The Lincoln and Douglas debates; an address before the Chicago Historical Society, February 17, 1914

THE LINCOLN AND
DOUGLAS DEBATES

AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE

CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

FEBRUARY 17. 1914

By

HORACE WHITE

3 1129 00435 6069

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILUNOIS

i-:%

c./

Copyright 1914 By
Chicago Historical Society

All Rights Reserved

Published July 1914

Composed and Printed By

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS DEBATES

The subject of this lecture is the Lincohi and Douglas
debates. These debates took place in the year 1858. They
grew out of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Doubt-
less some of you know what the Missouri Compromise was
and others do not. It is best that all should know, since
without such knowledge the debates themselves would
have Httle meaning for you. Fifty-six years have passed
since those debates took place. One hundred and ten
years have passed since President Jefferson bought Louisi-
ana from Napoleon Bonaparte. Missouri Territory^ was a
part of the Louisiana Purchase. Without that purchase
H there would have been no IMissouri Compromise, and no
W"- repeal of it in 1854, and no Lincoln and Douglas debates
on account thereof.

But there was a remoter and deeper cause for that
encounter. President Jefferson might have bought Louisi-
ana with its vast hinterland, and his successors might have
carved Missouri out of it and admitted her to the l)nion as
a state, without any disturbance, had not African slavery
existed in this country. That direful curse was ingrafted
upon us in the year 16 10 at Jamestown, Virginia, where a
Dutch warship, short of provisions, exchanged fourteen
negroes for a supply thereof. Few persons of the present
day reahze how shocking a comlition of society slaver} was.
It was a condition in which some millions of human beings
had no rights whatsoever, among whom the marriage relation

did not exisi, and where the privilege of virtue was
denied to women. This institution was common to all
the American colonies until the end of the Revolutionary
War. Then began an emancipation movement of which
Thomas Jefferson was the most ardent and inffucntial
advocate. He did not, however, gain sufficient support
for it in Virginia or in Maryland to aboHsh slavery
there, but in all the states north of Maryland measures
were initiated for that purpose before the end of the
eighteenth century.

After the emancipation movement came to a pause, at
the southern border of Pennsylvania, the fact became ap-
parent that there was a dividing line between free states
and slave states, and a feeling existed in both sections that
neither of them ought to acquire a preponderance of power
and mastery over the other. The slavery question was not
then an issue in poHtics, but a habit grew up of admitting
new states to the Union in pairs, in order to maintain a
balance of power in the national Senate. Thus Kentucky
and Vermont offset each other, then Tennessee and
Ohio, then Louisiana and Indiana, »^then Mississippi and
Illinois.

In 1819 Alabama, a new slave state, was admitted to the
Union and there was no free state to balance it. The terri-
tory of Missouri, in which slavery existed, also was apply-
ing for admission. While Congress was considering the
Missouri bill, Mr. Talmadge of New York, with a view to
preserving the balance of power, off"ered an amendment
providing for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the
proposed state, and prohibitmg the introduction of addi-
tional slaves. This amendment was adopted by the House
by a sectional vote, nearly all the northern members voting
for it and the southern ones against it, but it was rejected
by the Senate.

In the following year the Missouri question came up
afresh and Senator Thomas of Illinois proposed, as a
compromise, that Missouri should be admitted to the
Union vdth slavery, but that in all the remaining territory
north of 36°3o' north latitude slavery should be forever
prohibited. This amendment was adopted and the bill
was passed. The Missouri Compromise was generally
considered a victory for the South, but Thomas Jefferson
considered it the death knell of the Union. H6 was still
living, at the age of seventy-seven. He saw what this
sectional rift portended, and he wrote to John Holmes, one
of his correspondents, under date of April 22, 1820:

This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened
me and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of
the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a
reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding
with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and
held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated and
every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.

In short, there was already an irrepressible conflict in
our land. There was a fixed opinion in the North that
slavery was an evil which ought not to be extended and
enlarged. There was a grovvdng opinion in the South that
such extension was a vital necessity and that the South,
in contending for it, was contending for existence. The
prevailing thought in that quarter was that the southern
people were on the defensive, that they were resisting aggres-
sion. In this feeling they were sincere and they gave
expression to it in very hot temper.

Two treaties with Mexico following the war with that
country- in 1846-48 brought into our possession, partly by
conquest and partly by purchase, the territory now embraced
in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Cali-
fornia. Slaver}' did not exist in any part of this region,

having been abolished and prohibited by the constitution
of Mexico, but as it had been introduced into Texas in
spite of the local law, pubhc sentiment in the North was
keenly aUve to the danger of a similar result elsewhere.
So when a bill came before Congress in 1846 to appropriate
money preliminary to the first treaty, a proviso was moved
by Mr. Wiimot, of Pennsylvania, to the effect that neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist in any
territory to be thus acquired. The House promptly adopted
it but it was rejected by the Senate, and the fight over the
Wiimot Pro\'iso continued for several years. Abraham
Lincoln was a member of Congress during two of those
years and he voted for the Wiimot Proviso in one form or
another about forty times.

