THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS JOINT DEBATE
About this time Lincoln again became active in the politics of his
State, aiding in the formation of the Republican party there. On May 29,
1856, a state convention of "all opponents of anti-Nebraska legislation"
was held at Bloomington. After "a platform ringing with strong
anti-Nebraska sentiments" had been adopted, Lincoln, "in response to
repeated calls, came forward and delivered a speech of such earnestness
and power that no one who heard it will ever forget the effect it
produced." It was "never written out or printed," which is to be
regretted; but it lives in one of those vivid descriptions by Herndon
which leave nothing to the imagination. For the moment this triumph was
gratifying; but when Lincoln, leaving the hot enthusiasts of
Bloomington, came home to his fellow townsmen at Springfield, he passed
into a chill atmosphere of indifference and disapproval. An effort was
made to gather a mass meeting in order to ratify the action of the state
convention. But the "mass" consisted of three persons, viz., Abraham
Lincoln, Herndon, and one John Pain. It was trying, but Lincoln was
finely equal to the occasion; in a few words, passing from jest to
earnest, he said that the meeting was larger than he _knew_ it would be;
for while he knew that he and his partner would attend, he was not sure
of any one else; and yet another man had been found brave enough to come
out. But, "while all seems dead, the age itself is not. It liveth as
sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of life and motion
the world does move, nevertheless. Be hopeful, and now let us adjourn
and appeal to the people!"
In the presidential campaign of 1856 the Republicans of Illinois put
Lincoln on their electoral ticket, and he entered into the campaign
promptly and very zealously. Traveling untiringly to and fro, he made
about fifty speeches. By the quality of these, even more than by their
number, he became the champion of the party, so that pressing demands
for him came from the neighboring States. He was even heard of in the
East. But there he encountered a lack of appreciation and in some
quarters an hostility which he felt to be hurtful to his prospects as
well as unjust towards a leading Republican of the Northwest. Horace
Greeley, enthusiastic, well meaning, ever blundering, the editor of the
New York "Tribune," cast the powerful influence of that sheet against
him; and as the senatorial contest of 1858 was approaching, in which
Lincoln hoped to be a principal, this ill feeling was very
unfortunate.[75] "I fear," he said, "that Greeley's attitude will
damage me with Sumner, Seward, Wilson, Phillips, and other friends in
the East,"--and by the way, it is interesting to note this significant
list of political "friends." Thereupon Herndon, as guardian of Lincoln's
political prospects, went to pass the opening months of the important
year upon a crusade among the great men of the East, designing to
extinguish the false lights erroneously hung out by persons ignorant of
the truth. Erelong he cheered Lincoln by encouraging accounts of
success, and of kind words spoken by many Eastern magnates.
In 1858, ability, courage, activity, ambition, the prestige of success,
and a plausible moderation in party politics combined to make Douglas
the most conspicuous individual in the public view. There was no other
way whereby any other man could so surely attract the close and
interested attention of the whole people as by meeting Douglas in direct
personal competition. If Douglas had not held the position which he did,
or if, holding it, he had lived in another State than Illinois, Lincoln
might never have been President of the United States. But the essential
facts lay favorably for effecting that presentation before the people
which was indispensable for his fortunes. In April, 1858, the
Democratic State Convention of Illinois indorsed the position which
Douglas had taken in the Kansas business. This involved that the party
should present him as its candidate for reëlection to the national
Senate by the legislature whose members were to be chosen in the
following autumn. "In the very nature of things," says the enthusiastic
Herndon, Lincoln was at once selected by the Republicans, and on June 16
their convention resolved that "Hon. Abraham Lincoln is our first and
only choice for United States senator to fill the vacancy about to be
created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's term of office." Immediately
the popular excitement gave measure of the estimate placed upon the two
men by those who most accurately knew their qualities. All Illinoisians
looked forward eagerly to the fine spectacle of a battle royal between
real leaders.
The general political condition was extremely confused. The great number
of worthy citizens, who had been wont to save themselves from the worry
of critical thought in political matters by the simple process of
uniform allegiance to a party, now found the old familiar organizations
rapidly disintegrating. They were dismayed and bewildered at the scene;
everywhere there were new cries, new standards, new leaders, while small
bodies of recruits, displaying in strange union old comrades beside old
foes, were crossing to and fro and changing relationships, to the
inextricable confusion of the situation. In such a chaos each man was
driven to do his own thinking, to discover his genuine beliefs, and to
determine in what company he could stand enduringly in the troublous
times ahead. It was one of those periods in which small men are laid
aside and great leaders are recognized by popular instinct; when the
little band that is in deepest earnest becomes endowed with a force
which compels the mass of careless, temporizing human-kind to gravitate
towards it. Such bands were now the Abolitionists at the North and the
Secessionists at the South. Between them lay the nation, disquieted,
contentious, and more than a little angry at the prevalent discomfort
and alarm. At the North nine men out of ten cared far less for any
principle, moral or political, than they did for the discovery of some
course whereby this unwelcome conflict between slavery and freedom could
be prevented from disorganizing the course of daily life and business;
and since the Abolitionists were generally charged with being in great
measure responsible for the present menacing condition, they were
regarded with bitter animosity by a large number of their fellow
citizens. The Secessionists were not in equal disfavor at the South, yet
they were still very much in the minority, even in the Gulf States.
Illinois had been pretty stanchly Democratic in times past, but no one
could forecast the complexion which she would put on in the coming
campaign. The Whigs were gone. The Republican party, though so lately
born, yet had already traversed the period of infancy and perhaps also
that of youth; men guessed wildly how many voters would now cast its
ballot. On the other hand, the Democrats were suffering from internal
quarrels. The friends of Douglas, and all moderate Democrats, declared
him to be the leader of the Democracy; but Southern conventions and
newspapers were angrily "reading him out" of the party, and the singular
spectacle was witnessed of the Democratic administration sending out its
orders to all Federal office-holders in Illinois to oppose the
Democratic nominee, even to the point of giving the election to the
Republicans; for if discipline was to exist, a defection like that of
which Douglas had been guilty must be punished with utter and
everlasting destruction at any cost. This schism of course made the
numerical uncertainties even more uncertain than they rightfully should
have been. Yet, in an odd way, the same fact worked also against
Lincoln; for Douglas's recent votes against the pro-slavery measures of
the administration for the admission of Kansas, together with his own
direct statements on recent occasions, had put him in a light which
misled many Northern anti-slavery men, whose perception did not
penetrate to the core-truth. For example, not only Greeley, but Henry
Wilson, Burlingame, Washburne, Colfax, and more, really believed that
Douglas was turning his back upon his whole past career, and that this
brilliant political strategist was actually bringing into the
anti-slavery camp[76] all his accumulations of prestige, popularity, and
experience, all his seductive eloquence, his skill, and his grand
mastery over men. Blinded by the dazzling prospect, they gave all their
influence in favor of this priceless recruit, forgetting that, if he
were in fact such an apostate as they believed him to be, he would come
to them terribly shrunken in value and trustworthiness. Some even were
so infatuated as to insist that the Republicans of Illinois ought to
present no candidate against him. Fortunately the Illinoisians knew
their fellow citizen better; yet in so strange a jumble no one could
deny that it was a doubtful conflict in which these two rivals were
joining.
