ELECTION TO THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE: LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES
1856 to 1858
In the year 1856 I had rather unusual experiences of both victory
and defeat in one and the same political campaign. As candidate
for the Legislature I won out, being elected; as the chosen elector
on the Fillmore ticket, I went down in the party's defeat. The
Whig party was in its expiring days, and what was called the "Know-
Nothing" party was apparently a temporary substitute for it.
Fillmore carried one solitary state--Maryland. Buchanan was elected
by quite a large majority over both Fremont and Fillmore combined.
The administration of President Buchanan has been so frequently
and fully described that there is little, if anything, new to say
about it; but such were the fearful responsibilities incurred by
it for the subsequent bloodshed, that its shortcomings cannot be
entirely ignored in the intelligible presentation of the course of
events which gave direction to my observations and activities.
The campaign of 1856 had been one of the most exiting and hotly
contested ever fought in the State. The only hope the Democrats
had of success was in the division of their opponents and in
preventing their fusion. Their denunciations of abolitionists and
"Black Republicans," as they termed their antagonists, were without
bounds. But here and there some one would be called to account,
as in the case of the late John M. Palmer, since distinguished in
war and peace, and some years ago candidate of the Gold Democrats
for the Presidency.
Between him and Major Harris, then running for Congress in his
district, there had been considerable ill-feeling. The major had
written a letter to be read at a Democratic meeting at which Palmer
was present. It was very abusive of the Republicans, and Palmer
rising, remarked the fact that the author would not dare make such
charges to the face of any honest man. Harris, as related by the
historian Moses, hearing of this, announced that he would resent
it at the first opportunity. This Palmer soon gave him by attending
one of his meetings. The major in the course of his remarks indulged
in the most vituperative language against abolitionists, calling
them disturbers of the peace, incendiaries, and falsifiers; and at
length, turning to Palmer and pointing his finger at him, said, "I
mean you, sir!" Palmer rising to his feet, instantly replied,
"Well, sir, if you apply that language to me you are a dastardly
liar!" And drawing a pistol, he started toward the speaker's stand.
"Now, sir," he continued, "when you get through, I propose to reply
to you." The major had not anticipated this turn of affairs, but
prudently kept his temper and finished his speech. Then Palmer
arose and, laying his weapon before him, cocked, proceeded to give
the Democratic party such a castigation as none of those present
had ever heard before.
It was in the campaign of 1856 that I first began to make political
speeches. James H. Matheny, who was then our circuit clerk,
accompanied me to several meetings where we both delivered addresses.
He was an old Whig inclined toward Democracy, and I was a Whig
inclined toward Republicanism. The result was I made Republican
speeches, while Judge Matheny made Democratic speeches.
Our first meeting away from home was at Petersburg, Menard County.
Being a candidate for elector on the Fillmore ticket, I made my
first away-from-home speech, which I thought was a pretty good
Republican speech. Matheny followed me with a hot Democratic
speech, attacking especially Judge Trumbull, then our United States
Senator. I remained pretty steadily in the campaign of that year,
making about the same character of speech wherever I went.
Fillmore was very popular in Central Illinois, where the Whig party
also had quite a large following during its palmy days, but he did
not receive votes enough to come anywhere near carrying the State.
Sangamon, my home county, and Tazewell County, where I was brought
up, both gave their majority votes for Fillmore.
The Hon. John T. Stuart and his partner, the Hon. B. S. Edwards,
with whom I studied law, besides being able lawyers and first-class
men, were both Whigs; Mr. Stuart especially took an active part in
the campaign. The latter was invited to attend what was called a
Fillmore meeting at Shelbyville, several counties away from Sangamon.
It so happened that he could not go, and the people of Shelbyville
telegraphed for me. I went, and it turned out to be a combined
Fremont, Buchanan, and Fillmore meeting--at least the three meetings
there were held all on the same day.
The Fillmore camp gathered its forces out in the woods until about
two o'clock in the afternoon. The Buchanan and Fremont crowds then
marched in, informing the first-comers that they regarded their
right to have the first meeting pre-eminent. An agreement was
arrived at after some little wrangling, and old General Thornton
was chosen to preside. He determined that, as I was not only a
young man but the farthest from home, I should make the first speech
--an arrangement that suited me very well.
I made my speech, as good a one as I could, and in closing, somewhat
hurriedly announced that I was obliged to leave for home, much as
I might wish to remain with them to the close of the meeting. The
result was that most of the Fillmore people followed me away and
came nearly breaking up the whole performance. I urged them to go
back and listen to the other speakers; but they declined to do so
until I had gotten off for home. It was my first venture at speech-
making away from home on national issues.
I worked and voted for Fillmore because I had a very high opinion
of him as a good man, and did not then think very much of Fremont
as a proper candidate for the Presidency. Subsequently Fremont
became better known, and occupied a high place in the estimation
of the people of the United States, as a gallant soldier and a
statesman, enjoying the unique honor of having been the first
candidate of the Republican party for President.
