Battle Cry of Freedom

by James M. McPherson

  30. Charles H. Ray to Elihu B. Washburne, Aug. 23, 1858, quoted in Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 123.

  31. CWL, III, 313, 18, 29.

  means to hold on to his chances in Illinois. . . . He cares nothing for the South—he knows he is already dead there" because of his opposition to Lecompton.32 Lincoln asked the question anyway; Douglas answered as expected. His answer became famous in retrospect as the Freeport doctrine. It did play a role in prompting the southern demand for a territorial slave code—an issue that split the Democratic party in 1860. But this would have happened anyway. Lincoln did not press the question in subsequent debates, for its tendency to highlight Douglas's differences from southern Democrats ran counter to Lincoln's effort to highlight their similarities.33

  Douglas's counterattack smote Lincoln's house-divided metaphor. Why cannot the country continue to "exist divided into free and slave States?" asked Douglas. Whatever their personal sentiments toward slavery, the founding fathers "left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject." If the nation "cannot endure thus divided, then [Lincoln] must strive to make them all free or all slave, which will inevitably bring about a dissolution of the Union." To talk about ultimate extinction of slavery "is revolutionary and destructive of the existence of this Government." If it means anything, it means "warfare between the North and the South, to be carried on with ruthless vengeance, until the one section or the other shall be driven to the wall and become the victim of the rapacity of the other." No, said Douglas, "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."34

  Lincoln's inclusion of blacks among those "created equal" was a "monstrous heresy," said Douglas. "The signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro . . . or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men." Did Thomas Jefferson "intend to say in that Declaration that his negro slaves, which he held and treated as property, were created his equals by Divine law, and that he was violating the law of God every day of his life by holding them as slaves? ('No, no.')"35

  Douglas hit his stride in exploitation of the race issue. He considered it a sure winner in southern and central Illinois. The Negro "must always

  32. Lincoln to Henry Asbury, July 31, 1858, in CWL, II, 530.

  33. For a good analysis of the Freeport question, see Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 121–42.

  34. CWL, III, 8, 35, 111, 322.

  35. Ibid., 113, 216.

  ways occupy an inferior position," shouted Douglas to cheering partisans. "Are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship? ('No, no.') Do you desire to strike out of our State Constitution that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State . . . in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and voters on an equality with yourselves? ('Never,' 'no.') . . . If you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote . . . then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. ('Never, never.')"36

  How did Douglas know that Lincoln favored these things? Black speakers were campaigning for him in the Yankee districts of northern Illinois, showing "how much interest our colored brethren [feel] in the success of their brother Abe. (Renewed laughter.)" Why, in Freeport Douglas saw a handsome carriage drive up to a Lincoln meeting. "A beautiful young lady was sitting on the box seat, whilst Fred. Douglass and her mother reclined inside, and the owner of the carriage acted as driver. . . . If you, Black Republicans, think that the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, whilst you drive the team, you have a perfect right to do so. . . . Those of you who believe that the negro is your equal . . . of course will vote for Mr. Lincoln. ('Down with the negro,' no, no, &c.)"37

  Douglas's harping on this theme exasperated Lincoln. "Negro equality! Fudge!!" he wrote privately. "How long . . . shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougeism?" But try as he might, Lincoln could not ignore the issue. As he emerged from his hotel for the fourth debate at Charleston in southern Illinois, a man asked him if he was "really in favor of producing a perfect equality between negroes and white people." Placed on the defensive, Lincoln responded defensively. "Anything that argues me into his idea of a perfect social and political equality," complained Lincoln of Douglas's innuendoes, "is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by

  36. Ibid., 9.

  37. Ibid., 171, 55–56. Douglas managed to win back the confidence of some southerners with his racist rhetoric. After reading Douglas's speeches, a friend of Alexander Stephens wrote that "Douglas, with all his past objectionable conduct . . . is sound on niggers. . . . I prefer him . . . to a crazy fanatic [Lincoln], who openly proclaims the equality of the white and black races." J. Henly Smith to Alexander Stephens, Aug. 3, 1858, quoted in Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 497.

  which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse." Lincoln admitted that he believed black people "entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But "I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily have her for a wife. (Cheers and laughter)" So that his horse chestnut should no longer be mistaken for a chestnut horse, Lincoln spelled out his position with clarity: "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, (applause)—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 races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."38

  So far Lincoln would go in concession to the prejudices of most Illinois voters. But no farther. "Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior," he said in Chicago. Instead let us "unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal." Whether or not the black man was equal to the white man in mental or moral endowment, "in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. (Great applause.)" As for political rights, racial intermarriage, and the like, these were matters for the state legislature, "and as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror that some such danger is rapidly approaching, I propose as the best means to prevent it that the Judge be kept at home and placed in the State Legislature where he can fight the measures. (Uproarious laughter and applause.)"39

