From the vast historical record of Lincoln's recorded words, from those written by his hand, transcribed by reporters, or comments remembered later by friend and foe alike, Lincoln sincerely believed this controversial passage, even though certainly forced by political necessity to speak these words. Yet, he added these lines: " . . . there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." While he might agree with Douglas that no black was his equal "in moral or intellectual endowment," Lincoln chose, when he edited the debates for publication, to put these words in italic so they would not be missed: "But in the right to eat the bread, without the 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. "12
Most observers, and perhaps Lincoln himself, thought that Douglas got the better of him in that first debate in Ottawa. However, Lincoln recovered and found his stride at the next debate stop of Freeport. He started out more aggressively, posing an important question to Douglas, forcing the senator to explicitly state that northern voters had the clear right to outlaw slavery, despite the recent Dred Scott decision. The Freeport Doctrine that Douglas endorsed that afternoon would later heighten southern Democratic voters' distrust of him, but it is unlikely Lincoln was thinking that far ahead. More immediately, Lincoln wanted voters to severely doubt the truthfulness of their senator, as he made the point repeatedly that the Little Giant was part of a great conspiracy along with President James Buchanan, former president Franklin Pierce, and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to make slavery "perpetual and national."13This effort to make Illinois citizens conclude that their senator wanted slavery in every state, north or south, was an audacious one, hardly grounded in truth. Douglas bitterly resented the charge, which made Lincoln only more eager to repeat the taunt throughout the debates.
Yet this explosive charge was not actually indicative of Lincoln's usual style, as he generally treated political opponents with cool, reasoned disagreement laced with a sly humor. One observer of the debates, Carl Schurz, who later became a friend and political advisor, remembered Lincoln's "tone of earnest truthfulness, of elevated, noble sentiment, and of kindly sympathy."14 Lincoln's clear, high-pitched almost falsetto western twang rang out to the edges of the crowd, and to the nation beyond. Though even his greatest admirers could see what a long gawky figure Abraham Lincoln struck, there was also something strangely compelling in his speaking that made people quickly forget the rumpled clothes, the awkward flatfooted walk, the tousled wild hair, the thin, scrawny neck. His longtime law partner, William Herndon, acknowledged that when Lincoln began speaking, his voice was "shrill-squeaking-piping, unpleasant," but that as he warmed up and eased into the flow of his address, then it became "harmonious, melodious—musical, if you please."15
At six foot four, Lincoln appeared oddly elongated, with his considerable strength masked by narrow shoulders, huge hands, and long legs out of proportion with his frame. His complexion was rough and heavily wrinkled, his nose massive and jutting, his thin mouth expansive, his cheeks sunken. Most strange of all, his deep-set gray eyes, pensive and somber, did not match—his heavy-lidded and hooded right eye gave him a cold, off-center stare. Some described him as ugly, others were almost spellbound by his singular demeanor, as if these extreme features formed a visage distinctly majestic. He did not seem at all sensitive about his looks, and in fact delighted in making fun of himself.
Stephen Douglas was not so innocent in his humor. Over and over again, Douglas would declare Abraham Lincoln to be in secret league with the fiery black speaker and editor Frederick Douglass. In some sense, it is odd that the Lincoln-Douglas debates have such an exalted reputation, for they are full of abuse, racial insults, extraneous diversions and sallies, exemplified by Douglas's most devastating story: "I have reason to recollect that some people in this country think that Fred Douglass is a very good man. The last time I came here to make a speech . . . I saw a carriage, and a magnificent one it was, drive up and take a position on the outside of the crowd; 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." The crowd laughed and jeered, as Douglas made it clear that Lincoln's politics meant they would soon be driving the despised Douglass around with their wives and daughters. And why had the abolitionist Douglass been in town? Why, to speak "for his friend Lincoln as the champion of the black man."16
In all, Stephen Douglas goaded Lincoln in the debates by mentioning Frederick Douglass by name fifteen times, even repeating the carriage story to the crowd's delight at the next debate in Jonesboro, Illinois. Lincoln made no direct reply to either the carriage tale or to the continuing taunts of his supposed Black Republican identity. When he had the next chance to speak first, at Charlestown (the town in the debates closest to the Mason-Dixon line, and most sympathetic to the South), Lincoln tried a new tactic to fend off this poisonous and very effective attack, and also to indirectly address the anxious sexual subtext of what having a man like Fred Douglass seated next to a white wife and daughter might mean for the good voters of Illinois. Lincoln used the old politician's trick of pretending he had not planned to discuss the topic in that day's debate, but that, providentially, an "elderly gentleman" had just earnestly asked him to discuss black and white equality—so he thought he might just repeat he did not believe in any such thing, "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."
