requisites of a debater, a melodious voice and clear, sharply defined
enunciation. His forte in debating is his power of mystifying the
point. With the most offhand assured airs in the world, and a certain
appearance of honest superiority, like one who has a regard for you and
wishes to set you right on one or two little matters, he proceeds to
set up some point which is not that in question, but only a family
connection of it, and this point he attacks with the very best of logic
and language; he charges upon it, horse and foot, runs it down, tramples
it in the dust, and then turns upon you with 'See, there is your
argument. Did I not tell you so? You see it is all stuff.' And if you
have allowed yourself to be so dazzled by his quickness as to forget
that the routed point is not, after all, the one in question, you
suppose all is over with it. Moreover, he contrives to mingle up so many
stinging allusions, so many piquant personalities, that by the time
he has done his mystification, a dozen others are ready and burning to
spring on their feet to repel some direct or indirect attack all equally
wide of the point."

The mode of travel of the two contestants heightened the contrast.
George B. McClellan, a young engineer officer who had recently resigned
from the army and was now general superintendent of the Illinois Central
Railroad, gave Douglas his private car and a special train. Lincoln
traveled any way he could-in ordinary passenger trains, or even in the
caboose of a freight train. A curious symbolization of Lincoln's belief
that the real conflict was between the plain people and organized money!

The debates did not develop new ideas. It was a literary duel, each
leader aiming to restate himself in the most telling, popular way. For
once that superficial definition of art applied: "What oft was thought
but ne'er so well expressed." Nevertheless the debates contained an