  Despite Lincoln's wit, Douglas scored points on this issue. The Little Giant also backed Lincoln into a corner on the matter of slavery's "ultimate extinction." More than once Lincoln had said: "I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists." "Well, if he is not in favor of that," asked Douglas, "how does he expect to bring slavery in a course of ultimate extinction? ('Hit him again.')" With such obfuscatory rhetoric, charged

  38. CWL, III, 399, 16, 145–46.

  39. Ibid., II, 501, III, 16, 146.

  Douglas, the Black Republicans tried to conceal their purpose to attack slavery and break up the Union. Lincoln replied that when he spoke of ultimate extinction, he meant just that. "I do not mean . . . 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 the least; but that it will occur in the best way for both races in God's good time, I have no doubt. (Applause.)" Like the abolitionists, Lincoln refused to be drawn into discussion
of a "plan" for ending slavery. He hoped that southerners would once again come to regard bondage as an evil, just as Washington, Jefferson, and the other founders had regarded it. And just as they had limited its expansion as a first step toward ending the evil, "I have no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but re-adopted the policy of the fathers."40

  In any case the questions of "a perfect social and political equality . . . upon which Judge Douglas has tried to force the controversy . . . are false issues," said Lincoln in the concluding debate. The true issue was the morality and future of slavery. "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 . . . from the beginning of time. . . . The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. . . . No matter in what shape it comes, whether from 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."41

  In the judgment of history—or at least of most historians—Lincoln "won" the debates. The judgment of Illinois voters in 1858 is more difficult to discover. Republican and Democratic candidates for the legislature won virtually the same number of votes statewide—125,000 for each party.42 Democrats carried all but three of the fifty-four southern counties and Republicans all but six of the forty-eight northern counties. Because the legislature had not been reapportioned to reflect the faster growth of northern counties in the 1850s, and because eight of

  40. Ibid., Ill, 16, 165, 323, 181, 117.

  41. Ibid., 312, 315.

  42. Republican candidates won about 125,000 votes, Douglas Democrats 121,000, and anti-Douglas Buchanan Democrats 5,000. Tribune Almanac, 1859, pp. 60–61.

  the thirteen holdover senators not up for election were Democrats, that party had a majority of fifty-four to forty-six in the next legislature and elected Douglas. It was a significant triumph for the Little Giant. He confirmed his standing as leader of his party in the North and its strongest candidate for the next presidential nomination. For Lincoln the election was a victory in defeat. He had battled the famous Douglas on at least even terms, clarified the issues between Republicans and northern Democrats more sharply than ever, and emerged as a Republican spokesman of national stature.43

  Democrats also carried five of the nine congressional districts in Illinois. That made the state one of the few northern bright spots for the party in 1858. Elsewhere Democrats suffered almost as great a debacle as in 1854. In the next House of Representatives the number of northern Democrats would drop from fifty-three to thirty-two. In the four lower-North states carried by Buchanan in 1856 (Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and New Jersey) the party balance shifted in 1858 from twenty-nine Democratic and twenty-one Republican congressmen to sixteen Democrats and thirty-four Republicans. The Republican share of the vote in these four states jumped from 35 percent in 1856 (when the American party was in the field) to 52 percent in 1858. Buchanan had invited a few friends to an elegant White House dinner on election night. As telegrams bearing tidings of the returns from Pennsylvania came in, "we had a merry time of it," wrote the president next day, "laughing among other things over our crushing defeat. It is so great that it is almost absurd."44

  Lecompton and Dred Scott accounted for much of this Republican gain. Once again, victories by the "slave power" had produced a backlash that strengthened its deadliest enemies in the North. Other issues also worked in favor of the Republicans. The disappearance of the American party in the North pushed most of the remaining nativists into Republican ranks because they continued to perceive Democrats as the party of Romanism. In manufacturing regions the Democratic tariff policy and the depression following the Panic of 1857 intensified voter backlash. Republicans also benefited from continued southern opposition

  43. The best analysis of the election is in Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 114–20.

  44. Tribune Almanac, 1860, p. 18; Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 563–64; Buchanan to Harriet Lane, Oct. 15, 1858, quoted in Nevins, Emergence, I, 400.

  to homestead legislation and to federal aid for construction of a transcontinental railroad.

