Stephen A. Douglas, called the Little Giant on account of his intellect,
was a type of man of which our race has had some notable examples,
although they are not characteristic. Capable of sacrifice to their
country, personal ambition is, nevertheless, the mainspring of their
actions. They must either be before the public, or else unhappy. This
trait gives them a large theatrical strain, and sometimes brands them as
adventurers. Their ability saves them from being demagogues.
In the case of Douglas, he had deliberately renewed some years before
the agitation on the spread of slavery, by setting forth a doctrine of
extreme cleverness. This doctrine, like many others of its kind, seemed
at first sight to be the balm it pretended, instead of an irritant, as
it really was. It was calculated to deceive all except thinking men, and
to silence all save a merciless logician. And this merciless logician,
who was heaven-sent in time of need, was Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. Douglas was a juggler, a political prestidigitateur. He did things
before the eyes of the Senate and the nation. His balm for the healing
of the nation's wounds was a patent medicine so cleverly concocted that
experts alone could show what was in it. So abstruse and twisted were
some of Mr. Douglas's doctrines that a genius alone might put them into
simple words, for the common people.
The great panacea for the slavery trouble put forth by Mr. Douglas
at that time was briefly this: that the people of the new territories
should decide for themselves, subject to the Constitution, whether they
should have slavery or not, and also decide for themselves all other
questions under the Constitution. Unhappily for Mr. Douglas, there was
the famous Dred Scott decision, which had set the South wild with joy
the year before, and had cast a gloom over the North. The Chief Justice
of the United States had declared that under the Constitution slaves
were property,--and as such every American citizen owning slaves could
carry them about with him wherever he went. Therefore the territorial
legislatures might pass laws until they were dumb, and yet their
settlers might bring with them all the slaves they pleased.
And yet we must love the Judge. He was a gentleman, a strong man, and a
patriot. He was magnanimous, and to his immortal honor be it said that
he, in the end, won the greatest of all struggles. He conquered himself.
He put down that mightiest thing that was in him,--his ambition for
himself. And he set up, instead, his ambition for his country. He bore
no ill-will toward the man whose fate was so strangely linked to his,
and who finally came to that high seat of honor and of martyrdom which
he coveted. We shall love the Judge, and speak of him with reverence,
for that sublime act of kindness before the Capitol in 1861.
Abraham Lincoln might have prayed on that day of the Freeport debate:
“Forgive him, Lord. He knows not what he does.” Lincoln descried the
danger afar, and threw his body into the breach.
That which passed before Stephen's eyes, and to which his ears listened
at Freeport, was the Great Republic pressing westward to the Pacific. He
wondered whether some of his Eastern friends who pursed their lips when
the Wrest was mentioned would have sneered or prayed. A young English
nobleman who was there that day did not sneer. He was filled instead
with something like awe at the vigor of this nation which was sprung
from the loins of his own. Crudeness he saw, vulgarity he heard, but
Force he felt, and marvelled.
America was in Freeport that day, the rush of her people and the
surprise of her climate. The rain had ceased, and quickly was come out
of the northwest a boisterous wind, chilled by the lakes and scented by
the hemlocks of the Minnesota forests. The sun smiled and frowned Clouds
hurried in the sky, mocking the human hubbub below. Cheering thousands
pressed about the station as Mr. Lincoln's train arrived. They hemmed
him in his triumphal passage under the great arching trees to the new
Brewster House. The Chief Marshal and his aides, great men before,
were suddenly immortal. The county delegations fell into their proper
precedence like ministers at a state dinner. “We have faith in Abraham,
Yet another County for the Rail-sputter, Abe the Giant-killer,”--so the
banners read. Here, much bedecked, was the Galena Lincoln Club, part of
Joe Davies's shipment. Fifes skirled, and drums throbbed, and the stars
and stripes snapped in the breeze. And here was a delegation headed
by fifty sturdy ladies on horseback, at whom Stephen gaped like a
countryman. Then came carryalls of all ages and degrees, wagons from
this county and that county, giddily draped, drawn by horses from one
to six, or by mules, their inscriptions addressing their senatorial
candidate in all degrees of familiarity, but not contempt. What they
seemed proudest of was that he had been a rail-splitter, for nearly all
bore a fence-rail.