The discovery of gold in Cahfornia in 1848 caused such
a rush of immigrants to the Pacific Coast that, while
Congress was stiU wrangling over the Wiimot Pro\dso and
the spoils of the ivlexican War, the new settlers in California
came together in June, 1849, formed a state constitution
prohibiting slavery, and apphed for admission to the Union.
Here was an accomplished fact, which could not be ignored
or postponed. Henr>^ Clay brought forward a series of
bills, which, when finally passed, became known^as the
Compromise Measures of 1850. They included, among
other things, the admission of Cahfornia as a free state and
the organization of all the other territory in dispute, with-
out either the prohibition or the admission of slavery therein.
It was Mr. Clay's opinion that slavery was already prohibited
there by the law of Mexico. It was Mr. Webster's opinion
that it was prohibited also by the law of nature; that is, by
climate and topographical conditions.

The Compromise Measures of 1850 were assumed by
all political parties to be a final settlement of the slaver>'
question as far as Congress was concerned. The Demo-

crats carried the presidential election of 1852, and the in-
coming president, Franldin Pierce, in his first message to
Congress, declared that the repose which those measures
had brought to the public councils should not be disturbed
during his term of office, if he had power to prevent it.
This was a vain conception, for within sixty days there-
after he had agreed to support a bill to repeal the Missouri
Compromise. This agreement was made at the instance of
Senator Douglas of Illinois, supported by Jefferson Davis,
secretary of war, at an interv-iew in the White House on
Sunday, January- 22, 1854.

Douglas was then forty-one years of age. He had been
in Congress ten years and had reached the foremost place
there, his great predecessors, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and
John Quincy Adams, having just passed away. Born in
Vermont in 18 13, he had drifted westward at the age of
twenty to seek his fortune. He effected lodgment at Jack-
sonville, Illinois, in 1833. Nobody ever began the battle
of life in humbler surroundings or with smaller pecuniary-
resources. Yet his advance was so rapid that it seemed as
though he had only to ask anything from his fellow-citizens
in order to have it given to him more abundantly than he
desired. He had filled the offices of State's Attorney,
Member of the Legislature, Secretary of State, Judge of the
Supreme Court, Representative in Congress, and Senator
of the United States, and had been a formidable candidate
for the presidency in the Democratic National Convention
of 1852 which nominated Pierce. In the Democratic party
he had forged to the front by \irtue of boldness in leadership,
untiring industr>^, boundless ambition and self-confidence,
engaging manners, gi-eat capacity as a party organizer, and
unsurpassed powers as an orator and debater. He had a
large head, surmounted by an abundant mane, which gave
the appearance of a lion prepared to roar or crush his

prey, and the resemblance was not seldom confirmed when
he opened his mouth on the stump or in the Senate
chamber. Although patriotic beyond a doubt, he was
color blind to moral principles in politics, and if not
stone blind to the evils of slavery was deaf and dumb
to any expression concerning them. In stature he
was only five feet four inches high, but he had earned
the title of "Little Giant" before he ever held a public
office, and he kept it undisputed till the day of his death.
WTien he began his pubHc career he had for competitors
and rivals in his near neighborhood, Abraham Lincoln,
Lyman Trumbull, Edward D. Baker, O. H. Browning,
Richard Yates, and several other men who gained
national reputation and position, all of whom he distanced
in the race for preferment up to the time when he linked his
fortunes with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Ln
1854 he filled the public eye in larger measure than any other
American, not excepting President Buchanan. He was the
only man then living who could have carried that measure
through Congress. He was the only northern man who
would have had the audacity to propose it. Nor would any
southern statesman have ventured to take such a step then
if he had not led the way.

On the 5th of December, 1853, Senator Dodge, of Iowa,
introduced a bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska,
embracing all the unorganized country west of the state of
Missouri and north of 36°3o' north latitude. It said nothing
about slavery. It was referred to the Committee on Terri-
tories, of which Douglas was chairman. Douglas reported
it back with an amendment pro\iding "that all questions
pertaining to slavery in the territories, and in the new states
to be formed therefrom are to be left to the decision of the
people residing therein through their appropriate repre-
sentatives." In a report accompanying the bill he said:

Stephen Arnold Douglas
From a photograph supposed to have been made in 1858

The principles established by the Compromise Measures of 1850, so
far as they are applicable to territorial organizations, are proposed
to be affirmed and carried into practical operation within the limits
of the new territory.

This was an unexpected revelation and a ver>' startling
one to the people of the free states, who had never imagined
that the Compromise of 1850 reached backward as well as
forward so as to render the Missouri Compromise of 1820
nugatory and void. Yet a careful reading of Douglas'
amendment shows that it did not repeal the Missouri Com-
promise, for it did not open the door to the admission of any
slaves. It was merely a provision that if the people of the
territory should ask to be admitted to the Union as a slave
state, without ever having had a slave in their borders, they
should be allowed to come in. It was hardly possible that
such a thing could happen.

Senator Dixon of Kentucky, the successor of Henry
Clay, saw the point at once. He moved an amendment to
Douglas' bill so as to repeal the Missouri Compromise
outright and admit slavery to the new territory if any
slave-owners desired to carry them there. Douglas was
disconcerted by this motion. He went to Dixon's seat and
urged him to withdraw it, saying that it w^ould most prob-
ably defeat the bill and prevent the organization of the
territory altogether. Dixon was inflexible. Douglas hesi-
tated a few days but finally accepted Dixon's amendment,
and after a desperate struggle in Congress and amid intense
excitement throughout the country it eventually passed
both houses and was approved by President Pierce.

