The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (12 page)

What Douglas did only accelerated the coming conflict. Had he stayed with the Democratic party it might, perhaps, have elected one more President;
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it might have been successful in holding power for the South for four years more—then we would have dated our Civil War as beginning in 1864, and our war President would almost surely not have been Abraham Lincoln.

Events took shape rapidly from this time on, with Douglas and Lincoln pitted against each other in a campaign that grew in two years from a local contest for the Senatorship of Illinois to a national battle for the Presidency. At the Illinois Republican State Convention held in Springfield on June 16, 1858, a resolution was unanimously adopted that read: “Resolved that Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate, as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas.”

And then, on that night, Lincoln made one of the very finest speeches of his career, a speech that clearly defined the issues before the country, hinted at conspiracy in the political
maneuvers of the slaveholders and presented in plain language the charge that Douglas was not to be considered as a possible ally for the anti-slavery forces. In characteristic fashion, and in the matured style that had by this time come to mark Lincoln’s utterances, he began:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. 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 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. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.

These prophetic words were to be the keynote of the Lincoln-Douglas campaign. They run through the speeches of the next two years again and again, and Douglas was to quote them as often as Lincoln did, using them against his opponent on the charge that the prophecy was an incitement to dissension and civil war.

Douglas left Washington and returned to Illinois to begin his senatorial campaign. This time he was received everywhere in triumph—in strange contrast to his reception four years before when he had just engineered the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress. He spoke in Chicago on July 9 from the balcony of the Tremont House. Lincoln came up from Springfield to hear what his opponent had to say and sat behind Douglas, industriously taking down notes of his words.

Douglas, who had already declared in the Senate that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down, made clear that he was opposing the Lecompton constitution, not because of slavery, but because it ran counter to the will of the people. He referred kindly to his opponent, and then sharply attacked his “House Divided” speech, saying that what Lincoln had predicted would require absolute regimentation throughout the country if it were to come to pass. Local laws would have to be the same everywhere once the differences in state laws regarding slavery were abolished. The original intentions of the founders of the nation, who had specified that each state should be sovereign over its own internal affairs, would be ignored. “Uniformity is the parent of despotism the world over,” said Douglas, cheerfully distorting Lincoln’s argument, “… then Negroes will vote nowhere or everywhere; then you will have a Maine liquor law in every state or none; then you will have uniformity in all things local and domestic by the authority of the Federal Government. But when you attain that uniformity you will have converted these thirty-two sovereign, independent states into one consolidated empire, with the uniformity of despotism reigning triumphant throughout the length and breadth of the land.”

Lincoln’s stand on the Dred Scott decision, he said, was wholly unjustified. The Constitutional guarantee of equality of privilege among the citizens of all the states applied only to white citizens; Negroes had no such guarantee, and the Supreme Court of the United States had just ruled that they were not citizens at all. “This Government is founded on the white basis,” Douglas said. “It was made by the white man, for the white man, to be administered by white men.… I am opposed to Negro equality. Preserve the purity of our Government as well as the purity of our race; no amalgamation, political or otherwise, with inferior races!” Douglas used this point of white supremacy many times during the campaign. In Lower Illinois, where the people were almost wholly
of Southern origin, he emphasized it with devastating effect upon his opponent.

Lincoln spoke the next night at the same place before an audience even more enthusiastic than the one that had listened to Douglas. Lincoln’s speech was by no means one of his best, but in his reply to Douglas’s stand on racial inferiority he came out with a declaration that is as valid today as when he spoke the words more than three-quarters of a century ago:

Now I ask you, in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this government into a government of some other form? Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow—what are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people—not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the judge is the same old serpent that says, “You work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.” Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a king, as an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this should be granted, it does not stop with the Negro. I should like to know—taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it—where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

He was to use this statement only a few months later, during his last debate with Douglas at Alton, Illinois. By that
time the words had undergone a process of transmutation in the creative furnace of Lincoln’s mind. The words had been purified of dross, put together with artistry into a brief statement that has the emotional appeal of great literature. It is interesting to note the transformation:

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Lincoln had been a long time maturing; his mind worked slowly in all things, turning over and digesting the material on which it worked, but never ceasing to wrestle with the problem that absorbed him. He grew slowly but he never stopped growing. His power over words became greater each day. His speeches from this time on show not only growth in ideational content but growth in phraseology, in word power, style. The Lincoln of the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address was now in the throes of birth.

The political rival who was to make Lincoln great, not through friendship but through enmity, went on from Chicago to speak at Bloomington, and then at Springfield. Lincoln followed him, speaking after Douglas in Springfield, on July 17, 1858, where he renewed his charges of conspiracy, and made his first reference to himself in regard to the Presidency—although in a purely negative and self-deprecatory way. After pointing out that the Democrats benefited by
having Douglas as their candidate because he was a person of great renown who might some day very well become President and hand out political patronage, he said: “Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages … that the Republicans labor under.”