But stay, what is this wagon with the high sapling flagstaff in the
middle, and the leaves still on it?
“Westward the Star of Empire takes its way.
The girls link on to Lincoln; their mothers were for Clay.”
Here was glory to blind you,--two and thirty maids in red sashes and
blue liberty caps with white stars. Each was a state of the Union,
and every one of them was for Abraham, who called them his “Basket of
Flowers.” Behind them, most touching of all, sat a thirty-third shackled
in chains. That was Kansas. Alas, the men of Kansas was far from being
as sorrowful as the part demanded,--in spite of her instructions she
would smile at the boys. But the appealing inscription she bore, “Set me
free” was greeted with storms of laughter, the boldest of the young men
shouting that she was too beautiful to be free, and some of the old
men, to their shame be it said likewise shouted. No false embarrassment
troubled Kansas. She was openly pleased. But the young men who had
brought their sweethearts to town, and were standing hand in hand with
them, for obvious reasons saw nothing: They scarcely dared to look at
Kansas, and those who did were so loudly rebuked that they turned down
the side streets.
During this part of the day these loving couples, whose devotion was so
patent to the whole world, were by far the most absorbing to Stephen.
He watched them having their fortunes told, the young women blushing and
crying, “Say!” and “Ain't he wicked?” and the young men getting their
ears boxed for certain remarks. He watched them standing open-mouthed
at the booths and side shows with hands still locked, or again they were
chewing cream candy in unison. Or he glanced sidewise at them, seated in
the open places with the world so far below them that even the insistent
sound of the fifes and drums rose but faintly to their ears.
And perhaps,--we shall not say positively,--perhaps Mr. Brice's thoughts
went something like this, “O that love were so simple a matter to all!”
But graven on his face was what is called the “Boston scorn.” And no
scorn has been known like unto it since the days of Athens.
So Stephen made the best of his way to the Brewster House, the elegance
and newness of which the citizens of Freeport openly boasted. Mr.
Lincoln had preceded him, and was even then listening to a few remarks
of burning praise by an honorable gentleman. Mr. Lincoln himself made a
few remarks, which seemed so simple and rang so true, and were so free
from political rococo and decoration generally, that even the young
men forgot their sweethearts to listen. Then Mr. Lincoln went into the
hotel, and the sun slipped under a black cloud.
The lobby was full, and rather dirty, since the supply of spittoons was
so far behind the demand. Like the firmament, it was divided into little
bodies which revolved about larger bodies. But there lacked not here
supporters of the Little Giant, and discreet farmers of influence in
their own counties who waited to hear the afternoon's debate before
deciding. These and others did not hesitate to tell of the magnificence
of the Little Giant's torchlight procession the previous evening. Every
Dred-Scottite had carried a torch, and many transparencies, so that
the very glory of it had turned night into day. The Chief Lictor had
distributed these torches with an unheard-of liberality. But there
lacked not detractors who swore that John Dibble and other Lincolnites
had applied for torches for the mere pleasure of carrying them. Since
dawn the delegations had been heralded from the house-tops, and wagered
on while they were yet as worms far out or the prairie. All the morning
these continued to came in, and form in line to march past their
particular candidate. The second great event of the day was the event
of the special over the Galena roar, of sixteen cars and more than a
thousand pairs of sovereign lungs. With military precision they repaired
to the Brewster House, and ahead of then a banner was flung: “Winnebago
County for the Tall Sucker.” And the Tall Sucker was on the steps to
receive them.
But Mr. Douglas, who had arrived the evening before to the booming
of two and thirty guns, had his banners end his bunting, too. The
neighborhood of Freeport was stronghold of Northern Democrats, ardent
supporters of the Little Giant if once they could believe that he did
not intend to betray them.