When the biU actually became a law there was a poHti-
cal explosion in every northern state. The old parties
were rent asunder and a new one began to fonn in order to
prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories.
Abraham Lincoln was at this time a country lawyer in

%]^(Llj

Springfield, Illinois, with a not very lucrative practice, but
he was a very popular story-teller. In fact, he was not
exactly the leader of the bar. To reach the front rank in
the legal profession one must give his undi\'ided attention
and best energies to it. Lincoln never did so. He was,
first of all, a poHtician, using this phrase in its best sense — a
man absorbed in the contemplation of pubhc affairs and
the desire to participate therein. He had been a member of
Congress one term, but in 1854 he was practically shelved,
without a hope of obtaining any higher place than the one
he had filled last, or even of obtaining that one again. He
belonged to the Whig party, which was the minority party
in Illinois. He had followed Clay and Webster in sup-
porting the Compromise Measures of 1850, including the
fugitive slave law of that period, for although a hater of
slavery he believed that the Constitution required the
extradition of slaves escaping into the free states.

He was startled by the repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise. Without that awakening, which came like an
electric shock to all the northern states, he would doubtless
have remained in comparative obscurity. He would have
continued riding the circuit in central Illinois, making a
scanty living as a lawyer, entertaining tavern loungers
with funny stories, and would have passed away unhonored
and unsung. He was now roused to new activity. For the
first time the thought broke upon him that this country
could not permanently endure haK slave and half free. He
enunciated it to a friend and fellow-circuit-rider, Mr. T.
Lyle Dickey, shortly after the news arrived of the passage
of the Nebraska bill. Dickey persuaded him not to give
public expression to that thought at present, since Douglas
and his supporters would construe it as a hope that the
free states might be separated from the slave states and the
Union come to an end. Lincoln promised to be careful of

his words for the time being; but to his partner, Herndon,
he said that the day of compromise had now passed, that
either slavery or freedom must conquer, that they were
deadly antagonists which had thus far been held apart, but
that some day they would break their bonds and come to
a death grapple, and then the great question would be
settled.

Douglas' Nebraska bill was based upon the principle of
''popular sovereignty" or "sacred right of self-government"
or "right of the people to govern themselves" — three names
for the same thing. Yet it was not a new thing. It l^ad
been expounded by General Cass, the Democratic nominee
for president in 1848. It was then termed "squatter sover-
eignty." " Popular sovereignty " was a more orotund phrase
and Douglas was a more orotund speaker than Cass. He
made such skilful and incessant use of it and rang so many
changes on it, that he finally called it "my great principle"
and led many unthinking people to believe, not merely that
he had been the first to apply it to our outlying territories,
but that he was the original inventor of it as a form of
human government. It constituted the backbone, the piece
de resistance, of his speeches in Congress and everjrwhere,
including the joint debates with Lincoln.

Obviously the first thing to be done in any controversy
with him touching the Nebraska biU would be to expose
the ignis fatuus of Popular Sovereignty.

The Lincoln and Douglas debates, as commonly under-
stood, are those of 1858, seven in number, when the two
champions were candidates for the United States Senate.
But in fact, the debates of 185S were only a continuation of
the debate between the same champions in 1854, when the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a fresh subject of
dispute and when the poHtical elements from which the
Republican party was cast were in the boiling and bubbling

stage. It was my good fortune to hear the debates of both
years.

Douglas came home in September, 1854, to defend his
course in repealing the Missouri Compromise. He first
made an attempt to do so at Chicago but the people were
intensely hostile to him and literally hooted him from the
platform. His next appearance was at Springfield, Octo-
ber 3, where the state fair was in progress. He spoke in the
Representative hall of the state house. His speech was, for
the most part, a repetition of his arguments in the Senate on
the Nebraska bill, a seductive presentation of the doctrine
of Popular Sovereignty, and an attempt to show that the
Missouri Compromise had been repealed in principle by the
Compromise Measures of 1850.

On the followdng day Lincoln replied to Douglas in the
same hall (Douglas himseK being present) in a great speech,
one of the world's masterpieces of argumentative power and
moral grandeur. This was the first speech made by him
that gave a true measure of his qualities. It was the first
pubhc occasion that laid a strong hold upon his conscience
and stirred the depths of his nature. It was the first
speech of his that I was privileged to hear. I was then
twenty years of age. The impression made upon me was
overwhelming and it has lost nothing by the lapse of time.
I have read it often since, and always with thankfulness that
we had the right man in the right place at that critical
juncture, to uphold the banner of righteousness and make a
rallying-point for the lovers of freedom in the Northwest.
It was a profoundly serious speech. The thought impressed
upon its hearers was their solemn responsibility to God and
man and future generations, to uphold the principles of free
government, without flinching or doubting or wavering.
In the whole twenty-nine pages of the speech there is
not a line of levity, nothing to provoke a smile, although

Mr. Lincoln was an unrivaled master of humor on all proper
occasions. He was at this time forty-five years of age, at
the prime of life, at tht maturity of his powers. He never
made a better speech than this one, although the Cooper
Institute speech is on the same plane with it. Of the latter
Horace Greeley said that it was the greatest speech he had
ever listened to, although he had heard several of Webster's
best. In Mr. Lincoln's complete writings the speech we
have been considering is styled the Peoria speech, because
it was delivered at Peoria twelve days later, and soon after-
ward published from his own manuscript, although he did
not use any notes whatever when speaking.

