The same feeling, growing stronger as he grew older,
had inspired the Lincoln-Stone protest and the bill to free the
slaves in the District of Columbia, and had caused him to vote at
least forty times against slavery in one form or another during
his short term in Congress. The repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, throwing open once more to slavery a vast amount of
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.
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