The importance of a more accurate and elaborate history of the debate
between Lincoln and Douglas has induced Mr. Weik and me to secure,
for publication in these pages, the account by Horace White, of this
world-renowned forensic contest. Mr. White's means of knowledge, as
fully set forth in the article, are exceptional, and his treatment of
the subject is not less entertaining than truthful. It is certainly a
great contribution to history and we insert it without further comment:
"It was my good fortune to accompany Mr. Lincoln during his political
campaign against Senator Douglas in 1858, not only at the joint debates
but also at most of the smaller meetings where his competitor was not
present. We traveled together many thousands of miles. I was in the
employ of the _Chicago Tribune_, then called the _Press and Tribune_.
Senator Douglas had entered upon his campaign with two short-hand
reporters, James B. Sheridan and Henry Binmore, whose duty it was to
'write it up' in the columns of the Chicago Times. The necessity of
counteracting or matching that force became apparent very soon, and I
was chosen to write up Mr. Lincoln's campaign.
"I was not a short-hand reporter. The verbatim reporting for the Chicago
Tribune in the joint debates was done by Mr. Robert R. Hitt, late
Assistant Secretary of State, and the present Representative in Congress
from the 6th District of Illinois. Verbatim reporting was a new feature
in journalism in Chicago, and Mr. Hitt was the pioneer thereof. The
publication of Senator Douglas's opening speech in that campaign,
delivered on the evening of July 9th, by the Tribune the next morning,
was a feat hitherto unexampled in the West, and most mortifying to the
Democratic newspaper, the _Times_, and to Sheridan and Binmore, who,
after taking down the speech as carefully as Mr. Hitt had done, had gone
to bed intending to write it out next day, as was then customary.
"All of the seven joint debates were reported by Mr. Hitt for the
_Tribune_, the manuscript passing through my hands before going to the
printers, but no changes were made by me except in a few cases where
confusion on the platform; or the blowing of the wind, had caused some
slight hiatus or evident mistake in catching the speaker's words. I
could not resist the temptation to _italicise_ a few passages in Mr.
Lincoln's speeches, where his manner of delivery had been especially
emphatic.
"The volume containing the debates, published in 1860 by Follett,
Foster & Co., of Columbus, Ohio, presents Mr. Lincoln's speeches as they
appeared in the Chicago _Tribune_, and Mr. Douglas's as they appeared
in the Chicago _Times_. Of course, the speeches of both were published
simultaneously in both papers. The Chicago _Times_' reports of Mr.
Lincoln's speeches were not at all satisfactory to Mr. Lincoln's
friends, and this led to a charge that they were purposely mutilated
in order to give his competitor a more scholarly appearance before the
public--a charge indignantly denied by Sheridan and Binmore. There was
really no foundation for this charge. Of course, Sheridan and Binmore
took more pains with Mr. Douglas's speeches than with those of his
opponent. That was their business. It was what they were paid for, and
what they were expected to do. The debates were all held in the open
air, on rude platforms hastily put together, shaky, and overcrowded
with people. The reporters' tables were liable to be jostled and their
manuscript agitated by the wind. Some gaps were certain to occur in the
reporters' notes and these, when occurring in Mr. Douglas's speeches,
would certainly be straightened out by his own reporters, who would feel
no such responsibility for the rough places in Mr. Lincoln's. Then it
must be added that there were fewer involved sentences in Mr. Douglas's
_extempore_ speeches than in Mr. Lincoln's. Douglas was the more
practiced and more polished speaker of the two, and it was easier for a
reporter to follow him. All his sentences were round and perfect in his
mind before he opened his lips. This was not always the case with Mr.
Lincoln's.
"My acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln began four years before the campaign
of which I am writing, in October, 1854. I was then in the employ of the
Chicago _Evening Journal_. I had been sent to Springfield to report the
political doings of State Fair week for that newspaper. Thus it came
about that I occupied a front seat in the Representatives' Hall, in the
old State House, when Mr. Lincoln delivered the speech already described
in this volume. The impression made upon me by the orator was quite
overpowering.
"I had not heard much political speaking up to that time. I have heard
a great deal since. I have never heard anything since, either by Mr.
Lincoln, or by anybody, that I would put on a higher plane of oratory.
All the strings that play upon the human heart and understanding were
touched with masterly skill and force, while beyond and above all skill
was the overwhelming conviction pressed upon the audience that the
speaker himself was charged with an irresistible and inspiring duty to
his fellow men. This conscientious impulse drove his arguments through
the heads of his hearers down into their bosoms, where they made
everlasting lodgment. I had been nurtured in the Abolitionist faith,
and was much more radical than Mr. Lincoln himself on any point where
slavery was concerned, yet it seemed to me, when this speech was
finished, as though I had had a very feeble conception of the wickedness
of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. I was filled, as never before, with
the sense of my own duty and responsibility as a citizen toward the
aggressions of the slave power.
"Having, 'since then, heard all the great public speakers of this
country subsequent to the period of Clay and Webster, I award the palm
to Mr. Lincoln as the one who, although not first in all respects, would
bring more men, of doubtful or hostile leanings, around to his way of
thinking by talking to them on a platform, than any other.
"Although I heard him many times afterward I shall longest remember him
as I then saw the tall, angular form with the long, angular arms, at
times bent nearly double with excitement, like a large flail animating
two smaller ones, the mobile face wet with perspiration which he
discharged in drops as he threw his head this way and that like a
projectile--not a graceful figure, yet not an ungraceful one. After
listening to him a few minutes, when he had got well warmed with his
subject, nobody would mind whether he was graceful or not. All thought
of grace or form would be lost in the exceeding attractiveness of what
he was saying.
"Returning to the campaign of 1858--I was sent by my employers to
Springfield to attend the Republican State Convention of that year.
Again I sat at a short distance from Mr. Lincoln when he delivered the
'house-divided-against-itself' speech, on the 17th of June. This was
delivered from manuscript, and was the only one I ever heard him deliver
in that way. When it was concluded he put the manuscript in my hands and
asked me to go to the _State Journal_ office and read the proof of it.
I think it had already been set in type. Before I had finished this task
Mr. Lincoln himself came into the composing room of the _State Journal_
and looked over the revised proofs. He said to me that he had taken a
great deal of pains with this speech, and that he wanted it to go before
the people just as he had prepared it. He added that some of his friends
had scolded him a good deal about the opening paragraph and 'the house
divided against itself,' and wanted him to change it or leave it out
altogether, but that he believed he had studied this subject more deeply
than they had, and that he was going to stick to that text whatever
happened.
"On the 9th of July, Senator Douglas returned to Chicago from Washington
City. He had stopped a few days at Cleveland, Ohio, to allow his friends
to arrange a grand _entree_ for him. It was arranged that he should
arrive about eight o'clock in the evening by the Michigan Central
Railway, whose station was at the foot of Lake street, in which street
the principal hotel, the Tremont House, was situated, and that he should
be driven in a carriage drawn by six horses to the hotel, where
he should make his first speech of the campaign. To carry out this
arrangement it was necessary that he should leave the Michigan Southern
Railway at Laporte and go to Michigan City, at which place the Chicago
committee of reception took him in charge. It was noted by the Chicago
_Times_ that some malicious person at Michigan City had secretly spiked
the only cannon in the town, so that the Douglas men were obliged to use
an anvil on the occasion.
