And Douglas won. "I feel like the
boy," said Abe, "who stubbed his toe. It hurts too bad to laugh, and I
am too big to cry."
All of those who loved him--Mary, his wife, in her neat white house;
Sarah, his stepmother, in her little cabin, more than a hundred miles
away; and his many friends--were disappointed. But not for long. The
part he took in the Lincoln-Douglas debates made his name known
throughout the United States.
Abe Lincoln's chance was coming.
15
[Illustration]
During the next two years Abraham Lincoln was asked to make many
speeches. "Let us have faith that right makes might," he told one
audience in New York, "and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do
our duty as we understand it."
At the end of the speech, several thousand people rose to their feet,
cheering and waving their handkerchiefs. His words were printed in
newspapers. Throughout the Northern States, men and women began to think
of him as the friend of freedom.
By 1860 he was so well known that he was nominated for President of the
United States. Stephen A. Douglas was nominated by another political
party.
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