territory from which it had been shut out, could not fail to move
him deeply. His sense of justice and his strong powers of
reasoning were equally stirred, and from that time until slavery
came to its end through his own act, he gave his time and all his
energies to the cause of freedom.

Two points served to make the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
of special interest to Lincoln. The first was personal, in that
the man who championed the measure, and whose influence in
Congress alone made it possible, was Senator Stephen A. Douglas,
who had been his neighbor in Illinois for many years.

The second was deeper. He realized that the struggle meant much
more than the freedom or bondage of a few million black men: that
it was in reality a struggle for the central idea of our American
republic--the statement in our Declaration of Independence that
"all men are created equal." He made no public speeches until
autumn, but in the meantime studied the question with great care,
both as to its past history and present state. When he did speak
it was with a force and power that startled Douglas and, it is
said, brought him privately to Lincoln with the proposition that
neither of them should address a public meeting again until after
the next election.

Douglas was a man of great ambition as well as of unusual
political skill. Until recently he had been heartily in favor of
keeping slavery out of the Northwest Territory; but he had set
his heart upon being President of the United States, and he
thought that he saw a chance of this if he helped the South to
repeal the Missouri Compromise, and thus gained its gratitude and