by DL Fowler
The gay will laugh when thou art gone,
the solemn brood of care plod on,
and each one as before
will chase his favourite phantom;
yet all these shall leave their mirth
and their employments,
and come and make their bed with thee.
Although my campaign is off to a rough start, I take comfort in counsel John Stuart gave me during my early days in the state legislature, “No defeat is ever as final as it seems.” I vow to forge on. The cause is too worthy for failure.
Fortunately, Judge Douglas isn’t faring much better. The national Democrats are abandoning him over his feud with Buchanan, and local partisans are teetering as well. In April, when the State Democratic Convention nominates Douglas for re-election, several dozen delegates walk out under orders of the Postmaster of Chicago, a recent Buchanan appointee. The renegades hold their own convention and nominate Buchanan’s choice, Judge Breese.
To prepare for my campaign against Douglas, I pore over the district election results from the 1856 presidential canvass. Since the U.S. Senator is chosen by the state legislature—consisting of fifty-eight house seats and twenty-five senators—we must win the majority of those elections to defeat Douglas in January. The ’56 results buoy my spirits. Even though Buchanan won the state’s Presidential Electors, his opponents received thirty-thousand more votes. What’s more, Republicans and Whigs combined to win a majority of the state house and senate districts. If we can repeat those numbers, we can secure the Senate seat.
I rally my friends, telling them our strategy must focus on the middle section of the state. Abolitionists hold a solid advantage in the north, so we’re certain to win the seats in those counties. The southern counties are populated largely by southern-sympathizers who would never cast their ballot for an anti-slavery man like me. The middle counties are the stronghold of the old Whig party made up of folks who shy away from extreme positions. I caution my supporters that, if the Whigs buy Douglas’ portrait of me as an abolitionist, my chances with them are dim. My worries appear justified when the Whig candidate for Governor, Buckner Morris, endorses Douglas.
Campaigning begins in earnest on July 9 when the U.S. Senate adjourns, and Douglas returns to Chicago to deliver a speech at the grand five-story Tremont House. I make tracks to the burgeoning young metropolis and stand at the edge of the crowd below the second story terrace as he begins to speak. On seeing me among his supporters, the Little Giant invites me to join him on the balcony. When I do so, he lauds me as “a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent.” Out of politeness, I decline his invitation to address the assembly.
Soon after he launches into his speech, he turns and points to me, saying,
I am free to say to you that, in my opinion, 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 such manner as they should determine.
It is clear to me, if not to the throng below, that he is taking direct aim at my criticism of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which said the Negro has no part in the Declaration of Independence. His supporters howl their approval.
The next evening I address a modest crowd from the same balcony. I conclude by rebutting Douglas’ declaration of a white man’s government.
I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!
After lingering in Chicago for a few days, Douglas sets out on a tour of the central counties, canvassing votes for candidates who will support him when the legislature elects our Senator. I follow, unaccompanied and with no baggage. He travels in style on the Illinois Central Railroad directors’ private car with a banner strung up on the side announcing, S.A. DOUGLAS, THE CHAMPION OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY; a baby brass howitzer manned by two gunners in red militia shirts is mounted on a tagalong flatbed to sound his arrival.
On his arrival in Bloomington, he’s greeted by a throng of cheering admirers. No one makes any fuss over my presence, until Douglas notices me among the spectators as he begins to deliver his address. When he asks if I wish to make a speech to his supporters, I decline. I save my remarks for a more favorable audience the next evening after he departs.
I shadow Douglas as he moves on to Atlanta, Lincoln and Springfield, following the same pattern as in Chicago and Bloomington. When he sees me in the audience, he invites me to speak, and I decline, waiting until the next day to make my pitch under more agreeable conditions.
After a little more than a week of Douglas taking the crowd, and me gleaning his leftovers, I follow him back to Chicago. While there, I meet with Norman Judd who presses me to challenge Douglas to a series of face-to-face debates.
I fold my arms across my chest. “My recent experience shows that speaking at the same place the next day after Douglas is the best thing. I rebut him, but he has no chance of taking a second shot at me.”
Judd stares up at me with his eagle eyes and taps the side of his aristocratic nose. “I can smell opportunity from a mile away, but I’ll give you your way for now.”
Judd’s a stocky fellow with an authoritative bearing whom I’ve watched wear down the opposition while debating his cause in the State Senate. I know his concession isn’t his last word.
Two days later as I prepare to return to Springfield, I read that Judd’s friends at the Chicago Tribune have joined the chorus of those calling for debates. I go directly to his office to chastise him for enlisting the newspaper to pressure me. Before I can get in the first word, he grins as he hands me a copy of the New York Tribune. “Greeley has joined the debate bandwagon, too.”
I tell him, “Douglas is the idol of his party. If we go face-to-face, his popularity and imperious style will carry every debate. The newspaper men will say ‘Judge Douglas said so-and-so’ and write it up as a triumph for him.”
