Lincoln Part 20

We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.

Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and pa.s.sed.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing, or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery, will... place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will put it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new-North as well as South.

The "house divided" quotation was one familiar to virtually everybody in a Bible-reading, churchgoing state like Illinois; it appeared in three of the Gospels. Lincoln himself had used the image as early as 1843 in urging party solidarity among the Whigs. The idea behind the metaphor as he now used it, that slavery and freedom were incompatible, had been a standard part of the abolitionists' argument for decades, and in an 1852 speech Edmund Quincy, the Ma.s.sachusetts abolitionist, had used the house-divided quotation to predict the death of slavery. More recently Southern apologists, such as George Fitzhugh, also argued that the United States must become all slave or all free.

Lincoln had been thinking about this house-divided theme for several years. As early as 1855, after his first defeat for the Senate, he raised the question with a Kentucky correspondent: "Can we, as a nation, continue together permanently-forever-half slave, and half free?" The next year during the Fremont campaign he several times announced "his opinion that our government could not last-part slave and part free." In December 1857 he drafted a speech arguing that the controversy over the Lecompton Const.i.tution simply diverted attention from "the true magnitude of the slavery element in this nation," which was dividing political parties and even churches along sectional lines. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he concluded then. "I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free whether this shall be an entire slave nation, is the issue before us."

In using almost identical words now, Lincoln was setting the stage for the longer second section of his address, designed to show that Douglas was part of a dangerous plot to nationalize slavery. As proof of that conspiracy Lincoln evidenced first Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill opening all the national territory to slavery, which had upset a long-standing national consensus. Then he noted how President Franklin Pierce had pushed the bill to make it law. Next President James Buchanan, in his inaugural address, fervently urged citizens to accept the still unannounced opinion of the Supreme Court on the extension of slavery, and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney immediately afterward ruled that all congressional legislation restricting slavery in the territories was invalid. Unlike most other Republican leaders, Lincoln did not blame these measures extending slavery on the "Slave Power"-a phrase that he carefully avoided throughout the campaign-but attributed them to the Northern Democrats. He admitted that "we cannot absolutely know" that these Democratic leaders were in a conspiracy. "But," he said, using an image familiar to every Illinois farmer who had ever raised a barn, "when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen-Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James [i.e., Douglas, Pierce, Taney, and Buchanan], for instance-and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all these tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and... not a piece too many or too few," it was impossible not to believe that the four workmen had worked from a common plan or blueprint.

In the proslavery edifice so carefully constructed there was "another nice little niche," to be filled by a future Supreme Court decision declaring that the Const.i.tution does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits. That was all that was needed to make slavery universal, and, Lincoln predicted, it was "probably coming,... unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown." "We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free," he warned; "and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

Lincoln probably genuinely believed in this alleged proslavery conspiracy among Northern Democratic leaders because he so totally distrusted Douglas. He thought the senator utterly unprincipled. He was quite ready to believe a wholly undoc.u.mented rumor that Douglas was sending "certain unknown personages" to Illinois in order to arouse the hitherto quiescent temperance movement, in the hope that that issue might divide Republicans; "it would be perfectly natural in him," he judged, "just like him." Lincoln's suspicion of Douglas was fueled by his rankling envy of his rival. In a fragmentary ma.n.u.script discussing his twenty-two years of acquaintance with Douglas, Lincoln could not help making a painful comparison of their careers: "With me, the race of ambition has been a failure-a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success." He complained to Joseph Gillespie that Douglas had "arrogated a superiority over him on account of his national reputation," adding, a bit wistfully, that "if our positions were changed I would not do that."

But his charge of conspiracy was not based on fact. Certainly Douglas and Pierce had cooperated to secure the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but Buchanan had been out of the country and Taney had nothing to do with it. Taney's Dred Scott decision ran directly counter to Douglas's popular-sovereignty idea. Lincoln knew as well as anybody else that Douglas and Buchanan were now feuding, but in order to make his case he had to dismiss the fierce controversy over Lecompton as a "squabble," a kind of lovers' quarrel.

