the boards laid on logs for seats. Douglas spoke over three hours to an
immense audience, and made one of the most forcible speeches I ever
heard. As he went on he referred to Lincoln's Springfield speech, and
became very personal, and I said to Mr. Lincoln,--
"'Do you suppose Douglas knows you are here?'
"'Well,' he replied, 'I don't know whether he does or not; he has not
looked in this direction. But I reckon some of the boys have told him I
am here.'
"When Douglas finished there was a tremendous shout for 'Lincoln,' which
kept on with no let up. Mr. Lincoln said,--
"'What shall I do? I can't speak here.'
"'You will have to say something,' I replied. 'Suppose you get up and
say that you will speak this evening at the court-house yard.'
"Mr. Lincoln mounted the board seat, and as the crowd got sight of his
tall form the shouts and cheers were wild. As soon as he could make
himself heard he said,--
"'This is Judge Douglas's meeting. I have no right, therefore, no
disposition to interfere. But if you ladies and gentlemen desire to hear
what I have to say on these questions, and will meet me this evening at
the court-house yard, east side, I will try to answer this gentleman.'
"Lincoln made a speech that evening which in volume did not equal the
speech of Douglas, but for sound and cogent argument was the superior.
Douglas had charged Mr. Lincoln with being in favor of negro equality,
which was then the bugbear of politics. In his speech that evening Mr.
Lincoln said,--
"'Judge Douglas charges me with being in favor of negro equality, and
to the extent that he charges I am not guilty. I am guilty of hating
servitude and loving freedom; and while I would not carry the equality
of the races to the extent charged by my adversary, I am happy to
confess before you that in some things the black man is the equal of
the white man. In the right to eat the bread his own hands have earned
he is the equal of Judge Douglas or any other living man.'
"When Lincoln spoke the last sentence he had lifted himself to his
full height, and as he reached his hands towards the stars of that
still night, then and there fell from his lips one of the most sublime
expressions of American statesmanship. The effect was grand, the cheers
tremendous."
Senator Douglas accepted the challenge, and the famous debate was
arranged which for public interest and forensic ability has never
been surpassed or equalled in any country. Seven dates and towns were
selected, and the debaters were placed on an equal footing by an
arrangement that alternately one should speak an hour in opening and the
other an hour and a half in reply, the first to have half an hour in
closing.
In addition to his seven meetings with Douglas, Lincoln made thirty-one
other set speeches arranged by the State Central Committee during the
campaign, besides many brief addresses not previously advertised.
Sometimes he spoke several times a day, and was exposed to a great
deal of discomfort and fatigue which none but a man of his physical
strength could have endured. He paid his own expenses, travelled by
ordinary cars and freight trains, and often was obliged to drive in
wagons or to ride horseback to keep his engagements. Mr. Douglas enjoyed
a great advantage. He had been in the Senate several years and had
influential friends holding government offices all over the State, who
had time and money to arrange receptions and entertainments and lost no
opportunity to lionize him. Every Federal official, for weeks before
the joint meetings, gave his attention to the arrangements and was
held responsible by Mr. Douglas for securing a large and enthusiastic
Democratic audience. He was accompanied by his wife, a beautiful
and brilliant woman, and by a committee of the most distinguished
Democratic politicians in the State. He travelled in a special train
furnished by the Illinois Central Railroad, and in charge of Captain
George B. McClellan, who was then its general manager. Every employee
of that road was a partisan of Douglas, voluntary or involuntary, and
several times Lincoln was compelled to suffer unnecessary delay and
inconvenience because of their partisanship. Many a time when he was
trying to get a little sleep in a wayside station, while waiting for
a connection, or lay in a bunk in the caboose of a freight train, the
special car of his opponent, decorated with flags and lithographs, would
go sweeping by.
A gentleman who accompanied him during the canvass relates this:
"Lincoln and I were at the Centralia Agricultural Fair the day after
the debate at Jonesboro. Night came on and we were tired, having been
on the fair grounds all day. We were to go north on the Illinois
Central Railroad. The train was due at midnight, and the depot was full
of people. I managed to get a chair for Lincoln in the office of the
superintendent of the railroad, but small politicians would intrude so
that he could scarcely get a moment's sleep. The train came and was
filled instantly. I got a seat near the door for Lincoln and myself.
He was worn out, and had to meet Douglas the next day at Charleston.
An empty car, called a saloon car, was hitched on to the rear of the
train and locked up. I asked the conductor, who knew Lincoln and myself
well,--we were both attorneys of the road,--if Lincoln could not ride
in that car; that he was exhausted and needed rest; but the conductor
refused. I afterwards got him in by stratagem."