Lincoln had expected to be nominated, and during several weeks he had
been thinking over his speech of acceptance. However otherwise he might
seem at any time to be engaged, he was ceaselessly turning over this
matter in his mind; and frequently he stopped short to jot down an idea
or expression upon some scrap of paper, which then he thrust into his
hat. Thus, piece by piece, the accumulation grew alike inside and
outside of his head, and at last he took all his fragments and with
infinite consideration moulded them into unity. So studiously had he
wrought that by the time of delivery he had unconsciously committed the
whole speech accurately to memory. If so much painstaking seemed to
indicate an exaggerated notion of the importance of his words, he was
soon vindicated by events; for what he said was subjected to a
dissection and a criticism such as have not often pursued the winged
words of the orator. When at last the composition was completed, he
gathered a small coterie of his friends and admirers, and read it to
them. The opening paragraph was as follows:--
"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."
As the reader watched for the effect of this exordium he only saw
disapproval and consternation. His assembled advisers and critics, each
and all save only the fiery Herndon, protested that language so daring
and advanced would work a ruin that might not be mended in years.
Lincoln heard their condemnation with gravity rather than surprise. But
he had worked his way to a conviction, and he was immovable; all he said
was, that the statement was true, right, and just, that it was time it
should be made, and that he would make it, even though he might have "to
go down with it;" that he would "rather be defeated with this expression
in the speech ... than to be victorious without it." Accordingly, on the
next day he spoke the paragraph without the change of a word.
It is not without effort that we can now appreciate fully why this
utterance was so momentous in the spring of 1858.[77] By it Lincoln came
before the people with a plain statement of precisely that which more
than nine hundred and ninety-nine persons in every thousand, especially
at the North, were striving with all their might to stamp down as an
untruth; he said to them what they all were denying with desperation,
and with rage against the asserters. Their bitterness was the greater
because very many, in the bottom of their hearts, distrusted their own
painful and strenuous denial. No words could be more unpopular than that
the divided house could not permanently stand, when the whole nation was
insisting, with the intensity of despair, that it could stand, would
stand, must stand. Consequently occurrences soon showed his friends to
be right so far as concerned the near, practical point: that the
paragraph would cost more voters in Illinois than Lincoln could lose
without losing his election. But beyond that point, a little farther
away in time, much deeper down amid enduring results, Lincoln's judgment
was ultimately seen to rest upon fundamental wisdom, politically as well
as morally. For Lincoln was no idealist, sacrificing realities to
abstractions; on the contrary, the right which he saw was always a
practical right, a right which could be compassed. In this instance, the
story goes that he retorted upon some of those who grumbled about his
"mistake," that in time they "would consider it the wisest thing he ever
said." In this he foretold truly; that daring and strong utterance was
the first link in the chain of which a more distant link lay across the
threshold of the White House.
A battle opened by so resounding a shot was sure to be furious. Writers
and speakers fell upon the fateful paragraph and tore it savagely. They
found in it a stimulus which, in fact, was not needed; for already were
present all the elements of the fiercest struggle,--the best man and the
best fighter in each party at the front, and not unevenly matched; a
canvass most close and doubtful; and a question which stirred the souls
of men with the passions of crusading days. Douglas added experience and
distinction to gallantry in attack, adroitness in defense, readiness in
personalities, and natural aptitude for popular oratory. Lincoln frankly
admitted his formidable qualifications. But the Republican managers had
a shrewd appreciation of both opponents; they saw that Lincoln's forte
lay in hitting out straight, direct, and hard; and they felt that blows
of the kind he delivered should not go out into the air, but should
alight upon a concrete object,--upon Douglas. They conceived a wise
plan. On July 24, 1858, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of joint
debates. Douglas accepted, and named seven meetings, which he so
arranged that he opened and closed four times and Lincoln opened and
closed three times; but Lincoln made no point of the inequality; the
arrangement was completed, and this famous duel constituted another link
in that White House chain.
The setting of the spectacle had the picturesqueness of the times and
the region. The people gathered in vast multitudes, to the number of
ten thousand, even of twenty thousand, at the places named for the
speech-making; they came in their wagons from all the country round,
bringing provisions, and making camps in the groves and fields. There
were bonfires and music, parading and drinking. He was a singular man in
Illinois who was not present at some one of these encounters.
Into a competition so momentous Lincoln entered with a full appreciation
of the burden and responsibility which it put upon him. He had at once
to meet a false gloss of his famous sentence; and though he had been
very precise and accurate in his phraseology for the express purpose of
escaping misinterpretation, yet it would have been a marvel in applied
political morals if the paraphrases devised by Douglas had been strictly
ingenuous. The favorite distortion was to alter what was strictly a
forecast into a declaration of a policy, to make a prediction pass for
an avowal of a purpose to wage war against slavery until either the
"institution" or "Abolitionism" should be utterly defeated and forever
exterminated. It was said to be a "doctrine" which was "revolutionary
and destructive of this government," and which "invited a 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." Such
misrepresentation annoyed Lincoln all the more because it was
undeserved. The history of the utterance thus maltreated illustrates the
deliberate, cautious, thorough way in which his mind worked. So long ago
as August 15, 1855, he had closed a letter with the paragraph: "Our
political problem now is: Can we, as a nation, continue together
_permanently_--_forever_, half slave and half free? The problem is too
mighty for me. May God in his mercy superintend the solution."[78] This
is one among many instances which show how studiously Lincoln pondered
until he had got his conclusion into that simple shape in which it was
immutable. When he had found a form which satisfied him for the
expression of a conviction, he was apt to use it repeatedly rather than
to seek new and varied shapes, so that substantially identical sentences
often recur at distant intervals of time and place.
When one has been long studying with much earnest intensity of thought a
perplexing and moving question, and at last frames a conclusion with
painstaking precision in perfectly clear language, it is not pleasant to
have that accurate utterance misstated with tireless reiteration, and
with infinite art and plausibility. But for this vexation Lincoln could
find no remedy, and it was in vain that he again and again called
attention to the fact that he had expressed neither a "doctrine," nor an
"invitation," nor any "purpose" or policy whatsoever. But as it seemed
not altogether courageous to leave his position in doubt, he said: "Now,
it is singular enough, if you will carefully read that passage over,
that I did not say in it that I was in favor of anything. I only said
what I expected would take place.... I did not even say that I desired
that slavery should be put in course of ultimate extinction. I do say so
now, however, so there need be no longer any difficulty about that." He
felt that nothing short of such extinction would surely prevent the
revival of a dispute which had so often been settled "_forever_." "We
can no more foretell," he said, "where the end of this slavery agitation
will be than we can see the end of the world itself.... There is no way
of putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back
upon the basis where our fathers placed it.... Then the public mind will
rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction."