"When Mr. Douglas and his train arrived at the Lake street station, the
crowd along the street to the hotel, four or five blocks distant, was
dense, and, for the Chicago of that day, tremendous. It was with great
difficulty that the six-horse team got through it at all. Banners, bands
of music, cannon and fireworks added their various inspiration to the
scene. About nine o'clock Mr. Douglas made his appearance on a balcony
on the Lake street side of the hotel and made his speech. Mr. Lincoln
sat in a chair just inside the house, very near the speaker, and was an
attentive listener.
"Mr. Douglas's manner on this occasion was courtly and conciliatory. His
argument was plausible but worthless--being, for the most part, a
rehash of his 'popular sovereignty' dogma; nevertheless, he made a good
impression. He could make more out of a bad case, I think, than any
other man this country has ever produced, and I hope the country will
never produce his like again in this particular. If his fate had been
cast in the French Revolution, he would have out-demagogued the whole
lot of them. I consider the use he made of this chip called popular
sovereignty, riding upon it safely through some of the stormiest
years in our history, and having nothing else to ride upon, a feat of
dexterity akin to genius. But mere dexterity would not alone have borne
him along his pathway in life. He had dauntless courage, unwearied
energy, engaging manners, boundless ambition, unsurpassed powers of
debate, and strong personal magnetism. Among the Democrats of the North
his ascendency was unquestioned and his power almost absolute. He was
exactly fitted to hew his way to the Presidency, and he would have done
so infallibly if he had not made the mistake of coquetting with slavery.
This was a mistake due to the absence of moral principle. If he had been
as true to freedom as Lincoln was he would have distanced Lincoln in
the race. It was, in fact, no easy task to prevent the Republicans from
flocking after him in 1858, when he had, for once only, sided with them,
in reference to the Lecompton Constitution. There are some reasons
for believing that Douglas would have separated himself from the
slave-holders entirely after the Lecompton fight, if he had thought that
the Republicans would join in re-electing him to the Senate. Yet the
position taken by the party in Illinois was perfectly sound. Douglas was
too slippery to make a bargain with. He afterward redeemed himself in
the eyes of his opponents by an immense service to the Union, which no
other man could have rendered; but, up to this time, there was nothing
for anti slavery men to do but to beat him if they could.
"I will add here that I had no personal acquaintance with Mr. Douglas,
although my opportunities for meeting him were frequent. I regarded him
as the most dangerous enemy of liberty, and, therefore, as my enemy.
I did not want to know him. Accordingly, one day when Mr. Sheridan
courteously offered to present me to his chief, I declined without
giving any reason. Of course, this was a mistake; but, at the age of
twenty-four, I took my politics very seriously. I thought that all the
work of saving the country had to be done then and there. I have since
learned to leave something to time and Providence.
"Mr. Lincoln's individual campaign began at Beardstown, Cass county,
August 12th. Douglas had been there the previous day, and I had heard
him. His speech had consisted mainly of tedious repetitions of 'popular
sovereignty,' but he had taken occasion to notice Lincoln's conspiracy
charge, and had called it 'an infamous lie.' He had also alluded to
Senator Trumbull's charge that he (Douglas) had, two years earlier, been
engaged in a plot to force a bogus constitution on the people of Kansas
without giving them an opportunity to vote upon it. 'The miserable,
craven-hearted wretch,' said Douglas, 'he would rather have both ears
cut off than to use that language in my presence, where I could call him
to account.' Before entering upon this subject, Douglas turned to his
reporters and said 'Take this down.' They did so and it was published a
few days later in the St. Louis Republican. This incident furnished
the text of the Charleston joint debate on the 18th of September.
"Mr. Douglas's meeting at Beardstown was large and enthusiastic, but was
composed of a lower social stratum than the Republican meeting of the
following day. Mr. Lincoln came up the Illinois River from the town of
Naples in the steamer _Sam Gaty_. Cass county and the surrounding region
was by no means hopeful Republican ground. Yet Mr. Lincoln's friends
mustered forty horsemen and two bands of music, beside a long procession
on foot to meet him at the landing. Schuyler county sent a delegation of
three hundred, and Morgan county was well represented. These were mostly
Old Line Whigs who had followed Lincoln in earlier days. Mr. Lincoln's
speech at Beardstown was one of the best he ever made in my hearing, and
was not a repetition of any other. In fact, he never repeated himself
except when some remark or question from the audience led him back upon
a subject that he had already discussed. Many times did I marvel to see
him get on a platform at some out-of-the-way place and begin an entirely
new speech, equal, in all respects, to any of the joint debates, and
continue for two hours in a high strain of argumentative power and
eloquence, without saying anything that I had heard before. After the
Edwardsville meeting I said to him that it was wonderful to me that he
could find new things to say everywhere, while Douglas was parroting his
popular sovereignty speech at every place. He replied that Douglas was
not lacking in versatility, but that he had a theory that the popular
sovereignty speech was the one to win on, and that the audiences whom he
addressed would hear it only once and would never know whether he made
the same speech elsewhere or not, and would never care. Most likely, if
their attention were called to the subject, they would think that was
the proper thing to do. As for himself, he said that he could not
repeat to-day what he had said yesterday. The subject kept enlarging and
widening in his mind as he went on, and it was much easier to make a new
speech than to repeat an old one.
"It was at Beardstown that Mr. Lincoln uttered the glowing words
that have come to be known as the apostrophe to the Declaration of
Independence, the circumstances attending which are narrated in another
part of this book. Probably the apostrophe, as printed, is a trifle more
florid than as delivered, and, therefore, less forcible.
"The following passage, from the Beardstown speech, was taken down by
me on the platform by long-hand notes and written out immediately
afterward:
THE CONSPIRACY CHARGE.
"'I made a speech in June last in which I pointed out, briefly and
consecutively, a series of public measures leading directly to the
nationalization of slavery--the spreading of that institution over all
the Territories and all the States, old as well as new, North as well as
South. I enumerated the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which, every
candid man must acknowledge, conferred upon emigrants to Kansas and
Nebraska the right to carry slaves there and hold them in bondage,
whereas formerly they had no such right; I alluded to the events which
followed that repeal, events in which Judge Douglas's name figures quite
prominently; I referred to the Dred Scott decision and the extraordinary
means taken to prepare the public mind for that decision; the efforts
put forth by President Pierce to make the people believe that, in the
election of James Buchanan, they had endorsed the doctrine that slavery
may exist in the free Territories of the Union--the earnest exhortation
put forth by President Buchanan to the people to stick to that decision
whatever it might be--the close-fitting niche in the Nebraska bill,
wherein the right of the people to govern themselves is made 'subject to
the constitution of the United States'--the extraordinary haste made
by Judge Douglas to give this decision an endorsement at the capitol of
Illinois. I alluded to other concurring circumstances, which I need not
repeat now, and I said that, though I could not open the bosoms of men
and find out their secret motives, yet, when I found the framework of
a barn, or a bridge, or any other structure, built by a number of
carpenters--Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James--and so built that
each tenon had its proper mortice, and the whole forming a symmetrical
piece of workmanship, I should say that those carpenters all worked on
an intelligible plan, and understood each other from the beginning.
This embraced the main argument in my speech before the Republican State
Convention in June. Judge Douglas received a copy of my speech some two
weeks before his return to Illinois. He had ample time to examine and
reply to it if he chose to do so. He did examine and he did reply to it,
but he wholly overlooked the body of my argument, and said nothing
about the 'conspiracy charge,' as he terms it. He made his speech up of
complaints against our tendencies to negro equality and amalgamation.
