Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Republicans belittled Douglas’s offer. The Illinois State Journal complained that there were “about one hundred points in the State where the candidates … ought to have held discussions.” The senator’s excuse for confining the debates to seven sites “is a cowardly showing of the white feather,” the Journal protested.259 “The little dodger shirks, and backs out, except at half a dozen places which he himself selects!” exclaimed the Chicago Press and Tribune. Douglas’s reply was so “cowardly and contemptible” that the editors surmised he “is afraid of ‘Long Abe’ on the stump” and “would rather go about the country like a strolling mountebank, with his cannon, to[a]dies and puffers, to shoot, cheer and blow for him than to stand up to the work with a full grown man to confront him.” In 1840, Douglas had ridiculed William Henry Harrison for placing himself in the hands of a committee; now the Little Giant was using that same excuse.260 The Illinois State Register countered: “The idea that a man who has crossed blades in the senate with the strongest intellects of the country, who has, as the champion of democratic principles in the senatorial arena, routed all opposition—that such a man dreads encounter with Mr. A. Lincoln is an absurdity that can be uttered by his organs only with a ghastly phiz.”261 Lincoln, the Chicago Times predicted, “will get enough of debate and discomfiture to last him the balance of his life.”262

  Throughout the country, eyes turned to Ottawa, where the candidates would inaugurate what one Illinois abolitionist regarded as “a contest for the advancement of the kingdom of Heaven or the kingdom of Satan—a contest for an advance or a retrograde in civilization.”263 The New York Times prophetically remarked: “The battle must be close, severe, and doubtful. That it will be well fought is certain, and its results will be both important and memorable.”264

  13

  “A David Greater than

  the Democratic Goliath”

  The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

  (1858)

  In 1860, the radical abolitionist Parker Pillsbury dismissed Lincoln as “the Kentucky clodhopper,” scoffed at his antislavery record, and maintained there was “no essential difference” between him and Stephen A. Douglas.1 In fact, the two Illinois rivals disagreed fundamentally about slavery, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the role of the U.S. Supreme Court, racial equality, and American history. Their epic battle in 1858 threw into sharp relief not only those disagreements but also the stark difference in the combatants’ fundamental character. In addition, as some sensed at the time, their debates proved to be a dress rehearsal for the presidential contest two years later. As Herndon accurately predicted, “the Race in Ills for 1858 & 9—for the Senatorial seat … will be hot—energetic—deadly; it will be broader—wider, and deeper in principle than the race in 1856.”2

  As the Little Giant and his challenger girded for battle, odds-makers would probably have favored Douglas, though he suffered a few potential handicaps, including the split in his party; the reluctance of some former Whigs to back a Democrat; the increasing population of the northern part of the state, where hostility to slavery was intense; and the hard times produced by the Panic of 1857, which the public blamed on the Democrats. Outweighing those disadvantages were the Little Giant’s obvious strengths: he was much better known than Lincoln; his leadership in the struggle against the Lecompton Constitution had won respect among Illinoisans who had earlier lost faith in him because of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; his forceful personality endeared him to many; his party had long dominated the state’s politics; his appeals to race prejudice resonated in Illinois, one of the most Negrophobic of the Free States; and his skills as a debater were legendary. In addition, the Illinois General Assembly, which would choose the senator, was malapportioned; the heavily Democratic southern counties of the state had more than their fair share of legislative seats, depriving the Republicans of six to ten votes that they would have had if a reapportionment had been undertaken based on the most recent census. The twenty-five-member state senate contained Democratic holdovers from some districts that now had Republican majorities.