Judd steps up to me, his eyes only come up to the base of my throat, and plants himself like a boulder. “The committee’s appetite demands something more than second-fiddle appearances in towns Douglas has just left with a Napoleonic air.”
I shake my head and sit at his desk. “Get me some paper and a pen.”
Still smiling, he hands me a sheet of his stationery.
“A blank page, please,” I say in a deliberately icy tone. On the paper he supplies me, I write a brief note to Judge Douglas, challenging him to a series of debates. Judd delivers it on my behalf.
Before tendering his reply to my challenge, Douglas takes his tour down to Decatur. When I track him down, he’s dining at the Oglesby House restaurant, and he invites me to join him. However, my hopes of settling the question of our debates are dashed by an onslaught of Democrats who parade by our table, offering him congratulations on his speech and well-wishes for the canvass. We complete our meal without a single word exchanged between us regarding the campaign.
The next day, Douglas heads up to Monticello to make a speech. As I’m lingering behind, having breakfast, I’m handed a copy of the Chicago Times which has published Douglas’ response to my debate challenge. After digesting his litany of complaints and excuses, I write out a reply and make tracks north to catch up with him.
Our paths cross as Douglas is headed back south from Monticello, having already concluded his speech. As I begin to address his complaints, he interrupts and tells me he’ll be spending the night at the home of Frank Bryant. His host, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, lives in Bement, a flat, treeless patch of land I’ve just passed through. We agree to meet there after I’ve held my rally up in Monticello later in the evening, and I hand him the reply I’d written down in Decatur.
/> Late that evening, Douglas and I sit together in the parlor of Bryant’s cottage, and he begins by complaining,
“Lincoln, I don’t understand why you didn’t make this challenge earlier. You’ve been aware of my travels to the various county seats to meet with the Democratic committees for the purpose of scheduling my campaign stops. You followed me to each of those places and could have brought up the matter on several occasions.”
I lean back in my chair. “I’ve been quite content to tag along and get the last word on you each time you spoke. It’s the Republican Committee that is pressing for these debates.”
He brushes his hair back behind his ears. “I imagine you would be quite content to continue as you have. You put me in the position of having to anticipate any new charges you might lay on me.”
“As your agents can certainly report, Judge, my message doesn’t change. You and the Slave Power have a conspiracy to spread slavery across the entire continent, and we must stop you.”
“You have no evidence of any such agenda. If there’s a conspiracy afoot, it is you and this straw man Buchannan intends to put forward, working to defeat me by dividing the Democratic Party.”
I lean forward. “I’ve had no conversations with anyone from the President’s administration who’s conspiring against you.”
Douglas swirls a mouthful of whiskey and gulps it down. “As soon as I agree to these debates, Buchanan’s people will demand a share of the platform for their man.”
“Then we’ll both tell him he can’t.”
His eyes narrow. “And there’s this matter of you dogging me around the state. It has to stop.”
“Over the course of the nine debates, I’ll not follow you.”
“Seven debates. We already did the first two—Chicago and Bloomington.”
“We have a deal.”
Douglas stands and extends his hand. “Deal. I’ll send you a list of the places and dates.”
Three weeks later as my carriage bounces through Ottawa’s dusty, unpaved streets to the venue of our first debate, my progress is impeded by a vast concourse of people jamming into the town square—more than could possibly get near enough to hear. I’m forced to disembark and push my way past a sea of supporters and Douglas partisans alike, leaving several brawls in my wake. My ears are assaulted by peddlers hawking merchandise and bands straining to make their music heard above the boisterous masses. There are no chairs for spectators to be seated and no trees to offer shade from the blistering sun.
When I arrive at the platform, where the wooden awning already collapsed under the weight of a gang of drunken ruffians who had insisted on climbing atop it, cheers erupt. I greet Judge Douglas and whisper, “I fear the crowd will be rougher on us than you or I could be to one another.”
Douglas is the first to speak. He’s allotted an hour for his main presentation. I will follow with ninety minutes and he will close with a half-hour rebuttal. He puffs out his chest and begins by reading a message from Lyle Dickey, the local torchbearer for Henry Clay’s Whig principles. Dickey is both physically imposing and casts a large shadow over our state’s politics. Dickey’s message says:
The Republican Party in Illinois, unfortunately, has passed under the control of the revolutionary element of the Abolition party, and of those who have adopted or paid court to that element. The leaders, and to some extent the voters, of the Republican Party have been poisoned—debauched by the baneful sentiments and delusive distraction of that dangerous faction.
The Democrats roar their approval. I hang my head. We need Whig support from the central counties to win this contest.
After the crowd quiets, Judge Douglas continues in an angry, bombastic style labeling me as a dangerous radical who dishonorably opposed the Mexican War ten years ago. He accuses me of conspiring to abolitionize the old Whig and Democratic Parties and claims my opposition to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision banning Blacks from citizenship would lead to massive immigration by Blacks into our state. He goes on to pose seven questions, most of which are designed to prove I favor Black equality and oppose the Constitution.