Well, seeing that Douglas had had the process served on him, that he had
taken notice of the process, that he had come into court and pleaded
to a part of the complaint, but had ignored the main issue, I took
a default on him. I held that he had no plea to make to the general
charge. So when I was called on to reply to him, twenty-four hours
afterward, I renewed the charge as explicitly as I could. My speech was
reported and published on the following morning, and, of course, Judge
Douglas saw it. He went from Chicago to Bloomington and there made
another and longer speech, and yet took no notice of the 'conspiracy
charge.' He then went to Springfield and made another elaborate
argument, but was not prevailed upon to know anything about the
outstanding indictment. I made another speech at Springfield, this
time taking it for granted that Judge Douglas was satisfied to take his
chances in the campaign with the imputation of the conspiracy hanging
over him. It was not until he went into a small town, Clinton, in De
Witt county, where he delivered his fourth or fifth regular speech, that
he found it convenient to notice this matter at all. At that place
(I was standing in the crowd when he made his speech ), he bethought
himself that he was charged with something, and his reply was that his
'self-respect alone prevented him from calling it a falsehood.' Well,
my friends, perhaps he so far lost his self-respect in Beardstown as to
actually call it a falsehood.
"'But now I have this reply to make: that while the Nebraska bill was
pending, Judge Douglas helped to vote down a clause giving the people of
the Territories the right to exclude slavery if they chose; that neither
while the bill was pending, nor at any other time, would he give his
opinion whether the people had the right to exclude slavery, though
respectfully asked; that he made a report, which I hold in my hand, from
the Committee on Territories, in which he said the rights of the people
of the Territories, in this regard, are 'held in abeyance,' and cannot
be immediately exercised; that the Dred Scott decision expressly denies
any such right, but declares that neither Congress nor the Territorial
Legislature can keep slavery out of Kansas and that Judge Douglas
endorses that decision. All these charges are new; that is, I did not
make them in my original speech. They are additional and cumulative
testimony. I bring them forward now and dare Judge Douglas to deny one
of them. Let him do so and I will prove them by such testimony as shall
confound him forever. I say to you, that it would be more to the purpose
for Judge Douglas to say that he did not repeal the Missouri Compromise;
that he did not make slavery possible where it was impossible before;
that he did not leave a niche in the Nebraska bill for the Dred Scott
decision to rest in; that he did not vote down a clause giving the
people the right to exclude slavery if they wanted to; that he did not
refuse to give his individual opinion whether a Territorial Legislature
could exclude slavery; that he did not make a report to the Senate, in
which he said that the rights of the people, in this regard, were held
in abeyance and could not be immediately exercised; that he did not make
a hasty endorsement of the Dred Scott decision over at Springfield;*
that he does not now endorse that decision; that that decision does not
take away from the Territorial Legislature the right to exclude slavery;
and that he did not, in the original Nebraska bill, so couple the words
State and Territory together that what the Supreme Court has done in
forcing open all the Territories to slavery it may yet do in forcing
open all the States. I say it would be vastly more to the point for
Judge Douglas to say that he did not do some of these things; that he
did not forge some of these links of testimony, than to go vociferating
about the country that possibly he may hint that somebody is a liar.'
* This refers to Douglas's speech of June 12, 1857.
"The next morning, August 13th, we boarded the steamer _Editor_ and went
to Havana, Mason county. Mr. Lincoln was in excellent spirits. Several
of his old Whig friends were on board, and the journey was filled up
with politics and story-telling. In the latter branch of human affairs,
Mr. Lincoln was most highly gifted. From the beginning to the end of our
travels the fund of anecdotes never failed, and, wherever we happened to
be, all the people within ear-shot would begin to work their way up
to this inimitable storyteller. His stories were always _apropos_ of
something going on, and oftenest related to things that had happened in
his own neighborhood. He was constantly being reminded of one, and, when
he told it, his facial expression was so irresistibly comic that the
bystanders generally exploded in laughter before he reached what he
called the 'nub' of it. Although the intervals between the meetings
were filled up brimful with mirth in this way, Mr. Lincoln indulged very
sparingly in humor in his speeches. I asked him one day why he did not
oftener turn the laugh on Douglas. He replied that he was too much in
earnest, and that it was doubtful whether turning the laugh on anybody
really gained any votes.
"We arrived at Havana while Douglas was still speaking. The deputation
that met Mr. Lincoln at the landing suggested that he should go up
to the grove where the Democratic meeting was going on and hear what
Douglas was saying. But he declined to do so, saying: 'The Judge was
so put out by my listening to him at Bloomington and Clinton that I
promised to leave him alone at his own meetings for the rest of the
campaign. I understand that he is calling Trumbull and myself liars, and
if he should see me in the crowd he might be so ashamed of himself as
to omit the most telling part of his argument.' 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 this subject is not referred to in the Cincinnati platform,
nor in either of the Springfield platforms. Neither result would prove
him right or me wrong. And so of the gentleman who offered to do his
fighting for him. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove
any thing, 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.'
"At Havana I saw Mrs. Douglas (_nee_ Cutts) standing with a group of
ladies a short distance from the platform on which her husband was
speaking, and I thought I had never seen a more queenly face and figure.
I saw her frequently afterward in this campaign, but never personally
met her till many years later, when she had become the wife of General
Williams of the regular army, and the mother of children who promised
to be as beautiful as herself. There is no doubt in my mind that this
attractive presence was very helpful to Judge Douglas in the campaign.
It is certain that the Republicans considered her a dangerous element.
"From Havana we went to Lewistown and thence to Peoria, still following
on the heels of the Little Giant, but nothing of special interest
happened at either place. As we came northward Mr. Lincoln's meetings
grew in size, but at Lewistown the Douglas gathering was much the larger
of the two and was the most considerable in point of numbers I had yet
seen.
"The next stage brought us to Ottawa, the first joint debate, August
21st. Here the crowd was enormous. The weather had been very dry and
the town was shrouded in dust raised by the moving populace. Crowds were
pouring into town from sunrise till noon in all sorts of conveyances,
teams, railroad trains, canal boats, cavalcades, and processions on
foot, with banners and inscriptions, stirring up such clouds of dust
that it was hard to make out what was underneath them. The town was
covered with bunting, and bands of music were tooting around every
corner, drowned now and then by the roar of cannon. Mr. Lincoln came by
railroad and Mr. Douglas by carriage from La Salle. A train of seventeen
passenger cars from Chicago attested the interest felt in that city in
the first meeting of the champions. Two great processions escorted them
to the platform in the public square. But the eagerness to hear the
speaking was so great that the crowd had taken possession of the square
and the platform, and had climbed on the wooden awning overhead, to such
an extent that the speakers and the committees and reporters could not
get to their places. Half an hour was consumed in a rough-and-tumble
skirmish to make way for them, and, when finally this was accomplished,
a section of the awning gave way with its load of men and boys, and
came down on the heads of the Douglas committee of reception. But,
fortunately, nobody was hurt.