  Lincoln acknowledged that Douglas’s eminence benefited the Democrats. “Senator Douglas is of world wide renown,” he observed. “All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as a certainty, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, landoffices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.” Hoping for such patronage rewards, these politicos “rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions.” Lincoln, on the other hand, had no such support: “nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor lean, lank, face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.”3

  Helping to make Douglas formidable in debate was his lack of scruples. As William Herndon told a friend in Massachusetts, Illinois Republicans faced “a clever villian.… Douglas is an ambitious and an unscrupulous man; he is the greatest liar in all America; he misrepresents Lincoln throughout, and our people generally are not logical enough to see the precise manner, point & issue of [the] deception.”4 In addition, Douglas’s verbal dexterity and overweening self-assurance enabled him to impress audiences, even though he might be uttering non-sequiturs.

  Lincoln possessed offsetting advantages: his party was comparatively unified; the appeal of the antislavery cause was waxing; the sincerity of his commitment to that cause was palpable and persuasive; he was an effective, seasoned debater with political skills honed over the past quarter of a century; his psychological maturity and paternal qualities predisposed men to regard him with the affection and trust bestowed on a wise father; his self-effacing modesty and keen sense of humor made him likable; and his reputation for integrity had won him an unusual measure of respect.

  Nevertheless, some Republicans were nervous about the debates. The unpopularity of Lincoln’s stands on the Mexican War and on racial issues, along with the opposition of prominent Eastern Republicans like Horace Greeley, whose New York Tribune was widely read in Illinois, boded ill. Shortly before the debates began, Lincoln asked Hiram W. Beckwith of Danville how the party leaders in his area felt. When told that they anticipated the contest “with deep concern,” Lincoln at first looked pained but quickly changed his expression as he described two men about to fight: “one of them brags about what he means to do. He jumps high in the air, cracking his heels together, smites his fists, and wastes his breath trying to scare somebody.” The “other fellow, he says not a word.” His “arms are at his side, his fists are closely doubled up, his head is drawn to the shoulder, and his teeth are set firm together. He is saving his wind for the fight, and as sure as it comes off he will win it, or die a-trying.”5

  The Opening Debate

  Anticipation of the debates was keen. When Lincoln and Douglas took the platform for their first meeting, at Ottawa, the crowd of over 10,000 doubled the population of that county seat. People flocked there on special trains from LaSalle, Peru, and Chicago (84 miles to the northeast); from less distant locales they poured in on horseback, on foot, on hayracks, and in wagons and carriages. Boats conveyed others along the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which passed through the town. Many came the night before the debate, quickly filling the hotels and private houses; latecomers were forced to camp wherever they could find space. A resident recalled that the “campfires that spread up and down the valley for a mile made it look as if an army was gathered.”6

  Like a conquering hero, Douglas arrived in a splendid carriage drawn by four horses and flanked by bands playing martial music and by several hundred supporters waving flags and banners. Adding to the din, cannons fired volleys, well-wishers cheered lustily, and street vendors noisily hawked their wares. Lincoln made a less grandiose entrance into town aboard a train full of supporters from Chicago. En rout
e he seemed unruffled, and when asked about the upcoming debate, he “calmly and indifferently replied, that he was fully prepared.”7

  At the depot a large crowd holding aloft banners emblazoned with pro-Republican mottos greeted him: “Abe the Giant-Killer,” “Edgar County for the Tall Sucker,” “Illinois born under the Ordinance of ’87.”8 His friend W. H. L. Wallace escorted him to the home of Mayor Joseph O. Glover, where he would spend the night. Because the weather had been unusually dry, so much dust was stirred up that the town looked like a huge smokehouse. Under a blazing sun, the audience jammed into the unshaded public square, where they stood patiently for three hours listening to the debaters. With difficulty the speakers and dignitaries made their way through the mass of humanity to reach the platform, which was so crowded that part of it collapsed.

  Douglas opened the debates by repeating many of his earlier arguments, fiercely denying that he had conspired to nationalize slavery and charging that Lincoln favored racial equality. He underscored his points by furiously gesturing skyward, giving his head a shake, and moving forward like a springing panther.