There was much of this eloquence about "the fathers," much evocation of
the shades of the great departed, who, having reached the eternal
silence, could be claimed by both sides. The contention was none the
less strenuous because it was entirely irrelevant; since the opinion of
"the fathers" could not make slavery right or wrong. Many times
therefore did Douglas charge Lincoln with having said "that the Union
could not endure divided as our fathers made it, with free and slave
States;" as though this were a sort of blasphemy against the national
demigods. Lincoln aptly retorted that, as matter of fact, these same
distinguished "fathers"--"Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison,
Hamilton, Jay, and the great men of that day"--did not _make_, but
_found_, the nation half slave and half free; that they set "many clear
marks of disapprobation" upon slavery, and left it so situated that the
popular mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction. Unfortunately it had not been allowed to remain as they had
left it; but on the contrary, "all the trouble and convulsion has
proceeded from the efforts to spread it over more territory."
Pursuing this line, Lincoln alleged the purpose of the pro-slavery men
to make slavery "perpetual and universal" and "national." In his great
speech of acceptance at Springfield he put this point so well that he
never improved upon this first presentation of it. The repeal of the
Missouri Compromise in 1854 "opened all the national territory to
slavery, and was the first point gained. But so far Congress only had
acted, and an indorsement by the people, real or imaginary," was
obtained by "the notable argument of 'squatter sovereignty,' otherwise
called 'sacred right of self-government,' which latter phrase, though
expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so
perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: that if
any _one_ man choose to enslave _another_, no _third_ man shall be
permitted to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska
bill." In May, 1854, this bill was passed. Then the presidential
election came. "Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement was
secured. That was the second point gained." Meantime the celebrated case
of the negro, Dred Scott, was pending in the Supreme Court, and the
"President in his inaugural address fervently exhorted the people to
abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then in a few
days came the decision," which was at once emphatically indorsed by
Douglas, "the reputed author of the Nebraska bill," and by the new
President.
"At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of
the Nebraska bill on the mere question of _fact_, whether the Lecompton
Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of
Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a
fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted
_down_ or voted _up_.
... "The several points of the Dred Scott decision in connection with
Senator Douglas's 'care not' policy constitute the piece of machinery in
its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained.
... "We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the
result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different
portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and
places and by different workmen,--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James,
for instance,--and when we see these timbers joined together, and see
they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and
mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the
different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a
piece too many or too few,--not omitting even scaffolding; or, if a
single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted
and prepared yet to bring such piece in,--in such a case, we find it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James
all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a
common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.
"It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska bill the people of a
_State_ as well as a Territory were to be left 'perfectly free,'
'subject only to the Constitution.' Why mention a _State_?... Why is
mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law?
... "Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche,
which we may erelong see filled with another Supreme Court decision,
declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a
_State_ to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be
expected if the doctrine of 'care not whether slavery be voted down or
voted up' shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise
that such a decision can be maintained when made. Such a decision is all
that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States."
Following out this idea, Lincoln repeatedly put to Douglas a question to
which he could never get a direct answer from his nimble antagonist: "If
a decision is made, holding that the people of the _States_ cannot
exclude slavery, will he support it, or not?"
Even so skillful a dialectician as Douglas found this compact structure
of history and argument a serious matter. Its simple solidity was not so
susceptible to treatment by the perverting process as had been the
figurative and prophetic utterance about the "house divided against
itself." Neither could he find a chink between the facts and the
inferences. One aspect of the speech, however, could not be passed over.
Lincoln said that he had not charged "Stephen and Franklin and Roger and
James" with collusion and conspiracy; but he admitted that he had
"arrayed the evidence tending to prove," and which he "thought did
prove," these things.[79] It was impossible for the four distinguished
gentlemen[80] who owned the rest of these names to refuse to plead.
Accordingly Douglas sneered vehemently at the idea that two presidents,
the chief justice, and he himself had been concerned in that grave crime
against the State which was imputed to them; and when, by his lofty
indignation, he had brought his auditors into sympathy, he made the only
possible reply: that the real meaning, the ultimate logical outcome, of
what Lincoln had said was, that a decision of the Supreme Court was to
be set aside by the political action of the people at the polls. The
Supreme Court had interpreted the Constitution, and Lincoln was inciting
the people to annul that interpretation by some political process not
known to the law. For himself, he proclaimed with effective emphasis his
allegiance to that great tribunal in the performance of its
constitutional duties. Lincoln replied that he also bowed to the Dred
Scott decision in the specific case; but he repudiated it as a binding
rule in political action.[81] His point seemed more obscure than was
usual with him, and not satisfactory as an answer to Douglas. But as
matter of fact no one was deceived by the amusing adage of the
profession: that the courts do not _make_ the law, but only _declare
what it is_. Every one knew that the law was just what the judges chose
from time to time to say that it was, and that if judicial
_declarations_ of the law were not reversed quite so often as
legislative _makings_ of the law were repealed, it was only because the
identity of a bench is usually of longer duration than the identity of a
legislative body. If the people, politically, willed the reversal of the
Dred Scott decision, it was sure in time to be judicially reversed.[82]
Douglas boasted that the Democrats were a national party, whereas the
"Black Republicans" were a sectional body whose creed could not be
uttered south of Mason and Dixon's line. He was assiduous in fastening
upon Lincoln the name of "Abolitionist," and "Black Republican,"
epithets so unpopular that those who held the faith often denied the
title, and he only modified them by the offensive admission that
Lincoln's doctrines were sometimes disingenuously weakened to suit
certain audiences: "His principles in the north [of Illinois] are jet
black; in the centre they are in color a decent mulatto; and in lower
Egypt[83] they are almost white."
Concerning sectionalism, Lincoln countered fairly enough on his
opponent by asking: Was it, then, the case that it was slavery which was
national, and freedom which was sectional? Or, "Is it the true test of
the soundness of a doctrine that in some places people won't let you
proclaim it?" But the remainder of Douglas's assault was by no means to
be disposed of by quick retort. When Lincoln was pushed to formulate
accurately his views concerning the proper status of the negro in the
community, he had need of all his extraordinary care in statement.