Stephen felt in his bones the coming of a struggle, and was
thrilled. Once he smiled at the thought that he had become an active
partisan--nay, a worshipper--of the uncouth Lincoln. Terrible suspicion
for a Bostonian,--had he been carried away? Was his hero, after all, a
homespun demagogue? Had he been wise in deciding before he had taught
a glimpse of the accomplished Douglas, whose name end fame filled the
land? Stephen did not waver in his allegiance. But in his heart there
lurked a fear of the sophisticated Judge and Senator and man of the
world whom he had not yet seen. In his notebook he had made a copy of
the Question, and young Mr. Hill discovered him pondering in a corner
of the lobby at dinnertime. After dinner they went together to their
candidate's room. They found the doors open and the place packed, and
there was Mr. Lincoln's very tall hat towering above those of the
other politicians pressed around him. Mr. Lincoln took three strides in
Stephen's direction and seized him by the shoulder.
“Why, Steve,” said he, “I thought you had got away again.” Turning to a
big burly man with a good-natures face, who was standing by, he added.
“Jim, I want you to look out for this young man. Get him a seat on the
stands where he can hear.”
Stephen stuck close to Jim. He never knew what the gentleman's last name
was, or whether he had any. It was but a few minutes' walk to the grove
where the speaking was to be. And as they made their way thither Mr.
Lincoln passed them in a Conestoga wagon drawn by six milk-white horses.
Jim informed Stephen that the Little Giant had had a six-horse coach.
The grove was black with people. Hovering about the hem of the crowd
were the sunburned young men in their Sunday best, still clinging fast
to the hands of the young women. Bands blared “Columbia, Gem of the
Ocean.” Fakirs planted their stands in the way, selling pain-killers
and ague cures, watermelons and lemonade, Jugglers juggled, and beggars
begged. Jim said that there were sixteen thousand people in that grove.
And he told the truth.
Stephen now trembled for his champion. He tried to think of himself as
fifty years old, with the courage to address sixteen thousand people on
such a day, and quailed. What a man of affairs it must take to do
that! Sixteen thousand people, into each of whose breasts God had put
different emotions and convictions. He had never even imagined such a
crowd as this assembles merely to listen to a political debate. But then
he remembered, as they dodged from in front of the horses, what it was
not merely a political debate: The pulse of nation was here, a great
nation stricken with approaching fever. It was not now a case of excise,
but of existence.
This son of toil who had driven his family thirty miles across the
prairie, blanketed his tired horses and slept on the ground the night
before, who was willing to stand all through the afternoon and listen
with pathetic eagerness to this debate, must be moved by a patriotism
divine. In the breast of that farmer, in the breast of his tired wife
who held her child by the hand, had been instilled from birth that
sublime fervor which is part of their life who inherit the Declaration
of Independence. Instinctively these men who had fought and won the West
had scented the danger. With the spirit of their ancestors who had left
their farms to die on the bridge at Concord, or follow Ethan Allen into
Ticonderoga, these had come to Freeport. What were three days of bodily
discomfort! What even the loss of part of a cherished crop, if the
nation's existence were at stake and their votes might save it!
In the midst of that heaving human sea rose the bulwarks of a wooden
stand. But how to reach it? Jim was evidently a personage. The rough
farmers commonly squeezed a way for him. And when they did not, he made
it with his big body. As they drew near their haven, a great surging as
of a tidal wave swept them off their feet. There was a deafening shout,
and the stand rocked on its foundations. Before Stephen could collect
his wits, a fierce battle was raging about him. Abolitionist and
Democrat, Free Soiler and Squatter Sov, defaced one another in a rush
for the platform. The committeemen and reporters on top of it rose to
its defence. Well for Stephen that his companion was along. Jim was
recognized and hauled bodily into the fort, and Stephen after him. The
populace were driven off, and when the excitement died down again, he
found himself in the row behind the reporters. Young Mr. Hill paused
while sharpening his pencil to wave him a friendly greeting.
Stephen, craning in his seat, caught sight of Mr. Lincoln slouched into
one of his favorite attitudes, his chin resting in his hand.
But who is this, erect, compact, aggressive, searching with a confident
eye the wilderness of upturned faces? A personage, truly, to be
questioned timidly, to be approached advisedly. Here indeed was a lion,
by the very look of him, master of himself and of others. By reason of
its regularity and masculine strength, a handsome face. A man of the
world to the cut of the coat across the broad shoulders. Here was one
to lift a youngster into the realm of emulation, like a character in a
play, to arouse dreams of Washington and its senators and great men. For
this was one to be consulted by the great alone. A figure of dignity and
power, with magnetism to compel moods. Since, when he smiled, you warmed
in spite of yourself, and when he frowned the world looked grave.
