436 Election campaign in Illinois. [isss interest ; and in the excitement of the time the President was suspected of things of which he was quite incapable. It was charged and believed that the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case had been a thing concerted between the President and the Chief Justice, though the President's character made such a calumny inexcusable. He was a man of unsullied integrity, and punctilious in the performance of what he considered to be his duty. He was past the prime of life, had never possessed great courage or any notable gifts of initiative, and of course suffered himself to be guided by the men whom he regarded, and had good reason to regard, as the real leaders of the Democratic party. Only two States in the North had voted for him, and only two in the North- West: the Democratic party, which had chosen him President, was, happily or unhappily, in fact a party chiefly manned and guided from the South. He had called southern men of influence into his Cabinet in whose character and capacity he justly and implicitly believed. He took their advice because he believed it to be honest and authori- tative. But the country grew infinitely restive and uneasy to see one section rule. It was Mr Buchanan's chief fault, if fault it was, not that he yielded to improper influences, as his opponents unjustly believed, but that he did not judge and act for himself. He was weak; and weakness was under the circumstances fatal. The year 1858 brought abundant signs of a great reaction, and it soon became only too plain that the Democratic party was driving the bulk of the country into opposition. It was the year of a general election. As the autumn approached, those who watched affairs found the critical issues of the time more and more sharply fixed and determined in their thought, and their convictions grew more and more vivid and definite. Nothing conduced more to this result than a notable debate reported from Illinois. The Republicans of Illinois had made a determined effort to keep Douglas from re-election to the Senate. They had announced that, should they succeed in obtaining a majority in the State legislature, they meant to send Abraham Lincoln to the Senate in Douglas' stead; and the autumn campaign in Illinois became for ever memorable because in its course Douglas and Lincoln went about the State together and argued their claims for support face to face, upon city platforms and upon country platforms, in the presence of the voters. The striking individuality of the two men gave singular piquancy to the contest as well as their power of straightforward, unmistakeable definiteness of speech. Douglas was a national character, one of the acknowledged leaders of a great party; Lincoln was a comparatively unknown man, a shrewd lawyer and local politician. His long, gaunt, ungainly figure, his slouching gait, his homely turns of phrase marked him a frontiersman. His big, bony hands had wrought at the hard tasks of the forest and the farm. But his rough exterior did not repel the plain people to whom he spoke, alongside the more adroit and
