It was a powerful speech, but not a radical one. Indeed, Gustave Koerner, the German-American leader of the Republicans in Bellville, complained that it was “too much on the old conservative order” and concluded that Lincoln was “an excellent man, but no match to such impudent Jesuits and sophists as [Senator Stephen] Douglas.” What Lincoln omitted from his argument was as significant as what he said.

At its conclusion, Lincoln rose to say that he would return to speak the following night. His speech, though forthright, was defensive. He denied any Republican alliance with Buchaneers, denied that Republicans opposed popular sovereignty as properly understood, and explained his view in the “House Divided” speech.

Douglas delivered his opening campaign speech from the balcony of the Tremont House in Chicago on July 9. Lincoln was present since he was in Chicago for the opening session of the U.S. District Court. Douglas defended his role in the Lecompton imbroglio, explained the Dred Scott decision, and expounded popular sovereignty as sacred principle. He attacked the Danites for attempting an unholy alliance with the Republicans, but his strongest fire was saved for connecting Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech with radical abolitionism.

By the time [Douglas] arrived in Springfield (in the middle of another of that summer’s drenching rains), he was unblushingly fondling every white racist prejudice he could summon and gleefully painting the bull’s-eye of “Negro equality” all over Lincoln’s back.

The following week Douglas spoke in Springfield. There he cavalierly dismissed the charge that he was part of a conspiracy to obtain a second Dred Scott decision. Lincoln was not present at the time but spoke in Springfield the next day.

Douglas had no objection to turning this “natural equality” doctrine into another misstep for Lincoln, on top of the House Divided speech.

But it was noticeable that Lincoln devoted far more of his Springfield speech to defending himself than to refuting Douglas – defending the House Divided speech, denying that he was preaching “consolidation and uniformity” in wanting to see slavery “placed in the course of ultimate extinction,” denying that he was inciting the North “to disturb or resist” the Dred Scott decision, denying (at the end) that he wanted “to make negroes perfectly equal with white men in social and political relations.” This was the kind of rhetorical posture that befitted a civil lawyer whose long sui