More defensible, though also highly speculative, was Lincoln's prediction of a second Dred Scott decision, which would protect slavery in all the states as well as the national territories. He could not have known that Chief Justice Taney, angered by criticism, was eager to issue what he called a "supplement" to the Dred Scott decision, but as a well-informed lawyer he realized there were bound to be cases in the near future where the justices would issue further rulings on slavery. It was no secret that the case of Lemmon v. The People, involving the right of a Virginia slaveholder to bring his slaves into the state of New York, while in transit to Texas, was working its way up to the Supreme Court, and it required no great feat of the imagination to guess how the present justices would rule.

But the specifics of Lincoln's conspiracy charge in his house-divided speech were less important than its general import. Its purpose was clear: to show Republicans, both in Illinois and in the East, that Douglas could not be trusted and must be defeated.

In the brief final section of his speech Lincoln asked who could best check this headlong rush to nationalize slavery. Surely not Douglas, even though his admirers "remind us that he is a very great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones." But Douglas's past record of supporting slavery aggressions made him now a caged and toothless lion, and-in an unfortunate phrase-Lincoln reminded his listeners "a living dog is better than a dead lion." No, the cause of putting slavery on the road to ultimate extinction "must be intrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted friends," the Republicans. "The result is not doubtful," he concluded. "We shall not fail-if we stand firm, we shall not fail."

Thus the three sections of Lincoln's house-divided speech had the inevitability of a syllogism: The tendency to nationalize slavery had to be defeated. Stephen A. Douglas powerfully contributed to that tendency. Therefore, Stephen A. Douglas had to be defeated.

Attracting national attention, Lincoln's house-divided speech sounded very radical. Advanced five months before William H. Seward offered his prediction of an "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and freedom, it was the most extreme statement made by any responsible leader of the Republican party. Even Herndon, to whom Lincoln first read it, told his partner: "It is true, but is it wise or politic to say so?" Lincoln's other advisers condemned it, especially deploring the house-divided image and saying "the whole Spirit was too far in advance of the times." As the editor John Locke Scripps explained, many who heard and read Lincoln's speech understood it as "an implied pledge on behalf of the Republican party to make war upon the inst.i.tution in the States where it now exists."

Aware that his house-divided prediction was controversial, Lincoln in the months ahead tried to blunt its impact, telling Scripps "that whether the clause used by me, will bear such construction or not, I never so intended it." In this pa.s.sage, he insisted, "I did not say I was in favor of anything.... I made a prediction only-it may have been a foolish one perhaps." But he never disavowed it; he knew it was the necessary first premise in his syllogism proving that Douglas should be defeated.

V

When Douglas learned that the Republicans were nominating Lincoln, he recognized that he would be up against a formidable opponent. "I shall have my hands full," he told a newspaperman. "He is as honest as he is shrewd; and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won." He felt obliged to remain in Washington until he finally succeeded in defeating the Lecompton Const.i.tution, and he stayed on in a vain attempt to prevent the pa.s.sage of Representative William H. English's face-saving measure, endorsed by the Buchanan administration, providing for a referendum on that const.i.tution, which everyone now recognized would be rejected. In July, Douglas returned home to Chicago and, before a huge outdoor audience, offered an extended reply to Lincoln's charges.

Announcing themes that he would repeat and develop in the coming campaign, Douglas claimed credit for the defeat of Lecompton, which, he said, was a vindication of popular sovereignty. That policy of allowing the people of the states and the territories to choose their own inst.i.tutions, including slavery, was "dearer to every true American than any other," and any limitation on it would destroy "the fundamental principle of self-government." Referring to Lincoln, who sat on the balcony behind him, as "a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent," Douglas insisted that he had "totally misapprehended the great principles upon which our government rests" and was advocating "boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South." Continuing with a defense of the Supreme Court, Douglas insisted that Republicans who attacked the Dred Scott decision ignored the fact that "this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men." In advocating equal rights for the Negro, Republicans failed to understand that "any mixture or amalgamation with inferior races" could only lead to "degeneration, demoralization, and degradation." He ended with a fling at the Buchanan administration and the federal officeholders whom it had appointed for entering into "an unholy, unnatural alliance" with the Republicans.

The next night, from the same balcony of the same Chicago hotel, Lincoln replied to Douglas, denouncing his opponent for "quibbling about this... race and that race and the other race being inferior" and urging a return to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, "the electric cord... that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together ... as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."