He continued, articulating beliefs widely held by voters from both political parties and, truth be known, many abolitionists themselves, that these bars to equality were due to "a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever prevent the races living together on terms of social and political equality." If they were to be forced to coexist, there must be a superior race, "and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." Then he struck a particularly Lincolnian note, bemused, ironic, amusing—and a devastatingly effective political reply. In believing whites were above the black race, he still did 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."17
Still, Douglas made one more attempt at Charlestown to evoke the dark shadow of Frederick Douglass and his cohorts, before dropping the abolitionist's name in the remaining three debates. Reminding his listeners that Lincoln's Black Republican party had been chasing him around the state for years, he made an interesting rhetorical twist in this age of the Fugitive Slave Act: "They had the same negro hunting me down, and they now have a negro traversing the northern counties of the state and speaking in behalf of Lincoln . . . in order to show how much interest the colored brethren felt in the success of their brother Abe." Adding that it would take too much of his remaining time to read selections from it, the senator noted a recent address by Frederick Douglass in Poughkeepsie, New York, in which this nemesis "conjures all the friends of negro equality and negro citizenship to rally as one man around Abraham Lincoln, the perfect embodiment of their principles, and by all means to defeat Stephen A. Douglas."18
Frederick Douglass's Poughkeepsie address appears to contain his first mention of Lincoln, though the emerging Republican candidate's name was offered (a common mistake until the election of 1860) as "Abram." The grand platform collapsed just before his speech, sending all "in one conglomerate mass of pine, hemlock and humanity."19Falling down with the throng, his head was struck by a splintering board, yet Douglass still managed to rise and speak for well over an hour.
Delivered in early August of 1858 just before the debates, Frederick Douglass's speech was among the first to comment on the battle between Lincoln
and Douglas. Noting that the nation had existed only eighty-two years and thirty-one days, Douglass honed in on the fact that this senatorial campaign was about the nature of the Declaration of Independence itself. "The contest going on just now in the state of Illinois is worthy of attention. Stephen A. Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, is energetically endeavoring to hold his seat in the United States Senate, and Mr. Abram Lincoln is endeavoring as energetically to get that seat for himself." He added quickly that this was only "a partial view of the subject. The truth is, that Slavery and Anti-Slavery are at the bottom of the contest."20
Senator Douglas was correct in noting that Frederick Douglass was keenly gunning for him. In the abolitionist's view, the senator's troubles placed him in "an extravagance of political profligacy which can be neither forgiven or forgotten . . . " Still, Douglass knew there was no counting the Little Giant out, for he had money, influence, and great talent. In the end, he was "one of the most restless, ambitious, boldest and most unscrupulous enemies with whom the cause of the colored man has had to contend." With a mocking reference to their sharing a name, Frederick Douglass added, "It seems to me that the white Douglas should occasionally meet his desserts at the hands of a black one. Once I thought he was about to make the name respectable, but now I despair of him, and must do the best I can for it myself."
Concluding, he added, "I now leave him in the hands of Mr. Lincoln . . ." In this prescient speech, Douglass not only accurately predicted the great importance of the Senate race, but admiringly quoted at length Lincoln's recent oration at the beginning of the campaign, forever known as the House Divided speech. Though Lincoln was clearly not in the abolitionist camp, Douglass admired the lawyer's tough-minded vision of a nation that could not "endure permanently half Slave and half Free." He called Lincoln's bold and closely reasoned address "a great speech."21
The remaining debates ground on along the same well-trod themes, with little more rhetorical fireworks or inspirational tropes. The contestants were growing tired, and there were only so many ways to lay out their themes— Senator Douglas contended that Lincoln was somehow a radical abolitionist, despite all he said and what was in his (admittedly spare) political record; and Lincoln claimed that Douglas, despite his proclaimed neutrality toward slavery, was in a secret cabal to extend "the peculiar institution" not only into the western territories but into the free states. Neither candidate's attempt to sway the voters of Illinois was based entirely on fact.
Only in the closing words of the last debate in Alton, on October 15, 1858, were words said that somehow elevated the entire exercise and indicated what the future course of the nation might hold. Lincoln stated how odd, and troubling, it was for his rival to put himself before the people by refusing to state a position on slavery, to run on a platform "upon the basis of caring nothing about the very thing that every body does care the most about'" Lincoln finally, with only minutes more remaining to him, stated in stark and moving terms what was beyond the surface discussion over the western expansion of slavery: "It is the eternal struggle between the two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' "22
So the great debates ended, and the combatants, in exhaustion, awaited the people's verdict—though not by their direct vote, as in this time each county elected state legislators, who then in turn voted for the new senator by their party affiliation. Despite Lincoln's long-held optimism that he would win the popular vote, the senator had strong advantages in enough individual counties, the only vote that really mattered. The Republicans did indeed poll a slight majority, but on Election Day 1858, Stephen Douglas was returned to the Senate by the state legislature's vote, 54 to 46. While Lincoln had the satisfaction of being able to claim he had indeed defeated his rival in sheer votes, the disheartening reality was that he was not going to the Senate.
