by H. W. Brands
Lincoln apparently had been told that Schurz had been speaking for the Republican party to the Germans. “He received me with an off-hand cordiality, like an old acquaintance,” Schurz recounted. “We sat down together. In a somewhat high-pitched but pleasant voice he began to talk to me, telling me about the points he and Douglas had made in the debates at different places, and about those he intended to make at Quincy on the morrow.”
Schurz was struck by Lincoln’s easy style. “I should have felt myself very much honored by his confidence, had he permitted me to regard him as a great man,” Schurz said. “But he talked in so simple and familiar a strain, and his manner and homely phrase were so absolutely free from any semblance of self-consciousness or pretension to superiority, that I soon felt as if I had known him all my life and we had long been close friends.” Schurz had noted the sound of laughter that surrounded Lincoln as he boarded the train and followed him into the car. Schurz now heard some of Lincoln’s stories, which were interesting to Schurz chiefly for their effect on the teller. “He seemed to enjoy his own jests in a childlike way, for his unusually sad-looking eyes would kindle with a merry twinkle, and he himself led in the laughter; and his laugh was so genuine, hearty, and contagious that no one could fail to join in it.”
They rode together all the way to Quincy, where Lincoln was offered a carriage to the home of a friend. He hoped to spend a quiet evening ahead of the debate. But the evening was far from quiet. The political circus was the biggest thing to hit Quincy since the circus itself, and the residents were making the most of it. Brass bands, one enlisted by each party, repeatedly struck up tunes for the rival champions. Residents and visitors to Quincy, again aligned by party, drank to the health of their heroes and sang their praises until far past midnight. Schurz got little sleep; he supposed Lincoln suffered too.
The audience was equally boisterous the next day. The Republicans shouted for Lincoln and against Douglas, and the Democrats responded in kind. Yet no one got angry or violent. “In spite of the excitement created by the political contest, the crowds remained very good-natured, and the occasional jibes flung from one side to the other were uniformly received with a laugh,” Schurz said.
Lincoln had the opening and closing this day, Douglas the middle. Schurz, a public speaker himself, took notes of their performance. Lincoln’s opening was lackluster. “It did not strike me as anything extraordinary, either in substance or in form. Neither had Mr. Lincoln any of those physical advantages which usually are thought to be very desirable, if not necessary, to the orator. His voice was not musical, rather high-keyed, and apt to turn into a shrill treble in moments of excitement; but it was not positively disagreeable. It had an exceedingly penetrating, far-reaching quality. The looks of the audience convinced me that every word he spoke was understood at the remotest edges of the vast assemblage. His gesture was awkward. He swung his long arms sometimes in a very ungraceful manner. Now and then he would, to give particular emphasis to a point, bend his knees and body with a sudden downward jerk, and then shoot up again with a vehemence that raised him to his tip-toes and made him look much taller than he really was—a manner of enlivening a speech which at that time was, and perhaps still is, not unusual in the West, but which he succeeded in avoiding at a later period.”
Yet Lincoln’s earnestness transcended his distracting delivery. “Even when attacking his opponent with keen satire or invective, which, coming from any other speaker, would have sounded bitter and cruel,” Schurz said, “there was still a certain something in his utterance making his hearers feel that those thrusts came from a reluctant heart, and that he would much rather have treated his foe as a friend.”
Schurz agreed with Lincoln’s message, and as a Republican and fellow opponent of slavery he wanted Lincoln to win the debate. Yet he found himself worrying that Douglas, the veteran of years of debate in Congress and a master of all the arts of disputation, would chew Lincoln up. When Douglas rose to speak, Schurz’s worries increased. “No more striking contrast could have been imagined than that between those two men as they appeared upon the platform,” Schurz said. “By the side of Lincoln’s tall, lank, and ungainly form, Douglas stood almost like a dwarf, very short of stature, but square-shouldered and broad-chested, a massive head upon a strong neck, the very embodiment of force, combativeness, and staying power.” Schurz had first seen Douglas in the Senate years earlier, and he was curious to observe him in such a different setting. “On that stage at Quincy he looked rather natty and well groomed in excellently fitting broadcloth and shining linen,” he said. “But his face seemed a little puffy, and it was said that he had been drinking hard with some boon companions either on his journey or after his arrival. The deep, horizontal wrinkle between his keen eyes was unusually dark and scowling. While he was listening to Lincoln’s speech, a contemptuous smile now and then flitted across his lips, and when he rose, the tough parliamentary gladiator, he tossed his mane with an air of overbearing superiority, of threatening defiance, as if to say: ‘How dare anyone stand up against me?’ ”
Schurz had disliked Douglas before; he now discovered that he detested him. “But my detestation was not free from an anxious dread as to what was to come,” Schurz said. He feared the more for Lincoln as Douglas started to speak. “His voice, naturally a strong baritone, gave forth a hoarse and rough, at times even something like a barking, sound. His tone was, from the very start, angry, dictatorial, and insolent in the extreme. In one of his first sentences he charged Lincoln with ‘base insinuations,’ and then he went on in that style with a wrathful frown upon his brow, defiantly shaking his head, clenching his fists, and stamping his feet. No language seemed to be too offensive for him, and even inoffensive things he would sometimes bring out in a manner which sounded as if intended to be insulting; and thus he occasionally called forth, instead of applause from his friends, demonstrations of remonstrance from the opposition. But his sentences were well put together, his points strongly accentuated, his argumentation seemingly clear and plausible, his sophisms skillfully woven so as to throw the desired flood of darkness upon the subject and thus beguile the untutored mind, his appeals to prejudice unprincipled and reckless, but shrewdly aimed, and his invective vigorous and exceedingly trying to the temper of the assailed party. On the whole, his friends were well pleased with his performance, and rewarded him with vociferous cheers.”
