within the house, Lincoln was an attentive listener.[684] The presence
of his rival put Douglas on his mettle. He took in good part a rather
discourteous interruption by Lincoln, and referred to him in generous
terms, as "a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen,
and an honorable opponent."[685]

The address was in a somewhat egotistical vein--pardonably egotistical,
considering the extraordinary circumstances. Douglas could not refrain
from referring to his career since he had confronted that excited crowd
in Chicago eight years before, in defense of the compromise measures.
To his mind the events of those eight years had amply vindicated the
great principle of popular sovereignty. Knowing that he was in a
Republican stronghold, he dwelt with particular complacency upon the
manful way in which the Republican party had come to the support of
that principle, in the recent anti-Lecompton fight. It was this
fundamental right of self-government that he had championed through
good and ill report, all these years. It was this, and this alone,
which had governed his action in regard to the Lecompton fraud. It was
not because the Lecompton constitution was a slave constitution, but
because it was not the act and deed of the people of Kansas that he had
condemned it. "Whenever," said he, "you put a limitation upon the right
of a people to decide what laws they want, you have destroyed the
fundamental principle of self-government."

With Lincoln's house-divided-against-itself proposition, he took issue
unqualifiedly. "Mr. Lincoln asserts, as a fundamental principle of
this government, that there must be uniformity in the local laws and
domestic institutions of each and all the States of the Union, and he
therefore invites all the non-slaveholding States to band together,
organize as one body, and make war upon slavery in Kentucky, upon