Personally devastated, Lincoln, who by this time in his life had become adept at handling painful disappointment and thwarted ambition, reflected, rightly, that he had made a powerful contribution to the national debate on the future of slavery, one that would likely affect future campaigns. If he slid back into his accustomed obscurity, at least he had pressed the Little Giant as no one else had done before.
There are three reasons Lincoln did not return to anonymity after losing: his cool, logically compelling arguments against his forceful rival gave the newly emerging Republican party great hopes in the upcoming presidential contest; his personal realization that law was no longer consuming enough for his great vaunting inner ambition; and a singular and unusual political move for a losing candidate. In 1859, he helped arrange for the publishing of his personal scrapbook of the transcripts of the debates, and when they sold over thirty thousand copies, suddenly Lincoln was obscure no more.
The debates were not the first time the names of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass had been linked. Two years before, the Illinois State Register said of Lincoln, "his niggerism has as dark a hue as that of Garrison or Fred Douglass."23Douglass's fame was such that there were hundreds of references to the reformer all through the 1850s, especially when Lincoln was sharing a law practice with a fervent abolitionist, William Herndon. The innately conservative and cautious Lincoln was well served by his junior partner, whose reforming enthusiasms and attraction to New England Transcendental thought would have alerted him to the latest moves and innovations of the growing abolitionist parties, whether Free Soil, Liberty, Radical Abolitionist, and the extreme uncompromising edges of the new Republican movement.
Douglass and Senator Douglas had their own fascinating history. Frederick Douglass had long been determined to debate the senator himself, long before Lincoln's candidacy, saying of the Little Giant that no one had done more to intensify hatred of black people. Douglass spoke in several Illinois frontier towns long before the 1858 campaign. After seeing him in Chicago, the Illinois Daily Journal conceded in 1853 that Douglass was "the ablest and most accomplished speaker of the African race."24
The idea of a Douglass-Douglas debate would not die easily. In 1857, the same newspaper reported that a group of black Chicagoans passed resolutions "daring Senator Douglas to measure intellectual strength in debate with 'black Fred Douglass.' "25The group had decried the senator's epithets against their people, and they wanted to see their senator in debate with the foremost black orator in America. The white newspaper was excited at the prospect of a leader of the nation taking on Douglass.
As he had mentioned in the Lincoln debates, Stephen Douglas did indeed feel haunted by the former slave, who set up a speaking tour that closely followed his movements. The Illinois Daily Journal commented, "It has been quite common for white men to hunt negros, but we now find a negro hunting a white man!" One debate was even arranged but canceled by the senator, and he managed to evade his black political stalker in the next four years— daring only to evoke him in order to goad Lincoln.26
Frederick Douglass managed to convince many that a debate between him and Senator Douglas would be worthwhile. Douglass's hometown newspaper, the Rochester Democrat and American, wrote in 1859 that it would be interesting if friends of "the little giant in Illinois arrange for a joint debate between the two Douglases." But in a testament to the respect Lincoln was gaining across the country, they thought that it would "not be fair seeing how hard a task the Senator has in his contests with 'Long Abe.' "27
Almost as a consolation for not getting the chance to face the Little Giant, in the winter of 1858, Frederick Douglass embarked on a long Midwest tour through the prairies, making sure he spoke in many of the sites of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, with appearances in Freeport, Galesburg, and Ottawa.
Beginning with Freeport on Februar
y 15 and 16, Douglass called for immediate national emancipation. The FreeportJournal described him as "fluent and ready-willed," and said he "has a knack of saying impudent things about American institutions." The institution they referred to was slavery. The next night he was in Dixon, where the newspaper found this "Anglo-Ethiopian" to have "all the attributes of a great orator." In Mendota the following day, the Mendota Press Observer cited his rise from slavery without formal education and doubted whether "all history can furnish any instance more remarkable." Douglass won over the reporter with his wit, which he found to be a vindication of the black man's claims to humanity. Recognition of the fundamental humanity of black people was a major theme during the tour. Douglass would trace the achievements of the Egyptians and those of African descent all over the world, arguing that racial differences came from climates and geography instead of distinct inequalities. The Belvidere Standard dismissed such assertions, writing, "The lecture was a very good one, and interesting, but science is rather out of Fred's line."28
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