The meetings were attended by enormous crowds. People came twenty and
thirty miles in carriages and wagons, devoting two or three days to
the excursion, and the local excitement was intense. The two parties
endeavored to excel each other in processions, music, fireworks, and
novel features. At each town salutes would be fired and an address
of welcome delivered by some prominent citizen. Sometimes committees
of ladies would present the speakers bouquets of flowers, and on one
occasion they wound garlands around the lank and awkward form of the
future President, much to his embarrassment and dismay. After a debate
at Ottawa, the enthusiasm was so great that a party of his admirers
carried him on their shoulders from the meeting to the house where he
was being entertained.
Lincoln did not underrate the ability or the advantages of his opponent.
He realized fully the serious character and importance of the contest
in which he was engaged. He was aware that the entire country was
watching him with anxious eyes, and that he was addressing not only the
multitudes that gathered around the platforms, but the entire population
of the United States. He knew also that whatever he might say would have
a permanent effect upon the fortunes of the Republican party, then only
two years old, not to speak of his own personal destiny.
He knew Douglas as well and perhaps better than Douglas knew himself.
They had been acquainted from boyhood, and their lives had run in
parallels in a most remarkable manner. They had met at the threshold of
their political careers. They had served together in the Legislature
twenty-three years before. They were admitted to practice at the bar
of the Supreme Court together. They had been rivals for the hand of
the same lady, as related in a previous chapter. They served together
in Congress. They had met repeatedly, and had measured strength in the
Legislature, in the courts, and on the platform. They had always been
upon outwardly friendly terms, but each knew that the other disliked him
intensely. It is probable that his inquisitive nature and analytical
habits gave Lincoln a better knowledge of the strong and weak points of
his antagonist. He was very thorough in whatever he undertook, while
Douglas was more confident and careless in his preparation. Lincoln
knew that in the whole field of American politics there was no man so
adroit or aggressive or gifted in the tricks and strategy of debate,
and in this contest Douglas showed his fullest power. Lincoln's talents
and habits were entirely different. He indulged in no tricks and made
no effort to dazzle audiences. His fairness of statement and generosity
were well known and understood by Mr. Douglas, who took advantage
of them. His high standard of political morals and his devotion to
constitutional principles were equally well understood, and Douglas took
advantage of those also.
Douglas electrified the crowds with his eloquence and charmed them
by his grace and dexterity. He was forcible in statement, aggressive
in assertion, and treated Lincoln in a patronizing and contemptuous
manner; but Lincoln's simplicity of statement, his homely illustrations,
quaint originality, and convincing logic were often more forcible than
the lofty flights of eloquence in which his opponent indulged. He was
more careful and accurate in his statement of facts, and his knowledge
of the details of history and the legislation of Congress was a great
advantage, for he convicted Douglas of misrepresentation again and
again, although it seemed to have had no effect whatever upon the
confidence of the latter's supporters. As usual, Mr. Lincoln kept close
to the subject and spoke to convince and not to amuse or entertain. When
one of his friends suggested that his reputation for story-telling was
being destroyed by the seriousness of his speeches, Lincoln replied that
this was no time for jokes.
One of the gentlemen who accompanied Mr. Lincoln has given us the
following description of his appearance and manner of speaking: "When
standing erect he was six feet four inches high. He was lean in flesh
and ungainly in figure: thin through the chest, and hence slightly
stoop-shouldered. When he arose to address courts, juries, or crowds
of people his body inclined forward to a slight degree. At first he
was very awkward, and it seemed a real labor to adjust himself to the
surroundings. He struggled for a time under a feeling of apparent
diffidence and sensitiveness, and these only added to his awkwardness.
When he began speaking, his voice was shrill, piping, and unpleasant.
His manner, his attitude, his dark, yellow face wrinkled and dry,
his oddity of pose, his diffident movements,--everything seemed to
be against him, but only for a short time. After having arisen, he
generally placed his hands behind him, the back of his left hand
in the palm of his right, the thumb and fingers of his right hand
clasped around the left arm at the wrist. For a few moments he played
the combination of awkwardness, sensitiveness, and diffidence. As he
proceeded he became somewhat animated, and to keep in harmony with his
growing warmth his hands relaxed their grasp and fell to his side.
Presently he clasped them in front of him, interlocking his fingers,
one thumb meanwhile chasing the other. His speech now requiring more
emphatic utterance, his fingers unlocked and his hands fell apart.