Herein lay problems that were vexing many honest citizens and clever men
besides himself, and were breeding much disagreement among persons who
all were anti-slavery in a general way, but could by no means reach a
comfortable unison concerning troublesome particulars. The "all men free
and equal" of the Constitution, and the talk about human brotherhood,
gave the Democrats wide scope for harassing anti-slavery men with
vexatious taunts and embarrassing cross-interrogatories on practical
points. "I do not question," said Douglas, "Mr. Lincoln's conscientious
belief that the negro was made his equal, and hence is his brother. But
for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively
deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever." He said that
"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," but meant only "white men, of European birth and descent." This
topic opens the whole subject of Lincoln's political affiliations and of
his opinions concerning slavery and the negro, opinions which seem to
have undergone no substantial change during the interval betwixt this
campaign and his election to the presidency. Some selections from what
he said may sufficiently explain his position.
At Freeport, August 27, replying to a series of questions from Douglas,
he declared that he had supposed himself, "since the organization of the
Republican party at Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by
the platforms of the party, then and since." He said: "I do not now, nor
ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive
Slave Law." He believed that under the Constitution the Southerners were
entitled to such a law; but thought that the existing law "should have
been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to
it, without lessening its efficiency." He would not "introduce it as a
new subject of agitation upon the general question of slavery."
He should be "exceedingly sorry" ever to have to pass upon the question
of admitting more slave States into the Union, and exceedingly glad to
know that another never would be admitted. But "if slavery shall be kept
out of the Territories during the territorial existence of any one given
Territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear
field, when they come to adopt their constitution, do such an
extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced by
the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative,
if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union." He should
also, he said, be "exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the
District of Columbia," and he believed that Congress had "constitutional
power to abolish it" there; but he would favor the measure only upon
condition: "First, that the abolition should be gradual; second, that it
should be on a vote of the majority of qualified voters in the District;
and, third, that compensation should be made to unwilling owners." As to
the abolition of the slave trade between the different States, he
acknowledged that he had not considered the matter sufficiently to have
reached a conclusion concerning it. But if he should think that Congress
had power to effect such abolition, he should "not be in favor of the
exercise of that power unless upon some conservative principle, akin to
what I have said in relation to the abolition of slavery in the District
of Columbia." As to the territorial controversy, he said: "I am
impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the _right_ and
_duty_ of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States
Territories." Concerning the acquisition of new territory he said: "I am
not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and in any
given case I would or would not oppose such acquisition, according as I
might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery
question among ourselves." The statement derived its immediate
importance from the well-known purpose of the administration and a
considerable party in the South very soon to acquire Cuba. All these
utterances were certainly clear enough, and were far from constituting
Abolitionist doctrine, though they were addressed to an audience "as
strongly tending to Abolitionism as any audience in the State of
Illinois," and Mr. Lincoln believed that he was saying "that which, if
it would be offensive to any person and render them enemies to himself,
would be offensive to persons in this audience."
At Quincy Lincoln gave his views concerning Republicanism with his usual
unmistakable accuracy, and certainly he again differentiated it widely
from Abolitionism. The Republican party, he said, think slavery "a
moral, a social, and a political wrong." Any man who does not hold this
opinion "is misplaced and ought to leave us. While, on the other hand,
if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient over the
necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the
constitutional guarantees thrown around it, and would act in disregard
of these, he, too, is misplaced, standing with us. He will find his
place somewhere else; for we have a due regard ... for all these
things." ... "I have always hated slavery as much as any
Abolitionist,... but I have always been quiet about it until this new
era of the introduction of the Nebraska bill again." He repeated often
that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists;" that he had "no
lawful right to do so," and "no inclination to do so." He said that his
declarations as to the right of the negro to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness" were designed only to refer to legislation "about
any new country which is not already cursed with the actual presence of
the evil,--slavery." He denied having ever "manifested any impatience
with the necessities that spring from the ... actual existence of
slavery among us, where it does already exist."
He dwelt much upon the equality clause of the Declaration. If we begin
"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?"
Only within three years past had any one doubted that negroes were
included by this language. But he said that, while the authors "intended
to include _all_ men, they did not mean to declare all men equal _in all
respects_,... in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social
capacity," but only "equal in certain inalienable rights." "Anything
that argues me into his [Douglas's] idea of perfect social and political
equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of
words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut
horse.... I have no purpose to produce political and social equality
between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference
between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid
their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch
as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as
Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the
superior position.... But I hold that ... there is no reason in the
world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated
in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the
white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many
respects,--certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual
endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of
anybody else, which his own hand earns, _he is my equal, and the equal
of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man_." Later at
Charleston he reiterated much of this in almost identical language, and
then in his turn took his fling at Douglas: "I am not in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor
to intermarry with white people.... I do not understand that because I
do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a
wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.... I have never
had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes, if
there was no law to keep them from it; but as Judge Douglas and his
friends seem to be in great apprehension that _they_ might, if there
were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that
I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids
the marrying of white people with negroes."
By all this it is made entirely evident that Lincoln held a faith widely
different from that of the great crusading leaders of Abolitionism at
the East.[84] Equally marked was the difference between him and them in
the matters of temper and of the attitude taken towards opponents. The
absence of any sense of personal hostility towards those who assailed
him with unsparing vindictiveness was a trait often illustrated in his
after life, and which was now noted with surprise, for it was rare in
the excited politics of those days. In this especial campaign both
contestants honestly intended to refrain from personalities, but the
difference between their ways of doing so was marked. Douglas, under the
temptation of high ability in that line, held himself in check by an
effort which was often obvious and not always entirely successful. But
Lincoln never seemed moved by the desire. "All I have to ask," he said,
"is that we talk reasonably and rationally;" and again: "I hope to deal
in all things fairly with Judge Douglas." No innuendo, no artifice, in
any speech, gave the lie to these protestations. Besides this, his
denunciations were always against _slavery_, and never against
_slaveholders_. The emphasis of condemnation, the intensity of feeling,
were never expended against persons. By this course, unusual among the
Abolitionists, he not only lost nothing in force and impressiveness,
but, on the contrary, his attack seemed to gain in effectiveness by
being directed against no personal object, but exclusively against a
practice. His war was against slavery, not against the men and women of
the South who owned slaves. At Ottawa he read from the Peoria speech of
1854: "I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just
what we would [should] be in their situation. If slavery did not now
exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among
us, we should not instantly give it up.... It does seem to me that
systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their
tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the
South." Repeatedly he admitted the difficulty of the problem, and
fastened no blame upon those Southerners who excused themselves for not
expelling the evil on the ground that they did not know how to do so. At
Peoria he said: "If all earthly power were given me, I should not know
what to do as to the existing institution." He contributed some
suggestions which certainly were nothing better than chimerical.
Deportation to Africa was his favorite scheme; he also proposed that it
would be "best for all concerned to have the colored population in a
State by themselves." But he did not abuse men who declined to adopt his
methods. Though he was dealing with a question which was arousing
personal antagonisms as bitter as any that history records, yet he never
condemned any one, nor ever passed judgment against his fellow men.
