considered it immaterial. But he was not in the least prepared for what
happened. A storm burst. It was fiercest in his own State. "Traitor,"
"Arnold," "Judas," were the pleasant epithets fired at him in a
bewildering fusillade. He could not understand it. Something other than
mere Abolitionism had been aroused by his great stroke. But what was it?
Why did men who were not Abolitionists raise a hue and cry? Especially,
why did many Democrats do so? Amazed, puzzled, but as always furiously
valiant, Douglas hurried home to join battle with his assailants. He
entered on a campaign of speech-making. On October 3, 1854, he spoke
at Springfield. His enemies, looking about for the strongest popular
speaker they could find, chose Lincoln. The next day he replied to
Douglas.
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill had not affected any change in Lincoln's
thinking. His steady, consistent development as a political thinker
had gone on chiefly in silence ever since his Protest seventeen years
before. He was still intolerant of Abolitionism, still resolved to leave
slavery to die a natural death in the States where it was established.
He defended the measure which most offended the Abolitionists, the
Fugitive Slave Law. He had appeared as counsel for a man who claimed
a runaway slave as his property.(2) None the less, the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill had brought him to his feet, wheeled him back from law into
politics, begun a new chapter. The springs of action in is case were the
factor which Douglas had overlooked, which in all his calculations he
had failed to take into account, which was destined to destroy him.
Lincoln, no less than Douglas, had sensed the fact that money was
becoming a power in American politics. He saw that money and slavery
tended to become allies with the inevitable result of a shift of gravity
in the American social system. "Humanity" had once been the American
shibboleth; it was giving place to a new shibboleth-"prosperity." And
the people who were to control and administer prosperity were the rich.
The rights of man were being superseded by the rights of wealth.
Because of its place in this new coalition of non-democratic influences,
slavery, to Lincoln's mind, was assuming a new role, "beginning," as he
had said, in the Clay oration, "to assail and ridicule the white man's
charter of freedom, the declaration that 'all men are created free and
equal.'"
That phrase, "the white man's charter of freedom," had become Lincoln's
shibboleth. Various utterances and written fragments of the summer of
1854, reveal the intensity of his preoccupation.
"Equality in society beats inequality, whether the latter be of the
British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort"(3)
"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right enslave B,
why may not B snatch the same argument and prove equally that he may
enslave A? You say A is white and B is black. It is color then; the
lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule
you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin
than your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are
intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and therefore have the right
to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule you are to be slave to
the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own. But, you
say, it is a question of interest, and if you make it your interest, you
have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his
interest, he has the right to enslave you."(4)
Speaking of slavery to a fellow lawyer, he said: "It is the most
glittering, ostentatious, and displaying property in the world; and now,
if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is how many negroes he
or his lady love owns. The love of slave property is swallowing up
every other mercenary possession. Its ownership betokened not only the
possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who was
above and scorned labor."(5)
It was because of these views, because he saw slavery allying itself
with the spread of plutocratic ideals, that Lincoln entered the battle
to prevent its extension. He did so in his usual cool, determined way.
Though his first reply to Douglas was not recorded, his second, made
at Peoria twelve days later, still exists.(6) It is a landmark in his
career. It sums up all his long, slow development in political science,
lays the abiding foundation of everything he thought thereafter. In
this great speech, the end of his novitiate, he rings the changes on the
white man's charter of freedom. He argues that the extension of slavery
tends to discredit republican institutions, and to disappoint "the
Liberal party throughout the world." The heart of his argument is:
"Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska or other new Territories is not
a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The
whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these
Territories. We want them for homes for free white people. This they can
not be to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within
them. Slave States are places for poor white people to remove from, not
remove to. New Free States are the places for poor people to go to
and better their condition. For this use the nation needs these
Territories."
The speech was a masterpiece of simplicity, of lucidity. It showed
the great jury; lawyer at his best. Its temper was as admirable as its
logic; not a touch of anger nor of vituperation.
