The State Agricultural Fair was at
Springfield that year, and Douglas was announced to speak there."
The new question had created great excitement and uncertainty in
Illinois politics, and there were abundant signs that it was beginning
to break up the organization of both the Whig and the Democratic
parties. This feeling brought together at the State fair an unusual
number of local leaders from widely scattered counties, and almost
spontaneously a sort of political tournament of speech-making broke out.
In this Senator Douglas, doubly conspicuous by his championship of the
Nebraska Bill in Congress, was expected to play the leading part, while
the opposition, by a common impulse, called upon Lincoln to answer him.
Lincoln performed the task with such aptness and force, with such
freshness of argument, illustrations from history, and citations from
authorities, as secured him a decided oratorical triumph, and lifted him
at a single bound to the leadership of the opposition to Douglas's
propagandism. Two weeks later, Douglas and Lincoln met at Peoria in a
similar debate, and on his return to Springfield Lincoln wrote out and
printed his speech in full.
The reader who carefully examines this speech will at once be impressed
with the genius which immediately made Mr.
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