When my turn comes, I stand slump-shouldered, remove my spectacles to clean them and say to the assembly, “I now must wear these confounded things on account of my old age.”
Laughter rises from the audience.
I gesture toward Douglas and say, “It is somewhat intimidating for me to stand here next to a great man, while I am yet a small man.”
There is more laughter, this time mixed with hissing and booing. A small skirmish breaks out a ways back in the crowd.
“Judge Douglas makes a serious accusation, against which I am prepared to defend myself. He says I kept a saloon as a young man in the village of New Salem. That is not true; however I did work at a little still house at the head of the hollow.”
Nearly everyone in the audience has a good laugh.
“Now as to the charge of the saloon, I think I can clarify the matter. I believe Judge Douglas is referring to a grocery I once owned where we sold whiskey by the dram. If that is so, I must say in my defense that I would have kept the grocery business if I could have. But due to circumstances, which I regret, I lost it.”
Hoots and belly laughs break out all over the square. Even Douglas snickers.
For the remainder of my time I ignore Douglas’ questions and accusations. Instead, I remind everyone of the lofty principles of the Declaration of Independence and the precious gift of liberty that was intended by our forefathers to be enjoyed by everyone.
On rebuttal, Douglas lambasts me for not answering his questions and challenges me to renounce the Black Republican platform. He claims my failure to make such a renunciation proves I favor repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act which requires free-states to return runaway slaves to their owners, the emancipation of slaves in the nation’s capital, and that I wish to deprive citizens of their rights to carry slave property into the territories.
When the debate ends I’m roundly criticized even by my own friends. Fellow Circuit lawyer Henry Clay Whitney complains that I behaved like a dodger on the platform. “Next time,” he says, “don’t handle him so tenderly. You have got to treat him severely, and the sooner you commence, the better and the easier things will go.”
I tell him and my other friends, “For the first time in this canvass, Douglas and I crossed swords here. The fire flew some, and I am glad to know I am still alive.”
A week later, the skies have turned gray, the air damp and chilly. When Douglas arrives on the speakers’ platform, he’s dressed in plantation style with a new-looking ruffled shirt under a close-fitting blue coat, sporting a wide-brimmed soft hat. I finger the brim of my worn stove-pipe hat as I look down at my rough boots, exposed almost to their tops by my too-short, baggy pants. I tug at the cuffs of my thread-bare shirt sticking out too far from the sleeves of my coarse tattered coat. Mother’s nagging about my uncouth appearance rings in my ears.
This time, I lead off with an hour address and finish with a half-hour rebuttal. Douglas’ speech is sandwiched between my two.
I begin with short, crisp answers to each of Douglas’ seven questions from the previous debate. Each question had been framed with the preamble, “Have you pledged?”
Each time I say, “I have not pledged,” Douglas’ frown deepens and his face grows sterner. At the conclusion of my denials, I go on to explain my position on each matter.
I say in regard to the first question, I believe the people of the southern states are entitled to a fugitive slave law under the Constitution and have never advocated its appeal, though it might be modified to be less objectionable without diminishing its effectiveness.
On the second, I say that I hope to never be in the sad position of having to pass on a law admitting a new slave state. Furthermore, I would be glad if there was never to be another slave state admitted, and if slavery were to be kept out of the territories before they are admitted to stateho
od, it is unlikely we would have any more.
My answer to the third question is included in my reply to the second.
On the fourth matter, I favor abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia under the following conditions: first, it shall be done gradually; second, it shall be done by a majority vote of the citizens of the District; and third, there shall be compensation to unwilling slave owners.
In regard to the fifth question, I say I have not sufficiently pondered the question of ending the slave trade between the states to take a position on it.
On the sixth matter, I have made my views on prohibiting slavery in territories sufficiently clear in the past. There is no need to comment on it further.
Finally, as to whether I am opposed to the acquisition of more territories unless slavery is first prohibited therein, I suppose I could add nothing to what is already in writing to make my position better understood.
At the conclusion of my responses, I ask Judge Douglas a question of my own. “Can the people of any United States Territory—in any lawful way against the wishes of any citizen of the United States—exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?”
“He won’t answer,” someone calls out.
I bite my lip to stifle a grin. If he answers “yes,” he says the Supreme Court was wrong in its Dred Scott decision. Such an answer would confirm his opposition to the President who is from his own party, though it carries the risk of some moderate voters getting the impression that Popular Sovereignty can limit slavery’s expansion. If his response is “no,” he disavows his own principle of Popular Sovereignty and must agree that the Court will be right when it says that no state legislature, including our own, can exclude slavery.
During Douglas’ turn, he answers yes to my question, and Judd glares at me from his seat in the front row. His countenance tells me he believes by giving Douglas the opportunity to affirm the view that slavery’s extension can be halted, I have lost the debate and likely the election.