Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics Part 31

As he continued, Douglas grew offensively denunciatory. His opponents were invariably Black Republicans; Lincoln was the ally of rank Abolitionists like Giddings and Fred Dougla.s.s; of course those who believed in political and social equality for blacks and whites would vote for Lincoln. Lincoln had found fault with the resolutions because they were not adopted on the right spot. Lincoln and his friends were great on "spots." Lincoln had opposed the Mexican War because American blood was not shed on American soil in the right spot.

Trumbull and Lincoln were like two decoy ducks which lead the flock astray. Ambition, personal ambition, had led to the formation of the Black Republican party. Lincoln and his friends were now only trying to secure what Trumbull had cheated them out of in 1855, when the senatorship fell to Trumbull. Under this savage attack the crowd grew restive. As Douglas repeated the epithet "Black" Republican, he was interrupted by indignant cries of "White," "White." But Douglas shouted back defiantly, "I wish to remind you that while Mr. Lincoln was speaking there was not a Democrat vulgar and blackguard enough to interrupt him," and browbeat his hearers into quiet again.[729]

Realizing, perhaps, the immense difficulty of exposing the fallacy of Douglas's reply to his questions, in the few moments at his disposal, Lincoln did not refer to the crucial point. He contented himself with a defense of his own consistency. His best friends were dispirited, when the half-hour ended. They could not shake off the impression that Douglas had saved himself from defeat by his adroit answers to Lincoln's interrogatories.[730]

The next joint debate occurred nearly three weeks later down in Egypt.

By slow stages, speaking incessantly at all sorts of meetings, Douglas and Lincoln made their several ways through the doubtful central counties to Jonesboro in Union County. This was the enemy's country for Lincoln; and by reason of the activities of United States Marshal Dougherty, a Buchanan appointee, the county was scarcely less hostile to Douglas. The meeting was poorly attended. Those who listened to the speakers were chary of applause and appeared politically apathetic.[731]

Douglas opened the debate by a wild, unguarded appeal to partisan prejudices. Knowing his hearers, he was personally vindictive in his references to Black Republicans in general and to Lincoln in particular. He reiterated his stock arguments, giving new vehemence to his charge of corrupt bargain between Trumbull and Lincoln by quoting Matheny, a Republican and "Mr. Lincoln's especial and confidential friend for the last twenty years."[732]

Lincoln begged leave to doubt the authenticity of this new evidence, in view of the little episode at Ottawa, concerning the Springfield resolutions. At all events the whole story was untrue, and he had already declared it to be such.[733] Why should Douglas persist in misrepresenting him? Brushing aside these lesser matters, however, Lincoln addressed himself to what had now come to be known as Douglas's Freeport doctrine. "I hold," said he, "that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new country without police regulations is historically false.... There is enough vigor in slavery to plant itself in a new country even against unfriendly legislation. It takes not only law but the enforcement of law to keep it out." Moreover, the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case had created const.i.tutional obligations. Now that the right of property in slaves was affirmed by the Const.i.tution, according to the Court, how could a member of a territorial legislature, who had taken the oath to support the Const.i.tution, refuse to give his vote for laws necessary to establish slave property? And how could a member of Congress keep his oath and withhold the necessary protection to slave property in the Territories?[734]

Of course Lincoln was well aware that Douglas held that the Court had decided only the question of jurisdiction in the Dred Scott case; and that all else was a mere _obiter dictum_. Nevertheless, "the Court did pa.s.s its opinion.... If they did not decide, they showed what they were ready to decide whenever the matter was before them. They used language to this effect: That inasmuch as Congress itself could not exercise such a power [_i.e._, pa.s.s a law prohibiting slavery in the Territories], it followed as a matter of course that it could not authorize a Territorial Government to exercise it; for the Territorial Legislature can do no more than Congress could do."[735]

The only answer of Douglas to this trenchant a.n.a.lysis was a reiterated a.s.sertion: "I a.s.sert that under the Dred Scott decision [taking Lincoln's view of that decision] you cannot maintain slavery a day in a Territory where there is an unwilling people and unfriendly legislation. If the people are opposed to it, our right is a barren, worthless, useless right; and if they are for it, they will support and encourage it."[736]

