(St. Louis) Missouri Republican, "Douglas - Lincoln," September 2, 1858

On the first page of this paper we publish the speeches of Judge DOUGLAS and Mr. LINCOLN, at Freeport. They are the second of the series to be delivered by the representatives of the two parties in Illinois, and, it may be presumed, embrace the pith and substance of all the intermediate speeches and delivered by them. Both of the speakers are well attended, and a liberal allowance may be made for the enthusiasm and the crowds which are said to accompany them wherever they go. The contest is one to which the whole country is looking with intense anxiety. If there was much feeling expressed throughout every State of the Union, with reference to our election – if the Black Republicans of the North turned their gaze to St. Louis with intense anxiety, to discern, if possible, some hope that Black Republicanism had found a resting place in a Slave State, thereby relieving that party from the odium attached to a sectional, a strictly Free State party – if the result conveyed to them intelligence of the total discomfiture of their party – great as their disappointment was, still greater will be their disappointment if, in November next, the tidings should go forth that DOUGLAS had been endorsed by the people of Illinois, and that the black Republicans had been defeated and overwhelmed. We have not been inattentive observes of the course of things in Illinois – we have not undervalued the importance of the election soon to take place – and while it is very well known that we disapproved of the position assumed by Judge DOUGLAS at the commencement of the last Congress on the presentation of the President’s message, and the discussion which was then provoked by him on the Kansas Constitution, we entertain no doubt now that true patriotism, an honest desire for the settlement of this vexed question, will best be consulted by sustain Senator DOUGLAS in is war upon the Black Republicans of the State, and the defeat of that party. Judge DOUGLAS declares himself now, as he always has been, a Democrat – he stands pledged to the doctrines of the Cincinnati platform – his most intimate friends not only say that he will be found supporting the nominees of the Charleston Convention in 1860, but that he expects to be the nominee of that Convention – on all occasions, at all points, and in all positions, his hostility to Black Republicanism has been bold and uncompromising, and added to all this is his persistent declaration that, now that the Kansas question is settled by the people of that Territory, there is no cause of further difference between him and the President, or that portion of the Democratic party who, in the past session of Congress, took a different view of their duty from what he did. Such being his position and his sentiments, the conservative men of Illinois – Whigs and Americans – those who hate Black Republicanism, and believe that that heresy must lead to a dissolution of the Union – in our opinion, ought to have no hesitation in giving their influence and their votes for candidates who will support the reelection of Mr. DOUGLAS. Between him and Mr. LINCOLN, who has of late years gone off into the wildest stretches of Abolitionism, there ought to be no ground for doubt in the minds of all those who love the Union; of all those who think its preservation an object of much greater moment than the election of a man whose distempered brain is full of strange fancies, and who is the willing Representative of a party which is full of hatred of fifteen at least of the States of the confederacy, and would destroy it rather than not succeed in their desire to obtain complete control of the General Government. Let Illinois be saved from the grasp of these desperate politicians, and the Union is safe.