His left arm was thrown behind, the back of his hand resting against
his body, his right hand seeking his side. By this time he had gained
sufficient composure, and his real speech began. He did not gesticulate
as much with his hands as he did with his head. He used the latter
frequently, throwing it with vim this way and that. This movement was a
significant one when he sought to enforce his statement. It sometimes
came with a quick jerk, as if throwing off electric sparks into
combustible material. He never sawed the air nor rent space into tatters
and rags, as some orators do. He never acted for stage effect. He was
cool, considerate, reflective--in time self-possessed and self-reliant.
His style was clear, terse, and compact. In argument he was logical,
demonstrative, and fair. He was careless of his dress, and his clothes,
instead of fitting, as did the garments of Douglas on the latter's
well-rounded form, hung loosely on his giant frame.
"As he moved along in his speech he became freer and less uneasy in his
movements; to that extent he was graceful. He had a perfect naturalness,
a strong individuality; and to that extent he was dignified. There was
a world of meaning and emphasis in the long, bony finger of his right
hand as he dotted the ideas on the minds of his hearers. Sometimes,
to express joy or pleasure, he would raise both hands at an angle of
about fifty degrees, the palms upward. If the sentiment was one of
detestation,--denunciation of slavery, for example,--both arms, thrown
upward and the fists clinched, swept through the air, and he expressed
an execration that was truly sublime. This was one of his most effective
gestures, and signified most vividly a fixed determination to drag down
the object of his hatred and trample it in the dust. He always stood
squarely on his feet, toe even with toe; that is, he never put one
foot before the other. He neither touched nor leaned on anything for
support. He made but few changes in his positions and attitudes. He
never ranted, never walked backward and forward on the platform. To ease
his arms he frequently caught hold, with his left hand, of the lapel of
his coat, keeping his thumb upright and leaving his right hand free to
gesticulate. The designer of the monument erected in Chicago has happily
caught him in just this attitude. As he proceeded with his speech the
exercise of his vocal organs altered somewhat the tone of his voice. It
lost in a measure its former acute and shrilling pitch, and mellowed
into a more harmonious and pleasant sound. His form expanded, and,
notwithstanding the sunken breast, he rose up a splendid and imposing
figure. His little gray eyes flashed in a face aglow with the fire of
his profound thoughts, and his uneasy movements and diffident manner
sunk themselves beneath the wave of righteous indignation that came
sweeping over him. Such was Lincoln the orator."
Mr. Lincoln's own impressions were expressed to a friend as follows:
"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown," he said. "All of 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
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
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.
These are disadvantages, all taken together, that the Republicans labor
under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and principle alone."
As a rule, when both occupied the same platform their manners and
language were very courteous; but occasionally, when speaking elsewhere,
Mr. Douglas lost his temper and indulged in personal attacks upon his
opponent. Mr. Horace White, who reported the debate for one of the
Chicago papers, describes one of these occasions as follows;
"We arrived at Havana while Douglas was still speaking. I strolled up to
the Douglas meeting just before its conclusion, and there met a friend
who had heard the whole. He was in a state of high indignation. He said
that Douglas must certainly have been drinking before he came on the
platform, because he had called Lincoln 'a liar, a coward, a wretch,
and a sneak.'" When Mr. Lincoln replied, on the following day, he took
notice of Douglas's hard words in this way:
"I am informed that my distinguished friend yesterday became a little
excited, nervous(?) perhaps, and that he said something about fighting,
as though looking to a personal encounter between himself and me. Did
anybody in this audience hear him use such language? ['Yes, yes.'] I am
informed, further, that somebody in his audience, rather more excited
or nervous than himself, took off his coat and offered to take the job
off Judge Douglas's hands and fight Lincoln himself. Did anybody here
witness that warlike proceeding? [Laughter and cries of 'Yes.'] Well, I
merely desire to say that I shall fight neither Judge Douglas nor his
second. I shall not do this for two reasons, which I will explain. In
the first place, a fight would prove nothing which is in issue in this
election. It might establish that Judge Douglas is a more muscular man
than myself, or it might show that I am a more muscular man than Judge
Douglas; but that subject is not referred to in the Cincinnati platform,
nor in either of the Springfield platforms. Neither result would prove
him right nor me wrong. And so of the gentleman who offered to do his
fighting for him. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything,
it would certainly prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder. My
second reason for not having a personal encounter with Judge Douglas is
that I don't believe he wants it himself. He and I are about the best
friends in the world, and when we get together he would no more think of
fighting me than of fighting his wife. Therefore when the Judge talked
about fighting he was not giving vent to any ill-feeling of his own, but
was merely trying to excite--well, let us say enthusiasm against me on
the part of his audience. And, as I find he was tolerably successful in
this, we will call it quits."