Douglas made much of Lincoln's evident unwillingness to commit himself on the question of admitting more slave States. In various ways he sought to trip his adversary, believing that Lincoln had pledged himself to his Abolitionist allies in 1855 to vote against the admission of more slave States, if he should be elected senator. "Let me tell Mr. Lincoln that his party in the northern part of the State hold to that Abolition platform [no more slave States], and if they do not in the South and in the center, they present the extraordinary spectacle of a house-divided-against-itself."[737]

Douglas turned the edge of Lincoln's thrust at the duties of legislators under the Dred Scott decision by saying, "Well, if you are not going to resist the decision, if you obey it, and do not intend to array mob law against the const.i.tuted authorities, then, according to your own statement, you will be a perjured man if you do not vote to establish slavery in these Territories."[738] And it did not save Lincoln from the horns of this uncomfortable dilemma to repeat that he did not accept the Dred Scott decision as a rule for political action, for he had just emphasized the moral obligation of obeying the law of the Const.i.tution.

From the darkness of Egypt, Douglas and Lincoln journeyed northward toward Charleston in Coles County, where the fourth debate was to be held. Both paused _en route_ to visit the State Fair, then in full blast at Centralia. Curious crowds followed them around the fair grounds, deeming the rival candidates quite as worthy of close scrutiny as the other exhibits.[739] Ten miles from Charleston, they left the train to be escorted by rival processions along the dusty highway to their destination. From all the country-side people had come to town to cheer on their respective champions.[740] This twenty-fifth district, comprising Coles and Moultrie counties, had been carried by the Democrats in 1856, but was now regarded as doubtful. The uncertainty added piquancy to the debate.

It was Lincoln's turn to open the joust. At the outset he tried to allay misapprehensions regarding his att.i.tude toward negro equality.

"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position a.s.signed to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone."[741] This was by far the most explicit statement that he had yet made on the hazardous subject.

Lincoln then turned upon his opponent, with more aggressiveness than, he had hitherto exhibited, to drive home the charge which Trumbull had made earlier in the campaign. Prompted by Trumbull, probably, Lincoln reviewed the shadowy history of the Toombs bill and Douglas's still more enigmatical connection with it. The substance of the indictment was, that Douglas had suppressed that part of the original bill which provided for a popular vote on the const.i.tution to be drafted by the Kansas convention. In replying to Trumbull, Douglas had damaged his own case by denying that the Toombs bill had ever contained such a provision. Lincoln proved the contrary by the most transparent testimony, convicting Douglas not only of the original offense but of an untruth in connection with it.[742]

This was not a vague charge of conspiracy which could be treated with contempt, but an indictment, accompanied by circ.u.mstantial evidence.

While a dispa.s.sionate examination of the whole incident will acquit Douglas of any part in a plot to prevent the fair adoption of a const.i.tution by the people of Kansas, yet he certainly took a most unfortunate and prejudicial mode of defending himself.[743] His personal retorts were so vindictive and his attack upon Trumbull so full of venom, that his words did not carry conviction to the minds of his hearers. It was a matter of common observation that Democrats seemed ill at ease after the debate.[744] "Judge Douglas is playing cuttle-fish," remarked Lincoln, noting with satisfaction the very evident discomfiture of his opponent, "a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."[745]

Douglas, however, did his best to recover his ground by accusing Lincoln of shifting his principles as he pa.s.sed from the northern counties to Egypt; the principles of his party in the north were "jet-black," in the center, "a decent mulatto," and in lower Egypt "almost white." Lincoln then dared him to point out any difference between his speeches. Blows now fell thick and fast, both speakers approaching dangerously near the limit of parliamentary language.

Reverting to his argument that slavery must be put in the course of ultimate extinction, Lincoln made this interesting qualification: "I do not mean that when it takes a turn toward ultimate extinction it will be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races, in G.o.d's own good time, I have no doubt."[746]

Douglas was now feeling the full force of the opposition within his own party. The Republican newspapers of the State had seized upon his Freeport speech to convince the South and the administration that he was false to their creed. The Washington _Union_ had from the first denounced him as a renegade, with whom no self-respecting Democrat would a.s.sociate.[747] Slidell was active in Illinois, spending money freely to defeat him.[748] The Danites in the central counties plotted incessantly to weaken his following. Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson of New York sent "a Thousand Greetings" to a ma.s.s-meeting of Danites in Springfield,--a liberal allowance, commented some Douglasite, as each delegate would receive about ten greetings.[749] Yet the dimensions of this movement were not easily ascertained. The declination of Vice-President Breckinridge to come to the aid of Douglas was a rebuff not easily laughed down, though to be sure, he expressed a guarded preference for Douglas over Lincoln. The coolness of Breckinridge was in a measure offset by the friendliness of Senator Crittenden, who refused to aid Lincoln, because he believed Douglas's re-election "necessary as a rebuke to the administration and a vindication of the great cause of popular rights and public justice."[750] The most influential Republican papers in the East gave Lincoln tardy support, with the exception of the New York _Times_.[751]