Before coming to the joint debates of 1858, 1 will briefly
note Mr. Lincoln's answer to Douglas' Popular Sovereignty
dogma, or "sacred right of self-government." He said that
the right of self-government was absolutely and eternally
right but that whether it included the right to hold negroes
as slaves in Nebraska, or anywhere, depended upon whether
a negro was, or was not, a man. If he was not a man. he
might be reduced to servitude without any violation of the
doctrine of self-government; but if he was a man, he, too, had
the right to govern himself. To deny him that right was a
total destruction of the doctrine of self-government. "If
it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska," he added,
"to take and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred
right to buy them where they can buy them cheapest, and
that will undoubtedly be on the coast of Africa, provided
you consent not to hang men for going there to buy them."
In his later debates Mr. Lincoln applied to this Popular
Sovereignty humbug a more crisp, sententious definition,
saying it meant that "if A wanted to make a slave of B, no
third man had a right to object."

Between the debates of 1854 and those of 1858 two things
of importance occurred. One was the Kansas war between

the Free State men and the Pro-slavery men. Included in
this strife were the raids of non-residents, commonly called
"border ruffians," from Missouri into Kansas, to seize the
ballot boxes and control the elections. The other was the
attempt of the Pro-slavery party in 1857 to get Kansas
admitted to the Union as a state under the Lecompton
Constitution, without submitting it to the people for rati-
fication or rejection. In this attempt President Buchanan
sided with the Lecomptonites, although he had assured the
governor of the territory, Robert J. Walker, that the Con-
stitution should be so submitted. Douglas took the con-
trary view and insisted that the Constitution ought to be
submitted to the vote of the people at a fair election, and
that any different course would be a barefaced fraud upon
Kansas, and a national crime. To this position he adhered
in spite of the whole power of the administration, but he
said repeatedly that he cared not whether slavery was voted
up or voted down. His opposition to the Lecompton meas-
ure did not change the majority in the Senate, but it did
have that effect in the House. It killed Lecompton. His
course in this matter was so great a reinforcement to the
Republicans — it took such a burden of apprehension and
dread off their minds, and it held out such promise of future
assistance — that the leaders of the party in the eastern
states, including Seward and Greeley, strongly favored the
policy of joining forces to re-elect Douglas, w^hose senatorial
term was about to expire. The Republicans of Illinois,
however, did not think that Douglas could be trusted under
all possible circumstances. They had to judge of his future
course by his past, and they accordingly rejected the advice
of their eastern friends and nominated Lincoln as their
candidate for the Senate. If they had followed the advice
of their eastern friends, the Lincoln and Douglas debates
of 1858 would never have taken place, Lincoln would not

14

,3^^. A^s^ ^^^--^ ^., -/^^--- ^ ^=^ ^^..^---^

[indorsement]

have been brought mto the limelight and made a presi-
dential possibility in i860, and the whole course of history
would have been changed. Douglas was the cj-nosure of all
eyes then. The people of distant states and communities
came to know Lincoln, not because of his own merits, but
because he was pitted against Douglas. Few persons out-
side of IlHnois supposed that he would stand up long under
the blows of his expert and bard-hitting antagonist.

The debates of 1858 WTre the result of a challenge given
by Lincoln to Douglas to divide the time and address the
people from the same platform throughout the campaign.
Douglas hesitated about accepting the challenge. His
friends urged him to decline it, not because they feared that
Douglas would be worsted in the encounter, but because
his greater fame would draw crowds of people who would
otherwar^e never hear Lincoln at all. This was quite true.
Although Douglas is now remembered chiefly because of
his association with Lincoln, the case was far different
then.

Douglas, however, did not dare to refuse the challenge.
If he had refused, the RepubUcans would have said that he
was afraid to meet Lincohi on the stump, and there would
have been a modicum of truth in the statement. He
therefore accepted the challenge but he limited it to se\-en
debates in the whole state.

The main issue of the campaign was the extension of
slavery to new territory. Lincoln's contention was that it
ought not to be extended. Why ought it not to be extended ?
Because it was wrong per se and because it kept the country
in a constant broil and strife and tended to disrupt the
Union. At the convention where Lincoln was nominated
for senator he read a brief speech from manuscript. It was
a calm^ dispassionate argument. At or near the begin-
ning of it he used the words which have been so often

quoted: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I
beKeve this government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis-
solved— I do not expect the house to fall — ^but I do expect
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one t>hing or all
the other," etc. He then proceeded to show the steps taken
during recent years to make slavery a national instead of a
local institution by means of the Nebraska bill, and by the
decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. In
this case the court held that no negro slave, or descendant
of such slave, could bring a suit for his freedom m the courts
of the United States. The court decided also in this case
that any citizen had a constitutional right to migrate to any
territory with his slave property and hold slaves there.
In order to make slavery a national instead of a local institu-
tion, Mr. Lincoln contended, it was only necessar>^ for the
people generally to fall into the habit of not caring whether
slavery was voted dowTi or voted up, and of acquiescing in
the doctrine that negroes had no rights which they could
enforce in the courts of law.

I happened to be on the platform with Mr. Lincoln, as a
reporter, when this speech was delivered, and after the con-
vention adjourned he handed me his manuscript and asked
me to read the proof of it at the office of the Illinois State
Journal, where it had already been put in type. He said
to me that he had been urged by his friends in Springfield
not to use the words, *'this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and haK free," because the phrase
would be misinterpreted and misrepresented and would
probably cause his defeat in the election, but that his mind
was made up and he was determined to use those very
words, because they were true and because the time had
come to say so. He said he would rather be defeated in the
election than keep silent or half silent any longer.