"I have no prejudice against the Southern people," said he. "They are
just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist among
them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we
should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and
South.
"When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the
origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said
that the institution exists and that it is very difficult to get rid of
in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I
surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to
do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to
do as to the existing institution."
His instinctive aversion to fanaticism found expression in a plea for
the golden mean in politics.
"Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration lest they be
thrown in company with the Abolitionists. Will they allow me as an old
Whig, to tell them good-humoredly that I think this is very silly. Stand
with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right
and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the Abolitionist
in restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he
attempts to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law. In the latter case you stand
with the Southern dis-unionist. What of that? You are still right.
In both cases you are right. In both cases you expose the dangerous
extremes. In both you stand on middle ground and hold the ship level and
steady. In both you are national, and nothing less than national.
This is the good old Whig ground. To desert such ground because of
any company is to be less than a Whig-less than a man-less than an
American."
These two speeches against Douglas made an immense impression
Byron-like, Lincoln waked up and found himself famous. Thereupon, his
ambition revived. A Senator was to be chosen that autumn. Why might not
this be the opportunity to retrieve his failure in Congress? Shortly
after the Peoria speech, he was sending out notes like this to prominent
politicians:
"Dear Sir: You used to express a good deal of partiality for me, and if
you are still so, now is the time. Some friends here are really for me
for the United States Senate, and I should be very grateful if you could
make a mark for me among your members (of the Legislature)."(7)
When the Legislature assembled, it was found to comprise four groups:
the out-and-out Democrats who would stand by Douglas through thick and
thin, and vote only for his nominee; the bolting Democrats who would not
vote for a Douglas man, but whose party rancor was so great that they
would throw their votes away rather than give them to a Whig; such
enemies of Douglas as were willing to vote for a Whig; the remainder.
The Democrats supported Governor Matteson; the candidate of the second
group was Lyman Trumbull; the Whigs supported Lincoln. After nine
exciting ballots, Matteson had forty-seven votes, Trumbull thirty-five,
Lincoln fifteen. As the bolting Democrats were beyond compromise,
Lincoln determined to sacrifice himself in order to defeat Matteson.
Though the fifteen protested against deserting him, he required them to
do so. On the tenth ballot, they transferred their votes to Trumbull and
he was elected.(8)
Douglas had met his first important defeat. His policy had been
repudiated in his own State. And it was Lincoln who had formulated the
argument against him, who had held the balance of power, and had turned
the scale.
IX. THE LITERARY STATESMAN
Lincoln had found at last a mode and an opportunity for concentrating
all his powers in a way that could have results. He had discovered
himself as a man of letters. The great speeches of 1854 were not
different in a way from the previous speeches that were without results.
And yet they were wholly different. Just as Lincoln's version of an old
tale made of that tale a new thing, so Lincoln's version of an argument
made of it a different thing from other men's versions. The oratory of
1854 was not state-craft in any ordinary sense. It was art Lincoln the
artist, who had slowly developed a great literary faculty, had chanced
after so many rebuffs on good fortune. His cause stood in urgent need
of just what he could give. It was one of those moments when a new
political force, having not as yet any opening for action, finds
salvation in the phrase-maker, in the literary artist who can embody it
in words.
During the next five years and more, Lincoln was the recognized offset
to Douglas. His fame spread from Illinois in both directions. He was
called to Iowa and to Ohio as the advocate of all advocates who could
undo the effect of Douglas. His fame traveled eastward. The culmination
of the period of literary leadership was his famous speech at Cooper
Union in February, 1860.
It was inevitable that he should go along with the antislavery coalition
which adopted the name of the Republican party. But his natural
deliberation kept him from being one of its founders. An attempt of
its founders to appropriate him after the triumph at Springfield, in
October, 1854, met with a rebuff.(1) Nearly a year and a half went by
before he affiliated himself with the new party. But once having made
up his mind, he went forward wholeheartedly. At the State Convention of
Illinois Republicans in 1856 he made a speech that has not been
recorded but which is a tradition for moving oratory. That same year a
considerable number of votes were cast for Lincoln for Vice-President in
the Republican National Convention.
