The great duel was rapidly approaching its climax. What was in reality
no more than the last round has appropriated a label that ought to have
a wider meaning and is known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The two
candidates made a joint tour of the State, debating their policies in
public at various places during the summer and autumn of 1858.

Properly considered, these famous speeches closed Lincoln's life as
an orator. The Cooper Union speech was an isolated aftermath in alien
conditions, a set performance not quite in his true vein. His brief
addresses of the later years were incidental; they had no combative
element. Never again was he to attempt to sway an audience for an
immediate stake through the use of the spoken word. "A brief description
of Mr. Lincoln's appearance on the stump and of his manner when
speaking," as Herndon aptly remarks, "may not be without interest. When
standing erect, he was six feet four inches high. He was lean in flesh
and ungainly in figure. Aside from his sad, pained look, due to habitual
melancholy, his face had no characteristic or fixed expression. He was
thin through the chest and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. . . . At
first he was very awkward and it seemed a real labor to adjust himself
to his surroundings. He struggled for a time under a feeling of apparent
diffidence and sensitiveness, and these only added to his awkwardness....
When he began speaking his voice was shrill, piping and unpleasant.
His manner, his attitude, his dark yellow face, wrinkled and dry, his
oddity of pose, his diffident movements; everything seemed to be
against him, but only for a short time. . . . As he proceeded, he became
somewhat more animated. . . . He did not gesticulate as much with his
hands as with his head. He used the latter frequently, throwing it with
him, this way and that. . . . He never sawed the air nor rent space into
tatters and rags, as some orators do. He never acted for stage effect.