Unquestionably Douglas drew upon resources which Lincoln could not command. The management of the Illinois Central Railroad was naturally friendly toward him, though there is no evidence that it countenanced any illegitimate use of influence on his behalf. If Douglas enjoyed special train service, which Lincoln did not, it was because he drew upon funds that exceeded Lincoln's modest income. How many thousands of dollars Douglas devoted from his own exchequer to his campaign, can now only be conjectured. In all probability, he spent all that remained from the sale of his real estate in Chicago, and more which he borrowed in New York by mortgaging his other holdings in Cook County.[752] And not least among his a.s.sets was the constant companionship of Mrs. Douglas, whose tact, grace, and beauty placated feelings which had been ruffled by the rude vigor of "the Little Giant."[753]

When the rivals met three weeks later at Galesburg, they were disposed to drop personalities. Indeed, both were aware that they were about to address men and women who demanded an intelligent discussion of the issues of the hour. Lincoln had the more sympathetic hearing, for Knox County was consistently Republican; and the town with its academic atmosphere and New England traditions shared his hostility to slavery.

Vast crowds braved the cold, raw winds of the October day to listen for three hours to this debate.[754] From a platform on the college campus, Douglas looked down somewhat defiantly upon his hearers, though his words were well-chosen and courteous. The circ.u.mstances were much the same as at Ottawa; and he spoke in much the same vein.

He rang the changes upon his great fundamental principle; he defended his course in respect to Lecomptonism; he denounced the Republican party as a sectional organization whose leaders were bent upon "outvoting, conquering, governing, and controlling the South."

Douglas laid great stress upon this sectional aspect of Republicanism, which made its southward extension impossible. "Not only is this Republican party unable to proclaim its principles alike in the North and in the South, in the free States and in the slave States, but it cannot even proclaim them in the same forms and give them the same strength and meaning in all parts of the same State. My friend Lincoln finds it extremely difficult to manage a debate in the center part of the State, where there is a mixture of men from the North and the South."[755]

Here Douglas paused to read from Lincoln's speeches at Chicago and at Charleston, and to ask his hearers to reconcile the conflicting statements respecting negro equality. He p.r.o.nounced Lincoln's doctrine, that the negro and the white man are made equal by the Declaration of Independence and Divine Providence, "a monstrous heresy."

Lincoln protested that nothing was farther from his purpose than to "advance hypocritical and deceptive and contrary views in different portions of the country." As for the charge of sectionalism, Judge Douglas was himself fast becoming sectional, for his speeches no longer pa.s.sed current south of the Ohio as they had once done.

"Whatever may be the result of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas and myself, I see the day rapidly approaching when his pill of sectionalism, which he has been thrusting down the throats of Republicans for years past, will be crowded down his own throat."[756]

And Lincoln again scored on his opponent, when he pointed out that his political doctrine rested upon the major premise, that there was no wrong in slavery. "If you will take the Judge's speeches, and select the short and pointed sentences expressed by him,--as his declaration that he 'don't care whether slavery is voted up or down'--you will see at once that this is perfectly logical, if you do not admit that slavery is wrong.... Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong."[757]

Those who now read these memorable debates dis-pa.s.sionately, will surely acquit Lincoln of inconsistency in his att.i.tude toward the negro. His speech at Charleston supplements the speech at Chicago; at Galesburg, he made an admirable re-statement of his position.

Nevertheless, there was a marked difference in point of emphasis between his utterances in Northern and in Southern Illinois. Even the casual reader will detect subtle omissions which the varying character of his audience forced upon Lincoln. In Chicago he said nothing about the physical inferiority of the negro; he said nothing about the equality of the races in the Declaration of Independence, when he spoke at Charleston. Among men of anti-slavery leanings, he had much to say about the moral wrong of slavery; in the doubtful counties, Lincoln was solicitous that he should not be understood as favoring social and political equality between whites and blacks.