The crisis of the debate came at Freeport on August 27, 1858, when
Lincoln proposed a series of questions for Douglas to answer. At the
previous meeting at Ottawa, Douglas propounded a series of questions for
Lincoln which were designed to commit him to strong abolition doctrines.
He asked whether Lincoln was pledged to the repeal of the fugitive-slave
law, to resist the admission of any more slave States, to the abolition
of slavery in the District of Columbia, to the prohibition of the
slave-trade between the States, to the prohibition of slavery in the
Territories, and to oppose the acquisition of any new Territory unless
slavery was prohibited therein. Lincoln replied with great candor that
he was pledged to no proposition except the prohibition of slavery in
all the Territories of the United States. It was then that he turned
upon Douglas with four questions, the second of which was laden with the
most tremendous consequences not only to the debaters personally, but to
the entire nation and the cause of human freedom:
"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?"
In proposing this question Lincoln rejected the advice and disregarded
the entreaties of his wisest friends and most devoted adherents, for
they predicted that it would give Douglas an opportunity to square
himself with the people of Illinois and to secure his re-election to the
United States Senate. Lincoln replied,--
"I am killing larger game; if Douglas answers he can never be President,
and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."
This prediction, which was afterwards fulfilled, shows Lincoln's
remarkable political foresight perhaps better than any single incident
in his career. A private letter, written more than a month before, shows
that Lincoln had long and carefully studied the probable consequences
of the answer that Douglas must make to such an interrogatory, and its
fatal effect upon his political fortunes; for, even then, he foresaw
that Douglas was to be the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of
the United States, and that his reply would deprive him of the support
of more than half of the members of that party. With extraordinary
sagacity, he pointed out that Douglas would eagerly seize upon such an
opportunity as this interrogatory afforded to place himself right before
his constituents in Illinois, and thus would recover his popularity and
insure his re-election to the Senate. And he was confident that Douglas
was so shortsighted as to do this and then trust to his cunning to set
himself right afterwards with the people of the slave States, which
Lincoln believed would be impossible. But even he did not realize the
tremendous and far-reaching results of his inquiry, for the answer which
Douglas gave split the Democratic party into irreconcilable factions,
and enabled the Republican minority to select the President of the
United States at the most critical period of the nation's history, and
thus to save the Union.
"You will have hard work to get him [Douglas] directly to the point
whether a territorial Legislature has or has not the power to exclude
slavery," said Lincoln to a friend; "but if you succeed in bringing
him to it, though he will be compelled to say it possesses no such
power, he will instantly take the ground that slavery cannot exist in
the Territories unless the people desire it, and so give it protection
by territorial legislation. If this offends the South, he will let it
offend them, as, at all events, he means to hold on to his chances in
Illinois." And that was exactly what Douglas did do. He repeated the
sophism he had advanced in his speech at Springfield on the Dred Scott
decision the previous year, and said,--
"It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to
the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory
under the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce
it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot
exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police
regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the
local Legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will
elect representatives to that body who will, by unfriendly legislation,
effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the
contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension."
The supporters of Douglas shouted with satisfaction at the clever way in
which he had escaped the trap Lincoln had set for him. His re-election
to the Senate was practically secured, and Lincoln had been defeated
at his own game. Lincoln's friends were correspondingly depressed, and
in their despondency admitted that their favorite had no longer any
prospect of election; that he had thrown his own chances away.
Mr. Douglas was re-elected; but when Congress met in December, and he
was removed by the Democratic caucus from the chairmanship of the Senate
Committee on Territories, which he had held for eleven years, because he
had betrayed the slave-holders in his answer to Lincoln, at Freeport,
the Republicans of Illinois began to realize the political sagacity of
their leader. Then when, for the same reason, the Democratic National
Convention at Charleston was broken up by the Southern delegates rather
than accept Douglas as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency,
Lincoln's reputation as a political prophet was established.
In 1861 Lincoln asked Joseph Medill, of the _Chicago Tribune_, if he
recalled his opposition to putting that fatal question to Douglas.
"Yes," replied Medill, "I recollect it very well. It lost Douglas the
Presidency, but it lost you the Senatorship."
"Yes," said Mr. Lincoln. "And I have won the place he was playing for."