"Here I was joined by Mr. Hitt and also by Mr. Chester P. Dewey of
the New York _Evening Post_, who remained with us until the end of the
campaign. Hither, also, came quite an army of young newspaper men, among
whom was Henry Villard, in behalf of Forney's Philadelphia Press. I have
preserved Mr. Dewey's sketch of the two orators as they appeared on the
Ottawa platform, and I introduce it here as a graphic description by a
new hand:
"'Two men presenting wider contrasts could hardly be found, as the
representatives of the two great parties. Everybody knows Douglas, a
short, thick-set, burly man, with large, round head, heavy hair, dark
complexion, and fierce, bull-dog look. Strong in his own real power, and
skilled by a thousand conflicts in all the strategy of a hand-to-hand or
a general fight; of towering ambition, restless in his determined
desire for notoriety, proud, defiant, arrogant, audacious, unscrupulous,
'Little Dug' ascended the platform and looked out impudently and
carelessly on the immense throng which surged and struggled before him.
A native of Vermont, reared on a soil where no slave stood, he came
to Illinois a teacher, and from one post to another had risen to his
present eminence. Forgetful of the ancestral hatred of slavery to which
he was the heir, he had come to be a holder of slaves, and to owe much
of his fame to continued subservience to Southern influence.
"'The other--Lincoln--is a native of Kentucky, of poor white parentage,
and, from his cradle, has felt the blighting influence of the dark and
cruel shadow which rendered labor dishonorable and kept the poor in
poverty, while it advanced the rich in their possessions. Reared in
poverty, and to the humblest aspirations, he left his native State,
crossed the line into Illinois, and began his career of honorable
toil. At first a laborer, splitting rails for a living--deficient in
education, and applying himself even to the rudiments of knowledge--he,
too, felt the expanding power of his American manhood, and began to
achieve the greatness to which he has succeeded. With great difficulty,
struggling through the tedious formularies of legal lore, he was
admitted to the bar, and rapidly made his way to the front ranks of
his profession. Honored by the people with office, he is still the same
honest and reliable man. He volunteers in the Black Hawk war, and does
the State good service in its sorest need. In every relation of life,
socially and to the State, Mr. Lincoln has been always the pure and
honest man. In physique he is the opposite to Douglas. Built on the
Kentucky type, he is very tall, slender and angular, awkward even
in gait and attitude. His face is sharp, large-featured and
unprepossessing. His eyes are deep-set under heavy brows, his forehead
is high and retreating, and his hair is dark and heavy. In repose, I
must confess that 'Long Abe's' appearance is not comely. But stir him
up and the fire of his genius plays on every feature. His eye glows
and sparkles; every lineament, now so ill-formed, grows brilliant and
expressive, and you have before you a man of rare power and of strong
magnetic influence. He _takes_ the people every time, and there is no
getting away from his sturdy good sense, his unaffected sincerity and
the unceasing play of his good humor, which accompanies his close logic
and smoothes the way to conviction. Listening to him on Saturday,
calmly and unprejudiced, I was convinced that he had no superior as
a stump-speaker. He is clear, concise and logical, his language is
eloquent and at perfect command. He is altogether a more fluent speaker
than Douglas, and in all the arts of debate fully his equal. The
Republicans of Illinois have chosen a champion worthy of their heartiest
support, and fully equipped for the conflict with the great Squatter
Sovereign.'
"One trifling error of fact will be noticed by the readers of these
volumes in Mr. Dewey's sketch. It relates to Douglas, and it is proper
to correct it here. Mr. Douglas was never a slave-holder. As a trustee
or guardian, he held a plantation in Louisiana with the slaves thereon,
which had belonged to Col. Robert Martin, of North Carolina, the
maternal grandfather of his two sons by his first marriage. It is a fact
that Douglas refused to accept this plantation and its belongings as a
gift to himself from Colonel Martin in the life-time of the latter. It
was characteristic of him that he declined to be an owner of slaves, not
because he sympathized with the Abolitionists, but because, as he said
once in a debate with Senator Wade, 'being a Northern man by birth, by
education and residence, and intending always to remain such, it was
impossible for me to know, understand, and provide for the happiness of
those people.'
"At the conclusion of the Ottawa debate, a circumstance occurred which,
Mr. Lincoln said to me afterwards, was extremely mortifying to him.
Half a dozen Republicans, roused to a high pitch of enthusiasm for their
leader, seized him as he came down from the platform, hoisted him upon
their shoulders and marched off with him, singing the 'Star Spangled
Banner,' or 'Hail Columbia,' until they reached the place where he was
to spend the night. What use Douglas made of this incident, is known to
the readers of the joint debates. He said a few days later, at Joliet,
that Lincoln was so used up in the discussion that his knees trembled,
and he had to be carried from the platform, and he caused this to be
printed in the newspapers of his own party. Mr. Lincoln called him to
account for this fable at Jonesboro.
"The Ottawa debate gave great satisfaction to our side. Mr. Lincoln,
we thought, had the better of the argument, and we all came away
encouraged. But the Douglas men were encouraged also. In his concluding
half hour, Douglas spoke with great rapidity and animation, and yet with
perfect distinctness, and his supporters cheered him wildly.
"The next joint debate was to take place at Freeport, six days later. In
the interval, Mr. Lincoln addressed meetings at Henry, Marshall county;
Augusta, Hancock county, and Macomb, McDonough county. During this
interval he prepared the answers to the seven questions put to him by
Douglas at Ottawa, and wrote the four questions which he propounded to
Douglas at Freeport. The second of these, viz.: '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?' was made the subject of a
conference between Mr. Lincoln and a number of his friends from Chicago,
among whom were Norman B. Judd and Dr. C. H. Ray, the latter the chief
editor of the Tribune. This conference took place at the town of Dixon.
I was not present, but Doctor Ray told me that all who were there
counseled Mr. Lincoln not to put that question to Douglas, because
he would answer it in the affirmative and thus probably secure his
re-election. It was their opinion that Lincoln should argue strongly
from the Dred Scott decision, which Douglas endorsed, that the people
of the Territories could not lawfully exclude slavery prior to the
formation of a State Constitution, but that he should not force Douglas
to say yes or no. They believed that the latter would let that subject
alone as much as possible in order not to offend the South, unless he
should be driven into a corner. Mr. Lincoln replied that to draw an
affirmative answer from Douglas on this question was exactly what he
wanted, and that his object was to make it impossible for Douglas to get
the vote of the Southern States in the next Presidential election. He
considered that fight much more important than the present one and he
would be willing to lose this in order to win that.*
* Mr. Lincoln's words are given in Mr. Arnold's biography
thus: "I am after larger game; the battle of 1860 is worth a
hundred of this." Mr. Arnold's authority is not mentioned,
but these are exactly the words that Doctor Ray repeated to
me.
"The result justified Mr. Lincoln's prevision. Douglas did answer in the
affirmative. If he had answered in the negative he would have lost the
Senatorial election, and that would have ended his political career. He
took the chance of being able to make satisfactory explanations to the
slaveholders, but they would have nothing to do with him afterward.
"The crowd that assembled at Freeport on the 27th of August was even
larger than that at Ottawa. Hundreds of people came from Chicago and
many from the neighboring State of Wisconsin. Douglas came from Galena
the night before the debate, and was greeted with a great torch-light
procession. Lincoln came the following morning from Dixon, and was
received at the railway station by a dense crowd, filling up all the
adjacent streets, who shouted themselves hoarse when his tall form was
seen emerging from the train. Here, again, the people had seized upon
the platform, and all the approaches to it, an hour before the speaking
began, and a hand-to-hand fight took place to secure possession.