Diagnosis would perhaps show that the trait thus illustrated was mental
rather than moral. This absence of animosity and reproach as towards
individuals found its root not so much in human charity as in fairness
of thinking. Lincoln's ways of mental working are not difficult to
discover. He thought slowly, cautiously, profoundly, and with a most
close accuracy; but above all else he _thought fairly_. This capacity
far transcended, or, more correctly, differed from, what is ordinarily
called the judicial habit of mind. Many men can weigh arguments without
letting prejudice get into either scale; but Lincoln carried on the
whole process of thinking, not only with an equal clearness of
perception, but also with an entire impartiality of liking or disliking
for both sides. His aim, while he was engaged in thinking, was to
discover what was really true; and later when he spoke to others his
purpose was to show them the truth which he had discovered, and to
state to them on what grounds he believed it to be the truth; it did not
involve a judgment against the individuals who failed to recognize that
truth. His singular trait of impersonality was not made more apparent in
any other way. His effort never was to defeat the person who happened to
be his adversary, but always was to overcome the arguments of that
adversary. Primarily he was discussing a topic and establishing a truth;
it was only incidental that in doing these things he had to oppose a
man. It is noteworthy that his opponents never charged him with
misstating their case in order to make an apparently effective answer to
it. On the contrary, his hope of success seemed always to lie in having
both sides presented with the highest degree of clearness and honesty.
He had perfect confidence in the ultimate triumph of the truth; he was
always willing to tie fast to it, according as he could see it, and then
to bide time with it. This being a genuine faith and not mere
lip-service, he used the same arguments to others which he used to
himself, and staked his final success upon the probability that what had
persuaded his mind would in time persuade also the minds of other
intelligent men. It has been well said of him by an excellent judge: "He
loved the truth for the truth's sake. He would not argue from a false
premise, or be deceived himself, or deceive others, by a false
conclusion.... He did not seek to say merely the thing which was best
for that day's debate, but the thing which would stand the test of
time, and square itself with eternal justice.... His logic was severe
and faultless. He did not resort to fallacy."[85]
To return to the points made in the debate: Douglas laid down the "great
principle of non-interference and non-intervention by Congress with
slavery in the States and Territories alike;" which he assured his
audience would enable us to "continue at peace with one another." In the
same connection he endeavored to silver-coat for Northern palates the
bitter pill of the Dred Scott decision, by declaring that the people of
any State or Territory might withhold that protecting legislation, those
"friendly police regulations," without which slavery could not exist.
But this was, indeed, a "lame, illogical, evasive answer," which enabled
Lincoln to "secure an advantage in the national relations of the contest
which he held to the end."
Lincoln, in replying, agreed that "all the States have the right to do
exactly as they please about all their domestic relations, including
that of slavery." But he said that the proposition that slavery could
not enter a new country without police regulations was historically
false; and that the facts of the Dred Scott case itself showed that
there was "vigor enough in slavery to plant itself in a new country even
against unfriendly legislation." Beyond this issue of historical fact,
Douglas had already taken and still dared to maintain a position which
proved to be singularly ill chosen. The right to hold slaves as property
in the Territories had lately, to the infinite joy of the South, been
declared by the Supreme Court to be guaranteed by the Constitution; and
now Douglas had the audacity to repeat that notion of his, so abhorrent
to all friends of slavery,--that this invaluable right could be made
practically worthless by unfriendly local legislation, or even by the
negative hostility of withholding friendly legislation! From the moment
when this deadly suggestion fell from his ingenious lips, the Southern
Democracy turned upon him with vindictive hate and marked him for
destruction. He had also given himself into the hands of his avowed and
natural enemies. The doctrine, said Mr. Lincoln, is "no less than that a
thing may lawfully be driven away from a place where it has a lawful
right to be." "If you were elected members of the legislature, what
would be the first thing you would have to do, before entering upon your
duties? _Swear to support the Constitution of the United States_.
Suppose you believe, as Judge Douglas does, that the Constitution of the
United States guarantees to your neighbor the right to hold slaves in
that Territory,--that they are his property,--how can you clear your
oaths, unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to enable
him to enjoy that property? What do you understand by supporting the
Constitution of a State, or of the United States? Is it not to give such
constitutional helps to the rights established by that Constitution as
may be practically needed?... And what I say here will hold with still
more force against the judge's doctrine of 'unfriendly legislation.' How
could you, having sworn to support the Constitution, and believing it
guaranteed the right to hold slaves in the Territories, assist in
legislation _intended to defeat that right_?" "Is not Congress itself
under obligation to give legislative support to any right that is
established under the United States Constitution?" Upon what other
principle do "many of us, who are opposed to slavery upon principle,
give our acquiescence to a Fugitive Slave Law?" Does Douglas mean to say
that a territorial legislature, "by passing unfriendly laws," can
"_nullify a constitutional right_?" He put to Douglas the direct and
embarrassing query: "If the slaveholding citizens of a United States
Territory should need and demand congressional legislation for the
protection of their slave property in such Territory, would you, as a
member of Congress, vote for or against such legislation?" "Repeat
that," cried Douglas, ostentatiously; "I want to answer that question."
But he never composed his reply.
Another kindred question had already been put by Lincoln: "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?" Friends advised him not
to force this, as it seemed against the immediate policy of the present
campaign. But it was never his way to subordinate his own deliberate
opinion to the opinions of advisers; and on this occasion he was
merciless in pressing this question. A story has been very generally
repeated that he told the protesters that, whatever might be the bearing
on the senatorship, Douglas could not answer that question and be
elected President of the United States in 1860. "I am killing larger
game," he said; "the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."[86] A
few legends of this kind are extant, which tend to indicate that Lincoln
already had in mind the presidential nomination, and was fighting the
present fight with an eye to that greater one in the near future. It is
not easy to say how much credit should be given to such tales; they may
not be wholly inventions, but a remark which is uttered with little
thought may later easily take on a strong color in the light of
subsequent developments.
In presenting the Republican side of the question Lincoln seemed to feel
a duty beyond that of merely outarguing his opponent. He bore the
weighty burden of a responsibility graver than personal success. He
might prevail in the opinions of his fellow citizens; without this
instant triumph he might so present his cause that the jury of posterity
would declare that the truth lay with him; he might even convince both
the present and the coming generations; and though achieving all these
triumphs, he might still fall far short of the peculiar and exacting
requirement of the occasion. For the winning of the senatorship was the
insignificant part of what he had undertaken; his momentous charge was
to maintain a grand moral crusade, to stimulate and to vindicate a great
uprising in the cause of humanity and of justice. His full appreciation
of this is entirely manifest in the tone of his speeches. They have an
earnestness, a gravity, at times even a solemnity, unusual in such
encounters in any era or before any audiences, but unprecedented "on the
stump" before the uproarious gatherings of the West at that day.