  Douglas’s “sledge-hammer style” displeased some auditors, who thought him too “dogmatic” and “coarse in his expressions.”9 A local Republican paper reported that his “face was livid with rage and despair; he threw himself into contortions, shook his head, shook his fists; his whole body shook as with a palsy; his eyes protruded from their sockets; he raved like a mad bull. His voice at times descended to a demonized howl; and such looks as he gave his antagonist!”10 A former admirer of Douglas found it “disgusting” to observe how “he shuns and avoids the real solid matter and marrow of the matter, avoids everything that looks like fair debate upon questions of national or even of State policy; how he quibbles, how he misrepresents, how he prevaricates; nay—it must be said—how he lies, how he panders to the lowest portions of the lowest classes, with slang, with coarse jokes, with ribaldry, with vile abuse.”11

  In his opening remarks, Douglas praised his opponent’s character, then abruptly asked 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 negro to flow in [“never”] and cover our prairies with his settlements? Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony [“no, no”], in order that when Missouri shall abolish slavery, she can send us these emancipated slaves to become citizens and voters on an equality with you? [“Never, no.”] If you desire negro citizenship—if you desire them to come into the State and stay with white men—if you desire to let them vote on an equality with yourselves—if you desire to make them eligible to office—to have them serve on juries and judge of your rights—then go with Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republicans in favor of negro citizenship. [“Never, never.”] For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any form. [Cheers.]”

  (Instead of citing the threat posed by Missouri, some other Democrats pointed to Connecticut, where the state House of Representatives had recently passed a bill to enfranchise blacks. “This is republican policy where that party has full sweep,” according to the Illinois State Register. “When seeking power, as in this state, they endeavor to cover up their real designs.—Let them once secure the power, and, as in Connecticut, they will raise the negro to the political level of the native white.” If blacks were allowed to vote in Illinois, the Chicago Times predicted, thousands of them “will drift into this State.”)12

  Blacks were hopelessly inferior, Douglas argued. Snidely he remarked, “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 I positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever. [“Never.” “Hit him again,” and cheers.]” Citing history, he added: “I do not believe the Almighty ever intended the negro to be the equal of the white man. [“Never, never.”] If he did he has been a long time demonstrating the fact. [Laughter, cheers.] For six thousand years the negro has been a race upon the earth, and during that whole six thousand years—in all latitudes and climates wherever the negro has been—he has been inferior to whatever race adjoined him. The fact is he belongs to an inferior race and must occupy an inferior position. [“Good,” “that’s so,” &c.]”13

  Douglas may have said “nigger” instead of “Negro.” The Quincy Whig sarcastically noted that the Little Giant’s “elegant terms” included an accusation that Lincoln espoused “the doctrine that ‘niggers were equal to white men.’ ” The Whig asked: “Isn’t this beautiful language to come from a United States Senator?”14 A journalist who interviewed Robert R. Hitt, the shorthand journalist who covered the debates for the Chicago Press and Tribune, wrote that during the second debate, held at Freeport, Owen Lovejoy became “thoroughly aroused by Douglas’ reference to ‘the nigger’—Douglas said ‘nigger’ not ‘negro’ as the Times reported him on that occasion.”15 Throughout the debate, “Douglas said ‘nigger,’ ” though his “organ printed it ‘negro.’ ”16 At Hillsboro, Douglas gave a speech in which “he uttered scarcely a sentence which had not the word ‘nigger’ in it,” according to the Chicago Press and Tribune.17 In the later Alton debate, a reporter had difficulty hearing the Little Giant, but could make out some “emphatic words” like “nigger equality” and the Declaration of Independence was not made for “niggers.”18

  Douglas made several false allegations in addition to the charge that Lincoln favored social and political equality for blacks. He accused Lincoln and Trumbull of having conspired in 1854 to break up the Whig and Democratic parties, with the former to succeed Shields in the senate the following year and the latter to take Douglas’s seat in 1859. The Little Giant followed this falsehood with another, which would significantly undermine his credibility: he charged that Lincoln had helped write an antislavery platform allegedly drawn up at Springfield in October 1854. Douglas read portions of what he wrongly identified as that document, calling for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the elimination of the interstate slave trade, and a ban on the acquisition of more slave territory, among other things. He then posed seven interrogatories, asking if Lincoln agreed with that platform. He added that he would trot Lincoln down to Egypt and “bring him to his milk”—that is, confront him with the strong antislavery statements he made in northern Illinois.