The campaign rapidly grew more bitterly partisan. The old Mexican War charges against Lincoln were hauled out, and he was again accused of having voted to prevent the army from getting supplies; the “Spot” resolutions he had made in Congress ten years previously were used to ridicule him; and the Democratic press in Illinois did its best to play Lincoln down and Douglas up, while the Republican press, of course, waged an equally vitriolic counter-attack. The Republicans were dissatisfied with the way their candidate had been trailing Douglas, speaking only after he had spoken. They urged that a joint debate be held so the candidates could both have a chance to address the same crowd. Lincoln sent a letter of challenge to Douglas, and Douglas was forced into a position where he had to accept, although he knew perfectly well that he had nothing to win and everything to lose by such an encounter. The debates would make Lincoln well known, whereas Douglas was already so famous that he needed no additional publicity; if Lincoln were to win it would be a great victory for him, but if Douglas won he would simply be eliminating a competitor who was of slight importance. Douglas foresaw and feared the results of such a campaign, and he was quite correct in his forecast—the debates made Lincoln, and in making him they broke Douglas, even though he won the Senatorial race which served as an excuse for holding the debates. Lincoln was out for bigger game. He saw the coming split in the Democratic party, astutely realized that it would
give him his chance, and—if he could in some way obtain the Republican nomination in 1860—he would have a heaven-sent opportunity to become President of the United States.

Much against his better judgment Douglas accepted Lincoln’s challenge. He was given the privilege of setting the time and place for the seven joint debates that were to be held. These were decided upon by Douglas as follows: Ottawa, August 21; Freeport, August 27; Jonesboro, September 15; Charleston, September 18; Galesburg, October 7; Quincy, October 13; and Alton, October 15.

All seven places were small towns; the largest of them, Quincy, had a population of not much more than 10,000. All the towns were relatively new. Most of them had been settled within the memory of living men. And their citizens were American to the core, American with the peculiar native passion for independence and individuality that distinguished the small-town dweller in the first half of the nineteenth century. Freeport was in the northern part of the state, north of Chicago; Jonesboro was in the extreme south, down in “Egypt,” where the people were Southern by ancestry and tradition. But north or south, all these towns were alike in one thing—their passionate interest in politics. The debates were not simply one-day shows—they were important events to be talked about before they happened and then discussed long afterward, with endless elaboration of the points made by the speakers, and with great argument as to whether the “Tall Sucker” or the “Little Giant” was the better man.

Douglas traveled in a private railroad car, accompanied by friends and advisers as well as by the beautiful Mrs. Douglas who did yeomanlike service in winning over the ladies of each town to her husband’s cause. Women could not vote, but they were an important influence in politics, and Douglas was clever enough not to ignore them. Mrs. Lincoln stayed at home; she heard her husband speak only once—at the final debate at Alton.

Douglas’s train carried a flatcar on which a brass cannon was mounted. The cannon was fired at every stop; brass bands played; people cheered; influential citizens came to greet the celebrated Senator at the railroad station. Lincoln traveled modestly as an ordinary passenger on the regular trains. In towns where the Republicans were strong he was received with as much enthusiasm and fanfare as Douglas. Certainly he never lacked audience support. Even in the extreme south of the state there were some men who came to cheer for Lincoln, even though this expression of approval met with their neighbors’ scorn.

Lincoln’s stage presence on the speaker’s platform has been recorded for us by Herndon who caught his partner to the life in his description of Lincoln during the debates:

When standing erect he was six feet four inches high. He was lean in flesh and ungainly in figure. Aside from the 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. When he arose … his body inclined forward to a slight degree. 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. After having arisen, he generally placed his hands behind him, the back of his left hand in the palm of his right, the thumb and fingers of his right hand clasped around the left arm at the wrist. For a few moments he displayed the combination of awkwardness, sensitiveness, and diffidence. As he proceeded he became somewhat animated, and to keep in harmony with his growing warmth his hands relaxed their grasp and fell to his side. Presently he clasped them in front of him, interlocking his fingers, one thumb meanwhile chasing another. His speech now requiring more emphatic utterance, his fingers unlocked
and his hands fell apart. His left arm was thrown behind, the back of his hand resting against his body, his right hand seeking his side. By this time he had gained sufficient composure, and his real speech began. He did not gesticulate as much with his hands as with his head. He used the latter frequently, throwing it with vim this way and that. This movement was a significant one when he sought to enforce his statement. It sometimes came with a quick jerk, as if throwing off electric sparks into combustible material. He never sawed the air nor rent space into tatters and rags as some orators do. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool, considerate, reflective—in time self-possessed and self-reliant. His style was clear, terse, and compact. In argument he was logical, demonstrative, and fair.