Repeatedly he stigmatized slavery as "a moral, a social, a political
evil." Very impressively he denounced the positions of an opponent who
"cared not whether slavery was voted down or voted up," who said that
slavery was not to be differentiated from the many domestic institutions
and daily affairs which civilized societies control by police
regulations. He said that slavery could not be treated as "only equal to
the cranberry laws of Indiana;" that slaves could not be put "upon a par
with onions and potatoes;" that to Douglas he supposed that the
institution really "looked small," but that a great proportion of the
American people regarded slavery as "a vast moral evil." "The real issue
in this controversy--the one pressing upon every mind--is the sentiment
on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery _as
a wrong_, and of another class that does _not_ look upon it as a
wrong.... No man can logically say he does not care whether a wrong is
voted up or voted down. He [Douglas] contends that whatever community
wants slaves has a right to have them. So they have, if it is not a
wrong. But if it is a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do
wrong. He says that, upon the score of equality, slaves should be
allowed to go into a new Territory, like other property. This is
strictly logical if there is no difference between it and other
property.... But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right,
there is no use to institute a comparison between right and wrong....
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 work and toil and
earn bread, and I'll eat it.'" "I ask you if it is not a false
philosophy? Is it not a false statesmanship that undertakes to build up
a system of policy upon the basis of caring nothing about _the very
thing that everybody does care the most about_?"
We cannot leave these speeches without a word concerning their literary
quality. In them we might have looked for vigor that would be a little
uncouth, wit that would be often coarse, a logic generally sound but
always clumsy,--in a word, tolerably good substance and very poor form.
We are surprised, then, to find many and high excellences in art. As it
is with Bacon's essays, so it is with these speeches: the more
attentively they are read the more striking appears the closeness of
their texture both in logic and in language. Clear thought is accurately
expressed. Each sentence has its special errand, and each word its
individual importance. There is never either too much or too little. The
work is done with clean precision and no waste. Nowhere does one pause
to seek a meaning or to recover a connection; and an effort to make out
a syllabus shows that the most condensed statement has already been
used. There are scintillations of wit and humor, but they are not very
numerous. When Lincoln was urged to adopt a more popular style, he
replied: "The occasion is too serious; the issues are too grave. I do
not seek applause, or to amuse the people, but to convince them." This
spirit was upon him from the beginning to the end. Had he been
addressing a bench of judges, subject to a close limitation of minutes,
he would have won credit by the combined economy and force which were
displayed in these harangues to general assemblages. To speak of the
lofty tone of these speeches comes dangerously near to the distasteful
phraseology of extravagant laudation, than which nothing else can
produce upon honest men a worse impression. Yet it is a truth visible to
every reader that at the outset Lincoln raised the discussion to a very
high plane, and held it there throughout. The truth which he had to
sustain was so great that it was perfectly simple, and he had the good
sense to utter it with appropriate simplicity. In no speech was there
fervor or enthusiasm or rhetoric; he talked to the reason and the
conscience of his auditors, not to their passions. Yet the depth of his
feeling may be measured by the story that once in the canvass he said to
a friend: "Sometimes, in the excitement of speaking, I seem to see the
end of slavery. I feel that the time is soon coming when the sun shall
shine, the rain fall, on no man who shall go forth to unrequited toil.
How this will come, when it will come, by whom it will come, I cannot
tell,--but that time will surely come."[87] It is just appreciation, and
not extravagance, to say that the cheap and miserable little volume, now
out of print, containing in bad newspaper type, "The Lincoln and Douglas
Debates,"[88] holds some of the masterpieces of oratory of all ages and
nations.
The immediate result of the campaign was the triumph of Douglas, who had
certainly made not only a very able and brilliant but a splendidly
gallant fight, with Republicans assailing him in front and
Administrationists in rear.[89] Lincoln was disappointed. His feelings
had been so deeply engaged, he had worked so strenuously, and the result
had been so much in doubt, that defeat was trying. But he bore it with
his wonted resolute equanimity. He said that he felt "like the boy that
stumped his toe,--'it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to
cry.'" In fact, there were encouraging elements.[90] The popular vote
stood,[91] Republicans, 126,084; Douglas Democrats, 121,940; Lecompton
Democrats, 5,091. But the apportionment of districts was such that the
legislature contained a majority for Douglas.[92] So the prestige of
victory seemed separated from its fruits; for the nation, attentively
watching this duel, saw that the new man had convinced upwards of four
thousand voters more than had the great leader of the Democracy.
Douglas is reported to have said that, during his sixteen years in
Congress, he had found no man in the Senate whom he would not rather
encounter in debate than Lincoln. If it was true that Lincoln was
already dreaming of the presidency, he was a sufficiently shrewd
politician to see that his prospects were greatly improved by this
campaign. He had worked hard for what he had gained; he had been
traveling incessantly to and fro and delivering speeches in unbroken
succession during about one hundred of the hot days of the Western
summer, and speeches not of a commonplace kind, but which severely taxed
the speaker. After all was over, he was asked by the state committee to
contribute to the campaign purse! He replied: "I am willing to pay
according to my ability, but I am the poorest hand living to get others
to pay. _I have been on expense_ so long, without earning anything, that
I am absolutely without money now for even household expenses. Still, if
you can put in $250 for me,... I will allow it when you and I settle the
private matter between us. This, with what I have already paid,... will
exceed my subscription of $500. This, too, is exclusive of my ordinary
expenses during the campaign, all of which being added to my loss of
time and business bears pretty heavily upon one no better off than I
am.... You are feeling badly; 'and this, too, shall pass away;' never
fear."
The platform which, with such precision and painstaking, Lincoln had
constructed for himself was made by him even more ample and more strong
by a few speeches delivered in the interval between the close of this
great campaign and his nomination by the Republicans for the presidency.
In Ohio an important canvass for the governorship took place, and
Douglas went there, and made speeches filled with allusions to Lincoln
and the recent Illinois campaign. Even without this provocation Lincoln
knew, by keen instinct, that where Douglas was, there he should be also.
