terse diction, exact and lucid historical statement, and full of logical propositions so short and so strong as to resemble mathematical axioms. Above all it is pervaded by an elevation of thought and aim that lifts it out of the commonplace of mere party controversy. Comparing it with his later speeches, we find it to contain not only the argument of the hour, but the premonition of the broader issues into which the new struggle was destined soon to expand.

The main, broad current of his reasoning was to vindicate and restore the policy of the fathers of the country in the restriction of slavery; but running through this like a thread of gold was the demonstration of the essential injustice and immorality of the system. He said:

This declared indifference but, as I must think, covert zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self- interest.

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