Douglas appeared to have prevailed. But then Lincoln spoke again. And to Schurz’s not unbiased mind, he won the audience right back. “He replied to Douglas’s arguments and attacks with rapid thrusts so deft and piercing, with humorous retort so quaint and pat, and with witty illustrations so clinching, and he did it all so good-naturedly, that the meeting, again and again, broke out in bursts of delight by which even many of his opponents were carried away, while the scowl on Douglas’s face grew darker and darker.”
Schurz would later see Lincoln deliver some of the great addresses in American history. He caught glimpses of that greatness on the stage at Quincy. “There was in his debates with Douglas, which, as to their form at least, were largely extemporaneous, occasionally a flash of the same lofty moral inspiration; and all he said came out with the sympathetic persuasiveness of a thoroughly honest nature, which made the listener feel as if the speaker looked him straight in the eye and took him by the hand, saying: ‘My friend, what I tell you is my earnest conviction, and, I have no doubt, at heart you think so yourself.’ ”
23
ACROSS ILLINOIS the two men traveled, thrusting and parrying as they went. Before long they were repeating themselves, and repeating their repetitions. To many in each local audience their messages were fresh, but to those who followed the debates in the papers, the story grew old.
Occasionally something newsworthy surfaced. Ahead of the Freeport debate Douglas published a series of questions to Lincoln, trying to force him to choose between the moderate antislavery ground he favored and th
e more radical position of the Illinois Republican party. If Lincoln embraced the Republicans, he would lose votes of antislavery Democrats; if he distanced himself from his party, he would lose Republican votes.
The tactic had the disadvantage for Douglas of letting Lincoln prepare his answers ahead of time. Douglas was the quicker of the two on his feet; Lincoln the slower but steadier. Lincoln at Freeport read the questions and supplied his answers. Douglas had said, “I desire to know whether Lincoln today stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law.” Lincoln denied the premise and the conclusion. “I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law.” Douglas had written, “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.” Lincoln again denied both parts. “I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave states into the Union.”
The examination continued, with Lincoln’s answers echoing and refuting Douglas’s questions. “I do not stand 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,” Lincoln said. “I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different States….I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States territories….I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery question among ourselves.”
Douglas listened with satisfaction. Lincoln appeared to be backing away from beliefs that many Illinois Republicans passionately held. Douglas knew the Republicans would have to turn out in record numbers to unseat him; Lincoln was giving them little reason to come to the polls.
Lincoln, realizing his disadvantage, launched a counteroffensive. He had prepared a list of questions of his own for Douglas to answer. One after the other Lincoln posed them to the senator. The most pointed demanded that Douglas explain what was left of popular sovereignty after the Dred Scott decision. “Can the people of a United States territory,” Lincoln said, “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 question hung over the Freeport square while he finished his remarks; it hung there through Douglas’s opening. Douglas understood the danger it posed, which was why he tried to dismiss it as one he had answered already—“a hundred times, from every stump in Illinois.” Douglas’s voice grew angry as he accused Lincoln of simply causing trouble. “Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the state in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question.”
Yet Douglas recognized that he had to answer. And he realized he had no good answer. Lincoln was making him choose between popular sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision. No matter how he answered, he would alienate a large bloc of his party. If he chose popular sovereignty over the Dred Scott decision, he would anger the South. If he chose the Dred Scott decision over popular sovereignty, he would lose much of the North.
He did what he could. “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,” Douglas said. “The people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect and complete.”