In no other way had he yet appeared to such advantage as in encountering
"the Little Giant." To Ohio, accordingly, he hastened, and spoke at
Columbus and at Cincinnati.[93] To the citizens of the latter place he
said: "This is the first time in my life that I have appeared before an
audience in so great a city as this. I therefore make this appearance
under some degree of embarrassment." There was little novelty in
substance, but much in treatment. Thus, at Cincinnati, he imagined
himself addressing Kentuckians, and showed them that their next nominee
for the presidency ought to be his "distinguished friend, Judge
Douglas;" for "in all that there is a difference between you and him, I
understand he is sincerely for you, and more wisely for you than you are
for yourselves." Through him alone pro-slavery men retained any hold
upon the free States of the North; and in those States, "in every
possible way he can, he constantly moulds the public opinion to your
ends." Ingeniously but fairly he sketched Douglas as the most efficient
among the pro-slavery leaders. Perhaps the clever and truthful picture
may have led Mr. Greeley and some other gentlemen at the East to suspect
that they had been inconsiderate in their choice between the Western
rivals; and perhaps, also, Lincoln, while addressing imaginary
Kentuckians, had before his inner eye some Eastern auditors. For at the
time he did not know that his voice would ever be heard at any point
nearer to their ears than the hall in which he then stood. Within a few
weeks, however, this unlooked-for good fortune befell. In October, 1859,
he was invited to speak in the following winter in New York. That the
anti-slavery men of that city wished to test him by personal observation
signified that his reputation was national, and that the highest
aspirations were, therefore, not altogether presumptuous. He accepted
gladly, and immediately began to prepare an address which probably cost
him more labor than any other speech which he ever made. He found time,
however, in December to make a journey through Kansas, where he
delivered several speeches, which have not been preserved but are
described as "repetitions of those previously made in Illinois." Lamon
tells us that the journey was an "ovation," and that "wherever Lincoln
went, he was met by vast assemblages of people." The population of this
agricultural State was hardly in a condition to furnish "vast
assemblages" at numerous points, but doubtless the visitor received
gratifying assurance that upon this battle-ground of slavery and
anti-slavery the winning party warmly appreciated his advocacy of their
cause.
On Saturday, February 25, 1860, Lincoln arrived in New York. On Monday
his hosts "found him dressed in a sleek and shining suit of new black,
covered with very apparent creases and wrinkles, acquired by being
packed too closely and too long in his little valise. He felt uneasy in
his new clothes and a strange place." Certainly nothing in his previous
experience had prepared him to meet with entire indifference an audience
of metropolitan critics; indeed, had the surroundings been more
familiar, he had enough at stake to tax his equanimity when William
Cullen Bryant introduced him simply as "an eminent citizen of the West,
hitherto known to you only by reputation." Probably the first impression
made upon those auditors by the ungainly Westerner in his outlandish
garb were not the same which they carried home with them a little later.
The speech was so condensed that a sketch of it is not possible.
Fortunately it had the excellent quality of steadily expanding in
interest and improving to the end.
Of the Dred Scott case he cleverly said that the courts had decided it
"_in a sort of way_;" but, after all, the decision was "mainly based
upon a mistaken statement of fact,--the statement in the opinion that
'the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed
in the Constitution.'"
In closing, he begged the Republicans, in behalf of peace and harmony,
to "do nothing through passion and ill-temper;" but he immediately went
on to show the antagonism between Republican opinion and Democratic
opinion with a distinctness which left no hope of harmony, and very
little hope of peace. To satisfy the Southerners, he said, we must
"cease to call slavery _wrong_, and join them in calling it _right_. And
this must be done thoroughly,--done in _acts_ as well as in _words_....
We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We
must pull down our free-state Constitutions.... If slavery is right, all
words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong,
and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot object
to its nationality, its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly
insist upon its extension, its enlargement. All they ask we could
readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as
readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our
thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole
controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for
desiring its full recognition, as being right; but thinking it wrong, as
we do, can we yield to them?... Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet
afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the
necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we,
while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national
Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense
of duty forbids this ... let us be diverted by no sophistical
contrivances, such as groping for some middle ground between the right
and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a
living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of 'don't care' on a
question about which all true men do care; such as Union appeals
beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine
rule and calling not the sinners but the righteous to repentance."
The next morning the best newspapers gave full reports of the speech,
with compliments. The columns of the "Evening Post" were generously
declared to be "indefinitely elastic" for such utterances; and the
"Tribune" expressed commendation wholly out of accord with the recent
notions of its editor. The rough fellow from the crude West had made a
powerful impression upon the cultivated gentlemen of the East.
From New York Lincoln went to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, and Connecticut. In this last-named State he delivered
speeches which are said to have contributed largely to the Republican
success in the closely contested election then at hand. In Manchester it
was noticed that "he did not abuse the South, the administration, or
the Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the exception of a
few hits at Douglas's notions."[94]
These speeches of 1858, 1859, and 1860 have a very great value as
contributions to history. During that period every dweller in the United
States was hotly concerned about this absorbing question of slavery,
advancing his own views, weighing or encountering the arguments of
others, quarreling, perhaps, with his oldest friends and his nearest
kindred,--for about this matter men easily quarreled and rarely
compromised. Every man who fancied that he could speak in public got
upon some platform in city, town, or village, and secured an audience by
his topic if not by his ability; every one who thought that he could
write found some way to print what he had to say upon a subject of which
readers never tired; and for whatever purpose two or three men were
gathered together, they were not likely to separate without a few words
about North and South, pro-slavery and anti-slavery. Never was any
matter more harried and ransacked by disputation. Now to all the
speaking and writing of the Republicans Lincoln's condensed speeches
were what a syllabus is to an elaborate discourse, what a lawyer's brief
is to his verbal argument. Perhaps they may better be likened to an
anti-slavery gospel; as the New Testament is supposed to cover the whole
ground of Christian doctrines and Christian ethics, so that theologians
and preachers innumerable have only been able to make elaborations or
glosses upon the original text, so Lincoln's speeches contain the whole
basis of the anti-slavery cause as maintained by the Republican party.
They also set forth a considerable part of the Southern position,
doubtless as fairly as the machinations of the Devil are set forth in
Holy Writ. They only rather gingerly refrain from speaking of the small
body of ultra-Abolitionists,--for while Lincoln was far from agreeing
with these zealots, he felt that it was undesirable to widen by any
excavation upon his side the chasm between them and the Republicans. So
the fact is that the whole doctrine of Republicanism, as it existed
during the political campaign which resulted in the election of Lincoln,
also all the historical facts supporting that doctrine, were clearly and
accurately stated in these speeches. Specific points were more
elaborated by other persons; but every seed was to be found in this
granary.
This being the case, it is worth noticing that both Lincoln and Douglas
confined their disputation closely to the slavery question. Disunion and
secession were words familiar in every ear, yet Lincoln referred to
these things only twice or thrice, and incidentally, while Douglas
ignored them. This fact is fraught with meaning. American writers and
American readers have always met upon the tacit understanding that the
Union was the chief cause of, and the best justification for, the war.
