Six weeks into the campaign, Lincoln and his advisers came up with the idea that would change the whole shape and tenor of the contest. They offered Douglas the opportunity for an extended series of debates, envisioning upward of fifty.
Lincoln was taking a risk. Douglas, with much more experience as a legislator than Lincoln, had built a reputation in the Senate as an outstanding debater. Some of Lincoln’s friends feared the Little Giant would run roughshod over their man.
These fears notwithstanding, Lincoln wrote a formal challenge to Douglas on July 24, 1858. “Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences during the present canvass?” As the incumbent, Douglas feared he had little to gain. He was also concerned that a third candidate, a Buchanan Democrat, might yet enter the field. But in the American West, a man could be labeled a coward if he refused a challenge.
Cornered, Douglas countered. He agreed to debate Lincoln, but not all over the state. Douglas proposed to limit the debates to seven, which would take place in seven of the nine congressional districts. There was no need for debates in Chicago and Springfield, where the candidates had spoken already. Douglas insisted on deciding the details of the debates. On July 29, 1858, on the way to speaking engagements, Lincoln and Douglas met outside the little town of Bement to hammer out final particulars. Douglas named the places and dates to fit his schedule. Two days later, after a week of negotiations, Lincoln wrote from Springfield, “I accede, and thus close the arrangement.” Just as the corn was growing tall under the warm summer sun on the Illinois prairies, the campaign between Lincoln and Douglas was suddenly about to grow into the kind of historic event neither man could have imagined.
This map of Illinois shows the places of the seven debates between Lincoln and Douglas in the late summer and fall of 1858.
IN THE 1850S, in rural and small towns across Illinois, politics and religion were often the main shows in town. The preachers held forth on Sunday. The visiting lecturers spoke on cold winter evenings. Towns vied with one another to host the annual summer county fairs. Visiting circuses were anticipated by people of all ages. With frequent elections, politics provided year-round drama, entertainment, and sources for gossip. The seven Lincoln-Douglas debates became the Fourth of July picnic, summer revival meeting, county fair, visiting circus, and visiting lecturer all rolled into one grand pageant.
People came from miles around, arriving early and staying late. Hotels overflowed with guests, with visitors sleeping on cots in halls and parlors, or on pews in churches, or on the streets on warm summer evenings. The debates became dramatic theater featuring two actors on stage who could not have been more different in height, looks, and political philosophies. The enthusiastic audiences were often larger than the towns where the debates were held.
A reporter for the New York Post captured the intense interest in politics mirrored in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. “It is astonishing how deep an interest in politics this people take. Over long weary miles of hot and dusty prairie the processions of eager partisans come—on foot, on horseback, in wagons drawn by horses or mules; men, women, and children, old and young.”
People poured into Ottawa, in north central Illinois, for the first debate. The green town of Ottawa, population seven thousand, was located at the confluence of the Fox and Illinois rivers. Ten years earlier, in 1848, it also became a canal town astride the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the final canal built in the United States and the last link between the eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. Ottawa, part of the Third Congressional District, was represented by abolitionist Owen Lovejoy. A hotbed of abolitionism, with both water and rail connections, it had also become a stop on the Underground Railroad.
By the day of the debate, Saturday, August 21, 1858, between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand people converged on Ottawa’s Lafayette Square at the center of town. Special trains brought spectators from Chicago. With no chairs provided, people prepared to stand for hours under the scorching sun. To make matters worse, the New York Evening Post reported that from sunrise to high noon “Ottawa was deluged in dust.” Patriotism was unfurled everywhere in the bright colors of flags, banners, and bunting. A cannon was fired at irregular intervals, punctuating the already noisy atmosphere.
Lincoln arrived at noon aboard a special Chicago and Rock Island seventeen-car train packed with his supporters. A vast crowd greeted him at the depot, from which he was taken by a carriage decorated with evergreens to the home of Mayor Joseph O. Glover to rest until the debate. Douglas made his grand entrance into Ottawa in a carriage drawn by four white horses.
Shortly after two o’clock, already behind schedule because of the crush of people, the dignitaries made their way to the speakers’ stand, where representatives of the press and timekeepers jostled for space to witness and monitor the event. Lincoln and Douglas took the center seats, flanked by Congressman Lovejoy, Mayor Glover, and Chief Shab-bona, elderly leader of the Ottawa Tribe. By the rules of the debates, the first participant would speak for one hour, followed by a response of one and a half hours, with the first speaker given a final half hour for a rebuttal. Douglas would have the advantage of beginning and concluding four of the seven debates, including the first one. The crowds felt free to cheer, jeer, and offer questions and comments.
After an opening recapitulation of his leadership in passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Douglas spent the majority of his first hour attacking Lincoln’s speeches and actions since 1854. Douglas, recognizing that he needed to climb a steep hill in a strongly Republican district, determined not to defend his record, but rather to force Lincoln to defend his.