At this convention Lincoln was nominated for United
States senator by the Repubhcan party on the motion of
Charles L. Wilson of the Chicago Evening Journal. It was
not customary to nominate men for the Senate in this way.
I think this was the first occasion on which such a nomina-
tion had been made by any political party. Wilson took
this step without consultation with anybody, in order to
put a stop to a rumor which had been put in circulation
by the supporters of Douglas that if the Republicans should
win the next legislature they would elect John Wentworth as
senator. To put an end to this clap-trap Wilson made his
motion in the convention, and it was adopted unanimously.

Douglas was a past-master of the art of political display
and dazzle. He started on this campaign in the directors'
car of the Illinois Central Railway and with a platform car
attached, on which was mounted a brass cannon with a
supply of ammunition to announce his arrival at the places
where he was to speak. These conveniences were placed
at his service by George B. McCleilan, the vice-president
of the road, afterward General McCleilan. Douglas was
accompanied also by the lady to whom he had been married
two years earlier, formerly Miss Adele Cutts, of Washington
City, a grandniece of Dolly Madison. I saw her frequently
during the campaign, and I never beheld a more queenly per-
son. Her mere presence gained votes for her husband, with-
out any effort of her own.

1^ The first joint debate in pursuance of the agreement was
at Ottawa, August 21. It took place in the open air, as
did all the other debates. The state was now pretty well
stirred up. Expectation was on tiptoe. The people \^^thin
reaching distance of Ottawa by rail or by water or by
wagon road were astir. Local committees on both sides
had made the customary arrangements of processions on
foot and on horseback, with banners and band wagons and

every kind of apparatus, including cannon, to announce the
arrival of the champions. My own anticipations regarding
the assemblage were high but the reality surpassed them.
The sky was cloudless, but it had been very dry of late,
so that the dust rose at every slight movement on the
surface. I had early taken a position on elevated ground
overlooking the town and surrounding country. Some
hours before the time fixed for the speaking, clouds of dust
began to rise on the horizon along the roads leading to the
place, from all points of the compass, and these clouds
became more frequent and more dense as the hours
rolled on.

There were large wagons with four-horse teams for the
accommodation of political clubs, heavily loaded and bearing
canvas signs indicating their habitation and their political
belonging. Long before the speakers and reporters ascended
the platform, the public square where the meeting took place,
and the avenues leading thereto, were densely packed with
human beings, who had also SAvarmed upon the platform
itseK and its timber supports, and had filled the windows of
all houses within earshot. The crowd was so dense that the
speakers and their appointed escort had much dif&culty in
reaching their places and while they were doing so one corner
of the platform gave way with its superincumbent popula-
tion, but nobody was hurt. At all the other joint debates,
except those of Jonesboro and Alton, which were in the part
of Illinois called ''Egypt," similar crowds and scenes were
witnessed, the largest assemblage of all, according to my
memoranda, being at Galesburg.

Douglas opened the debate with one hour at Ottawa.
It was in his best style. He had a clarion voice and a
smooth, compulsive, unhesitating flow of words, without
ornament, going straight to the subject-matter wdth grace
of manner and rapidity and ease of delivery which made it a

pleasure to listen to him. But this fluency covered many
rocks and quicksands. He was gifted with the faculty of
gUding deftly from one thing to another, turning the hearers'
attention away from the real subject of debate so adroitly
that the break would not be noticed, and presently the
audience would be swimming in a new channel in company
with him, not having missed the connection with the main
theme. This skill in legerdemain constituted the cliief
part of Douglas' first hour at Ottawa, and the only part
which need be noticed here. It related to Lincoln's saying
that this government could not endure permanently half
slave and half free. Why not? he asked. Didn't our
fathers make it so? Didn't Washington and Jefferson,
Franklin and Madison, Hamilton and Jay leave each state
perfectly free to do as it pleased about slavery ? Why could
it not exist on the same principles still? "Suppose," he
said, "this doctrine of uniformity preached by Mr. Lincoln,
that the states should all be free or all slave, had prevailed,
what would have been the result?" As there were then
twelve slave-holding states and only one free state, slavery
would have been fastened upon the whole thirteen. "If
uniformity had been adopted when the government was
established it must inevitably have been uniformity of
slavery everywhere or else uniformity of negro citizenship
and negro equality everywhere."

Here was the assumption adroitly introduced that
Lincoln was "preaching" the doctrine of uniformity, and
that uniformity meant that all states must be free or
all slave, and that if all were free then negro equaHty
must prevail everywhere. He went on to say that he
did not question Mr. Lincoln's conscientious belief that
the negro was made his equal and his brother, but for
his own part he denied such equality and brotherhood
altogether.

19

It perhaps occurred to him then that he was talking to
an audience composed in large part of anti-slavery men. So
he added these words :

I do not hold that because the negro is our inferior therefore he
ought to be a slave. By no means can such a conclusion be drawn
from what I have said. On the contrary, I hold that humanity and
Christianity both require that the negro shall have and enjoy every
right, every privilege, and every immimity consistent with the safety
of the society in which he lives. The question then arises what
rights and privileges are consistent with the public good. This is a
question which each state and each territory must decide for itself.

So this fine outburst of justice and generosity to the
negro ended in the reaffirmance of the "sacred right of
self-government," meaning that if A and B want to make
slaves of C and D, no other person has the right to object.

Douglas concluded his half-hour with the expressed
belief that if the new doctrine "preached by Lincoln/'
i.e., the doctrine of all one thing or all the other, should
prevail, it would dissolve the Union.