The exchange in Chicago set a pattern for the next six weeks of the campaign. When Douglas set out on an extended election tour of the state, Lincoln followed him at most places, often rising at the end of Douglas's speech to announce that he would make a reply, sometimes later in the evening but more often the next day. It was, the New York Herald observed, "somewhat of an anomaly for a Senator of the United States to be stumping the State, and another who wishes to be Senator following in his wake."

Lincoln thought that "speaking at the same place the next day after D. is the very thing," but his advisers doubted the wisdom of trailing around after the senator. Judd, Lincoln's unofficial campaign manager for northern Illinois, pointed out that it allowed Douglas constantly to put him on the defensive. A Decatur supporter explained that Douglas's ostentatious arrival attracted crowds from both parties but that only confirmed Republicans remained after the senator left. "In other words," he wrote, "Douglas takes the crowd and Lincoln the leavings." Douglas and his supporters were furious at Lincoln for poaching on the audiences that had a.s.sembled to hear him. The Illinois State Register claimed that Lincoln did so because he could not attract his own crowds. "Poor, desperate creature," sneered the Democratic Chicago Times, "he wants an audience,... [and] the people won't turn out to hear him." Perhaps he should join one of the "two very good circuses and menageries traveling through the State," for they always brought out a considerable audience.

Lincoln changed his battle plan after Douglas began devoting more and more time on the stump to attacking Lyman Trumbull, who had accused him of a corrupt bargain in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Seeing that this personal quarrel would divert public attention from his own campaign, he proposed a series of debates with Douglas. The senator was reluctant to agree. He had nothing to gain and much to lose by giving public exposure to his lesser-known rival. Lincoln's challenge came too late, he complained; he already had a heavy schedule of speaking appointments and he might also be asked to divide time with a potential third candidate, nominated by Democrats loyal to Buchanan. At the same time, Douglas knew he could not refuse, lest he seem afraid of Lincoln. Grudgingly he consented to partic.i.p.ate in seven debates-one in each of the Illinois congressional districts, except the second and sixth (Chicago and Springfield), where the two candidates had already appeared.

The first of the debates would take place at Ottawa, in the north central part of the state, on August 21; the last, at Alton, in the south, along the Mississippi River, on October 15. In between there were to be debates at Freeport, in the extreme north (August 27); at Jonesboro, in the far south (September 15); at Charleston, in the east central region (September 18); at Galesburg, in the northwestern section (October 7); and at Quincy, in the west (October 13). Even though he fussed over details of the arrangements, Lincoln accepted them. His letter gave a rare glimpse of a hard ego that he usually concealed under a guise of humility: he had not challenged Douglas earlier, he explained, because "I did not know but that such proposal would come from you."

VI

Debating with Douglas was not Lincoln's only occupation during the 1858 campaign. With no secretarial staff, no full-time a.s.sistants, no designated campaign manager, he had to decide most of the details of the canva.s.s himself. He raised money, reminding friends who had expressed an interest in his prospects that now was the time when help was needed. He tried to plant pro-Republican articles in even such minor newspapers as the Paris (Illinois) Prairie Beacon, and he supervised the printing and distribution of his campaign speeches, in both German and English. Recognizing how weak the Republicans were in southern Illinois, he joined with Trumbull and five other a.s.sociates in promising to pay the young German-American newspaperman John G. Nicolay $500 to promote the circulation of the St. Louis Missouri Democrat-which, despite its name, was a staunchly Republican organ-in that part of the state.

Much of his time was taken in planning Republican strategy. From the returns in the 1856 election it was fairly clear that the two Republican candidates for general state offices-those of state treasurer and superintendent of education-would win. But the success of his own race for the Senate depended on the outcome of nearly a hundred local elections for the state legislature, over which he could exert little direct influence. The Republicans' task was, therefore, formidable, and at times, as Herndon reported, Lincoln grew "gloomy-rather uncertain, about his own success."