"After the debate was finished, we Republicans did not feel very
happy. We held the same opinion that Mr. Judd and Doctor Ray had--that
Douglas's answer had probably saved him from defeat. We did not look
forward, and we did not look South, and even if we had done so, we were
too much enlisted in this campaign to swap it for another one which
was two years distant. Mr. Lincoln's wisdom was soon vindicated by his
antagonist, one of whose earliest acts, after he returned to Washington
City, was to make a speech (February 23, 1859) defending himself against
attacks upon the 'Freeport heresy,'as the Southerners called it. In that
debate Jefferson Davis was particularly aggravating, and Douglas did not
reply to him with his usual spirit.
"It would draw this chapter out to unreasonable length, if I were to
give details of all the small meetings of this campaign. After the
Freeport joint debate, we went to Carlinville, Macoupin county, where
John M. Palmer divided the time with Mr. Lincoln. From this place we
went to Clinton, De Witt county, via Springfield and Decatur. During
this journey an incident occurred which gave unbounded mirth to Mr.
Lincoln at my expense.
"We left Springfield about nine o'clock in the evening for Decatur,
where we were to change cars and take the north-bound train on the
Illinois Central Railway. I was very tired and I curled myself up as
best I could on the seat to take a nap, asking Mr. Lincoln to wake me
up at Decatur, which he promised to do. I went to sleep, and when I
did awake I had the sensation of having been asleep a long time. It was
daylight and I knew that we should have reached Decatur before midnight.
Mr. Lincoln's seat was vacant. While I was pulling myself together, the
conductor opened the door of the car and shouted, 'State Line.' This
was the name of a shabby little town on the border of Indiana. There was
nothing to do but to get out and wait for the next train going back to
Decatur. About six o'clock in the evening I found my way to Clinton. The
meeting was over, of course, and the Chicago Tribune had lost its
expected report, and I was out of pocket for railroad fares. I wended my
way to the house of Mr. C. H. Moore, where Mr. Liacoin was staying, and
where I, too, had been an expected guest. When Mr. Lincoln saw me coming
up the garden path, his lungs began to crow like a chanticleer, and I
thought he would laugh, _sans_ intermission, an hour by his dial. He
paused long enough to say that he had fallen asleep, also, and did not
wake up till the train was starting _from_ Decatur. He had very nearly
been carried past the station himself, and, in his haste to get out, had
forgotten all about his promise to waken me. Then he began to laugh
again. The affair was so irresistibly funny, in his view, that he told
the incident several times in Washington City when I chanced to meet
him, after he became President, to any company who might be present, and
with such contagious drollery that all who heard it would shake with
laughter.
"Our course took us next to Bloomington, McLean county; Monticello,
Piatt county, and Paris, Edgar county. At the last-mentioned place
(September 8th) we were joined by Owen Lovejoy, who had never been in
that part of the State before. The fame of Lovejoy as an Abolitionist
had preceded him, however, and the people gathered around him in a
curious and hesitating way, as though he were a witch who might suddenly
give them lock-jaw or bring murrain on their cattle, if he were much
provoked. Lovejoy saw this and was greatly amused by it, and when
he made a speech in the evening, Mr. Lincoln having made his in the
day-time, he invited the timid ones to come up and feel of his horns and
examine his cloven foot and his forked tail. Lovejoy was one of the most
effective orators of his time. After putting his audience in good humor
in this way, he made one of his impassioned speeches which never failed
to gain votes where human hearts were responsive to the wrongs of
slavery. Edgar county was in the Democratic list, but this year it gave
a Republican majority on the legislative and congressional tickets, and
I think Lovejoy's speech was largely accountable for the result.
"My notes of the Paris meeting embrace the following passage from Mr.
Lincoln's speech:
WHAT IS POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY?
"'Let us inquire what Judge Douglas really invented when he introduced
the Nebraska Bill? He called it Popular Sovereignty. What does that
mean? It means the sovereignty of the people over their own affairs--in
other words, the right of the people to govern themselves. Did Judge
Douglas invent this? Not quite. The idea of Popular Sovereignty was
floating about several ages before the author of the Nebraska Bill was
born--indeed, before Columbus set foot on this continent. In the year
1776 it took form in the noble words which you are all familiar with:
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal,' etc. Was not this the origin of Popular Sovereignty as applied
to the American people? Here we are told that governments are instituted
among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
If that is not Popular Sovereignty, then I have no conception of the
meaning of words. If Judge Douglas did not invent this kind of Popular
Sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what kind he did
invent. Was it the right of emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska to govern
themselves, and a lot of 'niggers,' too, if they wanted them? Clearly
this was no invention of his, because General Cass put forth the same
doctrine in 1848 in his so-called Nicholson letter, six years before
Douglas thought of such a thing. Then what was it that the 'Little
Giant' invented? It never occurred to General Cass to call his discovery
by the odd name of Popular Sovereignty. He had not the face to say that
the right of the people to govern 'niggers' was the right of the people
to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were
not moulded to the brazenness of calling the right to put a hundred
'niggers' through under the lash in Nebraska a 'sacred right of
self-government.' And here, I submit to you, was Judge Douglas's
discovery, and the whole of it. He discovered that the right to breed
and flog negroes in Nebraska was Popular Sovereignty.'
"The next meetings in their order were Hillsboro, Montgomery county;
Greenville, Bond county, and Edwardsville, Madison county. At
Edwardsville (September 13th) I was greatly impressed with Mr. Lincoln's
speech, so much so, that I took down the following passages, which, as I
read them now, after the lapse of thirty-one years, bring back the whole
scene with vividness before me--the quiet autumn day in the quaint old
town; the serious people clustered around the platform; Joseph Gillespie
officiating as chairman, and the tall, gaunt, earnest man, whose high
destiny and tragic death were veiled from our eyes, appealing to his old
Whig friends, and seeking to lift them up to his own level:
"'I have been requested,' he said, 'to give a concise statement of
the difference, as I understand it, between the Democratic and the
Republican parties on the leading issues of the campaign. This question
has been put to me by a gentleman whom I do not know. I do not even know
whether he is a friend of mine or a supporter of Judge Douglas in this
contest, nor does that make any difference. His question is a proper
one. Lest I should forget it, I will give you my answer before
proceeding with the line of argument I have marked out for this
discussion.
"'The difference between the Republican and the Democratic parties on
the leading issues of this contest, as I understand it, is that the
former consider slavery a moral, social and political wrong, while the
latter do not consider it either a moral, a social or a political wrong;
and the action of each, as respects the growth of the country and the
expansion of our population, is squared to meet these views. I will not
affirm that the Democratic party consider slavery morally, socially
and politically right, though their tendency to that view has, in my
opinion, been constant and unmistakable for the past five years. I
prefer to take, as the accepted maxim of the party, the idea put forth
by Judge Douglas, that he 'don't care whether slavery is voted down
or voted up.' I am quite willing to believe that many Democrats would
prefer that slavery should be always voted down, and I know that some
prefer that it be always 'voted up;' but I have a right to insist that
their action, especially if it be their constant action, shall determine
their ideas and preferences on this subject. Every measure of the
Democratic party of late years, bearing directly or indirectly on
the slavery question, has corresponded with this notion of utter
indifference, whether slavery or freedom shall outrun in the race of
empire across to the Pacific--every measure, I say, up to the Dred
Scott decision, where, it seems to me, the idea is boldly suggested that
slavery is better than freedom. The Republican party, on the contrary,
hold that this government was instituted to secure the blessings of
freedom, and that slavery is an unqualified evil to the negro, to the
white man, to the soil, and to the State. Regarding it as an evil, they
will not molest it in the States where it exists, they will not overlook
the constitutional guards which our fathers placed around it; they will
do nothing that can give proper offense to those who hold slaves by
legal sanction; but they will use every constitutional method to prevent
the evil from becoming larger and involving more negroes, more white
men, more soil, and more States in its deplorable consequences. They
will, if possible, place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in course of ultimate peaceable extinction in God's
own good time. And to this end they will, if possible, restore the
government to the policy of the fathers--the policy of preserving the
new Territories from the baneful influence of human bondage, as the
northwestern Territories were sought to be preserved by the ordinance
of 1787, and the Compromise Act of 1820. They will oppose, in all its
length and breadth, the modern Democratic idea, that slavery is as good
as freedom, and ought to have room for expansion all over the continent,
if people can be found to carry it. All, or nearly all, of Judge
Douglas's arguments are logical, if you admit that slavery is as good
and as right as freedom, and not one of them is worth a rush if you deny
it. This is the difference, as I understand it, between the Republican
and Democratic parties....