Douglas ended in a whirlwind of applause and Lincoln
began to speak in a slow and rather awkward way. He had
a thin tenor, or rather falsetto, voice, almost as high-
pitched as a boatswain's whistle. It could be heard farther
and it had better wearing qualities than Douglas' rich
baritone, but it was not so impressive to the listeners.
Moreover, his words did not flow in a rushing, unbroken
stream Uke Douglas'. He sometimes stopped for repairs
before finishing a sentence, especially at the beginning of a
speech. After getting fairly started, and lubricated, as it
were, he went on without any noticeable hesitation, but he
never had the ease and grace and finish of his adversary.
Both his mind and his body worked more slowly than
Douglas'. Nobody ever caught Douglas napping. He was
quick as a flash to answer any question put to him in debate,

Abraham Lincoln

Photograph by Alexander Hesler, Chicago; probably
made in 1858.

and not infrequently his reply, although a manifest non
sequitur, would be delivered with a wealth and overplus of
words and an air of assurance, and pity for the ignorance
of his questioner, quite confusing to the latter. Lincoln
required time to gather himself in such emergencies, but he
never failed to find his footing and to mamtain it firmly
when he had found it. What he lacked in mental agility
and alertness he made up in moral superiority and blazing
earnestness that came from his heart and went straight to .
those of his hearers.

As Lincoln had not preached any doctrine of aU one thing
or all the other, but had merely pouited out the tendency
and logical consequence of the spread of slavery into new
regions, it was easy for him to expose Douglas' sophistry and
to show, as he said, that it was "a specious and fantastic
arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse
chestnut to be a chestnut horse."' .\nd in regard to negro
equahty, it was not difficult to point out that Douglas had
put civil rights and political and social privileges all in a
mortar and brayed them together hi such fashion that the
several things could not be easil}' distinguished. After
separating them and defining the various kinds of equahty
that might exist in mundane affairs he afiirmed that, in the
right to eat the bread that his own hand had earned, the
negro was the equal of Judge Douglas and of every living
man. This may seem now a very trivial matter, not worth
recaUing, but in fact Douglas never allowed Lincoln to drop
it. He continued to charge him with the desire to bring
about negro equahty and amalgamation, to the end of the
chapter.

4l Six days later the two champions met again at Freeport.
This debate has become the most famous of the whole
series by reason of a question which Lincohi put to Douglas
and v/hich the latter answered. Certain questions had been

put by Douglas to Lincoln at Ottawa which were not of
much consequence in the long run, and when Lincoln
answered them he claimed the right to ask an equal number
in return. Among them was this: "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?"

Douglas' Popular Sovereignty and his whole campaign
were bottomed on the idea that the people of a territory
could admit slavery, or exclude it, just as the majority
might decide. But the southern people, particularly those
of the Cotton States, had come by slow degrees to a differ-
ent opinion. As long ago as 1848, William L. Yancey, of
Alabama, who has been rightly styled the "orator of seces-
sion," laid down the doctrine that the people of a territory
could not, prior to the formation of a state constitution,
prevent any citizen of the LTnited States from settling in
such territory with his property, whether slave property
or other. This doctrine had now received the sanction of
the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case.

On the evening before the Freeport debate Lincoln had a
conference with some of his party friends at which the ques-
tion was considered whether it would be wise to put the
foregoing question to Douglas or not. All of the gentlemen
present counseled him not to do so because Douglas would
reply in the affirmative in order to save his election as
senator.

It was Lincoln's opinion that Douglas was the only
Democrat who could command sufficient strength in the
North to be elected president in i860, and that if he were
not nominated the Republicans would win that fight. It
was his opinion also that if Douglas should reply that the
people of a territory could exclude slavery, the South would
turn against him, and he could not get the nomination for

president in i860 or any other time. So he decided to put
the question, and when his friends still remonstrated, saying
that he was throwing away the battle, he said: "I am after
larger game; the battle of i860 is worth a hundred of this."
Of course, neither he nor anybody else then anticipated that
the larger game of i860 would be bagged by himself.

This was not the first time that Douglas had been con-
fronted with this puzzling query. Senator Trumbull had
put it to him in a debate in the Senate more than two years
earHer, on the 9th of June, 1856. At that tune, however,
the Dred Scot decision had not been rendered. So Douglas
replied that it was a judicial question and that he and all
good Democrats would conform to the decision when it
should be made. After the decision was made he conceived
the idea of territorial unfriendliness as a means for keeping
slaver}" out of a territory notwithstanding it had a legal
right to go in, and he announced this doctrine, before the
joint debates began, in two public speeches in Illinois, at one
of which Lincoln himself was present.

''Douglas' reply at Freeport was that, no matter what the
Supreme Court might decide, the people of a territory could
exclude slavery by failing to give it legal protection, or by
enacting unfriendly legislation. "Slavery cannot exist a
day or an hour any^vhere," he said, "unless it is supported
by local pohce regulations. , . . . Hence no matter what
the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract
question, still the right of the people to make a slave territory
or a free territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska
biU."

\^ The next joint debate took place at Jonesboro, in "Lower
Egypt." This was in a region where the Republican votes
were so few that they were usually classified as "scattering."
The audience was the smallest of the series, rather less than
one thousand. Mr. Lincoln here took up Douglas' Freeport

speech and demolished it completely. He showed that it
was not true that slavery could not exist unless supported by
local police regulations, for in fact slaver>^ always began
without legislation and so continued until it became so
extensive as to require legislation to regulate and support it.
It began in this way in our own country in 1619. Dred
Scott himself was held as a slave in Minnesota without any
local poUce regulations. But if citizens had a constitutional
right to take slaves into a territory and hold them there as
property, the local legislature would be bound to afford them
aU needful protection, and faihng to do so Congress would
be bound to supply the deficiency. The logic of this posi-
tion was unassailable. The only way that Douglas could
reply was by likening slavery to liquor-sellmg, saying that
if a man should take a stock of liquors to a territory, his
right to sell it there would be subject to the local law and
if that were unfriendly it would drive him out just as
effectually as though there were a constitutional prohibi-
tion of liquor-selling. This was another example of his
skill in juggling with words. If liquor-seUing in territories
were a constitutional right no territorial law could render
that right nugatory.

