Friends kept say-ing to Lin-coln “You’ve ruined your chan-ces. You’ve made a mis-take. Aren’t you sor-ry? Don’t you wish you hadn’t writ-ten that speech?” Straight came the an-swer, and it was this: “If I had to draw a pen a-cross my whole life and e-rase it from ex-ist-ence, and I had one poor lit-tle gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world as it is.” Men then be-gan to think as they had nev-er thought be-fore. It seemed as if a death-shot had been sent straight to the heart of sla-ver-y. That speech was, how-ev-er, but the first of a hard and fierce strug-gle be-tween two sides of one of the great-est ques-tions ev-er brought be-fore an-y na-tion. Lin-coln and Doug-las went up and down the state of Il-li-nois talk-ing in halls and in “wig-wams” as the build-ings were called where they spoke. Some-times they made a speech on the same day, out of doors, where large crowds would come. Both oft-en held forth in the same hall, one mak-ing his views known be-fore din-ner and the oth-er talk-ing on the oth-er side af-ter din-ner. Lin-coln was not known to make fun of an-y one, but there were scores who made fun of him, and tried to make him an-gry. But he an-swered all their scoff with sound state-ments, and found friends where oth-ers would have made foes. Doug-las had a way of tell-ing folks that Lin-coln said some things which he did not say. This was hard to bear, but Lin-coln would tell the crowds just what he did say at such and such a meet-ing and peo-ple would be-lieve him.