by H. W. Brands
Brown here wasn’t providing cover to himself alone. He was protecting his sponsors, who could say, if the time came, that they didn’t know of his plans for an invasion of the South. At least some of them apparently realized this; at any rate, he wasn’t pressed on the issue.
Yet neither were they as open-handed as he wished. Brown’s deception backfired when it came to fund-raising. While he let them think small, in terms of Kansas, he was thinking large, of the South. Their contributions suited the former but fell short of the latter. He might have blamed himself but instead blamed them. He left Boston and tossed a sneer over his shoulder. “Old Brown’s Farewell: to the Plymouth Rocks; Bunker Hill Monuments, Charter Oaks, and Uncle Tom’s Cabins,” was the heading he put on his angry piece. “Has left for Kansas. Was trying since he came out of the territory to secure an outfit, or in other words the means of arming and equipping thoroughly his regular minute men, who are mixed up with the people of Kansas. And he leaves the States with a deep feeling of sadness, that after having exhausted his own small means, and with his family and his brave men, suffered hunger, nakedness, cold, sickness, and (some of them) imprisonment, with the most barbarous and cruel treatment, wounds, and death; that after lying on the ground for months, in the most unwholesome and sickly, as well as uncomfortable, places, with sick and wounded destitute of any shelter a part of the time, dependent in part on the care and hospitality of the Indians, and hunted like wolves; that after all this, in order to sustain a cause which every Citizen of this ‘Glorious Republic’ is under equal moral obligation to do (and for the neglect of which he will be held accountable to God), in which every man, woman, and child of the entire human family has a deep and awful interest; that when no wages are asked or expected, he cannot secure (amidst all the wealth, luxury, and extravagance of this ‘Heaven exalted’ people) even the necessary supplies for a common soldier: ‘How are the mighty fallen?’ ”
A different sort of man would have asked himself why he had failed to get his message across. John Brown wasn’t that man. His failure simply strengthened his determination to carry his war to Africa. Others might forget that God would hold them accountable; John Brown did not.
19
ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S Springfield speech caused the sensation he hoped for, and then some. Many of his allies thought he had taken things too far with his “house divided” imagery. William Herndon had known Lincoln was going to use the phrase and image, for Lincoln had read him the speech ahead of time. “It is true,” Herndon said of the metaphor. “But is it wise or politic to say so?” Lincoln subsequently read the speech to an audience of a dozen close confidants. “Some condemned and not one endorsed it,” Herndon said of the provocative line. Herndon recalled a member of the group spluttering about Lincoln’s “damned fool utterance.” The consensus was that it would frighten potential Republicans into the ranks of the Democrats. Yet Herndon, retrospectively claiming prescience, recalled telling his partner, “Lincoln, deliver that speech as read and it will make you president.”
But it didn’t seem likely to make him senator. Democrats were delighted at Lincoln’s inflammatory rhetoric. “I had thought until recently that the Little Giant was dead in Illinois,” one of them said, employing the nickname for the short Douglas, “until I saw the speech Mr. Lincoln made to the Republican convention in Springfield.” This observer predicted that Lincoln’s characterization of the struggle between slave states and free was entirely too extreme for Illinoisans and other westerners. The Democrats could use it to destroy Lincoln. “It is abolition and disunion so absolutely expressed that it should be made to burn Mr. Lincoln as long as he lives.”
Lincoln knew his words would create a furor. But he claimed he couldn’t have not spoken them. “I have never professed an indifference to the honors of official station; and were I to do so now, I should only make myself ridiculous,” he scribbled a few weeks later in a note for a speech. “Yet I have never failed—do not now fail—to remember that in the Republican cause there is a higher aim than that of mere office.” He remarked that opponents of slavery in Britain had labored for decades before achieving success. He allowed that success in America might take as long. “I cannot but regard it as possible that the higher object of this contest may not be completely attained within the term of my natural life. But I cannot doubt either that it will come in due time.” And he wanted to be on the side of righteousness. “I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see.”
All the same, Lincoln didn’t employ the “house divided” language again. Once was enough. Yet he didn’t retreat from the broader message of the speech: that the Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, were engaged in a conspiracy to force slavery upon the whole nation. “I clearly see, as I think, a powerful plot to make slavery universal and perpetual in this nation,” he jotted in another note. “The effort to carry that plot through will be persistent and long continued, extending far beyond the senatorial term for which Judge Douglas and I are just now struggling.” Referring to his House Divided speech, he said, “In it I arrange a string of incontestable facts which, I think, prove the existence of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery. The evidence was circumstantial only; but nevertheless it seemed inconsistent with every hypothesis save that of the existence of such conspiracy. I believe the facts can be explained to-day on no other hypothesis.”