Although Douglas' answer at Freeport blocked liis road
to the Charleston nomination, it saved him the senatorship.
If he had said that the people of a territory could not, under
the Dred Scott decision, keep slavery out of a territory, his
whole fabric of Popular Sovereignty and sacred right of
self-government would have fallen into ruin and he would
have been buried immediately under the heap.
^Aiter the Freeport joint debate and before that of Jones-
boro, we went to Carlinville, Macoupin County, where
John M. Palmer divided the time with Mr. Lincoln. From
this place we went to Clinton, DeWitt County, via Spring-
field and Decatur. During this journey an incident

24

occurred which gave unbounded mirth to Mr. Lincoln at
m\- 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 lUinois 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. Lincoln
was staying and where I too had been an expected guest.
When j\Ir. Lmcoln 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 also had fallen asleep
and did not wake up till the train was starting/rom 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,

25

, tTThe Galesburg meeting came on October 7, the largest of
tne series in point of numbers in attendance. Douglas made
the opening speech but it was only a repetition of his set
speech about his doctrine of Popular Sovereignty and what
he called Lincoln's doctrine of negro equahty. Enlarging
upon the odious features of the latter, he had something
to say about Thomas Jefferson and the words used by Jeffer-
son in writing the Declaration of Independence, "that all
men are created equal," etc. He afl&rmed that as Jefferson
was himself a slave-holder he never could have intended to
include negroes in that phrase. This gave Lincoln the
opportunity to unbosom himself on the subject of the
Declaration of Independence, a theme that alwa}^s brought
out his best powers. The Declaration was to him as Holy
Writ. He regarded it as the moral bedrock and foundation
stone of our whole system of government. Nobody could
question its sacredness in his presence without arousing his
hot mdignation. In reply to Douglas' remarks on this
theme he said:

I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the
Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be
searched in vain for one single affirmation from one single man that
the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I
think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that
Washington ever said so, that any president ever said so, that any
member of Congress ever said so, imtil the necessities of the Demo-
cratic part> in regard to slavery had to invent that affirmation. And
I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that while Mr. Jefferson
was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this
very subject he used the strong language that he trembled for his
country when he remembered that God was just; and I will offer the
highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if he wiU show that
he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at aU akin to that of Jeiierson.

j^The next meeting was at Quincy, October 13. Here
Mr. Lincoln had the opening and he employed it in showing

26

what were the true issues of the campaign. The funda-
mental difference between parties arose from the fact that
domestic slavery existed in the land and that it was a
disturbing element, leading to controversy between persons
who thought that slaver}' was wrong and others who did
not think it wrong. Those who thought it was evil and a
disturbing element and a breeder of controversy were bound
to use their influence and their votes in such ways as to
prevent it from increasing and overspreading new territories
and thereby becoming more harmful and disturbing than
before. He enlarged upon this theme, constructing a
masterly argument in support of the Republican party,
which was then only two years old, and had taken part in
only one presidential contest. He did not, however, indulge
in any offensive language toward the southern people. His
allusions to them were generally in terms implying that they
were the product and the victims of a bad social system, not
the architects and designers of it.

When Douglas made his reply he said that if we would
all mmd our own business and let our neighbors alone this
Republic could exist forever divided into free and slave
states; which gave Lincoln the opportunity to thank him
for his public announcement that his political theories con-
templated that slavery should last forever.
^ The last debate took place at Alton, October 15. At this
meeting Douglas' voice was scarcely audible. It was worn
out by incessant speaking, not at the seven joint debates
only, but at nearly a hundred separate meetings. At Alton
he was so hoarse that he could not be distinctly heard more
than twenty feet from the platform. Yet he maintained the
same resolute bearing, the same look of calm self-confidence
that he had shown at the beginning. Lincoln's voice was not
in the least impaired although he had made as many speeches
additional to the joint debates as Douglas had.

One instance of Lincoln's drollery comes to my mind
connected with the Alton debate. Douglas had the opening
speech here. Lincoln was occupying a seat in the rear
of the platform. His next neighbor was a young lady
friend with whom he had been engaged in conversation before
the debate began. He was holding in his lap a linen over-
garment to protect himself from the dust. When Douglas
had finished his opening speech Lincoln rose and handed
his linen duster to the young lady and said in a low tone
of voice: "Now hold my coat while I stone Stephen."

The Alton debate was a general summing-up of issues on
the part of both speakers. The only noticeable feature
was the following paragraph from Lmcoln:

This 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, the other the
divine right of kings. It is the same spirit in whatever shape it de-
velops itself. It is the same spirit that says/ 'You toil and work
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.