The inevitable comparison was come, and Stephen's hero was shrunk once
more. He drew a deep breath, searched for the word, and gulped. There
was but the one word. How country Abraham Lincoln looked beside Stephen
Arnold Douglas!
Had the Lord ever before made and set over against each other two such
different men? Yes, for such are the ways of the Lord.
........................
The preliminary speaking was in progress, but Stephen neither heard nor
saw until he felt the heavy hand of his companion on his knee.
“There's something mighty strange, like fate, between them two,” he was
saying. “I recklect twenty-five years ago when they was first in the
Legislatur' together. A man told me that they was both admitted to
practice in the S'preme Court in '39, on the same day, sir. Then you
know they was nip an' tuck after the same young lady. Abe got her.
They've been in Congress together, the Little Giant in the Senate, and
now, here they be in the greatest set of debates the people of this
state ever heard; Young man, the hand of fate is in this here, mark my
words--”
There was a hush, and the waves of that vast human sea were stilled. A
man, lean, angular, with coat-tail: flapping-unfolded like a grotesque
figure at a side-show.
No confidence was there. Stooping forward, Abraham Lincoln began to
speak, and Stephen Brice hung his head and shuddered. Could this shrill
falsetto be the same voice to which he had listened only that morning?
Could this awkward, yellow man with his hands behind his back be he whom
he had worshipped? Ripples of derisive laughter rose here and there, on
the stand and from the crowd. Thrice distilled was the agony of those
moments!
But what was this feeling that gradually crept over him? Surprise?
Cautiously he raised his eyes. The hands were coming around to the
front. Suddenly one of them was thrown sharply back, with a determined
gesture, the head was raised,--and--and his shame was for gotten. In
its stead wonder was come. But soon he lost even that, for his mind was
gone on a journey. And when again he came to himself and looked upon
Abraham Lincoln, this was a man transformed. The voice was no longer
shrill. Nay, it was now a powerful instrument which played strangely on
those who heard. Now it rose, and again it fell into tones so low as to
start a stir which spread and spread, like a ripple in a pond, until it
broke on the very edge of that vast audience.
“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?”
It was out, at last, irrevocably writ in the recording book of History,
for better, for worse. Beyond the reach of politician, committee, or
caucus. But what man amongst those who heard and stirred might say that
these minutes even now basting into eternity held the Crisis of a nation
that is the hope of the world? Not you, Judge Douglas who sit there
smiling. Consternation is a stranger in your heart,--but answer the
question if you can. Yes, your nimble wit has helped you out of many a
tight corner. You do not feel the noose--as yet. You do not guess that
your reply will make or mar the fortunes of your country. It is not
you who can look ahead two short years and see the ship of Democracy
splitting on the rocks at Charleston and at Baltimore, when the power of
your name might have steered her safely.
But see! what is this man about whom you despise? One by one he is
taking the screws out of the engine which you have invented to run your
ship. Look, he holds them in his hands without mixing them, and shows
the false construction of its secret parts.
For Abraham Lincoln dealt with abstruse questions in language so limpid
that many a farmer, dulled by toil, heard and understood and marvelled.
The simplicity of the Bible dwells in those speeches, and they are now
classics in our literature. And the wonder in Stephen's mind was that
this man who could be a buffoon, whose speech was coarse and whose
person unkempt, could prove himself a tower of morality and truth. That
has troubled many another, before and since the debate at Freeport.
That short hour came all too quickly to an end. And as the Moderator
gave the signal for Mr. Lincoln, it was Stephen's big companion who
snapped the strain, and voiced the sentiment of those about him.
“By Gosh!” he cried, “he baffles Steve. I didn't think Abe had it in
him.”
The Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, however, seemed anything but baffled
as he rose to reply. As he waited for the cheers which greeted him to
die out, his attitude was easy and indifferent, as a public man's should
be. The question seemed not to trouble him in the least. But for Stephen
Brice the Judge stood there stripped of the glamour that made him, even
as Abraham Lincoln had stripped his doctrine of its paint and colors,
and left it punily naked.