"'My friends, I have endeavored to show you the logical consequences
of the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people of a Territory
cannot prevent the establishment of slavery in their midst. I have
stated what cannot be gainsaid, that the grounds upon which this
decision is made are equally applicable to the free States as to the
free Territories, and that the peculiar reasons put forth by Judge
Douglas for endorsing this decision, commit him, in advance, to the next
decision and to all other decisions coming from the same source. And
when, by all these means, you have succeeded in dehumanizing the negro;
when you have put him down and made it impossible for him to be but as
the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul in this
world and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out as in the
darkness of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have
roused will not turn and rend you? What constitutes the bulwark of our
own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our
bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance
against tyranny. All of those may be turned against us without making
us weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which
God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty
as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this
spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.
Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your
own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others,
you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit
subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. And let me
tell you, that all these things are prepared for you by the teachings
of history, if the elections shall promise that the next Dred Scott
decision and all future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in by the
people.'
"From Edwardsville we went to the Jonesboro joint debate. The audience
here was small, not more than 1,000 or 1,500, and nearly all Democrats.
This was in the heart of Egypt. The country people came into the little
town with ox teams mostly, and a very stunted breed of oxen, too. Their
wagons were old-fashioned, and looked as though they were ready to fall
in pieces. A train with three or four carloads of Douglas men came up,
with Douglas himself, from Cairo. All who were present listened to the
debate with very close attention, and there was scarcely any cheering on
either side. Of course we did not expect any in that place. The reason
why Douglas did not get much, was that Union county was a stronghold
of the 'Danites,' or Buchanan Democrats. These were a pitiful minority
everywhere except in the two counties of Union and Bureau. The reason
for this peculiarity in the two counties named, must lie in the fact
that Union county was the home of the United States Marshal for the
Southern District, W. L. Dougherty; and Bureau, that of the Marshal for
the Northern District, Charles N. Pine. Evidently both these men worked
their offices for all they were worth, and the result would seem to show
that Marshalships are peculiarly well fitted to the purpose of turning
voters from their natural leanings. In Bureau county the 'Danites'
polled more votes than the Douglas Democrats. In Union, they divided the
party into two nearly equal parts. In no other county did they muster
a corporal's guard; James W. Sheahan, the editor of the Times, told me,
with great glee, after the election, that at one of the voting places in
Chicago, where the two Democratic judges of election were Irish, a few
'Danite' votes were offered, but that the judges refused to receive
them, saying gravely, 'We don't take that kind.' They thought it was
illegal voting.
"The only thing noteworthy that I recall at Jonesboro was not political
and not even terrestrial. It was the splendid appearance of Donati's
comet in the sky, the evening before the debate. Mr. Lincoln greatly
admired this strange visitor, and he and I sat for an hour or more in
front of the hotel looking at it.
"From Jonesboro we went to Centralia, where a great State Fair was
sprawling over the prairie, but there was no speaking there. It was not
good form to have political bouts at State Fairs, and I believe that the
managers had prohibited them. After one day at this place, where great
crowds clustered around both Lincoln and Douglas whenever they appeared
on the grounds, we went to Charleston, Coles county, September 18th,
where the fourth joint debate took place.
"This was a very remarkable gathering, the like of which we had not seen
elsewhere. It consisted of a great outpouring ( or rather inpouring ) of
the rural population, in their own conveyances. There was only one line
of railroad here, and only one special train on it. Yet, to my eye,
the crowd seemed larger than at either Ottawa or Freeport, in fact the
largest of the series, except the one at Galesburg, which came later.
The campaign was now at its height, the previous debates having stirred
the people into a real fever. 'It is astonishing,' said Mr. Dewey, in
his letter from Charleston to the _Evening Post_, 'how deep an interest
in politics this people take. Over long weary miles of hot, dusty
prairie, the processions of eager partisans come on foot, on horseback,
in wagons drawn by horses or mules; men, women and children, old and
young; the half-sick just out of the last 'shake,' children in arms,
infants at the maternal fount; pushing on in clouds of dust under a
blazing sun, settling down at the town where the meeting is, with hardly
a chance for sitting, and even less opportunity for eating, waiting in
anxious groups for hours at the places of speaking; talking, discussing,
litigious, vociferous, while the roar of artillery, the music of bands,
the waving of banners, the huzzas of the crowds, as delegation after
delegation appears; the cry of peddlers vending all sorts of wares, from
an infallible cure for 'agur' to a monster water-melon in slices to suit
purchasers--combine to render the occasion one scene of confusion and
commotion. The hour of one arrives, and a perfect rush is made for the
grounds; a column of dust rising to the heavens, and fairly deluging
those who are hurrying on through it. Then the speakers come, with flags
and banners and music, surrounded by cheering partisans. Their arrival
at the grounds and immediate approach to the stand, is the signal for
shouts that rend the heavens. They are introduced to the audience amid
prolonged and enthusiastic cheers, they are interrupted by frequent
applause and they sit down finally among the same uproarious
demonstrations. The audience sit or stand patiently, throughout, and, as
the last word is spoken, make a break for their homes, first hunting up
lost members of their families, gathering their scattered wagon loads
together, and, as the daylight fades away, entering again upon the broad
prairies and slowly picking their way back to the place of beginning.'
"Both Lincoln and Douglas left the train at Mattoon, distant some
ten miles from Charleston, to accept the escort of their respective
partisans. Mattoon was then a comparatively new place, a station on
the Illinois Central Railway peopled by Northern men. Nearly the whole
population of this town turned out to escort Mr. Lincoln along the
dusty highway to Charleston. In his procession was a chariot containing
thirty-two young ladies, representing the thirty-two States of the
Union, and carrying banners to designate the same. Following this, was
one young lady on horseback holding aloft a banner inscribed, 'Kansas--I
will be free.' As she was very good looking, we thought that she would
not remain free always. The muses had been wide awake also, for, on the
side of the chariot, was the stirring legend:
'Westward the star of empire takes its way;
The girls link-on to Lincoln, as their mothers did to Clay.'
"The Douglas procession was likewise a formidable one. He, too, had his
chariot of young ladies, and, in addition, a mounted escort. The two
processions stretched an almost interminable distance along the road,
and were marked by a moving cloud of dust.
