Introduction by Richard Behn. The Lehrman Institute. For some days people had been arriving by the steam-packets from up and down the river, the up-boats from St. Louis bringing visitors with long, black hair, goatees, and stolid, Indian-like faces, slave-owners, and slave-dealers, from the human marts of Missouri and Kentucky; the northern visitors arriving by boat or rail, abolitionists and Republicans, with a cast of features distinctly different from the types coming from the south.
Oates wrote: Mary and Robert joined Lincoln for the final encounter, with Robert marching in the ranks of the Springfield Cadets. Alton had seen nothing so exciting since the assassination of [Elijah] Lovejoy, the fearless Abolitionist, many years before. It seemed to me that Judge Douglas was suffering from a severe cold and was very hoarse. He labored under a disadvantage which to me seemed to detract from the power of his argument. From a distance his voice sounded like that of a mastiff giving short, quick barks.
He had the opening speech, and on being introduced was received with a tumult and great enthusiasm. Throughout the speech Judge Douglas received such cheering as I had never heard before. Lincoln gave his one and a half hour rejoinder, according to McPike, who had helped with the local arrangements. He threw into his voice and gestures an animation that bound the audience with a spell. When he touched on the slavery feature of his address, it seemed to me there came an eloquence born of the earnestness of a heart convinced of the sinfulness — the injustice and the brutality of the institution of slavery, which made him a changed man.
So long as I live I will never lose the impression he made upon me. It helped strengthen my convictions on the subject of human slavery, and I have heard boys who heard him say that it shaped their opinions and fixed views in after life. His long arms rose and fell and swayed in air in gestures which became to the audience under his spell models of grace and beauty.
His tones range out clear, and his resonant voice proclaimed with profound conviction the doom of slavery or the doom of the nation. Let him go at it! Although Mr. Lincoln has doubts about the political question of slavery, he never had doubts about the moral question of slavery. Contemporary Jonathan Birch recalled hearing Mr. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle.