* * *
—
SMITH ATKINS WAS an Illinois Republican who attended the Freeport debate. He afterward recalled meeting Lincoln ahead of the debate, in company with several other Lincoln partisans. “There was, in no sense, a consultation of Mr. Lincoln’s supporters,” Atkins said, “but in a general conversation that appeared to come about naturally, Mr. Lincoln read the questions he proposed to ask of Mr. Douglas.” One of the questions was the one whether the people of a territory could exclude slavery in defiance of the Dred Scott ruling. “All of the prominent Republicans present who engaged in the conversation objected to Mr. Lincoln’s asking that question of Mr. Douglas,” Atkins recalled. “They argued that Mr. Douglas would, notwithstanding his unqualified endorsement of the Dred Scott case, answer that the people of a territory could exclude slavery by unfriendly legislation, and that Mr. Douglas would please the people by his answer, and would beat Mr. Lincoln for senator from Illinois.”
Lincoln listened to the objections, Atkins remembered. But then he replied, “I don’t know how Mr. Douglas will answer. If he answers that the people of a territory cannot exclude slavery, I will beat him. But if he answers as you say he will, and as I believe he will, he may beat me for senator, but he will never be president.”
Possibly Smith Atkins remembered things too well. Prescient statements eventually stuck to Lincoln like lint on his wool suit. Yet whether or not Lincoln said precisely what Atkins recalled him saying, the logic of the argument was sound. The Freeport Doctrine, as Douglas’s formula was soon being called, had the effect its author anticipated in the Senate race against Lincoln. When Illinoisans went to the polls, they elected a majority of Democrats to the state legislature, who in turn elected Douglas to the Senate.
But the Douglas dodge enraged the South. Southern newspapers blasted the Freeport formula as a snare and a delusion; they called its author more dangerous to Southern interests than the most egregious abolitionist. If the South had anything to say about it, Stephen Douglas would indeed never be president.
As for Lincoln, he took the defeat philosophically. “The fight must go on,” he wrote to an ally. “The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even, one hundred defeats. Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as the best means to break down, and to uphold the slave interest. No ingenuity can keep those antagonistic elements in harmony long. Another explosion will soon come.”
PART III
Harpers Ferry
24
WHEN JOHN BROWN LEFT Boston in disgust at the lack of commitment among the abolitionists there, he reflexively headed back toward Kansas. He would take his war against slavery to the South, but his base was in Kansas. His followers, including his militant sons, were there; Kansas would be his springboard for whatever would follow.
Yet Kansas might also be a trap. John Brown and the other free-state fighters had done their job too well. The finagling over the Lecompton constitution left the future of Kansas in political limbo, but on the ground in the territory the antislavery settlers greatly outnumbered the pro-slavery ones. This wasn’t entirely—or even mostly—the work of fighters like John Brown; the soil and climate of Kansas made it unsuited for the kind of plantation agriculture common in the South. Slavery had always been a long shot in Kansas, which was why the Missouri ruffians and the Pierce and Buchanan administrations had to work so hard to foster it there. The effect of Brown and his ilk was to enable Kansas to find its antislavery equilibrium.
But that very equilibrium meant Brown was no longer needed, or even wanted. Or, rather, he was wanted—for the Pottawatomie murders. And with law an
d order taking hold in Kansas, he might be arrested and tried for the crimes. John Brown Jr. warned his father against returning to Kansas, for precisely this reason. “It seems as though if you return to Kansas this spring I should never see you again,” wrote the son, who had left the territory with his father. John feared that Kansans would show no gratitude for what Brown had done but would “hand you over to the tormentor.” Perhaps John knew his father wouldn’t be dissuaded by mere danger; perhaps he simply wanted to show his confidence in the old man, for he added, “I will not look on the dark side. You have gone safely through a thousand perils and hairbreadth escapes.”
From Boston, Brown passed through Connecticut, stopping here and there to speak about Kansas. Charles Blair, a blacksmith—or “forger,” as he called himself—heard Brown and was intrigued. Blair encountered Brown again the next morning. “He was exhibiting to a number of gentlemen who happened to be collected together in a druggist’s store some weapons which he claimed to have taken from Captain Pate in Kansas,” Blair recalled later. “Among them was a two-edged dirk, with a blade about eight inches long, and he remarked that if he had a lot of those things to attach to poles about six feet long, they would be a capital weapon of defense for the settlers of Kansas to keep in their log cabins to defend themselves against any sudden attack that might be made on them. He turned to me, knowing, I suppose, that I was engaged in edge-tool making, and asked me what I would make them for; what it would cost to make five hundred or a thousand of those things, as he described them.”