"Before the Charleston debate, Mr. Lincoln had received (from Senator
Trumbull, I suppose) certain official documents to prove that Douglas
had attempted, in 1856, to bring Kansas into the Union without allowing
the people to vote upon her constitution, and with these he put the
Little Giant on the defensive, and pressed him so hard that we all
considered that our side had won a substantial victory.
"The Democrats seemed to be uneasy and dissatisfied, both during the
debate and afterward. Mr. Isaac N. Arnold, in his biography of Lincoln,
page 148, relates an incident in the Charleston debate on the authority
of 'a spectator' ( not named ), to this effect: that near the end of Mr.
Lincoln's closing speech, Douglas became very much excited and walked
rapidly up and down the platform behind Lincoln, holding a watch in his
hand; that the instant the watch showed the half hour, he called out
'Sit down! Lincoln, sit down! Your time is up.'
"This must be a pure invention. My notes show nothing of the kind. I sat
on the platform within ten feet of Douglas all the time that Lincoln was
speaking. If any such dramatic incident had occurred, I should certainly
have made a note of it, and even without notes I think I should have
remembered it. Douglas was too old a campaigner to betray himself in
this manner, whatever his feelings might have been.
"After the debate was ended and the country people had mostly dispersed,
the demand for speeches was still far from being satisfied. Two meetings
were started in the evening, with blazing bonfires in the street to
mark the places. Richard J. Oglesby, the Republican nominee for Congress
(afterward General, Governor and Senator ), addressed one of them.
At the Douglas meeting, Richard T. Merrick and U. F. Linder were the
speakers. Merrick was a young lawyer from Maryland, who had lately
settled in Chicago, and a fluent and rather captivating orator. Linder
was an Old Line Whig, of much natural ability, who had sided with
the Democrats on the break-up of his own party. Later in the campaign
Douglas wrote him a letter saying: 'For God's sake, Linder, come up
here and help me.' This letter got into the newspapers, and, as a
consequence, the receiver of it was immediately dubbed, 'For-God's-Sake
Linder,' by which name he was popularly know all the rest of his days.
"There was nothing of special interest between the Charleston debate and
that which took place at Galesburg, October 7th. Here we had the largest
audience of the whole series and the worst day, the weather being very
cold and raw, notwithstanding which, the people flocked from far and
near. One feature of the Republican procession was a division of one
hundred ladies and an equal number of gentlemen on horseback as a
special escort to the carriage containing Mr. Lincoln. The whole country
seemed to be swarming and the crowd stood three hours in the college
grounds, in a cutting wind, listening to the debate. Mr. Lincoln's
speech at Galesburg was, in my judgment, the best of the series.
"At Quincy, October 13th, we had a fine day and a very large crowd,
although not so large as at Galesburg. The usual processions and
paraphernalia were on hand. Old Whiggery was largely represented here,
and, in front of the Lincoln procession, was a live raccoon on a pole,
emblematic of a by-gone day and a by-gone party. When this touching
reminder of the past drew near the hotel where we were staying, an old
weather-beaten follower of Henry Clay, who was standing near me,
was moved to tears. After mopping his face he made his way up to Mr.
Lincoln, wrung his hand and burst into tears again. The wicked Democrats
carried at the head of their procession a dead 'coon, suspended by
its tail. This was more in accord with existing facts than the other
specimen, but our prejudices ran in favor of live 'coons in that part
of Illinois. Farther north we did not set much store by them. Here I
saw Carl Schurz for the first time. He was hotly in the fray, and was
an eager listener to the Quincy debate. Another rising star, Frank P.
Blair, Jr., was battling for Lincoln in the southern part of the State.
"The next day both Lincoln and Douglas, and their retainers, went on
board the steamer _City of Louisiana_, bound for Alton. Here the last of
the joint debates took place, October 15th. The day was pleasant but the
audience was the smallest of the series, except the one at Jonesboro.
The debate passed off quietly and without any incident worthy of note.
"The campaign was now drawing to a close. Everybody who had borne an
active part in it was pretty well fagged out, except Mr. Lincoln. He
showed no signs of fatigue. Douglas's voice was worn down to extreme
huskiness. He took great pains to save what was left of his throat, but
to listen to him moved one's pity. Nevertheless, he went on doggedly,
bravely, and with a jaunty air of confidence. Mr. Lincoln's voice was
as clear and far-reaching as it was the day he spoke at Beardstown, two
months before--a high-pitched tenor, almost a falsetto, that could
be heard at a greater distance than Douglas's heavy basso. The battle
continued till the election (November 2d), which took place in a cold,
pelting rainstorm, one of the most uncomfortable in the whole year. But
nobody minded the weather. The excitement was intense all day in all
parts of the State. The Republican State ticket was elected by a small
plurality, the vote being as follows:
FOR STATE TREASURER.
Miller (Republican),........... 125,430
Fondey (Douglas Democrat),..... 121,609
Dougherty (Buchanan Democrat),. 5,079
"The Legislature consisted of twenty-five Senators and seventy-five
Representatives. Thirteen Senators held over from the preceding
election. Of these, eight were Democrats and five Republicans. Of the
twelve Senators elected this year, the Democrats elected six and the
Republicans six. So the new Senate was composed of fourteen Democrats
and eleven Republicans.
"Of the seventy-five members of the House of Representatives, the
Democrats elected forty and the Republicans thirty-five.
"On joint ballot, therefore, the Democrats had fifty-four and the
Republicans forty-six. And by this vote was Mr. Douglas re-elected
Senator.
"Mr. Isaac N. Arnold, in his biography, says that Mr. Lincoln lost the
election because a number of the holding-over Senators, representing
districts that actually gave Republican majorities in this election,
were Democrats. This is an error, and an inexcusable one for a person
who is writing history. The apportionment of the State into Legislative
districts had become, by the growth and movement of population, unduly
favorable to the Democrats; that is, it required fewer votes on the
average to elect a member in a Democratic district than in a Republican
district. But ideal perfection is never attained in such matters. By the
rules of the game Douglas had fairly won. The Republicans claimed that
the Lincoln members of the Lower House of the Legislature received more
votes, all told, than the Douglas members. These figures are not, at
this writing, accessible to me, but my recollection is that, even on
this basis, Douglas scored a small majority. There were five thousand
Democratic votes to be accounted for, which had been cast for Dougherty
for State Treasurer, and of these, the Douglas candidates for the
Legislature would naturally get more than the Lincoln candidates.
"What is more to the purpose, is that the Republicans gained 29,241
votes, as against a Democratic gain of 21,332 (counting the Douglas and
Buchanan vote together), over the presidential election of 1856. There
were 37,444 votes for Fillmore in that year, and there was also an
increase of the total vote of 13,129. These 50,573 votes, or their
equivalents, were divided between Lincoln and Douglas in the ratio of 29
to 21.
"Mr. Lincoln, as he said at the Dixon Conference, had gone after 'larger
game,' and he had bagged it to a greater extent than he, or anybody,
then, imagined. But the immediate prize was taken by his great rival.
