The Senatorial term of Douglas was drawing near to its close, when in July, 1858, he left Washington to enter upon the canvass for re-election. The Republican State Convention of Illinois had in the month previous met at Springfield, and nominated Abraham Lincoln as a candidate for United States Senator, this with a view to pledge all Republican members of the Legislature to vote for him—a practice since gone into disuse in most of the States, because of the rivalries which it engenders and the aggravation of the dangers of defeat sure to follow in the selection of a candidate in advance. “First get your goose, then cook it,” inelegantly describes the basic principles of improved political tactics. But the Republicans, particularly of the western part of Illinois, had a double purpose in the selection of Lincoln. He was not as radical as they, but he well represented the growing Republican sentiment, and he best of all men could cope with Douglas on the stump in a canvass which they desired should attract the attention of the Nation, and give shape to the sentiment of the North on all questions pertaining to slavery. The doctrine of “popular sovereignty” was not acceptable to the Republicans, the recent repeal of the Missouri compromise having led them, or the more radical portion of them, to despise all compromise measures. The plan of the Illinois Republicans, if indeed it was a well-settled plan, accomplished even more than was anticipated, though it did not result in immediate success. It gave to the debate which followed between Lincoln and Douglas a world-wide celebrity, and did more to educate and train the anti-slavery sentiment, taken in connection with the ever-growing excitement in Kansas, than anything that could have happened. Lincoln’s speech before the convention which nominated him, gave the first clear expression to the idea that there was an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. Wm. H. Seward on October 25th following, at Rochester, N. Y., expressed the same idea in these words: “It is an _irrepressible conflict_ between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States will sooner or later become either an entire slaveholding Nation, or an entirely free labor Nation.” Lincoln’s words at Springfield, in July, 1858, were: