THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES
The anti-Lecompton recusancy of Douglas baffled the plotting
extremists of the South, and created additional dissension in the
Democratic ranks; and this growing Democratic weakness and the
increasing Republican ardor and strength presaged a possible
Republican success in the coming Presidential election. While this
condition of things gave national politics an unusual interest, the
State of Illinois now became the field of a local contest which for
the moment held the attention of the entire country in such a degree
as to involve and even eclipse national issues.
In this local contest in Illinois, the choice of candidates on both
sides was determined long beforehand by a popular feeling, stronger
and more unerring than ordinary individual or caucus intrigues.
Douglas, as author of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, as a
formidable Presidential aspirant, and now again as leader of the
anti-Lecompton Democrats, could, of course, have no rival in his party
for his own Senatorial seat. Lincoln, who had in 1854 gracefully
yielded his justly won Senatorial honors to Trumbull, and who alone
bearded Douglas in his own State throughout the whole anti-Nebraska
struggle, with anything like a show of equal political courage and
intellectual strength, was as inevitably the leader and choice of the
Republicans. Their State convention met in Springfield on the 16th of
June, 1858, and, after its ordinary routine work, passed with
acclamation a separate resolution, which declared "that Abraham
Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois
for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas."
The proceedings of the convention had consumed the afternoon, and an
adjournment was taken. At 8 o'clock that same evening, the convention
having reassembled in the State-house, Lincoln appeared before it, and
made what was perhaps the most carefully prepared speech of his whole
life. Every word of it was written, every sentence had been tested;
but the speaker delivered it without manuscript or notes. It was not
an ordinary oration, but, in the main, an argument, as sententious and
axiomatic as if made to a bench of jurists. Its opening sentences
contained a political prophecy which not only became the ground-work
of the campaign, but heralded one of the world's great historical
events. He said:
[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 1.
"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
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."
Then followed his demonstration, through the incidents of the Nebraska
legislation, the Dred Scott decision, and present political theories
and issues, which would by and by find embodiment in new laws and
future legal doctrines. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the
language of the Nebraska bill, which declared slavery "subject to the
Constitution," the Dred Scott decision, which declared that "subject
to the Constitution" neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature
could exclude slavery from a Territory--the argument presented point
by point and step by step with legal precision the silent subversion
of cherished principles of liberty. "Put this and that together," said
he, "and we have another nice little niche, which we may ere long 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.... Such a decision is all that slavery now
lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.... We shall lie down,"
continued the orator, "pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri
are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the
reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave
State."
His peroration was a battle-call: "Our cause, then, must be intrusted
to and conducted by its own undoubted friends, those whose hands are
free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result. Two
years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred
thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to
a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of
strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered from the
four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the
constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we
brave all then to falter now?--now, when that same enemy is wavering,
dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not
fail--if we stand firm we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate
or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the victory is sure to
come."
[Sidenote] See O.J. Hollister, "Life of Colfax," pp. 119-22.
[Sidenote] J. Watson Webb to Bates, June 9, 1858. MS.
Lincoln's declaration that the cause of slavery restriction "must be
intrusted to its own undoubted friends" had something more than a
general meaning. We have seen that while Douglas avowed he did not
care "whether slavery was voted down or voted up" in the Territories,
he had opposed the Lecompton Constitution on the ground of its
non-submission to popular vote, and that this opposition caused the
Buchanan Democrats to treat him as an apostate. Many earnest
Republicans were moved to strong sympathy for Douglas in this
attitude, partly for his help in defeating the Lecompton iniquity,
partly because they believed his action in this particular a prelude
to further political repentance, partly out of that chivalric
generosity of human nature which sides with the weak against the
strong. In the hour of his trial and danger many wishes for his
successful reëlection came to him from Republicans of national
prominence. Greeley, in the New York "Tribune" as well as in private
letters, made no concealment of such a desire. Burlingame, in a fervid
speech in the House of Representatives, called upon the young men of
the country to stand by the Douglas men. It was known that Colfax and
other influential members of the House were holding confidential
interviews with Douglas, the object of which it was not difficult to
guess. There were even rumors that Seward intended to interfere in his
behalf. This report was bruited about so industriously that he felt it
necessary to permit a personal friend to write an emphatic denial, so
that it might come to Lincoln's knowledge. On the other hand,
newspapers ventured the suggestion that Lincoln might retaliate by a
combination against Seward's Presidential aspirations.
[Sidenote] Wentworth to Lincoln, April 19, 1858. MS.
Rival politicians in Illinois were suspicious of each other, and did
not hesitate to communicate their suspicions to Lincoln. Personal
friends, of course, kept him well informed about these various
political under-currents, and an interesting letter of his shows that
he received and treated the matter with liberal charity. "I have never
said or thought more," wrote he, "as to the inclination of some of our
Eastern Republican friends to favor Douglas, than I expressed in your
hearing on the evening of the 21st April, at the State Library in this
place. I have believed--do believe now--that Greeley, for instance,
would be rather pleased to see Douglas reëlected over me or any other
Republican; and yet I do not believe it is so because of any secret
arrangement with Douglas--it is because he thinks Douglas's superior
position, reputation, experience, and ability, if you please, would
more than compensate for his lack of a pure Republican position, and,
therefore, his reëlection do the general cause of Republicanism more
good than would the election of any one of our better undistinguished
pure Republicans. I do not know how you estimate Greeley, but I
consider him incapable of corruption or falsehood. He denies that he
directly is taking part in favor of Douglas, and I believe him.[1]
Still his feeling constantly manifests itself in his paper, which,
being so extensively read in Illinois, is, and will continue to be, a
drag upon us. I have also thought that Governor Seward, too, feels
about as Greeley does; but not being a newspaper editor, his feeling
in this respect is not much manifested. I have no idea that he is, by
conversation or by letter, urging Illinois Republicans to vote for
Douglas."
[Sidenote] Lincoln to Wilson, June 1, 1858. MS.
"As to myself, let me pledge you my word that neither I nor my
friends, so far as I know, have been setting stake against Governor
Seward. No combination has been made with me, or proposed to me, in
relation to the next Presidential candidate. The same thing is true in
regard to the next Governor of our State. I am not directly or
indirectly committed to any one; nor has any one made any advance to
me upon the subject. I have had many free conversations with John
Wentworth; but he never dropped a remark that led me to suspect that
he wishes to be Governor. Indeed it is due to truth to say that while
he has uniformly expressed himself for me, he has never hinted at any
condition. The signs are that we shall have a good convention on the
16th, and I think our prospects generally are improving some every
day. I believe we need nothing so much as to get rid of unjust
suspicions of one another."
[Sidenote] Lincoln to Crittenden, July 7, 1858. Mrs. Coleman, "Life
of Crittenden," Vol. II., p. 162.
[Sidenote] Crittenden to Lincoln, July 29, 1858. Ibid., p. 163.
[Sidenote] Crittenden to Dickey, August 1, 1858. Ibid., p. 164.
While many alleged defections were soon disproved by the ready and
loyal avowals of his friends in Illinois and elsewhere, there came to
him a serious disappointment from a quarter whence he little expected
it. Early in the canvass Lincoln began to hear that Crittenden, of
Kentucky, favored the reëlection of Douglas, and had promised so to
advise the Whigs of Illinois by a public letter. Deeming it well-nigh
incredible that a Kentucky Whig like Crittenden could take such a
part against an Illinois Whig of his own standing and service, to help
a life-long opponent of Clay and his cherished plans, Lincoln
addressed him a private letter making the direct inquiry. "I do not
believe the story," he wrote, "but still it gives me some uneasiness.
If such was your inclination, I do not believe you would so express
yourself. It is not in character with you as I have always estimated
you." Crittenden's reply, however, confirmed his worst fears. He said
he and Douglas had acted together to oppose Lecompton. For this
Douglas had been assailed, and he thought his reëlection was necessary
to rebuke the Buchanan Administration. In addition Crittenden also
soon wrote the expected letter for publication, in which phraseology
of apparent fairness covered an urgent appeal in Douglas's behalf.
[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 4-5.
In the evenly balanced and sensitive condition of Illinois politics
this ungracious outside interference may be said to have insured
Lincoln's defeat. While it gave him pain to be thus wounded in the
house of his friends, he yet more deeply deplored the inexcusable
blunder of leaders whose misplaced sympathy put in jeopardy the
success of a vital political principle. In his convention speech he
had forcibly stated the error and danger of such a step. "How can he
[Douglas] oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about
it. His avowed mission is impressing the 'public heart' to care
nothing about it.... For years he has labored to prove it a sacred
right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can
he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they
can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper
in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the
whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property.... Now
as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question
his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him.
Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that
our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to
have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly he is not now
with us--he does not pretend to be--he does not promise ever to be."
[Sidenote] Lincoln, Springfield Speech, July 17, 1858. Debates,
p. 55.
Lincoln in nowise underrated the severity of the political contest in
which he was about to engage. He knew his opponent's strong points as
well as his weak ones--his energy, his adroitness, the blind devotion
of his followers, his greater political fame. "Senator Douglas is of
world-wide renown," he said. "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. These are disadvantages all taken together, that
the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon
principle, and principle alone."
[Sidenote] 1858.
Douglas and his friends had indeed entered upon the canvass with an
unusual flourish of trumpets. Music, banners, salutes, fireworks,
addresses, ovation, and jubilation with enthusiasm genuine and
simulated, came and went in almost uninterrupted sequence; so much of
the noise and pomp of electioneering had not been seen since the
famous hard-cider campaign of Harrison. The "Little Giant," as he was
proudly nicknamed by his adherents, arrived in Illinois near
midsummer, after elaborate preparation and heralding, and made
speeches successively at Chicago, Bloomington, and Springfield on the
9th, 16th, and 17th of July. The Republicans and their candidate were
equally alert to contest every inch of ground. Mr. Lincoln made
speeches in reply at Chicago on the 10th and at Springfield on the
evening of Douglas's day address; and in both instances with such
force and success as portended a fluctuating and long-continued
struggle.
[Illustration: ANSON BURLINGAME.]
For the moment the presence of Douglas not only gave spirit and fresh
industry to his followers, but the novelty impressed the indifferent
and the wavering. The rush of the campaign was substituting excitement
for inquiry, blare of brass bands and smoke of gunpowder for
intelligent criticism. The fame and prestige of the "Little Giant" was
beginning to incline the vibrating scale. Lincoln and his intimate
political advisers were not slow to note the signs of danger; and the
remedy devised threw upon him the burden of a new responsibility. It
was decided in the councils of the Republican leaders that Lincoln
should challenge Douglas to joint public debate.
The challenge was sent by Lincoln on July 24; Douglas proposed that
they should meet at the towns of Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro,
Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton, each speaker alternately to
open and close the discussion; Douglas to speak one hour at Ottawa,
Lincoln to reply for an hour and a half, and Douglas to make a half
hour's rejoinder. In like manner Lincoln should open and close at
Freeport, and so on alternately. Lincoln's note of July 31 accepted
the proposal as made. "Although by the terms," he wrote, "as you
propose, you take four openings and closes to my three, I accede and
thus close the arrangement." Meanwhile each of the speakers made
independent appointments for other days and places than these seven;
and in the heat and dust of midsummer traveled and addressed the
people for a period of about one hundred days, frequently making the
necessary journeys by night, and often speaking two and sometimes even
three times in a single day. Thus to the combat of intellectual skill
was added a severe ordeal of physical endurance.[2]
Lincoln entered upon the task which his party friends had devised with
neither bravado nor misgiving. He had not sought these public
discussions; neither did he shrink from them. Throughout his whole
life he appears to have been singularly correct in his estimate of
difficulties to be encountered and of his own powers for overcoming
them. Each of these seven meetings, comprising both the Republican and
Democratic voters of the neighboring counties, formed a vast, eager,
and attentive assemblage. It needed only the first day's experience to
show the wisdom of the Republican leaders in forcing a joint
discussion upon Douglas. Face to face with his competitor, he could no
longer successfully assume airs of superiority, or wrap himself in his
Senatorial dignity and prestige. They were equal spokesmen, of equal
parties, on an equal platform, while applause and encouragement on one
side balanced applause and encouragement on the other.
In a merely forensic sense, it was indeed a battle of giants. In the
whole field of American politics no man has equaled Douglas in the
expedients and strategy of debate. Lacking originality and
constructive logic, he had great facility in appropriating by
ingenious restatement the thoughts and formulas of others. He was
tireless, ubiquitous, unseizable. It would have been as easy to hold a
globule of mercury under the finger's tip as to fasten him to a point
he desired to evade. He could almost invert a proposition by a
plausible paraphrase. He delighted in enlarging an opponent's
assertion to a forced inference ridiculous in form and monstrous in
dimensions. In spirit he was alert, combative, aggressive; in manner,
patronizing and arrogant by turns.
Lincoln's mental equipment was of an entirely different order. His
principal weapon was direct, unswerving logic. His fairness of
statement and generosity of admission had long been proverbial. For
these intellectual duels with Douglas, he possessed a power of
analysis that easily outran and circumvented the "Little Giant's" most
extraordinary gymnastics of argument. But, disdaining mere quibbles,
he pursued lines of concise reasoning to maxims of constitutional law
and political morals. Douglas was always forcible in statement and
bold in assertion; but Lincoln was his superior in quaint originality,
aptness of phrase, and subtlety of definition; and oftentimes
Lincoln's philosophic vision and poetical fervor raised him to flights
of eloquence which were not possible to the fiber and temper of his
opponent.
It is, of course, out of the question to abridge the various
Lincoln-Douglas discussions of which the text fills a good-sized
volume. Only a few points of controversy may be stated. Lincoln's
convention speech, it will be remembered, declared that in his belief
the Union could not endure permanently half slave and half free, but
must become all one thing or all the other. Douglas in his first
speech of the campaign attacked this as an invitation to a war of
sections, declaring that uniformity would lead to consolidation and
despotism. He charged the Republicans with intent to abolish slavery
in the States; said their opposition to the Dred Scott decision was a
desire for negro equality and amalgamation; and prescribed his dogma
of popular sovereignty as a panacea for all the ills growing out of
the slavery agitation.
[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 75.
To this Lincoln replied that Republicans did not aim at abolition in
the slave-States, but only the exclusion of slavery from free
Territories; they did not oppose the Dred Scott decision in so far as
it concerned the freedom of Dred Scott, but they refused to accept its
dicta as rules of political action. He repelled the accusation that
the Republicans desired negro equality or amalgamation, saying: "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. I have never said
anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this
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 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."
In return he pressed upon Douglas his charge of a political conspiracy
to nationalize slavery, alleging that his "don't care" policy was but
the convenient stalking-horse under cover of which a new Dred Scott
decision would make slavery lawful everywhere.
[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 82.
It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under
the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided
that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial
Legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the
whole thing is done. This being true, and this being the way, as I
think, that slavery is to be made national, let us consider what
Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end. In the first place,
let us see what influence he is exerting on public sentiment. In
this and like communities public sentiment is everything. With
public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can
succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper
than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes
statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.
The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not
tolerate the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least
degree of wrong about it. Try it by some of Judge Douglas's
arguments. He says he "don't care whether it is voted up or voted
down" in the Territories. I do not care myself, in dealing with
that expression, whether it is intended to be expressive of his
individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the national
policy he desires to have established. It is alike valuable for my
purpose. Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in
slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in
it; because no man can logically say he don't care whether a wrong
is voted up or voted down. He may say he don't care whether an
indifferent thing is voted up or down, but he must logically have
a choice between a right thing and a wrong thing. He 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. If it and other property are equal,
his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is
wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a
comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over everything
in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the
shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the
Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the
shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments--it everywhere
carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it.
[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 233-4.
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." 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 men as
an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical
principle.
[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 56.
As to the vaunted popular sovereignty principle, Lincoln declared it
"the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a
community.... Does he mean to say that he has been devoting his life
to securing to the people of the Territories the right to exclude
slavery from the Territories? If he means so to say, he means to
deceive; because he and every one knows that the decision of the
Supreme Court, which he approves and makes especial ground of attack
upon me for disapproving, forbids the people of a Territory to exclude
slavery. This covers the whole ground from the settlement of a
Territory till it reaches the degree of maturity entitling it to form
a State constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the
Judge is not sustaining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing
it. He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of
the Territories has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during
their territorial existence."
By no means the least interesting of the many points touched in these
debates is Lincoln's own estimate of the probable duration of slavery,
or rather of the least possible period in which "ultimate extinction"
could be effected, even under the most favorable circumstances.
[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 157.
Now, at this day in the history of the world [said he, in the
Charleston debate], we can no more foretell where the end of this
slavery agitation will be than we can see the end of the world
itself. The Nebraska-Kansas bill was introduced four years and a
half ago, and if the agitation is ever to come to an end, we may
say we are four years and a half nearer the end. So too we can say
we are four years and a half nearer the end of the world; and we
can just as clearly see the end of the world as we can see the end
of this agitation. The Kansas settlement did not conclude it. If
Kansas should sink to-day, and leave a great vacant space in the
earth's surface, this vexed question would still be among us. I
say then 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, no way but to keep it out of our new
Territories--to restrict it forever to the old States where it now
exists. Then the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in
the course of ultimate extinction. That is one way of putting an
end to the slavery agitation.
The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his
friends have their way and plant slavery over all the States;
cease speaking of it as in any way a wrong; regard slavery as one
of the common matters of property and speak of negroes as we do of
our horses and cattle. But while it drives on in its state of
progress as it is now driving, and as it has driven for the last
five years, I have ventured the opinion, and I say to-day that we
will have no end to the slavery agitation until it takes one turn
or the other. I do not mean to say that when it takes a turn
towards ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year,
nor in two years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way
ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at
least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in
God's own good time, I have no doubt.
But the one dominating characteristic of Lincoln's speeches is their
constant recurrence to broad and enduring principles, their
unremitting effort to lead public opinion to loftier and nobler
conceptions of political duty; and nothing in his career stamps him so
distinctively an American as his constant eulogy and defense of the
philosophical precepts of the Declaration of Independence. The
following is one of his indictments of his political opponents on this
point:
[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 225.
At Galesburg the other day, I said, in answer to Judge Douglas,
that three years ago there never had been a man, so far as I knew
or believed, in the whole world, who had said that the Declaration
of Independence did not include negroes in the term "all men." I
re-assert it to-day. I assert that Judge Douglas and all his
friends may search the whole records of the country, and it will
be a matter of great astonishment to me if they shall be able to
find that one human being three years ago had ever uttered the
astounding sentiment that the term "all men" in the Declaration
did not include the negro. Do not let me be misunderstood. I know
that more than three years ago there were men who, finding this
assertion constantly in the way of their schemes to bring about
the ascendency and perpetuation of slavery, denied the truth of
it. I know that Mr. Calhoun and all the politicians of his school
denied the truth of the Declaration. I know that it ran along in
the mouth of some Southern men for a period of years, ending at
last in that shameful though rather forcible declaration of
Pettit, of Indiana, upon the floor of the United States Senate,
that the Declaration of Independence was in that respect "a
self-evident lie" rather than a self-evident truth. But I say,
with a perfect knowledge of all this hawking at the Declaration
without directly attacking it, that three years ago there never
had lived a man who had ventured to assail it in the sneaking way
of pretending to believe it and then asserting it did not include
the negro. I believe the first man who ever said it was
Chief-Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, and the next to him
was our friend, Stephen A. Douglas. And now it has become the
catchword of the entire party. I would like to call upon his
friends everywhere to consider how they have come in so short a
time to view this matter in a way so entirely different from their
former belief; to ask whether they are not being borne along by an
irresistible current, whither they know not?
In the joint debates, however, argument and oratory were both hampered
by the inexorable limit of time. For the full development of his
thought, the speeches Lincoln made separately at other places afforded
him a freer opportunity. A quotation from his language on one of these
occasions is therefore here added, as a better illustration of his
style and logic, where his sublime theme carried him into one of his
more impassioned moods:
The Declaration of Independence was formed by the representatives
of American liberty from thirteen States of the Confederacy,
twelve of which were slave-holding communities. We need not
discuss the way or the reason of their becoming slave-holding
communities. It is sufficient for our purpose that all of them
greatly deplored the evil and that they placed a provision in the
Constitution which they supposed would gradually remove the
disease by cutting off its source. This was the abolition of the
slave trade. So general was the conviction, the public
determination, to abolish the African slave trade, that the
provision which I have referred to as being placed in the
Constitution declared that it should not be abolished prior to the
year 1808. A constitutional provision was necessary to prevent the
people, through Congress, from putting a stop to the traffic
immediately at the close of the war. Now if slavery had been a
good thing, would the fathers of the republic have taken a step
calculated to diminish its beneficent influences among themselves,
and snatch the boon wholly from their posterity? These
communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall,
said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This
was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe.
This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the
justice of the Creator to his creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all
his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their
enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and
likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded,
and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race
of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the
farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children,
and their children's children, and the countless myriads who
should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they
were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and
so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in
the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should
set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men,
or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again
to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the
battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and
mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be
extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to
limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of
liberty was being built.
Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting
with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if
you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its
grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you
have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal
in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty,
let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose
waters spring close by the blood of the revolution. Think nothing
of me--take no thought for the political fate of any man
whomsoever--but come back to the truths that are in the
Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you
choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not
only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to
death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do
claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an
anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and
insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am
nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that
immortal emblem of Humanity--the Declaration of American
Independence.[3]
----------
[1] It is interesting to compare with Lincoln's letter one from Greeley
to a Chicago editor on the same subject:
"NEW YORK,
"July 24, 1858.
"MY FRIEND: You have taken your own course--don't try to throw the
blame on others. You have repelled Douglas, who might have been
conciliated and attached to our own side, whatever he may _now_
find, it necessary to say, or do, and instead of helping us in
other States, you have thrown a load upon us that may probably
break us down. You knew what was the almost unanimous desire of
the Republicans of other States; and you spurned and insulted
them. Now go ahead and fight it through. You are in for it, and
it does no good to make up wry faces. What I have said in the
'Tribune' since the fight was resolved on, has been in good faith,
intended to help you through. If Lincoln would fight up to the
work also, you might get through--if he apologizes, and retreats,
he is lost, and all others go down with him. His first Springfield
speech (at the convention) was in the right key; his Chicago
speech was bad; and I fear the new Springfield speech is worse. If
he dare not stand on broad Republican ground, he cannot stand at
all. That, however, is _his_ business; he is nowise responsible
for what I say. I shall stand on the broad anti-slavery ground,
which I have occupied for years. I cannot change it to help your
fight; and I should only damage you if I did. You have got your
Elephant--you would have him--now shoulder him! He is not so very
heavy, after all. As I seem to displease you equally when I try to
keep you out of trouble, and when, having rushed in in spite of
me, I try to help you in the struggle you have unwisely provoked,
I must keep neutral, so far as may be hereafter. Yours,
(Signed) "HORACE GREELEY.
"J. MEDILL, Esq., Chicago, (very) Ill.
"What have I ever said in favor of 'Negro equality' with reference
to your fight? I recollect nothing."
The above is from a manuscript copy of Greeley's letter, but it bears
internal evidence of genuineness.
[2] "Last year in the Illinois canvass I made just 130 speeches."--
[Douglas, Wooster (O.) Speech.] This was between July 9 and November
2, 1858, just 100 days, exclusive of Sundays.
[3] Lincoln's Lewiston Speech, August 17, 1858. Chicago "Press and
Tribune."