"I say great rival, with a full sense of the meaning of the words. I
heard Mr. Douglas deliver his speech to the members of the Illinois
Legislature, April 25, 1861, in the gathering tumult of arms. It was
like a blast of thunder. I do not think that it is possible for a human
being to produce a more prodigious effect with spoken words, than
he produced on those who were within the sound of his voice. He was
standing in the same place where I had first heard Mr. Lincoln. The
veins of his neck and forehead were swollen with passion, and the
perspiration ran down his face in streams. His voice had recovered
its clearness from the strain of the previous year, and was frequently
broken with emotion. The amazing force that he threw into the words:
'When hostile armies are marching under new and odious banners against
the government of our country, the shortest way to peace is the most
stupendous and unanimous preparation for war,' seemed to shake the whole
building. That speech hushed the breath of treason in every corner of
the State. Two months later he was in his grave. He was only forty-eight
years old.
"The next time I saw Mr. Lincoln, after the election, I said to him that
I hoped he was not so much disappointed as I had been. This, of course,
'reminded him of a little story.' I have forgotten the story, but it was
about an over-grown boy who had met with some mishap, 'stumped' his toe,
perhaps, and who said that 'it hurt too much to laugh, and he was too
big to cry.'
"Mention has been made of the 'Danites' in the campaign. They were
the Buchanan office-holders and their underlings, and, generally, a
contemptible lot. The chief dispenser of patronage for Illinois was
John Slidell, Senator from Louisiana. He took so much interest in his
vocation that he came to Chicago as early as the month of July, to see
how the postmasters were doing their work. He hated Douglas intensely,
and slandered him vilely, telling stories about the cruel treatment
and dreadful condition of the negroes on the Douglas plantation in
Louisiana. These stories were told to Dr. Daniel Brainard, the surgeon
of the U. S. Marine Hospital. Brainard was a Buchanan Democrat, like all
the other federal officeholders, but was a very distinguished surgeon;
in fact, at the head of his profession, and a man of wealth and social
standing. He became convinced that Slidell's story about the Douglas
negroes was true, and he communicated it to Doctor Ray, and urged him to
publish it in the _Tribune_. Doctor Ray did so, without, however, giving
any names. It made no little commotion. Presently, the New Orleans
_Picayune_ denied the truth of the statement, concerning the condition
and treatment of the negroes, and called it 'an election canard.' Then
the Chicago Times called for the authority, and the Tribune gave the
names of Brainard and Slidell. The latter at once published a card
in the Washington Union, denying that he had ever made the statements
attributed to him by Brainard. The latter was immediately in distress.
He first denied that he had made the statements imputed to him, but
afterward admitted that he had had conversations with a Republican
editor about the hardships of the Douglas negroes, but denied that he
had given Slidell as authority. Nobody doubted that the authorship of
the story was correctly stated in the first publication. It was much too
circumstantial to have been invented, and Doctor Ray was not the man to
publish lies knowingly.
"The 'Danites' held a State convention at Springfield, September 8th,
or, rather, they had called one for that date, but the attendance was so
small that they organized it as a convention of the Sixth Congressional
District. John C. Breckinridge and Daniel S. Dickinson had been
announced as speakers for the occasion, but neither of them appeared.
Breckinridge took no notice of this meeting, or of his invitation to
be present. A telegram was read from Dickinson, sending 'a thousand
greetings,' and this, the Douglas men said, was liberal, being about
ten to each delegate. Ex-Gov. John Reynolds was the principal speaker.
Douglas was in Springfield the same day. He met his enemies by chance at
the railway station, and glared defiance at them.
"Mention should be made of the services of Senator Trumbull in the
campaign. Mr. Trumbull was a political debator, scarcely, if at all,
inferior to either Lincoln or Douglas. He had given Douglas more trouble
in the Senate, during the three years he had been there, than anybody
else in that body. He had known Douglas from his youth, and he knew all
the joints in his armor. He possessed a courage equal to any occasion,
and he wielded a blade of tempered steel. He was not present at any of
the joint debates, or at any of Mr. Lincoln's separate meetings, but
addressed meetings wherever the State Central Committee sent him. Mr.
Lincoln often spoke of him to me, and always in terms of admiration.
That Mr. Lincoln was sorely disappointed at losing the Senatorship in
1855, when Trumbull was elected, is quite true, but he knew, as well as
anybody, that in the then condition of parties, such a result could not
be avoided. Judd, Palmer and Cook had been elected to the Legislature as
Democrats. The Republican party was not yet born. The political elements
were in the boiling stage. These men could not tell what kind of
crystallization would take place. The only safe course for them, looking
to their constituencies, was to vote for a Democrat who was opposed to
the extension of slavery. Such a man they found in Lyman Trumbull, and
they knew that no mistake would be made in choosing him. I say that
Mr. Lincoln knew all this as fully as anybody could. I do not remember
having any talk with him on that subject, for it was then somewhat
stale. But I do remember the hearty good feeling that he cherished
toward Trumbull and the three men here mentioned, who were chiefly
instrumental in securing Trumbull's election.
"Douglas scented danger when Trumbull took the field, and, with his
usual adroitness, sought to gain sympathy by making it appear that it
was no fair game. At Havana, in the speech already alluded to, he made a
rather moving remonstrance against this 'playing of two upon one,' as
he called it. Mr. Lincoln, in his speech at the same place, thought it
worth while to reply:
"'I understand,' he said, 'that Judge Douglas, yesterday, referred
to the fact that both Judge Trumbull and myself are making speeches
throughout the State to beat him for the Senate, and that he tried to
create sympathy by the suggestion that this was playing _two upon
one_ against him. It is true that Judge Trumbull has made a speech in
Chicago, and I believe he intends to co-operate with the Republican
Central Committee in their arrangements for the campaign, to the extent
of making other speeches in different parts of the State. Judge Trumbull
is a Republican like myself, and he naturally feels a lively interest in
the success of his party. Is there anything wrong about that? But I will
show you how little Judge Douglas's appeal to your sympathies amounts
to. At the next general election, two years from now, a Legislature will
be elected, which will have to choose a successor to Judge Trumbull. Of
course, there will be an effort to fill his place with a Democrat. This
person, whoever he may be, is probably out making stump-speeches against
me, just as Judge Douglas is. He may be one of the present Democratic
members of the Lower House of Congress--but, whoever he is, I can tell
you that he has got to make some stump-speeches now, or his party will
not nominate him for the seat occupied by Judge Trumbull. Well, are not
Judge Douglas and this man playing two upon one against me, just as
much as Judge Trumbull and I are playing _two upon one_ against Judge
Douglas? And, if it happens that there are two Democratic aspirants for
Judge Trumbull's place, are they not playing three upon one against me,
just as we are playing two upon one against Judge Douglas?'
"Douglas had as many helpers as Lincoln had. His complaint implied that
there was nobody on the Democratic side who was anywhere near being a
match for Trumbull, and this was the fact.
"I think that this was the most important intellectual wrestle that has
ever taken place in this country, and that it will bear comparison with
any which history mentions. Its consequences we all know. It gave Mr.
Lincoln such prominence in the public eye that his nomination to the
Presidency became possible and almost inevitable. It put an apple
of discord in the Democratic party which hopelessly divided it at
Charleston, thus making Republican success in 1860 morally certain. This
was one of Mr. Lincoln's designs, as has been already shown. Perhaps the
Charleston schism would have taken place, even if Douglas had not been
driven into a corner at Freeport, and compelled to proclaim the doctrine
of 'unfriendly legislation,' but it is more likely that the break would
have been postponed a few years longer.
"Everything stated in this chapter is taken from memoranda made at the
time of occurrence. I need not say that I conceived an ardent attachment
to Mr. Lincoln. Nobody could be much in his society without being
strongly drawn to him.
"Horace White"
New York, February 27, 1890