I have taken an active part in every campaign since 1856, excepting
when poor health prevented a regular speaking campaign.
The animosities of the campaign of 1856 were carried into the
Legislature and kept alive in the House during the entire session.
Governor Bissell's inaugural address was a dignified State paper
in which he referred to the administration of his predecessor in
highly complimentary terms. He concurred in all his recommendations,
but suggested no measures of his own. Although he had commented
briefly upon the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, and in mild terms,
his remarks stirred the ire of the Democrats. Upon the motion to
print the address, a virulent attack was made upon him, led, strange
to say, by John A. Logan, afterwards the foremost volunteer general
of the Union, and a Republican of Republicans. The rancor of the
Democrats against Governor Bissell, who at that time was a physical
wreck from a stroke of paralysis, though mentally sound, was largely
due to their recollection of the fearless manner in which he had
responded, some years before, to a challenge given him by Jefferson
Davis to a duel. That episode has long since become historic, and
I need not enlarge upon it here.
As was the political temper in the State of Illinois, so was it,
to a greater or less degree, throughout the entire Nation.
Buchanan's first message repeated the assurance that the discussion
of slavery had come to an end. The clergy were criticised for
fomenting prevalent disturbances. The President declared in favor
of the admission of Kansas, with a Constitution agreeable to a
majority of the settlers. He also referred to an impending decision
of the Supreme Court, with which he had been made acquainted, and
asked acquiescence in it. This was Judge Taney's decision in the
Dred Scott case, rendered two days after Buchanan's inauguration.
An action had been begun in the Circuit Court in Missouri by Scott,
a negro, for the freedom of himself and children. He claimed that
he had been removed by his master in 1834 to Illinois, a Free State,
and afterwards taken into territory north of the compromise line.
Sanford, his master, replied that Scott was not a citizen of
Missouri, and could not bring an action, and that he and his children
were Sanford's slaves. The lower courts differed, and the case
was twice argued. The decision nullified the Missouri restriction,
or, indeed, any restriction by Congress on slavery in the Territories.
Chief-Justice Taney said:
"The question is whether the class of persons (negroes) compose a
portion of the people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty.
We think they are not included under the word 'citizen' in the
Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and
privileges of that instrument."
Negroes, as a race, were at that time considered as a subordinate
and inferior class who had been subjugated by the dominant whites,
and had no rights or privileges except such as those who held the
power and the government might choose to grant them. They had for
more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior grade--
so far inferior that they possessed no rights which the white man
was bound to respect; and the negro might justly and lawfully be
reduced to slavery for his (the white man's) benefit. The negro
race by common consent had been excluded from civilized governments
and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery. The unhappy
black race was separated from the whites by indelible marks long
before established, and was never thought of or spoken of except
as property.
The Chief-Justice further annulled the Missouri restriction, by
asserting that "the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from
holding property of this kind north of the line therein mentioned
is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void."
Benton said that it was "no longer the exception, with freedom the
rule; but slavery was the rule, with freedom the exception."
It was a year of financial distress in America, which recalled the
hard times of twenty years before. The United States treasury was
empty.
Early in this year (1856) a Legislature had met at Topeka, Kansas,
and was immediately dissolved by the United States marshals. A
Territorial Legislature also met at Lecompton and provided for a
State Constitution. The people of Kansas utterly refused to
recognize the latter body which had been chosen by the Missouri
invaders, and both parties continued to hold their elections.
Thus it may be seen that these episodes were the culmination of a
long series of events leading to a new alignment of the country's
political forces. The Republican party was the child of this
ferment of unrest. The formation of a new political party, or the
regeneration of an old one, is always due to events, and not to
the schemes and purposes of men except as events sometimes originate
in such purposes and schemes. In this case the steps in the course
of events which had rendered the formation of an anti-slavery party
inevitable were: The pro-slavery provisions of the Constitution,
the foreign slave trade, the acquisition of the Territory of
Louisiana, the invention of the cotton-gin and its effects, the
Missouri Compromise, the nullification schemes of South Carolina,
the colonization and annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the
contest over the admission of California, the Compromise Measure
of 1850, and finally the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854.
The name of the party was an incident only, and not an essential
or very important incident; its principles and purposes were the
vital facts. When events demand a new party, or the reorganization
of an old one, all resistance is usually borne down speedily. On
the other hand, it is a wasteful exhibition of human power to
attempt the creation of a new party by the force of combined will
and resolutions formulated in public meetings. Abraham Lincoln's
great experience or keener penetration, or both, guided him at the
outset of the realignments on political issues, and at the opening
of the Congressional campaign of 1858, I followed him firmly and
without mental reservation into the ranks of the Republican party.
Hence it was that I was present on that historic occasion when the
Republican party of the State of Illinois held a convention at
Springfield, June 17 of the year named, and nominated Lincoln for
the seat in the United States Senate, then held by Stephen A.