In public statements Lincoln feigned surprise at the stir he had caused. To a Chicago editor who had remarked on the force of his Springfield speech, Lincoln responded, “I am much flattered by the estimate you place on my late speech; and yet I am much mortified that any part of it should be construed so differently from anything intended by me.” Choosing his words carefully, and avoiding the biblical reference, Lincoln went on, “The language, ‘place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,’ I used deliberately, not dreaming then, nor believing now, that it asserts, or intimates, any power or purpose to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists.”
If Lincoln really thought the editor or anyone else would believe this disclaimer, he was reasoning more like a lawyer than a political candidate. His lawyerly logic would have run along lines asserting that the Southern states would eventually conclude that emancipation was in their own self-interest and would end slavery without external compulsion. But any politician would read the phrase and recognize that Southerners would see “ultimate extinction” as Lincoln’s own plan for slavery.
So Lincoln belabored the point in his letter to the editor. “I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion, neither the general government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists. I believe that whenever the effort to spread slavery into the new territories, by whatever means, and into the free states themselves, by Supreme Court decisions, shall be fairly headed off, the institution will then be in course of ultimate extinction; and by the language used I meant only this.”
Then Lincoln hedged again, and again. “I do not intend this for publication; but still you may show it to any one you think fit.”
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STEPHEN DOUGLAS WOULDN’T let Lincoln off so easily. He accused his opponent of preaching a war of North against South for the extinction of slavery. He asserted that Lincoln intended for federal law to run roughshod over state law. He denounced Lincoln for betraying the very Constitution he professed to hold so dear.
And in doing so, Douglas played into Lincoln’s hands. Douglas was the incumbent and the favorite; he had no compelling reason to do anything that increased Lincoln’s visibility. But each attack he made on Lincoln did just that. Lincoln, plausibly professing a desire to defend himself, challenged Douglas to a series of debates. “Will it be agreeable to you to ma
ke an arrangement for you and myself to divide time and address the same audiences during the present canvass?” he inquired in a note delivered to Douglas by a friend.
Douglas, doubtless cursing himself, initially demurred. “Recent events have interposed difficulties in the way of such an arrangement,” he responded. Douglas said he and the Democratic party had worked out their campaign schedule so that Douglas could speak on the same bill as other Democratic candidates. There wouldn’t be room for Lincoln.
“Besides, there is another consideration which should be kept in mind,” Douglas continued. “It has been suggested recently that an arrangement had been made to bring out a third candidate for the U.S. Senate, who, with yourself, should canvass the state in opposition to me, and with no other purpose than to insure my defeat by dividing the Democratic party for your benefit.” If Douglas agreed to debate Lincoln, he would have to debate the third candidate. This would be unfair. “He and you in concert might be able to take the opening and closing speech in every case.”
Moreover, Lincoln should have asked earlier, Douglas said. Presumably Lincoln hadn’t thought up this idea on the spur of the moment. Their paths had crossed already, or nearly so, on the campaign trail. Lincoln could have raised the issue then.
Yet after saying all this, Douglas consented to meet Lincoln. Having built Lincoln up by his denunciations, he could hardly do otherwise. He proposed one debate in each of the nine congressional districts of Illinois, except two where they had recently spoken separately. Douglas went so far as to specify a particular town in each district: Freeport, Ottawa, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton, Jonesboro and Charleston.
Lincoln didn’t respond at once. Douglas’s letter seems to have been slow in transit. Four days later, the two men sat down at the same dinner, Lincoln not knowing that Douglas had replied and Douglas puzzling why Lincoln, having suggested the debates in the first place, wouldn’t take yes for an answer.
Some of the holdup might have been deliberate, on Douglas’s part. Or so Lincoln inferred from reading Douglas’s letter in a Chicago newspaper before he laid hands on the original. With Douglas’s objections in the public domain, Lincoln felt compelled to answer them. To Douglas’s statement that it had been “suggested” that a third candidate was waiting in the wings, Lincoln scoffed, “I can only say that such suggestion must have been made by yourself, for certainly none such has been made by me.” To Douglas’s complaint that Lincoln had tarried in making his proposal of debates, Lincoln disavowed any deviousness. “I can only say I made it as soon as I resolved to make it. I did not know but that such proposal would come from you; I waited respectfully to see.” Lincoln certainly didn’t expect Douglas to believe this, since Douglas had little to gain and much to lose from the debates. But if Douglas was going to start the debates in these letters, Lincoln wasn’t going to back down.
Then, having matched Douglas’s half-truths with dubious fractions of his own, he accepted the senator’s plan. “I agree to an arrangement to speak at the seven places you have named,” he said. “As to other details, I wish perfect reciprocity, no more.”
