In presenting the Republican side of the question Lincoln seemed to feel a duty beyond that of merely outarguing his opponent. He bore the weighty burden of a responsibility graver than personal success. He might prevail in the opinions of his fellow citizens; without this instant triumph he might so present his cause that the jury of posterity would declare that the truth lay with him; he might even convince both the present and the coming generations; and though achieving all these triumphs, he might still fall far short of the peculiar and exacting requirement of the occasion. For the winning of the senatorship was the insignificant part of what he had undertaken; his momentous charge was to maintain a grand moral crusade, to stimulate and to vindicate a great uprising in the cause of humanity and of justice. His full appreciation of this is entirely manifest in the tone of his speeches. They have an earnestness, a gravity, at times even a solemnity, unusual in such encounters in any era or before any audiences, but unprecedented "on the stump" before the uproarious gatherings of the West at that day. Repeatedly he stigmatized slavery as "a moral, a social, a political evil." Very impressively he denounced the positions of an opponent who "cared not whether slavery was voted down or voted up," who said that slavery was not to be differentiated from the many domestic institutions and daily affairs which civilized societies control by police regulations. He said that slavery could not be treated as "only equal to the cranberry laws of Indiana;" that slaves could not be put "upon a par with onions and potatoes;" that to Douglas he supposed that the institution really "looked small," but that a great proportion of the American people regarded slavery as "a vast moral evil." "The real issue in this controversy--the one pressing upon every mind--is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery _as a wrong_, and of another class that does _not_ look upon it as a wrong.... No man can logically say he does not care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down. He [Douglas] contends that whatever community wants slaves has a right to have them. So they have, if it is not a wrong. But if it is a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong. He says that, upon the score of equality, slaves should be allowed to go into a new Territory, like other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference between it and other property.... But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a comparison between right and wrong.... That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to