" This
spirit was upon him from the beginning to the end. Had he been
addressing a bench of judges, subject to a close limitation of minutes,
he would have won credit by the combined economy and force which were
displayed in these harangues to general assemblages. To speak of the
lofty tone of these speeches comes dangerously near to the distasteful
phraseology of extravagant laudation, than which nothing else can
produce upon honest men a worse impression. Yet it is a truth visible to
every reader that at the outset Lincoln raised the discussion to a very
high plane, and held it there throughout. The truth which he had to
sustain was so great that it was perfectly simple, and he had the good
sense to utter it with appropriate simplicity. In no speech was there
fervor or enthusiasm or rhetoric; he talked to the reason and the
conscience of his auditors, not to their passions. Yet the depth of his
feeling may be measured by the story that once in the canvass he said to
a friend: "Sometimes, in the excitement of speaking, I seem to see the
end of slavery. I feel that the time is soon coming when the sun shall
shine, the rain fall, on no man who shall go forth to unrequited toil.
How this will come, when it will come, by whom it will come, I cannot
tell,--but that time will surely come."[87] It is just appreciation, and
not extravagance, to say that the cheap and miserable little volume, now
out of print, containing in bad newspaper type, "The Lincoln and Douglas
Debates,"[88] holds some of the masterpieces of oratory of all ages and
nations.
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