Feeling keenly this diplomatic shifting of emphasis, Douglas persisted in accusing Lincoln of inconsistency: "He has one set of principles for the Abolition counties and another set for the counties opposed to Abolitionism." If Lincoln had said in Coles County what he has to-day said in old Knox, Douglas complained, "it would have settled the question between us in that doubtful county."[758] And in this Douglas was probably correct.

At Quincy, Douglas was in his old bailiwick. Three times the Democrats of this district had sent him to Congress; and though the bounds of the congressional district had since been changed, Adams County was still Democratic by a safe majority. Among the people who greeted the speakers, however, were many old-time Whigs, for whose special benefit the Republicans of the city carried on a pole, at the head of their procession, a live racc.o.o.n. With a much keener historic sense, the Democrats bore aloft a dead racc.o.o.n, suspended by its tail.[759]

Lincoln again harked back to his position that slavery was "a moral, a social, and a political wrong" which the Republican party proposed to prevent from growing any larger; and that "the leading man--I think I may do my friend Judge Douglas the honor of calling him such--advocating the present Democratic policy, never himself says it is wrong."[760]

The consciousness that he was made to seem morally obtuse, cut Douglas to the quick. Even upon his tough const.i.tution this prolonged campaign was beginning to tell. His voice was harsh and broken; and he gave unmistakable signs of nervous irritability, brought on by physical fatigue. When he rose to reply to Lincoln, his manner was offensively combative. At the outset, he referred angrily to Lincoln's "gross personalities and base insinuations."[761] In his references to the Springfield resolutions and to his mistake, or rather the mistake of his friends at the capital, he was particularly denunciatory. "When I make a mistake," he boasted, "as an honest man, I correct it without being asked to, but when he, Lincoln, makes a false charge, he sticks to it and never corrects it."[762]

But Douglas was too old a campaigner to lose control of himself, and no doubt the rude charge and counter-charge were prompted less by personal ill-will than by controversial exigencies. Those who have conceived Douglas as the victim of deep-seated and abiding resentment toward Lincoln, forget the impulsive nature of the man. There is not the slightest evidence that Lincoln took these blows to heart. He had himself dealt many a vigorous blow in times past. It was part of the game.

Douglas found fault with Lincoln's answers to the Ottawa questions: "I ask you again, Lincoln, will you vote to admit New Mexico, when she has the requisite population with such a const.i.tution as her people adopt, either recognizing slavery or not, as they shall determine!" He was well within the truth when he a.s.serted that Lincoln's answer had been purposely evasive and equivocal, "having no reference to any territory now in existence."[763] Of Lincoln's Republican policy of confining slavery within its present limits, by prohibiting it in the Territories, he said, "When he gets it thus confined, and surrounded, so that it cannot spread, the natural laws of increase will go on until the negroes will be so plenty that they cannot live on the soil.

He will hem them in until starvation seizes them, and by starving them to death, he will put slavery in the course of ultimate extinction."[764] A silly argument which Douglas's wide acquaintance with Southern conditions flatly contradicted and should have kept him from repeating.

To the charge of moral obliquity on the slavery question, Douglas made a dignified and worthy reply. "I hold that the people of the slave-holding States are civilized men as well as ourselves; that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to G.o.d and their posterity, and not to us. It is for them to decide, therefore, the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits."[765]

On the following day both Lincoln and Douglas took pa.s.sage on a river steamer for Alton. The county of Madison had once been Whig in its political proclivities. In the State legislature it was now represented by two representatives and a senator who were Native Americans; and in the present campaign, the county was cla.s.sed as doubtful. In Alton and elsewhere there was a large German vote which was likely to sway the election.

