"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.... I was glad to express my gratitude at Quincy, and I re-express it here, to Judge Douglas,--_that he looks to no end of the institution of slavery_. That will help the people to see where the struggle really is."[769] To the mind of Douglas, the issue presented itself in quite another form. "He [Lincoln] says that he looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished everywhere. I look forward to a time when each State shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business,--not mine. I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Christendom. I would not endanger the perpetuity of this Union, I would not blot out the great inalienable rights of the white men, for all the negroes that ever existed."[770] With this encounter at Alton, the joint debates, but not the campaign closed. Douglas continued to speak at various strategic points, in spite of inclement weather and physical exhaustion, up to the eve of the election.[771] The canvass had continued just a hundred days, during which Douglas had made one hundred and thirty speeches.[772] During the last weeks of the campaign, election canards designed to injure Douglas were sedulously circulated, adding no little uncertainty to the outcome in doubtful districts. The most damaging of these stories seems to have emanated from Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, whose midsummer sojourn in Illinois has already been noted. A Chicago journal published the tale that Douglas's slaves in the South were "the subjects of inhuman and disgraceful treatment--that they were hired out to a factor at fifteen dollars per annum each--that he, in turn, hired them out to others in lots, and that they were ill-fed, over-worked, and in every way so badly treated that they were spoken of in the neighborhood where they are held as a disgrace to all slave-holders and the system they support." The explicit denial of the story came from Slidell some weeks after the election, when the slander had accomplished the desired purpose.[773]