But all these were mere details. The great event of the years between
1854 and 1860 was his contest with Douglas. It was a battle of wits,
a great literary duel. Fortunately for Lincoln, his part was played
altogether on his own soil, under conditions in which he was entirely at
his ease, where nothing conspired with his enemy to embarrass him.
Douglas had a far more difficult task. Unforeseen complications rapidly
forced him to change his policy, to meet desertion and betrayal in his
own ranks. These were terrible years when fierce events followed
one another in quick succession--the rush of both slave-holders and
abolitionists into Kansas; the cruel war along the Wakarusa River; the
sack of Lawrence by the pro-slavery party; the massacre by John Brown
at Pottawatomie; the diatribes of Sumner in the Senate; the assault on
Sumner by Brooks. In the midst of this carnival of ferocity came the
Dred Scott decision, cutting under the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, denying to
the people of a Territory the right to legislate on slavery, and giving
to all slave-holders the right to settle with their slaves anywhere they
pleased outside a Free State. This famous decision repudiated Douglas's
policy of leaving all such questions to local autonomy and to private
enterprise. For a time Douglas made no move to save his policy. But when
President Buchanan decided to throw the influence of the Administration
on the side of the pro-slavery party in Kansas, Douglas was up in
arms. When it was proposed to admit Kansas with a constitution favoring
slavery, but which had not received the votes of a majority of the
inhabitants, Douglas voted with the Republicans to defeat admission.
Whereupon the Democratic party machine and the Administration turned
upon him without mercy. He stood alone in a circle of enemies. At no
other time did he show so many of the qualities of a great leader.
Battling with Lincoln in the popular forum on the one hand, he was
meeting daily on the other assaults by a crowd of brilliant opponents in
Congress. At the same time he was playing a consummate game of political
strategy, struggling against immense odds to recover his hold on
Illinois. The crisis would come in 1858 when he would have to go before
the Legislature for reelection. He knew well enough who his opponent
would be. At every turn there fell across his path the shadow of a cool
sinister figure, his relentless enemy. It was Lincoln. On the struggle
with Lincoln his whole battle turned.
Abandoned by his former allies, his one hope was the retention of his
constituency. To discredit Lincoln, to twist and discredit all his
arguments, was for Douglas a matter of life and death. He struck
frequently with great force, but sometimes with more fury than wisdom.
Many a time the unruffled coolness of Lincoln brought to nothing what
was meant for a deadly thrust. Douglas took counsel of despair and tried
to show that Lincoln was preaching the amalgamation of the white and
black races. "I protest," Lincoln replied, "against the counterfeit
logic which says that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I
must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either.
I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my
equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her
own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal and
the equal of all others."(2) Any false move made by Douglas, any
rash assertion, was sure to be seized upon by that watchful enemy in
Illinois. In attempting to defend himself on two fronts at once, defying
both the Republicans and the Democratic machine, Douglas made his
reckless declaration that all he wanted was a fair vote by the people
of Kansas; that for himself he did not care how they settled the matter,
whether slavery was voted up or voted down. With relentless skill,
Lincoln developed the implications of this admission, drawing forth
from its confessed indifference to the existence of slavery, a chain
of conclusions that extended link by link to a belief in reopening
the African slave trade. This was done in his speech accepting the
Republican nomination for the Senate. In the same speech he restated his
general position in half a dozen sentences that became at once a classic
statement for the whole Republican party: "A house divided against
itself can not stand. I believe this government can not 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."(3)
The great duel was rapidly approaching its climax. What was in reality
no more than the last round has appropriated a label that ought to have
a wider meaning and is known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The two
candidates made a joint tour of the State, debating their policies in
public at various places during the summer and autumn of 1858.