Douglas labored under a physical disadvantage. His voice was painful to hear, while Lincoln's betrayed no sign of fatigue.[766] Both fell into the argument _ad hominem_. Lincoln advocated holding the Territories open to "free white people" the world over--to "Hans, Baptiste, and Patrick." Douglas contended that the equality referred to in the Declaration of Independence, was the equality of white men--"men of European birth and European descent." Both conjured with the revered name of Clay. Douglas persistently referred to Lincoln as an Abolitionist, knowing that his auditors had "strong sympathies southward," as Lincoln shrewdly guessed; while Lincoln sought to unmask that "false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that everybody does care the most about."[767]

Douglas made a successful appeal to the sympathy of the crowd, when he said of his conduct in the Lecompton fight, "Most of the men who denounced my course on the Lecompton question objected to it, not because I was not right, but because they thought it expedient at that time, for the sake of keeping the party together, to do wrong. I never knew the Democratic party to violate any one of its principles, out of policy or expediency, that it did not pay the debt with sorrow. There is no safety or success for our party unless we always do right, and trust the consequences to G.o.d and the people. I chose not to depart from principle for the sake of expediency on the Lecompton question, and I never intend to do it on that or any other question."[768]

Both at Quincy and at Alton, Douglas paid his respects to the "contemptible crew" who were trying to break up the party and defeat him. At first he had avoided direct attacks upon the administration; but the relentless persecution of the Washington _Union_ made him restive. Lincoln derived great satisfaction from this intestine warfare in the Democratic camp. "Go it, husband! Go it, bear!" he cried.

In this last debate, both sought to summarize the issues. Said Lincoln, "You may turn over everything in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, ... it everywhere carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it [slavery].

"That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--right and wrong--throughout the world.... I was glad to express my grat.i.tude at Quincy, and I re-express it here, to Judge Douglas,--_that he looks to no end of the inst.i.tution of slavery_. That will help the people to see where the struggle really is."[769]

To the mind of Douglas, the issue presented itself in quite another form. "He [Lincoln] says that he looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished everywhere. I look forward to a time when each State shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business,--not mine. I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Christendom. I would not endanger the perpetuity of this Union, I would not blot out the great inalienable rights of the white men, for all the negroes that ever existed."[770]

With this encounter at Alton, the joint debates, but not the campaign closed. Douglas continued to speak at various strategic points, in spite of inclement weather and physical exhaustion, up to the eve of the election.[771] The canva.s.s had continued just a hundred days, during which Douglas had made one hundred and thirty speeches.[772]

During the last weeks of the campaign, election canards designed to injure Douglas were sedulously circulated, adding no little uncertainty to the outcome in doubtful districts. The most damaging of these stories seems to have emanated from Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, whose midsummer sojourn in Illinois has already been noted.

A Chicago journal published the tale that Douglas's slaves in the South were "the subjects of inhuman and disgraceful treatment--that they were hired out to a factor at fifteen dollars per annum each--that he, in turn, hired them out to others in lots, and that they were ill-fed, over-worked, and in every way so badly treated that they were spoken of in the neighborhood where they are held as a disgrace to all slave-holders and the system they support." The explicit denial of the story came from Slidell some weeks after the election, when the slander had accomplished the desired purpose.[773]

All signs pointed to a heavy vote for both tickets. As the campaign drew to a close, the excitement reached a pitch rarely equalled even in presidential elections. Indeed, the total vote cast exceeded that of 1856 by many thousands,--an increase that cannot be wholly accounted for by the growth of population in these years.[774] The Republican State ticket was elected by less than four thousand votes over the Democratic ticket. The relative strength of the rival candidates for the senatorship, however, is exhibited more fully in the vote for the members of the lower house of the State legislature..

The avowed Douglas candidates polled over 174,000, while the Lincoln men received something over 190,000. Administration candidates received a scant vote of less than 2,000. Notwithstanding this popular majority, the Republicans secured only thirty-five seats, while the Democratic minority secured forty. Out of fifteen contested senatorial seats, the Democrats won eight with a total of 44,826 votes, while the Republicans cast 53,784 votes and secured but seven. No better proof could be offered of Lincoln's contention that the State was gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats. Still, this was part of the game; and had the Republicans been in office, they would have undoubtedly used an advantage which has proved too tempting for the virtue of every American party.

When the two houses of the Illinois Legislature met in joint session, January 6, 1859, not a man ventured, or desired, to record his vote otherwise than as his party affiliations dictated. Douglas received fifty-four votes and Lincoln forty-six. "Glory to G.o.d and the Sucker Democracy," telegraphed the editor of the _State Register_ to his chief. And back over the wires from Washington was flashed the laconic message, "Let the voice of the people rule." But had the _will_ of the people ruled?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 669: Hollister, Life of Colfax pp. 119 ff; Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, II, p. 567.]

[Footnote 670: Hollister, Colfax, p. 121.]

[Footnote 671: Wilson, p. 567.]