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Indiana University 
continuation of this demand for the prohibition of slavery 
in the Territories by CongTess, accompanied as it was by the 
danger that the control of the government by its supporters 
might bring secession and possibly war, is that nothing short 
of the application of this principle would enable the people 
of the North to “rest in the belief’' that slavery was “in the 
course of ultimate extinction”.^^ That the public mind of the 
North should be unable to rest in this belief without actual 
prohibitive legislation by Congress seems to imply that the 
meaning of the decision by the people of Kansas was not 
understood. 
Whether the significance of the Kansas referendum of 
August 2, 1858, was grasped or not, it is certain that the Re- 
publican party and its leaders felt obliged to minimize or 
ignore its importance. The returns from this election, held 
under the terms of the English Compromise, came to the public 
at an inopportune time for Lincoln. In the “House Divided” 
speech, which was delivered several weeks before the Kansas 
election, he had said: 
We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the 
avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the slavery 
agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only 
not ceased but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not 
cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.^ 
It is the broad general sweep of this passage that makes it 
a profound and prophetic utterance. Applied to affairs in 
Kansas, it was not entirely sound, since the conditions there 
had greatly improved and the contest was soon to end. Even 
after the great victory of the free-state party, Lincoln 
evidently could not believe that the situation had changed. 
During the Charleston debate, speaking of the Kansas con- 
flict, he said: 
Now he [Douglas] tells us again that it is all over, and the people 
of Kansas have voted down the Lecompton constitution. How is it all 
over? That was only one of the attempts at putting an end to the 
Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, I, 240. See opening- 
passage of the “House Divided’’ speech (Spring-field), June 16, 1858. Lincoln believed 
the t-wo great principles of the Republican party to be the Wilmot Proviso principle 
and the “ultimate extinction of slavery’’. By “ultimate extinction’’, he explained in 
the debate at Charleston that he did not mean a short period, saying : “I do not sup- 
pose that in the most peaceful -way ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hun- 
dred years at least ; but that it will occur in the best way for both races in God’s own 
good time, I have no doubt.’’ Ibid., I, 408. Rejoinder (Charleston), September 18, 1858. 
« Ibid., I, 240. 
