Alton, this old town that I had visited so many times before, was
crowded with people drawn from the surrounding country, from across the
river in Missouri. As to the temper of the audience, it rather favored
Douglas. I saw the leering, ugly faces that I had seen in the lobbies of
the hotels in St. Louis years before at the railroad convention, when
Captain Grant was lounging there and planters swarmed at the bar and
cursed Yankees and nigger-lovers.
It was the fifteenth of October, fair and temperate. Thousands swarmed
around the speaker's stand in the public square, which was bare of flags
or mottoes by express orders of the masters of ceremony. The time
arrived. Lincoln came to the platform and took a seat.
He was tall, enormously tall, long of limb, angular, narrow shouldered.
His skin was yellow and dry, wrinkled. His hair was black and coarse.
His eyes were sunk back in his head with a melancholy expression which
could flame into humor or indignation. But his forehead was full,
shapely, and noble. The largeness of his nose, tilted a little to one
side, gave sculptural strength to his face. His great mouth with its
fleshy underlip, supplemented the nose. Both were material for grotesque
caricature. He looked like an educated gawk, a rural genius, a pied
piper of motley followers. He was a sad clown, a Socratic wag, a
countryman dressed up for a state occasion. But he was not a poor man
defending the cause of the poor. There was nothing of the dreamer in his
make-up, the eccentric idealist. His big nose and mouth and Henry Clay
forehead denied all of this. He sat in self-possession, in poise,
clothed in the order of confident reason, unafraid, sure of himself but
without vanity, in a wise detachment, on a vantage point of vision. His
frock coat, rusty from dust and wear, did not fit him. The sleeves
escaped his wrists by several inches; his trousers had hitched up as he
sat down, so that one half of his shanks was exposed to view, leaving
his monstrous feet, like the slap-boots of a negro minstrel, for
ludicrous inches over the floor. His neck was long and feminine, and
stuck up grotesquely much above a sort of Byronic collar held together
by a black stock tie. I had never seen a man so absurd.
Douglas was as ludicrously short as Lincoln was tall; broad shouldered
where Lincoln was narrow; thick chested where Lincoln was thin; big
headed where Lincoln was small; of massive brow where Lincoln was full
and shapely; of strong bull-like neck where Lincoln was small and
delicate; of short, compact, powerful body where Lincoln was tall,
loosely constructed, awkward, and muscular. Douglas' face wore
determination, seriousness, force, pugnacity, and endurance. But his
hair was grayer than mine; he looked tired. He arose and in that great
melodious voice which always thrilled me, he said: "It is now nearly
four months since the canvass between Mr. Lincoln and myself commenced."
He went on and controverted Mr. Lincoln's "house divided against
itself," going over the ground of the previous debate. There was not a
sound of disturbance in the audience. They were in a charm, a trance.
Oratory could rise to no greater heights. Then after saying that the
Declaration of Independence did not include the negro, Indians, or Fiji
Islanders, but that all dependent races should be treated nevertheless
with fairness, and that it did not follow that because a negro was an
inferior he must be a slave, he appealed to the rights of the states and
the territories to control slavery for themselves. He closed with these
memorable words:
"Why can we not thus have peace? Why should we allow a sectional party
to agitate this country, to array the North against the South, and
convert us into enemies instead of friends merely that a few ambitious
men may ride into power on a sectional hobby? How long is it since these
ambitious northern men wished for a sectional organization? Did any one
of them dream of a sectional party as long as the North was the weaker
section and the South the stronger? Then all were opposed to sectional
parties; but the moment the North obtained the majority in the House and
in the Senate by the admission of California and could elect a
President without the aid of southern votes, that moment ambitious men
formed a scheme to excite the North against the South and make the
people be governed in their votes by geographical lines, thinking that
the North being the stronger section would outvote the South and
consequently they, the leaders, would ride into office on a sectional
hobby. I am told that my hour is out. It was very short."
Short it was. I thought he had just begun. What would this strange
creature now rising to six feet four inches of awkward angularity say in
reply to this wonderful oration? He opened his great mouth and spoke.
