Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (39 page)

24
. Paul Finkelman, An
Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity
(Chapel Hill, 1981), 323. This fine study provides a thorough analysis of the Lemmon case and its context. See also Fehrenbacher,
Dred Scott
, 444–45.

25
.
Springfield Republican
, Oct. 12, 1857, quoted in Fehrenbacher,
Dred Scott
, 314.

26
. Quotation from Don E. Fehrenbacher,
Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850's
(Stanford, 1962), 123. Technically neither Lincoln nor Douglas was a "candidate" in this election, for state legislatures chose senators, and the Illinois election in 1858 was for members of the legislature. But given Douglas's national importance, and the Republican party's "nomination" of Lincoln for senator, the main focus of the legislative election was the senatorship.

social, and political wrong," who "will oppose . . . the modern Democratic idea that slavery is as good as freedom, and ought to have room for expansion all over the continent."
²⁷

This was the message that Lincoln carried to Illinois voters in dozens of speeches during that summer of '58. Douglas traversed the same territory branding Lincoln a Black Republican whose abolition doctrines would destroy the Union and flood Illinois with thousands of thick-lipped, bullet-headed, degenerate blacks. Lincoln "believes that the Almighty made the Negro equal to the white man," said Douglas at Springfield in July. "He thinks that the Negro is his brother. I do not think the Negro is any kin of mine at all. . . . This government . . . was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity, to be executed and managed by white men."
²⁸

Desiring to confront Douglas directly, Lincoln proposed a series of debates. Douglas agreed to seven confrontations in various parts of the state. These debates are deservedly the most famous in American history. They matched two powerful logicians and hard-hitting speakers, one of them nationally eminent and the other little known outside his region. To the seven prairie towns came thousands of farmers, workers, clerks, lawyers, and people from all walks of life to sit or stand outdoors for hours in sunshine or rain, heat or cold, dust or mud. The crowds participated in the debates by shouted questions, pointed comments, cheers, and groans. The stakes were higher than a senatorial election, higher even than the looming presidential contest of 1860, for the theme of the debates was nothing less than the future of slavery and the Union. Tariffs, banks, internal improvements, corruption, and other staples of American politics received not a word in these debates—the sole topic was slavery.
²⁹

27
.
CWL
, II, 468, III, 92.

28
. Paul M. Angle, ed.,
Created Equal? The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of
1858 (Chicago, 1958), 62, 60.

29
. In each debate the opening speaker talked for one hour, his opponent responded for an hour and a half, and the first speaker closed for half an hour. Douglas and Lincoln alternated as opening speaker, Douglas opening and closing four of the seven debates. Because of the importance of the debates, they received wide coverage in the press. Stenographers (then called "phonographers") from one Republican and one Democratic newspaper recorded every word including crowd reactions. A verbatim publication of the debates in book form first appeared in 1860. There are three modern annotated editions of the debates:
CWL
, III, 1–325; Angle, ed.,
Created Equal
; and Robert W. Johannsen, ed.,
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of
1858 (New York, 1965).

In the fashion of debaters, Douglas and Lincoln opened with slashing attacks designed to force the other man to spend his time defending vulnerable positions. A Republican journalist phrased this strategy in a letter of advice to one of Lincoln's associates: "When you see Abe at Freeport, for God's sake tell him to 'Charge Chester! charge!' . . . We must not be parrying all the while. We want the deadliest thrusts. Let us see blood follow any time he closes a sentence."
³⁰
Lincoln's main thrust was the accusation that Douglas had departed from the position of the founding fathers, while the Republicans were upholding that position. Like the fathers, Republicans "insist that [slavery] should as far as may be, be treated as a wrong, and one of the methods of treating it as a wrong is to make provision that
it shall grow no larger
." Lincoln reiterated that the country could not exist forever half slave and half free; it had existed in that condition so far only because until 1854 most Americans shared the founders' faith that restricting slavery's growth would put it on the path to ultimate extinction. But Douglas not only
"looks to no end of the institution of slavery,"
he looks to its
"perpetuity and nationalization."
He is thus "eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people."
³¹

In one respect Lincoln's celebrated Freeport question was a departure from this strategy of linking Douglas to the slave power. Was there any lawful way, Lincoln asked at Freeport, that the people of a territory could exclude slavery if they wished to do so? The point of the question, of course, was to nail the contradiction between
Dred Scott
and popular sovereignty. Folklore history has portrayed this question as the stone that slew Goliath. If Douglas answered No, he alienated Illinois voters and jeopardized his re-election to the Senate. If he answered Yes, he alienated the South and lost their support for the presidency in 1860. The problem with this thesis is that Douglas had already confronted the issue many times. Lincoln knew how he would answer the question: "He will instantly take ground that slavery can not actually exist in the territories, unless the people desire it, and so give it protective territorial legislation. If this offends the South he will let it offend them; as at all events he

30
. Charles H. Ray to Elihu B. Washburne, Aug. 23, 1858, quoted in Fehrenbacher,
Prelude to Greatness
, 123.