I was present at most of Mr. Lincoln's separate meetings
as well as at all of the joint debates, as reporter and corre-
spondent of the Chicago Press and Tribune, and I was struck
with admiration and wonder that Lincoln hardly ever
repeated himself. Each speech, no matter how smaU the
audience, seemed to be a new one, although the pabulum was
the same and some particular phrases were in frequent use.
I once asked him how he could find fresh material day after
day, while Douglas' habit was to repeat the same speech at

2S

his small meetings everywhere. He said that for his own
part he could not repeat a speech the second time although he
might make one bearing some similarity to a former one.
The subject with which he was charged was crowding for
utterance all the tim.e; it was always enlarging as he went
on from place to place. He said that Douglas was not lack-
ing in versatility, but that he had formed a theory that the
speech which he was delivering at his small meetings was
the one best adapted to secure votes and since the voters at
one meeting would not be likely to hear him at any other,
they would never know that he was repeating himself, or,
if they did know, they would probably think that it was the
proper thing to do.

I traveled many days with Mr. Lincoln in all sorts of
conveyances, when he had no other companion. At such
times we engaged in conversation mostly on the subject with
which his mind was occupied, connected with the campaign,
and he talked to me with the same freedom and seriousness
as he would have talked with a person of his own age and
experience. At the country taverns where we stopped over
night there was always a roomful, or houseful, of warm
friends and eager listeners, with whom the conversation,
interspersed with mirth, was continued for hours together.
Lincoln as a story-teller was the most humorous being I
ever knew. His stories were not told for the purpose of
causing merriment but to illustrate the subject of the con-
versation, whatever it might be. His manner of telling
such stories was irresistible and inimitable. He would
entertain a roomful of people in this way till their sides
ached with laughter. It was customary then in country
taverns for two men to occupy the same room at night,
either as a matter of necessity or as a matter of economy,
and thus I slept in the same room with Mr. Lincoln several
times.

29

In all my journeyings with him I never heard any person
call him "Abe," not even his partner, Herndon. There
was an impalpable garment of dignity about him which
forbade such familiarit)^ I have read pretended con\^ersa-
tions with him in books and newspapers where his inter-
locutors addressed him as Abe this and Abe that, but I
am sure that all such colloquies are imaginary.

Douglas does not make a very engaging picture in the
seven joint debates, but he won the \dctory according to
the rules of the game. His friends carried the legislature
by a majority of three in the Senate and five in the House,
although Lincoln's friends had a pluraHty of 4,191 in the
popular vote. The districting of the state was unduly
favorable to the Democrats. The result was bitterly
lamented by the Repubhcans and by none more so than
myself, but looking back upon it now it seems to me that
Providence directed events better than we could have done,
for if Douglas had been defeated his prestige would have
been shattered, and he would not have had sufficient strength
in the Charleston convention to split the Democratic party
in twain, whereby a RepubHcan victory was made certain
in i860. Moreover, if Lincoln had been elected senator
he would probably not have been nominated for President
in i860.

In reviewing this political encounter I have sketched
only the saHent points of the campaign, those which must
remain a part of our countr>'^'s histor}\ After reading again
the whole of these seven joint debates I am more than ever
con\nnced that Lincoln's speeches will take a place among
our American classics, not merely by reason of the cause
for which he contended, and the mighty events which the}'
foreshadowed, but also for their literary quality. We find
here the same felicity that marked the papers and messages
and speeches that he gave us during his presidency, includ-

ing the Gettysburg address and the second inaugural. This
feUcity of expression is all the more remarkable when we
reflect that the speeches were extemporaneous and were
deHvered in the open air, in the midst of noise, confusion,
and various interruptions. All of those speeches as tran-
scribed by the shorthand reporter, Robert R. Hitt (afUir-
ward congressman), passed through my hands, and none
other, before they went to the printers, and they under-
went no alteration except in a few cases where the wind, or
some disorder on the platform, caused a slight hiatus in the
stenographer's notes.

I need not add that Douglas was outclassed in these
debates, although he won the prize for which the debaters
were contending. His day of true glory" came later. When
the secessionists fired on Fort Sumter, he ranged himself
on the side of Lincoln and came to Illinois to hold the state
true to the Union. This was the occasion of his last and
greatest effort. The state legislature, then in session,
invited liim to address them on the existing crisis and he
responded on the 25th of April. I was one of the hsteners
to that speech and I camiot conceive that Demosthenes,
or Mirabeau, or Patrick Henry, or any orator of ancient or
modern times could have surpassed it. Nobody can form
an estimate of its power by merely reading it. Its chief
feature was its tremendous earnestness. It was an outburst
of passion, perspiration, and patriotism raised to the nth
degree. If the roof of the building had been carried away
by the tempest that was issuing from the Little Giant
none of his Hsteners would have been surprised. At that
time southern Illinois was hanging in the balance regarding
the question of sustaining Lincohi in the policy of coercing
the seceding states. Lying between Kentucky and Mis-
souri, its people held substantially the same poHtical views
and prejudices as theirs. Douglas was the only man who

could have held them solid for the Union, The southern
counties now followed him as faithfully as they had followed
him in previous years and sent their sons into the field to
fight for the Union as numerously and bravely as any other
section of the state or of the Union. His influence was also
potent in the border states, Kentucky and Missouri, both of
which refused to join the Southern Confederacy and sent
large reinforcements to the Union armies.

Douglas had only a few more days to live. He was now
forty-eight years of age, but if he had lived forty-eight
years longer he never could have surpassed that eloquence,
or exceeded that service to his country, for he never could
have found another like occasion to call out his astounding
powers. He died at Chicago, June 3, 1861. I have a
tender memory for him. His great competitor, however,
will always wear the laurel of the joint debates. "Thrice
is he armed who hath his quarrel just!"