What is this? A falsetto note, a piping instead of the musical thunder
we have heard. He poses strangely, his gestures shoot up and out like
the arms of a dislocated clothes rack. He rises on his toes with a quick
springlike movement, as if he were a puppet loosened by a spring from a
box. He sways from side to side to give emphasis to his words. His mouth
opens to huge proportions in moments of excitement. His black hair falls
over his forehead. His great nose sticks out like a signboard. Is he
scoring?
I know, for I have read the other debates. He is wasting no words; he is
meeting Douglas point by point, whether successfully or not. He seemed
embarrassed, diffident at first. Why not? He is fighting a giant; then
there are ugly faces in the audience, men in drink, slave owners from
Missouri, Democrats who hate sectionalism and loathe the rise of the
Republican party. Whispers are near me: "He amounts to nothing. Douglas
has laid him out. He is scared. The Little Giant has choked him."
But Lincoln goes on. His earnestness deepens, his seriousness becomes
more impressive. His voice is carrying even though it pipes. He has
endurance, too, and courage and fighting will. But Douglas has made it
very difficult for him; indeed he has brought Lincoln to his terms on
nearly everything--all but the 'house divided against itself' doctrine;
and the right and duty of Congress to keep slavery out of the
territories. These are issues between him and Douglas still; but is this
the real issue after all? He is nearly through. He has been going on as
if he were making a statement of a case. It is interjected with
argument; but it is largely statement of positions. It is declaratory
and follows the form of a poem, not an argument. It assumes premises; he
says "I think so." It has reason back of it, but it is the reason of
things proven. It is fortified by matters of general acceptance. It has
logic, but the logic of things existing inherently, not made. And at
last, more earnestly than before, he says:
"On the point of my wanting to make war between the free and the slave
states, there has been no issue between us. So too when he says that I
am in favor of introducing a perfect social and political equality
between the white and the black races. These are false issues upon
which Judge Douglas has tried to force the controversy. There is no
foundation in truth for the charges that I maintain either of these
propositions. The real issue in this controversy--the one pressing upon
every mind--is the sentiment upon 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. The sentiment that contemplates the
institution of slavery in this country as a wrong is the sentiment of
the Republican party. It is the sentiment around which all their
actions, all their arguments, circle, from which all their propositions
radiate. 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 silenced. 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 spirit that
says: 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in
what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to
bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their
labor, or from one race of man as an apology for enslaving another race,
it is the same tyrannical principle."
What had come over Lincoln? He was no longer awkward. A divine grace
permeated his being. The October sun threw glory upon his brow, gave us
a look into his deeply illuminated eyes, left nothing of the great nose
and mouth but their strength, the sculptural impressiveness of stone
features in the sides of hills. What would Serafino think if he could
hear this?
Then of a sudden I saw Pinturicchio in Lincoln's face, the same
gentleness along the sunken cheeks, the same imaginative glow in the
whole countenance. Here in this warped and homely face, this face out of
the womb of poverty and sorrow, the winter loneliness of the forest, the
humbleness and the want of the log cabin, the mystical yearning of
humanity on the prairies and under the woodland stars, I saw for a swift
moment in the glancing of the sun, as he uttered these words, the genius
of the poet who knows and states, who has lived years of loneliness and
failure, who has seen others grow rich, notable, and powerful, and who
has remained obscure and unobeyed, with nothing but a vision which has
become lightning at last in a supreme moment of inspiration. Lincoln had
had his hour whatever should befall him.
The debate was over--the debates were over. Reverdy and I walked away
with the great crowd hurrahing for Douglas, a few hurrahing for Lincoln.
I began to repeat to myself what Douglas had said years before in the
Senate in replying to Webster: "There is a power in this nation greater
either than the North or the South--a growing, increasing, and swelling
power that will be able to speak the law of this nation and to execute
the law as spoken. That power is the country known as the Great West.
There, sir, is the hope of this nation--the resting place of the power
that is not only to control but to save the Union."
This prediction had now been fulfilled. This West had produced Lincoln
and Douglas. One of them was sure to have the responsibility of
executing the law as spoken. Of this I was sure.