  Transcribing Douglas’s remarks later, Robert R. Hitt discovered that the Little Giant was quoting a radical platform adopted in 1854 at Aurora, not the more moderate one endorsed at Springfield. Douglas later claimed that he had relied on an 1856 speech by Congressman Thomas L. Harris, who cited a resolution adopted by what he termed the “first State convention of the Black Republican party in Illinois.”19 (The day before the Ottawa debate, this resolution appeared in the Illinois State Register, which mistakenly stated that it had been written by a committee on which Lincoln had served.) In mid-August, Douglas had asked Harris where and when that convention was held. According to the Little Giant, the editor of the Illinois State Register, Charles H. Lanphier, who replied for the indisposed Harris, misinformed him, saying that it had occurred in Springfield in October 1854 and providing a clipping from the Illinois State Register containing the Aurora platform, misidentified as the Springfield platform. Republicans in 1854 had pointed out the Register’s gaffe. Leading Republican newspapers, like the Chicago Journal and Democrat, had opposed those Aurora resolutions.

  When the Chicago Press and Tribune revealed Douglas’s error, he recounted this tale and asked rhetorically at Galena on August 25, “Had I not abundant reason for supposing they were the Republican State platform of 1854?”20 This was a lame excuse, for Douglas had made the same mistake in 1856 in a speech on the senate floor, where Trumbull set him straight. In October, Douglas repeated his explanation and scornfully decl
ared, “it will not do for him [Lincoln] to charge forgery on Charles H. Lanphier or Thomas L. Harris. No man on earth who knows these men or Lincoln could believe Lincoln on oath against either of them.… Any man who attempts to make such charges as Mr. Lincoln has indulged in against them, only proclaims himself a slanderer.”21 The Chicago Press and Tribune scoffed at Douglas’s “evasion of responsibility of his own act,” which it called “mean and pitiful to the last degree, second only to the pusillanimity of trying to fasten it upon an absent friend.”22 Clearly, Douglas had not made an honest mistake, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

  Lanphier, who did not seem to resent Douglas’s attempt to blame him for the error, insouciantly argued that it mattered little whether the Republicans at Aurora adopted a platform different from the Springfield platform, for they were all Republicans. This assertion was disingenuous, for the moderate platforms adopted by the Republican state conventions at Bloomington in 1856 and Springfield in 1858 were far more representative of the state party’s views than the more radical ones adopted in 1854 by county conventions in northern Illinois.

  Angry Republicans condemned Douglas’s forgery as the “shameful” and “outrageous” act of a “little coward.”23 The Illinois State Journal pointed out that in 1854 some local Democratic conventions in northern Illinois had adopted resolutions endorsing the principle of “no more slave states” and calling for the abolition of the domestic slave trade and of slavery in the District of Columbia. It deemed the Little Giant’s misrepresentation of the Springfield platform “an act that, in the ordinary business transactions of life, would consign its authors and abettors to … the society of thieves and blacklegs” and remarked that Douglas now wore “the brand of the forger upon his forehead.”24 The Chicago Press and Tribune indignantly observed that “Mr. Douglas knew that he basely, maliciously and willfully LIED. He not only lied circumstantially and wickedly; but he spent the first part of his speech in elaborating the lie with which he set out, and the entire latter part, in giving the lie application and effect.… Men of Illinois, here is your Senator! … Here is the man who is traversing the State from end to end in pursuit of votes, bellowing as he goes—‘You lie! you lie!’ ”25 The Chicago Journal expressed disbelief “that such wanton falsehoods will obtain for their author consideration from honorable men.”26