Didn’t I know that’s the way he felt. I hadn’t been watchin’ him sweatin’ his brains on that darned question for four years without knowin’. I tell you nobody that didn’t see him often them days, and didn’t care enough about him to feel bad when he felt bad, can ever understand what Abraham Lincoln went through before his debates with Douglas. He worked his head day and night tryin’ to git that slavery question figured out so nobody could stump him. Greatest man to think things out so nobody could git around him I ever see. Hadn’t any patience with what wa’n’t clear. What worried him most, I can see now, was makin’ the rest of us understand it like he did. Well, as I was sayin’, it seemed as if all Illinois turned out to hear ’em speak. A country fair wa’n’t nuthin’ to the crowds. There wa’n’t any too many railroads in Illinois in ’58, and they didn’t select the places fur the debates accordin’ to connections. I reckon I traveled about all the ways there be gettin’ to the places: foot, horseback, canal-boat, stage, side-wheeler, just got around any way that come handy; et and slept the same. Up to Quincy I recollect I put up on the bluff, and over to Charlestown me and seven of the boys had two beds. Nobody seemed to mind. We was all too took up with the speeches, seemed as if the more you heard the more you wanted to hear. I tell you they don’t have no such speeches nowadays. There ain’t two men in the United States today could git the crowds them two men had or hold ’em if they got ’em. I sort of expected some new line of argument from Douglas when they started out, but ’twa’n’t long before we all saw he wa’n’t goin’ to talk about anything but popular sovereignty--that is, if he could help himself. As it turned out he didn’t git his way. Mr. Lincoln had made up his mind that the Judge had got to say whether he thought slavery was right or wrong. Accordin’ to him, that was the issue of the campaign. He argued that Douglas’ notion of popular sovereignty was all right if slavery was as good as freedom, but that if it wa’n’t, his arguments wa’n’t worth a rush. He said the difference between him and the Judge was that one thought slavery was wrong and ought to be kept where it was till it died out of itself, and the other thought it was right and ought to be spread all over the country.