Properly considered, these famous speeches closed Lincoln's life as
an orator. The Cooper Union speech was an isolated aftermath in alien
conditions, a set performance not quite in his true vein. His brief
addresses of the later years were incidental; they had no combative
element. Never again was he to attempt to sway an audience for an
immediate stake through the use of the spoken word. "A brief description
of Mr. Lincoln's appearance on the stump and of his manner when
speaking," as Herndon aptly remarks, "may not be without interest. When
standing erect, he was six feet four inches high. He was lean in flesh
and ungainly in figure. Aside from his 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. . . . 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. . . . As he proceeded, he became
somewhat more animated. . . . He did not gesticulate as much with his
hands as with his head. He used the latter frequently, throwing it with
him, this way and that. . . . 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. . . . As he moved along in his speech he became freer and
less uneasy in his movements; to that extent he was graceful. He had a
perfect naturalness, a strong individuality, and to that extent he was
dignified. . . . He spoke with effectiveness--and to move the judgment
as well as the emotion of men. There was a world of meaning and emphasis
in the long, bony finger of the right hand as he dotted the ideas on the
minds of his hearers. . . . He always stood squarely on his feet. . . .
He neither touched nor leaned on anything for support. He never ranted,
never walked backward and forward on the platform. . . . As he proceeded
with his speech, the exercise of his vocal organs altered somewhat the
pitch of his voice. It lost in a measure its former acute and shrilling
pitch and mellowed into a more harmonious and pleasant sound. His form
expanded, and notwithstanding the sunken breast, he rose up a splendid
and imposing figure. . . . His little gray eyes flashed in a face aglow
with the fire of his profound thoughts; and his uneasy movements
and diffident manner sunk themselves beneath the wave of righteous
indignation that came sweeping over him."(4)
A wonderful dramatic contrast were these two men, each in his way so
masterful, as they appeared in the famous debates. By good fortune we
have a portrait of Douglas the orator, from the pen of Mrs. Stowe,
who had observed him with reluctant admiration from the gallery of
the Senate. "This Douglas is the very ideal of vitality. Short, broad,
thick-set, every inch of him has its own alertness and motion. He has
a good head, thick black hair, heavy black brows, and a keen face. His
figure would be an unfortunate one were it not for the animation that
constantly pervades it. As it is it rather gives poignancy to his
peculiar appearance; he has a small handsome hand, moreover, and
a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it. . . . He has two
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
incident that helped to make history. Though Douglas was at war with the
Administration, it was not certain that the quarrel might not be made
up. There was no other leader who would be so formidable at the head of
a reunited Democratic party. Lincoln pondered the question, how could
the rift between Douglas and the Democratic machine be made irrevocable?
And now a new phase of Lincoln appeared. It was the political strategist
He saw that if he would disregard his own chance of election-as he had
done from a simpler motive four years before--he could drive Douglas
into a dilemma from which there was no real escape. He confided his
purpose to his friends; they urged him not to do it. But he had made up
his mind as he generally did, without consultation, in the silence of
his own thoughts, and once having made it up, he was inflexible.
At Freeport, Lincoln made the move which probably lost him the
Senatorship. He asked a question which if Douglas answered it one way
would enable him to recover the favor of Illinois but would lose him
forever the favor of the slave-holders; but which, if he answered it
another way might enable him to make his peace at Washington but would
certainly lose him Illinois. The question was: "Can the people of a
United States Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any
citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to
the formation of a State Constitution?"(5) In other words, is the Dred
Scott decision good law? Is it true that a slave-holder can take his
slaves into Kansas if the people of Kansas want to keep him out?
Douglas saw the trap. With his instantaneous facility he tried to cloud
the issue and extricate himself through evasion in the very manner Mrs.
Stowe has described. While dodging a denial of the court's authority,
he insisted that his doctrine of local autonomy was still secure because
through police regulation the local legislature could foster or strangle
slavery, just as they pleased, no matter "what way the Supreme Court may
hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may
not go into a Territory under the Constitution."