An age may come when historians, treating our history as we treat that
of Greece, stirred by no emotion at the sight of the "Stars and
Stripes," moved by no patriotism at the name of the United States of
America, will seek a deeper philosophy to explain this obstinate,
bloody, costly struggle. Such writers may say that a rich, civilized
multitude of human beings, possessors of the quarter of a continent,
believing it best for their interests to set up an independent
government for themselves, fell back upon the right of revolution,
though they chose not to call it by that name. Now, even if it be
possible to go so far as to say that every nation has always a right to
preserve by force, if it can, its own integrity, certainly it cannot be
stated as a further truth that no portion of a nation can ever be
justified in endeavoring to obtain an independent national existence; no
citizen of this country can admit this, but must say that such an
endeavor is justifiable or not justifiable according as its cause and
basis are right or wrong. Far down, then, at the very bottom lay the
question whether the Southerners had a sufficient cause upon which to
base a revolution. Now this question was hardly conclusively answered by
the perfectly true statement that the North had not interfered with
Southern rights. Southerners might admit this, and still believe that
their welfare could be best subserved by a government wholly their own.
So the very bottom question of all still remained: Was the South
endeavoring to establish a government of its own for a justifiable
reason and a right purpose? Now the avowed purpose was to establish on
an enduring foundation a permanent slave empire; and the declared reason
was, that slavery was not safe within the Union. Underneath the question
of the Union therefore lay, logically, the question of slavery.
Lincoln and the other Republican leaders said that, if slavery extension
was prevented, then slavery was in the way of extinction. If the
assertion was true, it pretty clearly followed that the South could
retain slavery only by independence and a complete imperial control
within the limits of its own homogeneous nationality; for undeniably the
preponderant Northern mass was becoming firmly resolved that slavery
should not be extended, however it might be tolerated within its present
limits. So still, by anti-slavery statement itself, the ultimate
question was: whether or not the preservation of slavery was a right and
sufficient cause or purpose for establishing an independent nationality.
Lincoln, therefore, went direct to the logical heart of the contention,
when he said that the real dispute was whether slavery was a right thing
or a wrong thing. If slavery was a right thing, a Union conducted upon a
policy which was believed to doom it to "ultimate extinction" was not a
right thing. But if slavery was a wrong thing, a revolution undertaken
with the purpose of making it perpetual was also a wrong thing.
Therefore, from beginning to end, Lincoln talked about slavery. By so
doing he did what he could to give to the war a character far higher
even than a war of patriotism, for he extended its meaning far beyond
the age and the country of its occurrence, and made of it, not a war for
the United States alone, but a war for humanity, a war for ages and
peoples yet to come. In like manner, he himself also gained the right to
be regarded as much more than a great party leader, even more than a
great patriot; for he became a champion of mankind and the defender of
the chief right of man. I do not mean to say that he saw these things in
this light at the moment, or that he accurately formulated the precise
relationship and fundamental significance of all that was then in
process of saying and doing. Time must elapse, and distance must enable
one to get a comprehensive view, before the philosophy of an era like
that of the civil war becomes intelligible. But the philosophy is not
the less correct because those who were framing it piece by piece did
not at any one moment project before their mental vision the whole in
its finished proportions and relationship.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] As an example of Greeley's position, see letter quoted by N. and H.
ii. 140, note. The fact that he was strenuously pro-Douglas and
anti-Lincoln is well known. Yet afterward he said that it "was hardly in
human nature" for Republicans to treat Douglas as a friend. Greeley's
_American Conflict_, i. 301.
[76] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, ii. 567; for sketches
of Douglas's position, see Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i.
141-144; von Holst, _Const. Hist. of U.S._ vi. 280-286; Herndon,
391-395; N. and H. ii. 138-143; Lamon, 390-395; Holland, 158. Crittenden
was one of the old Whigs, who now sorely disappointed Lincoln by
preferring Douglas. N. and H. ii. 142.
[77] Several months afterward, October 25, 1858, Mr. Seward made the
speech at Rochester which contained the famous sentence: "It is an
irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it
means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become
either entirely a slaveholding nation or entirely a free-labor nation."
Seward's _Works_, new edition, 1884, iv. 292. But Seward ranked among
the extremists and the agitators. See _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 244.
After all, the idea had already found expression in the Richmond
_Enquirer_, May 6, 1856, quoted by von Hoist, vi. 299, also referred to
by Lincoln; see _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 262.
[78] Letter to Hon. Geo. Robertson, N. and H. i. 392; and see Lamon,
398; also see remarks of von Holst, vi. 277.
[79] _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 93. W.P. Fessenden, "who," says Mr.
Blaine, "always spoke with precision and never with passion," expressed
his opinion that if Fremont had been elected instead of Buchanan, that
decision would never have been given. _Twenty Years of Congress_, i.
133.
[80] Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Roger B. Taney, James
Buchanan.
[81] _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 198. At Chicago he said that he would
vote for the prohibition of slavery in a new Territory "in spite of the
Dred Scott decision." _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 20; and see the rest of
his speech on the same page. The Illinois Republican Convention, June
16. 1858, expressed "condemnation of the principles and tendencies of
the extra-judicial opinions of a majority of the judges," as putting
forth a "political heresy." Holland, 159.
Years ago Salmon P. Chase had dared to say that, if the courts would not
overthrow the pro-slavery construction of the Constitution, the people
would do so, even if it should be "necessary to overthrow the courts
also." Warden's _Life of Chase_, 313.
[82] For Lincoln's explanation of his position concerning the Dred Scott
decision, see _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 20.
[83] A nickname for the southern part of Illinois.
[84] Henry Wilson has made his criticism in the words that "some of his
[Lincoln's] assertions and admissions were both unsatisfactory and
offensive to anti-slavery men; betrayed too much of the spirit of caste
and prejudice against color, and sound harshly dissonant by the side of
the Proclamation of Emancipation and the grand utterances of his later
state papers." _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, ii. 576.
[85] Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 145
[86] N. and H. ii. 159, 160, 163; Arnold, 151; Lamon, 415, 416, and see
406; Holland, 189; Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, ii. 576;
Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 148.
[87] Arnold, 144. This writer speaks with discriminating praise
concerning Lincoln's oratory, p. 139. It is an illustration of Lincoln's
habit of adopting for permanent use any expression that pleased him,
that this same phrase had been used by him in a speech made two years
before this time. Holland, 151.
[88] Published in Columbus, in 1860, for campaign purposes, from copies
furnished by Lincoln; see his letter to Central Exec. Comm., December
19, 1859, on fly-leaf.
[89] Many tributes have been paid to Douglas by writers who oppose his
opinions; _e.g._, Arnold says: "There is, on the whole, hardly any
greater personal triumph in the history of American politics than his
reëlection," pp. 149, 150; Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 149.
[90] See Lincoln's letter to Judd, quoted N. and H. ii. 167; also
_Ibid._ 169.
[91] Raymond, 76.
[92] The Senate showed 14 Democrats, 11 Republicans; the House, 40
Democrats, 35 Republicans.
[93] In September, 1859. These are included in the volume of _The
Lincoln and Douglas Debates_, printed at Columbus, 1860.
[94] _The Mirror_, quoted by Lamon, 442.