31
.
CWL
, III, 313, 18, 29.

means to hold on to his chances in Illinois. . . . He cares nothing for the South—he knows he is already dead there" because of his opposition to Lecompton.
³²
Lincoln asked the question anyway; Douglas answered as expected. His answer became famous in retrospect as the Freeport doctrine. It did play a role in prompting the southern demand for a territorial slave code—an issue that split the Democratic party in 1860. But this would have happened anyway. Lincoln did not press the question in subsequent debates, for its tendency to highlight Douglas's differences from southern Democrats ran counter to Lincoln's effort to highlight their similarities.
³³

Douglas's counterattack smote Lincoln's house-divided metaphor. Why cannot the country continue to "exist divided into free and slave States?" asked Douglas. Whatever their personal sentiments toward slavery, the founding fathers "left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject." If the nation "cannot endure thus divided, then [Lincoln] must strive to make them all free or all slave, which will inevitably bring about a dissolution of the Union." To talk about ultimate extinction of slavery "is revolutionary and destructive of the existence of this Government." If it means anything, it means "warfare between the North and the South, to be carried on with ruthless vengeance, until the one section or the other shall be driven to the wall and become the victim of the rapacity of the other." No, said Douglas, "I would not endanger the perpetuity of this Union. I would not blot out the great inalienable rights of the white men for all the negroes that ever existed."
³⁴

Lincoln's inclusion of blacks among those "created equal" was a "monstrous heresy," said Douglas. "The signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro . . . or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men." Did Thomas Jefferson "intend to say in that Declaration that his negro slaves, which he held and treated as property, were created his equals by Divine law, and that he was violating the law of God every day of his life by holding them as slaves? ('No, no.')"
³⁵

Douglas hit his stride in exploitation of the race issue. He considered it a sure winner in southern and central Illinois. The Negro "must always

32
. Lincoln to Henry Asbury, July 31, 1858, in
CWL
, II, 530.

33
. For a good analysis of the Freeport question, see Fehrenbacher,
Prelude to Greatness
, 121–42.

34
.
CWL
, III, 8, 35, 111, 322.

35
.
Ibid
., 113, 216.

ways occupy an inferior position," shouted Douglas to cheering partisans. "Are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship? ('No, no.') Do you desire to strike out of our State Constitution that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State . . . in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and voters on an equality with yourselves? ('Never,' 'no.') . . . If you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote . . . then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. ('Never, never.')"
³⁶

How did Douglas know that Lincoln favored these things? Black speakers were campaigning for him in the Yankee districts of northern Illinois, showing "how much interest our colored brethren [feel] in the success of their brother Abe. (Renewed laughter.)" Why, in Freeport Douglas saw a handsome carriage drive up to a Lincoln meeting. "A beautiful young lady was sitting on the box seat, whilst Fred. Douglass and her mother reclined inside, and the owner of the carriage acted as driver. . . . If you, Black Republicans, think that the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, whilst you drive the team, you have a perfect right to do so. . . . Those of you who believe that the negro is your equal . . . of course will vote for Mr. Lincoln. ('Down with the negro,' no, no, &c.)"
³⁷

Douglas's harping on this theme exasperated Lincoln. "Negro equality! Fudge!!" he wrote privately. "How long . . . shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougeism?" But try as he might, Lincoln could not ignore the issue. As he emerged from his hotel for the fourth debate at Charleston in southern Illinois, a man asked him if he was "really in favor of producing a perfect equality between negroes and white people." Placed on the defensive, Lincoln responded defensively. "Anything that argues me into his idea of a perfect social and political equality," complained Lincoln of Douglas's innuendoes, "is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by

36
.
Ibid
., 9.

37
.
Ibid
., 171, 55–56. Douglas managed to win back the confidence of some southerners with his racist rhetoric. After reading Douglas's speeches, a friend of Alexander Stephens wrote that "Douglas, with all his past objectionable conduct . . . is
sound on niggers
. . . . I prefer him . . . to a crazy fanatic [Lincoln], who openly proclaims the equality of the white and black races." J. Henly Smith to Alexander Stephens, Aug. 3, 1858, quoted in Fehrenbacher,
Dred Scott Case
, 497.

which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse." Lincoln admitted that he believed black people "entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But "I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily have her for a wife. (Cheers and laughter)" So that his horse chestnut should no longer be mistaken for a chestnut horse, Lincoln spelled out his position with clarity: "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, (applause)—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."
³⁸