All the Powers of Earth

by Sidney Blumenthal

  The fourth debate took place in Charleston, in Coles County, the heart of conservative Old Whig territory, populated mainly by Kentuckians. Lincoln’s father had settled there and his stepmother still lived on the farm Lincoln had bought for them. Lincoln had long practiced law in the county. One of the attorneys to whom he was close, Thomas A. Marshall, was the nephew of Henry Clay, an Old Whig who had become a Republican. Lincoln managed to coax Marshall into running for the State Senate. Marshall advised him on Fillmore men who might be swayed and warned that to persuade them he must not endorse “negro equality.” “Our enemies are preparing for a desperate fight,” Marshall wrote him on July 22. “We must go into it with as little weight as possible. Unless they succeed in exciting some strong prejudices against us we are safe in the [this] quarter.”

  Both candidates entered Charleston on September 18 in elaborate parades of bands, wagons, and floats. Lincoln’s carriage was followed by a float decorated as the “Ship of State,” carrying thirty-two young women in flowing white dresses holding flags with the names of the states, and one riding on a white horse bore a banner reading, “Kansas, I Will Be Free.” On the side of the float was the motto: “Westward the Star of Empire Takes its Way, Our Girls Link-on to Lincoln, Their Mothers were for Clay.” When the parade entered Charleston, Lincoln saw his stepmother, stopped, kissed her, and got back in his carriage.

  Just as the debate was about to begin a group of Douglas partisans shoved their way to the front of the crowd near the platform carrying a banner with a crude caricature of Lincoln with a black woman under the words “Negro Equality.” Two of Lincoln’s local supporters, who were on the platform, jumped off to scuffle with the Douglas men and tear down the banner.

  Lincoln’s opening statement took Marshall’s talking points as his text. He sought to separate himself from the taint of the “negro equality” stigma to win over the wavering Fillmore and Old Whig votes. He had said most of it before, lately at the Ottawa debate, but this was his most encyclopedic and compact summary in order to present himself as a conservative Old Whig. “While I was at the hotel today,” he said,

  an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, 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; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do 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. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its correctness, and that is the case of Judge Douglas’s old friend Col. Richard M. Johnson.

  Richard Mentor Johnson, a hero of the War of 1812, said to have killed the Native American chief Tecumseh, and senator from Kentucky, had been Martin Van Buren’s vice president. He married a slave, an octoroon, living with her openly, by whom he had two daughters, whom he freely acknowledged. Upon his wife’s death, he took another slave as his mistress, and when she fled into the arms of a lover he hunted her as a fugitive slave and sold her, after which he lived with another slave mistress. In 1840, Johnson insisted on retaining his position as vice president, throwing the Democrats into tumult, and Van Buren decided to run without a running mate, the first and only time in American political history. Though Johnson died in 1850, Lincoln revived him as his own counter to Douglas’s race baiting.

  Douglas’s response was an attempt to reclaim his hold on the “negro equality” issue. “I am glad,” he said, “that I have at last succeeded in getting an answer out of him upon this question of negro citizenship and eligibility to office, for I have been trying to bring him to the point on it ever since this canvass commenced.”

  Then he bashed Lincoln and Trumbull, from the Mexican War to their alleged conspiracy to destroy the political parties, from Frederick Douglass to the depravities of the “house divided” speech.” He lampooned the “Black Republicans” and Lincoln as hypocritical. “Their principles in the north are jet-black, in the center they are in color a decent mulatto, and in lower Egypt they are almost white. Why, I admired many of the white sentiments contained in Lincoln’s speech at Jonesboro, and could not help but contrast them with the speeches of the same distinguished orator made in the northern part of the State.”

  “I am told that I have but eight minutes more,” Douglas said near his end.

  I would like to talk to you an hour and a half longer, but I will make the best use I can of the remaining eight minutes. Mr. Lincoln said in his first remarks that he was not in favor of the social and political equality of the negro with the white man. Everywhere up north he has declared that he was not in favor of the social and political equality of the negro, but he would not say whether or not he was opposed to negroes voting and negro citizenship. I want to know whether he is for or against negro citizenship? . . . Lincoln maintains there that the Declaration of Independence asserts that the negro is equal to the white man, and that under Divine law, and if he believes so it was rational for him to advocate negro citizenship, which, when allowed, puts the negro on an equality under the law. . . . I say that this Government was established on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and never should be administered by any except white men.