He accused Lincoln and Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull of entering into an arrangement to dissolve the Whig and Democratic parties and “to connect the members of both into an Abolition party under the name and disguise of a Republican party.” Douglas focused his attack on the early Republican meeting convened by Lovejoy in Springfield in October 1854. The week before the Ottawa debate, Douglas had written to his friend Charles H. Lamphier, editor of the Illinois State Register in Springfield, seeking details about the platform enacted at that meeting. Douglas, in a dramatic gesture, held up the resolutions of the meeting of the “Black Republicans.” He declared that his purpose in reading the resolutions was to ask Lincoln seven questions to see “whether he will stand by each article in that creed and carry it out.” At that point a voice in the crowd called out, “Hit him again.” Douglas resumed, “I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions, in order that when I trot him down to lower Egypt [the extreme southern part of Illinois] I may put the same questions to him again. … My purposes are the same everywhere.”
Douglas assured the audience that, knowing Lincoln for twenty-five years, “I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman.” He proceeded to offer flattering remarks about Lincoln’s life and career, but salted each remark with satire. He described Lincoln as a “flourishing grocery-keeper” in New Salem—translation: Lincoln sold liquor. He offered mock praise for Lincoln as a congressman who “distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican war, taking the side of the common enemy against his own country.” Finally, Douglas read the introduction of the “House Divided” speech. Even as the audience responded with “good,” Douglas declared Lincoln’s words were “revolutionary and destructive of the existence of this government.”
Douglas was also adept at turning national issues into local problems. Thus, he attacked Lincoln on his criticism of the Dred Scott decision by asking the audience “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, and allow the free negroes to flow in and cover your prairies with black settlements?” (“Never!”) Douglas assailed Lincoln by playing up to the prejudices and fears of his audience. “I do not question Mr. Lincoln’s
conscientious belief that the negro was made his equal, and hence is his brother, [laughter], but for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother or any kin to me whatever.”
After an hour, Lincoln rose to offer his response. The crowd cheered so loudly and long that it was several minutes before he could begin. As he began to speak, he held in his hand a book containing Douglas speeches, editorials from newspapers, and several quotations he intended to use, including some from the founding fathers.
Henry Villard, a twenty-three-year-old German immigrant hired to cover the debates for the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, captured the unusual characteristics of Lincoln as a speaker. “He had a lean, lank, indescribably gawky figure, an odd-featured, wrinkled, inexpressive, and altogether uncomely face.” As for his mannerisms, “He used singularly awkward, almost absurd, up-and-down and side-wise movements of his body to give emphasis to his arguments.” And yet, observed Villard, in Lincoln one saw “a thoroughly earnest and truthful man, inspired by sound convictions.” A reporter for the New York Evening Post wrote, “I must confess that long Abe’s appearance is not comely. But stir him up and the fire of his genius plays on every feature. … You have before you a man of rare power and magnetic influence.” Whereas Douglas had been pretentious, often demeaning, and sometimes angry, Lincoln appeared comfortable, self-deprecating, and often humorous in his remarks.
Lincoln kept a scrapbook filled with Douglas speeches, newspaper editorials, and quotations from the founding fathers as a ready resource to use during the debates.
Lincoln, in response to Douglas’s attacks, replied, “When a man hears himself misrepresented, it provokes him—at least, I find it so with myself; but when the misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse him.” As the crowd laughed, Lincoln began his defense. One by one, he refuted Douglas’s accusations in a style that delighted the crowd. After rebutting each charge—for example, that he agreed to “sell out the old Whig party”—Lincoln would end by saying, “Yet I have no doubt he is conscientious about it,” satirizing the very word that Douglas had used to characterize him. Finally, Lincoln dismissed Douglas’s attacks about the supposed first Republican platform in 1854 by turning to “my friend Mr. Lovejoy,” who was seated on the platform. “He will be able to recollect that he tried to get me into it, but I would not go in.”
Douglas used his final half hour to resume his offensive. He charged that Lincoln had not answered his questions. After he finished, supporters swarmed the stage and lifted a startled and embarrassed Lincoln to their shoulders.
The highly political press reported two different debates at Ottawa. The Chicago Press & Tribune’s headline crowed: “Twelve Thousand Persons Present: The Dred Scott Champion Pulverized.” The Chicago Times, by contrast, emblazoned: “Lincoln’s Heart Fails Him! Lincoln’s Legs Fail Him! Lincoln’s Tongue Fails Him.” The reader, searching for the truth between such politically biased reporting, might wish to turn to the text of the debate. Reporter Horace White and stenographer Robert R. Hitt covered the debates for the pro-Lincoln Chicago Press & Tribune, while Henry Binmore and James B. Sheridan, two shorthand reporters, wrote on the debates for the pro-Douglas Chicago Times. The difficulty was that the texts in the two newspapers sometimes varied on crucial words or phrases.
The rival campaign staffs attempted to use the debate postmortem to influence public opinion. Lincoln’s closest friends sent their congratulations. Judge David Davis wrote, “Everybody here is delighted with the rencontre at Ottawa.” Richard Yates, on whose behalf Lincoln delivered his first speech when he reentered politics in 1854, applauded, “We were well satisfied with you at Ottawa.” As for Lincoln, the day after the Ottawa debate, he wrote Joseph O. Cunningham, editor of the Urbana Union, “Douglas and I, for the first time this canvass, crossed swords here yesterday; the fire flew some, and I am glad to know I am yet alive.”