Rather than lamenting his luck, Lincoln prepared to make the best of the situation. He drew up a careful, detailed list of how the representative and senatorial districts had voted in the previous election and, a.s.suming that the 1856 Fillmore voters would now support Republican candidates, tried to predict how each district would go in 1858. Some, mostly in southern Illinois, he wrote off as "desparate," meaning that there was no use wasting Republican resources there; others, chiefly in the north, he marked, "we take to ourselves, without question," so that no campaigning in these counties was needed. He allocated his public appearances accordingly, making only four speeches in the north and only four in the south. The rest of his time he devoted to districts "we must struggle for," mainly in the central part of the state, where the Whig (and more recently the Know Nothing) party had been strongest.

Lincoln found his efforts to woo this old Whig vote frustrating. It was a warning of their disaffection that very few former Whigs partic.i.p.ated in the Republican county conventions of 1858. Lincoln attempted to check this defection by stressing his long service to the Whig party and throughout the campaign claimed to wear the mantle of Henry Clay, but Douglas, too, campaigned as the great Kentuckian's successor in advocating sectional compromise. Lincoln's effort to win over the old-line Whigs was severely damaged when Judge T. Lyle d.i.c.key, one of the most prominent Whigs and hitherto a close friend, announced that he would support Douglas; Lincoln, he said, was "too closely allied to the abolitionists." Then d.i.c.key let it leak out that he had a private letter from John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, Clay's political heir in the United States Senate, favoring Douglas. Much troubled, Lincoln wrote Crittenden that though he did not believe this story it made him uneasy. To his dismay, Crittenden responded that he did indeed think that Douglas's reelection was "necessary as a rebuke to the Administration, and a vindication of the great cause of popular rights and public justice."

Along with efforts to keep his own fragile coalition together, Lincoln tried to capitalize on divisions among the Democrats. Despite several attempts at compromise, the break between Douglas and Buchanan persisted, and the President and his Southern advisers resolved to help defeat the Illinois senator, partly out of vindictiveness, partly to demonstrate that Democrats must not rebel against their party leadership. Buchanan began removing Illinois postmasters and other federal officials appointed because of Douglas's recommendation, replacing them with men known to be inveterate enemies of the senator. He also fostered the creation of a separate National Democratic party in Illinois. Some of these "Danites," as they were derisively called, after an alleged secret order of Mormons who acted as spies to suppress disaffection, openly endorsed Lincoln's election to the Senate; others favored a separate ticket in order to divide the Democratic vote.

Douglas charged that there was a corrupt bargain between these National Democrats and the Republicans, who had nothing in common except a desire to bring about his defeat. In reply to an urgent inquiry from Trumbull, Lincoln replied that, at least as far as he was concerned, there was no alliance with the Buchanan men. To be sure, he was "rather pleased to see a division in the ranks of the democracy" and certainly did nothing to prevent it; but he had made no agreement with them "by which there is to be any concession of principle on either side, or furnishing of the sinews, or part.i.tion of offices, or swopping of votes, to any extent." He chose his words carefully, as did Herndon, who also gave a.s.surance that there was not "any contract ... either express or implied, directly or indirectly," with the Danites.

Though that was literally the truth, it was not the whole truth. Only a few days after Lincoln wrote Trumbull, he met privately with Colonel John Dougherty, the National Democratic candidate for state treasurer, to discuss the election. When Dougherty promised that the National Democrats would field a candidate in every legislative district, Lincoln replied: "If you do this the thing is settled-the battle is fought." In most of his dealing with the Danites, however, Lincoln preferred to keep his hands clean by working through an intermediary. Herndon was one of the best, because his brother, Elliott Herndon, was editor of the Illinois State Democrat, the National Democratic newspaper in Springfield, and his father was also a strong supporter of Buchanan. "They make 'no bones' in telling me what they are going to do," Herndon boasted. He understood the importance of keeping Lincoln in the dark about these conversations. As he told Trumbull, "Lincoln ... does not know the details of how we get along. I do, but he does not."

As the campaign progressed, ties between the Republicans and the National Democrats became even closer. In September so few Danites turned out for their party convention that Republicans had to pack the hall to keep it from becoming a joke. At this meeting, as Jesse Dubois reported to Lincoln, Republicans worked through "your man" to learn the National Democrats' campaign strategy. The underfinanced publisher of the Illinois State Democrat told one of his unpaid employees that "he expected $500 of Mr. Lincoln in a day or two"-which may, or may not, have been true.

VII