Standing up, the very person of the Little Giant was contradictory, as
was the man himself. His height was insignificant. But he had the head
and shoulders of a lion, and even the lion's roar. What at contrast the
ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's
opening words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly
disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people
how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by
putting things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his
mouth: But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that
the Judge was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might
lead one to expect. Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at
Freeport? And yet it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his
hearers “Black Republicans.” “Not black,” came from the crowd again
and again, and once a man: shouted, “Couldn't you modify it and call
it brown?” “Not a whit!” cried the Judge, and dubbed them “Yankees,”
although himself a Vermonter by birth. He implied that most of these
Black Republicans desired negro wives.
But quick,--to the Question, How was the Little Giant, artful in debate
as he was, to get over that without offence to the great South? Very
skillfully the judge disposed of the first of the interrogations. And
then, save for the gusts of wind rustling the trees, the grove might
have been empty of its thousands, such was the silence that fell. But
tighter and tighter they pressed against the stand, until it trembled.
Oh, Judge, the time of all artful men will come at length. How were you
to foresee a certain day under the White Dome of the Capitol? Had your
sight been long, you would have paused before your answer. Had your
sight been long, you would have seen this ugly Lincoln bareheaded before
the Nation, and you are holding his hat. Judge Douglas, this act alone
has redeemed your faults. It has given you a nobility of which we did
not suspect you. At the end God gave you strength to be humble, and so
you left the name of a patriot.
Judge, you thought there was a passage between Scylla and Charybdis
which your craftiness might overcome.
“It matters not,” you cried when you answered the Question, “it matters
not which 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 or to
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.”
Judge Douglas, uneasy will you lie to-night, for you have uttered the
Freeport Heresy.
It only remains to be told how Stephen Brice, coming to the Brewster
House after the debate, found Mr. Lincoln. On his knee, in transports
of delight, was a small boy, and Mr. Lincoln was serenely playing on
the child's Jew's-harp. Standing beside him was a proud father who had
dragged his son across two counties in a farm wagon, and who was to
return on the morrow to enter this event in the family Bible. In a
corner of the room were several impatient gentlemen of influence who
wished to talk about the Question.
But when he saw Stephen, Mr. Lincoln looked up with a smile of welcome
that is still, and ever will be, remembered and cherished.
“Tell Judge Whipple that I have attended to that little matter, Steve,”
he said.
“Why, Mr. Lincoln,” he exclaimed, “you have had no time.”
“I have taken the time,” Mr. Lincoln replied, “and I think that I am
well repaid. Steve,” said he, “unless I'm mightily mistaken, you know a
little more than you did yesterday.”
“Yes, sir! I do,” said Stephen.
“Come, Steve,” said Mr. Lincoln, “be honest. Didn't you feel sorry for
me last night?”
Stephen flushed scarlet.
“I never shall again, sir,” he said.
The wonderful smile, so ready to come and go, flickered and went out. In
its stead on the strange face was ineffable sadness,--the sadness of the
world's tragedies, of Stephen stoned, of Christ crucified.
“Pray God that you may feel sorry for me again,” he said.
Awed, the child on his lap was still. The politician had left the room.
Mr. Lincoln had kept Stephen's hand in his own.
“I have hopes of you, Stephen,” he said. “Do not forget me.”
Stephen Brice never has. Why was it that he walked to the station with a
heavy heart? It was a sense of the man he had left, who had been and was
to be. This Lincoln of the black loam, who built his neighbor's cabin
and hoed his neighbor's corn, who had been storekeeper and postmaster
and flat-boatman. Who had followed a rough judge dealing a rough justice
around a rough circuit; who had rolled a local bully in the dirt;
rescued women from insult; tended the bedside of many a sick coward who
feared the Judgment; told coarse stories on barrels by candlelight (but
these are pure beside the vice of great cities); who addressed political
mobs in the raw, swooping down from the stump and flinging embroilers
east and west. This physician who was one day to tend the sickbed of the
Nation in her agony; whose large hand was to be on her feeble pulse, and
whose knowledge almost divine was to perform the miracle of her healing.
So was it that, the Physician Himself performed His cures, and when work
was done, died a martyr.
Abraham Lincoln died in His name