Behind closed doors, however, Lincoln and his advisers were not so pleased with his performance. Henry C. Whitney, his friend from the Eighth Judicial Circuit, dispirited, wrote that even Lincoln’s friends said “Dug had now got you where he wanted you—that you had dodged on the platform.” Lincoln went to Chicago to meet with his advisers. Norman Judd, chairman of the Republican state central committee, and Joseph Medill and Charles Ray of the Chicago Press & Tribune gave him strong medicine. “Don’t act on the defensive at all.” Lincoln and his strategists worked on questions he could ask Douglas. Ray implored Congressman Elihu Washburne, in whose congressional district the next debate would be held, “When you see Abe at Freeport, for God’s sake tell him to ‘Charge Chester! Charge!’ ” Medill, speaking of Douglas, added, “You are dealing with a bold, brazen, lying rascal and you must ‘fight the devil with fire.’ ” Finally, Lincoln was urged by his friends, “For once leave modesty aside.”
THE SECOND DEBATE took place six days later in Freeport, on the banks of the Pecatonica River, a few miles south of the Wisconsin line. In spite of overcast skies and the threat of rain, upward of fifteen thousand people converged on this town of seven thousand. More than a thousand traveled the six-hour train ride from Chicago. Although not as antislavery as Ottawa, Freeport sat at the hub of a strongly Republican area.
Lincoln arrived by special train the morning of the debate and was escorted to the new, stylish Brewster House. In the early afternoon, he traveled the short distance from the hotel to the debate site in a broad-wheeled Conestoga wagon accompanied by a group of farmers. There he met Douglas. The attire of the debaters was a study in contrasts. Douglas was dressed in a ruffled shirt, a dark blue coat with shining buttons, light trousers, well-shined shoes, and a white brim hat. Lincoln wore a stovepipe hat, a coat with too-short sleeves, and baggy trousers so short they showed off his rough Conestoga boots. Lincoln and Doug las partisans held aloft a variety of competing banners, including “All Men Are Created Equal” and “No Nigger Equality.”
Lincoln, speaking for the first hour, immediately struck a more confident tone in this second debate. At the end of the Ottawa debate, Doug las had accused Lincoln of answering only one of his seven “interrogatories.” At Freeport, Lincoln wasted no time in answering all seven, doing so in crisp one-sentence answers, which he later expanded upon. He did not support the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. “I shall be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia.” Although direct, his answers contained no new revelations.
At Freeport, Lincoln became the hunter and Douglas the hunted. Lincoln took the offensive by asking Douglas four questions, the second being the most critical. “Q. 2. 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?”
Lincoln’s advisers, especially Joseph Medill, had encouraged him to ask this question. It was meant to push Douglas to speak about the meaning of popular sovereignty within the new legal landscape of the Dred Scott decision. Certainly this was not a new question for Douglas. “Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer [it] a hundred times from every stump in Illinois.” Yet Lincoln, who would return to popular sovereignty again and again in the debates, decided to make him answer it at Freeport. Douglas came into the debates trying to straddle the fence between popular sovereignty and Dred Scott. Lincoln believed the Supreme Court’s decision had effectively put a roadblock in front of popular sovereignty. He held that if Douglas endorsed the Supreme Court decision, he could not at the same time support self-government. Lincoln hoped his question would force Douglas off the fence.
Lincoln then turned his focus to the Republican meeting of October 1854, which Douglas had pounced on in the first debate. Lincoln admitted that six days earlier he had not known whether the resolutions Doug las read from had actually been passed at the Springfield meeting. His own recent research, done by Herndon, had revealed several important facts.
The meeting did not call itself the Re
publican State Convention.
No resolutions were passed in Springfield.
The resolutions Douglas read from had been passed later at a meeting in Kane County.
Lincoln was at neither meeting.
Lincoln spelled out his case as if he were a lawyer in a courtroom, turning to the jury of the Freeport audience and exclaiming, “It is most extraordinary that he should so far forget all the suggestions of justice to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the assertion of that which the slightest investigation would have shown him to be wholly false.” Prosecutor Lincoln rested his case to a response of tumultuous cheers.
Douglas was forced to begin his one-and-a-half-hour reply responding to Lincoln’s four questions. His answer to question two was direct. “It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please.” Why? “Slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations.”
Douglas’s answer to Lincoln, while not new, received widespread attention in the press, who quickly dubbed it the “Freeport Doctrine.” Douglas may have been seeking to separate himself from the Buchanan Democrats in Illinois, but his answer further alienated him from the pro-slavery Democrats in the South.
Whenever cornered, Douglas resorted not to ideas, but to aggression. A good defense, he believed, was a good offense. His favorite tactic was to characterize Lincoln as part of the “Black Republicans.” He used the term “Black Republicans” thirteen times at Ottawa and eighteen times at Freeport. He also referred to Lincoln’s ideas by using the terms “abolition” and “abolitionizing.”
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