20
THE DOUGLAS-LINCOLN debates—only later called the Lincoln-Douglas debates—were the highlight of the summer and early autumn in Illinois. Political campaigns were a reliable source of entertainment in nineteenth-century America, and this campaign promised to be more entertaining than most. The face-to-face format of the debates heightened the air of combat that surrounded every campaign. The contrast between the individuals—the pugnacious Little Giant versus the joke-telling Long Abe—couldn’t have been more striking. The stakes were high; the fate of the country hinged on the issues the two men would discuss. One of the two might become the next president of the United States. Current odds favored Douglas, the most formidable figure in the party that had owned the White House for much of the century, but Lincoln was making a mark among the Republicans, whose national chances increased by the month. Newspapers from all over America sent correspondents to tip the papers’ readers on the country’s politics to come.
The first stop of the caravan was Ottawa, in north-central Illinois. The event was a boon to local businesses, which lodged and fed the ten thousand or so who doubled the town’s population that day. Railroads appreciated the traffic, routing extra trains to carry the partisans of the two champions. Other spectators arrived by boat and barge, on the canal that antedated the railroad. Area farmers were less happy, for after the hotels filled, visitors camped out on whatever fields appeared vacant.
In late August the sun was still strong and the temperature high. The summer rains had stopped weeks earlier, and clouds of dust announced the approach of those who lived near enough to arrive by foot, horse and carriage on the day of the debate. Early arrivals got the best spots, which meant a standing place on the town square close to the platform. As for the platform, it had been constructed for the occasion, but not well. By the time it filled with all the local worthies who considered their presence necessary for the proceedings, their weight was too much for the underpinnings, and part of the structure crumpled.
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STEPHEN DOUGLAS LED off. He traced the origin of the current dispute over slavery, and he blamed the party Lincoln currently represented. “Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties, known as the Whig and Democratic parties,” Douglas said. “Both were national and patriotic, advocating principles that were universal in their application. An old-line Whig could proclaim his principles in Louisiana and Massachusetts alike. Whig principles had no boundary sectional line; they were not limited by the Ohio River, nor by the Potomac, nor by the line of the free and slave states, but applied and were proclaimed wherever the Constitution ruled or the American flag waved over the American soil.” The Whigs and the Democrats had differed on numerous issues, to be sure—on a national bank, on the tariff, on federal support for roads and bridges. But they agreed on the slavery question. “The Whig party and the Democratic party jointly adopted the Compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of a proper and just solution of this slavery question in all its forms.” Modestly eliding his own role in the 1850 compromise, Douglas credited Whig Henry Clay and Democrat Lewis Cass for its passage. His point was that it was a bipartisan measure. He added that the two parties had endorsed the compromise in their national platforms in 1852. “Thus you see that up to 1853–54, the Whig party and the Democratic party both stood on the same platform with regard to the slavery question. That platform was the right of the people of each state and each territory to decide their local and domestic institutions for themselves, subject only to the federal Constitution.”
If members of the audience noticed that Douglas had inserted here his own interpretation of the Compromise of 1850, perhaps they forgave him, as one of the measure’s authors. In fact the compromise did not give the people of each territory the right to decide on slavery for themselves; that right extended only to the new territories taken from Mexico. In the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase, the Missouri Compromise still forbade slavery.
Douglas plunged ahead. He explained how he had introduced what became the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He said it merely codified the popular-sovereignty principle of the Compromise of 1850. He noted that he had inserted language into the Kansas-Nebraska bill making the principle explicit: “It is the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Federal Constitution.” The Kansas-Nebraska Act had received the bipartisan approval of Congress, revealing once again the broad acceptance of popular sovereignty.
And then the trouble started, Douglas said. Lincoln and others had conspired to dissolve the old Whig party, to join with some Democratic malcontents, and “to connect the members of both into an Abolition
party, under the name and disguise of a Republican party.” Douglas thereafter referred to Lincoln’s party as the Black Republicans, to whom he ascribed wholly abolitionist views. Douglas read several planks of the platform of the first meeting of Illinois Republicans, in 1854, conveying their strongly antislavery opinions.
Loud applause from Lincoln’s supporters interrupted Douglas as he read.
Douglas nodded knowingly. “Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered every one of those propositions,” he said. “And yet I venture to say that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln to come out and say that he is now in favor of each one of them.” So Douglas put the questions directly. “I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln today stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law. I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged today, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave states into the Union, even if the people want them. I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new state into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that state may see fit to make. I want to know whether he stands today pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different states. I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the territories of the United States, North as well as South of the Missouri Compromise line. I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any more territory, unless slavery is prohibited therein.”