  III

  A dozen years of growth and prosperity came to a jolting halt in 1857–58.45 The Panic of 1857 had both foreign and domestic roots. The Crimean War (1854–56) had cut off Russian grain from the European market. American exports mushroomed to meet the need. This intensified a surge of speculation in western lands. The decade-long expansion of all economic indices had also produced rapid rises in the prices of stocks and bonds. From 1848 to 1856 the number of banks increased 50 percent and their notes, loans, and deposits doubled. Railroad mileage and capital grew threefold from 1850 to 1857. Textile mills, foundries, and factories ran at full tilt to meet an apparently insatiable demand. California gold continued to pump millions of dollars monthly into the economy. By 1856, however, pessimists began to discern some cracks in this economic structure. Much of the capital invested in American railroads, insurance companies, and banks came from Europe, especially Britain. The Crimean War plus simultaneous British and French colonial ventures in the Far East drained specie from the banks of those countries. This brought a doubling and even tripling of interest rates in Britain and France, causing European investors to sell lower-yielding American securities to reinvest at home. The resulting decline in the prices of some American stocks and bonds in 1856–57 in turn reduced the assets of American banks holding these securities. Meanwhile British banks increased the ratio of reserves to liabilities, causing some American banks to do the same. And a buildup of unsold inventories caused several American textile mills to shut down temporarily.46

  By the summer of 1857 the combination of speculative fever in some parts of the economy and ominous cutbacks in others created a climate of nervous apprehension. "What can be the end of all this but another

  45. There had been a Wall Street panic and a brief recession in the winter of 1854–55.

  46. This analysis of the background of the Panic of 1857 is based on George W. Van Vleck, The Panic of 1857: An Analytical Study (New York, 1943); Nevins, Emergence, I, 176–97; and Peter Temin, "The Panic of 1857," Intermountain EconomicReview, 6 (Spring 1975), 1–12.

  general collapse like that of 1837?" asked the financial writer of the New York Herald. "The same premonitory symptoms that prevailed in 1835—36 prevail in 1857 in a tenfold degree . . . paper bubbles of all descriptions, a general scramble for western lands and town and city sites, millions of dollars, made or borrowed, expended in fine houses and gaudy furniture. . . . That a storm is brewing on the commercial horizon there can be no doubt."47

  Given this mood, any financial tremor was likely to become an earthquake through the mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy. On August 24 came the tremor: the New York branch of an Ohio investment house suspended payments because the cashier had embezzled its funds. The crisis of confidence set off by this event reverberated through the economy. Financial markets in most parts of the country were now connected by telegraph; the novelty of instant communication charged these markets with a volatility that caused a rumor in one region to become a crisis somewhere else. Depositors made runs on banks, which had to call in loans to obtain specie. This caused over-extended speculators and entrepreneurs to go under. A wave of panic selling hit Wall Street. As the ripple of these failures began to spread through the country in September, a ship carrying $2 million in gold from California went to the bottom in a storm. By mid-October all but a handful of the nation's banks had suspended specie payments. Factories shut down; business failures multiplied; railroads went bankrupt; construction halted; crop prices plummeted; the intricate structure of land speculation collapsed like a house of cards; immigration dropped in 1858 to its lowest level in thirteen years; imports fell off; and the federal treasury (whose reven
ues came mainly from tariffs and land sales) ran a deficit for the first time in a decade. Men and women by hundreds of thousands lost their jobs and others went on short time or took wage cuts as the winter of 1857–58 came on.

  Remembering that some of the European revolutions in 1848 (which had been preceded by a financial downturn) had taken a radical turn toward class warfare, Americans wondered if they would experience similar events. Unemployed workers in several cities marched in demonstrations carrying banners demanding work or bread. In New York a large crowd broke into the shops of flour merchants. On November 10 a mob gathered in Wall Street and threatened forced entry into the U.S. customs

  47. New York Herald, June 27, July 18, 1857, quoted in Van Vleck, Panic of 1857, 60, 63.

  house and subtreasury whose vaults contained $20 million. Soldiers and marines dispersed them, but unrest persisted through the winter, causing more than one anxious citizen to apprehend that "a nightmare broods over society."48

  Though often militant in rhetoric, however, these demonstrations generated little violence. No one was killed and few were injured—in sharp contrast to the Know-Nothing riots a few years earlier and the ongoing guerrilla warfare in Kansas. Relief and public works in northern cities helped alleviate hardships over the winter. One of the most striking consequences of the depression was a religious revival that brought people of all occupations together in prayer meetings at which they contemplated God's punishment for the sins of greed and high living that had caused the crash.49

  Perhaps the Lord took pity. The depression of 1857–58 turned out to be milder and shorter than expected. California gold came east in large quantities during the fall and winter. Banks in New York resumed specie payments by December 1857, and those elsewhere followed suit during the next few months. The stock market rebounded in the spring of 1858. Factories reopened, railroad construction resumed its rapid pace, and unemployment declined. By early 1859 recovery was almost complete. Trade unions, which had all but disappeared under impact of the depression, revived in 1859 and began a series of strikes to recoup predepression wages. In February 1860 the shoemakers of Lynn, Massachusetts, went out in what became the largest strike in American history to that time, eventually involving 20,000 workers in the New England shoe industry.