Douglas, who at that time was usually affectionately referred to
by his partisan followers as "The Little Giant." This nomination
was anticipated, and Mr. Lincoln had prepared a speech, which he
then delivered, in which he set forth, in a manner now universally
recognized as masterly, the doctrines of the Republican party. He
arraigned the administration of Mr. Buchanan and denounced the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the lead of Senator Douglas.
In that speech he made the declaration, which I remember as clearly
as though an event of yesterday, then characterized as extravagant
but long since accepted as prophetic: "I believe this Government
cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free."
That address inaugurated a discussion which has no exact parallel
in history--certainly no equal in American political history. It
introduced Mr. Lincoln to the country at large, and prepared the
way for his nomination to the Presidency two years later. On the
declaration above quoted Mr. Douglas based many arguments, in vain
attempts to prove that Mr. Lincoln was a disunionist.
During this period Douglas addressed an enthusiastic assemblage at
Chicago, and in the course of his speech adverted to the arraignment
of himself by Mr. Lincoln. He took direct issue with that gentleman
on his proposition that, as to Freedom and Slavery, "the Union will
become _all_ one thing or _all_ the other," and maintained strenuously
that "it is neither desirable nor possible that there should be
uniformity in the local institutions and domestic regulations of
the different States of this Union."
An announcement that Mr. Lincoln would reply to Mr. Douglas on the
following evening brought out another assemblage, July 10, which
was awakened, before the speaker had concluded, to an enthusiasm
at least equal to that which the eloquence of Douglas had aroused.
The issues involved in this famous series of debates are too familiar
to all students of our Nation's political history to be considered
at length in these pages. Mr. Lincoln analyzed and answered the
various arguments advanced by Mr. Douglas the evening before; and
the closing paragraphs of his reply to the insistent reminders
"that this Government was made for white men," were memorable:
"Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be
treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying;
that as much is to be done for them as their conditions will allow.
What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have
made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will
find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this
class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they
wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being
ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is
the same old serpent that says: 'You work, and I eat; you toil,
and I will enjoy the fruits of it.'"
Six days thereafter, July 16, Senator Douglas in a great speech
again tried to break the force of his opponent's facts and logic.
This was at Bloomington, and Mr. Lincoln was again a careful
listener. On the evening following, July 17, at Springfield, before
an enthusiastic audience, he proceeded to dissect the matters so
plausibly presented.
At the same hour Douglas was addressing a Springfield audience of
his own, ridiculing especially Mr. Lincoln's alleged attitude toward
the Supreme Court.
Contrasting the disadvantages under which, by reason of an unfair
apportionment of State Legislature representation and otherwise,
the Republicans labored in that campaign, Mr. Lincoln on that
occasion said in the course of his talk:
"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians
of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have
been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the
President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly,
fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet
appointments, _chargé_-ships and foreign missions, bursting and
sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by
their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive
picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has
taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming
hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him,
and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond
what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have
brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever
expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody
has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out."
He affirmed that Popular Sovereignty, "the great staple" of the
Douglas campaign, was "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever
enacted before a community."
As a result of these preliminary speeches of the Congressional
campaign it was generally conceded that, at last, the "Little Giant"
had met his match, and the intellectual and political appetites of
the public called for more. In recognition of this demand, Mr.
Lincoln opened a correspondence which led to an agreement with Mr.
Douglas for a series of joint discussions, seven in number, on fixed
dates in August, September, and October. Alternately they were,
in succession, to open the discussion and speak for an hour, with
another half-hour at the close after the other had spoken for an
hour and a half continuously. My friend and schoolmate, the late
Mr. R. R. Hitt, an efficient stenographer, was employed to report
the whole series, and thus we have a full record of the most
remarkable debate, viewed from all points, that has ever occurred
in American history--possibly without a parallel in the world's
history. Vast assemblages gathered from far and near and listened
with breathless attention to these absorbingly interesting
discussions.
Notwithstanding the intense partisan feeling that was evoked, the
discussion proceeded amidst surroundings characterized by the utmost
decorum. The people evidently felt that the greatest of all
political principles, that of human liberty itself, was hanging on
the issue of this great political contest between intellectual
giants, thus openly waged before the world. They accordingly rose
to the dignity and solemnity of the occasion, as has been well said
by one who was then a zealous follower of Douglas, vindicating by
their very example the sacredness with which the right of free
speech should be regarded at all times and everywhere.
I have elsewhere described the disappointment I personally felt at
the result, when the election returns came in. Although the popular
vote stood 125,698 for Lincoln to 121,130 for Douglas--showing a
victory for Lincoln among the people--yet enough Douglas Democrats
were elected to the Legislature, when added to those of his friends
in the Illinois Senate elected two years before and held over, to
give him fifty-four members of both branches of the Legislature on
joint ballot, against forty-six for Mr. Lincoln.