  Lincoln noticed that his old friend Orlando B. Ficklin was seated on the platform to support Douglas. Ficklin, a Democrat, had served together with the Whig Lincoln in the legislature and the Congress, and they were involved in many cases on the circuit. Without warning Lincoln called on Ficklin to step forward to vouch that Lincoln had voted for military appropriations for the Mexican War. Ficklin did not tell a lie. “Mr. Lincoln voted for that resolution.” Lincoln’s theatrics turned the trick on Douglas. “I take it these people have some sense,” he said to the crowd, “they see plainly that Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish, [Laughter] a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes. [Roars of laughter.] Ain’t the Judge playing the cuttlefish?” Lincoln had the crowd rolling with him in debunking Douglas. “Why does he stand playing upon the meaning of words, and quibbling around the edges of the evidence?” On he went, citing Euclid, “If you have ever studied geometry, you remember that by a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Euclid has shown you how to work it out. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, and to show that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar? [Roars of laughter and enthusiastic cheers.]”

  “Republicans saw it, democrats realized it, and ‘a sort of panic seized them, and
ran through the crowd of up-turned faces,’ ” recalled Isaac N. Arnold, a Republican lawyer from Chicago who was present. Douglas “walked rapidly up and down the platform, behind Lincoln, holding his watch in his hand, and obviously impatient for the call of ‘time.’ ” He held up his watch and shouted, “Sit down, Lincoln, sit down. Your time is up.” “They tell me that my time is out, and therefore I close.” “Yes,” loudly remarked a Lincoln supporter on the platform, “Douglas has had enough, it is time you let him up.”

  Lincoln’s pandering on “negro equality” left the most lasting impression in historical accounts of the Charleston debate. He was also criticized by a religious abolitionist publication for having “planted himself on low prejudice.” But his victory over Douglas, who was reduced to frustration and anger, was the conclusion of those who observed it. Lew Wallace, an Indiana state senator, the future Civil War general and author of Ben-Hur, was a Douglas supporter who came to cheer his champion. He described Lincoln wearing a suit from “a slop-shop,” and “a more unattractive man I had never seen.”

  Now, not having been blessed with a vision of the events to come, which were to set this uncouth person in a niche high up alongside Washington, leaving it debatable which of the two is greatest, I confess I inwardly laughed at him; only the laugh was quite as much at the political manager who had led him out against Mr. Douglas. Nevertheless, I gave him attention. Ten minutes—I quit laughing. He was getting hold of me. The pleasantry, the sincerity, the confidence, the amazingly original way of putting things, and the simple, unrestrained manner withal, were doing their perfect work; and then and there I dropped an old theory, that to be a speaker one must needs be graceful and handsome. Twenty minutes—I was listening breathlessly, and with a scarcely defined fear. I turned from him to Mr. Douglas frequently, wonderin’; if the latter could indeed be so superior to this enemy as to answer and overcome him. Thirty minutes—the house divided against itself was looming up more than a figure of speech. My God, could it be prophetic!

  It was three weeks to the next debate. Douglas was drinking heavily. His speech, the Chicago Journal reported, “was observed to be very difficult, as though his tongue was much swollen.” The Chicago Tribune taunted him in a piece headlined “Poor Little Dug!” “Douglas grows fainter and weaker as he progresses. His one act comedy is losing interest with all sorts of hearers. . . . His voice is growing hollow and husky, his temper is bad, and his whole appearance jaded and worn.”

  The debates turned north. The town of Galesburg was described by Democratic newspapers as “the Abolition nest,” “nest of nigger thieves,” and “the center of abolitiondom in this State.” George Washington Gale, a Presbyterian minister from upstate New York, founded the town as an ideal Christian colony and Knox College in 1837. Residents of Galesburg and trustees of Knox College provided much of the leadership in the formation of the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, the state Liberty Party, and Free Soil Party. Gale was indicted for hiding fugitive slaves. Knox College enrolled black students, including, as Lincoln would have known, Varveel Florville, the son of his barber.

  The candidates marched into town on October 7 with bands, cavalcades, and banners. “Small-fisted Farmers, Mud Sills of Society, Greasy Mechanics, for A. Lincoln,” read one mocking Senator Hammond’s “Cotton is King” speech denigrating free labor. A bevy of young women paraded for Douglas, their dresses embroidered with the slogan: “White Men or None.” A large crowd ranging from 10,000 to 25,000, according to newspaper estimates, gathered on a raw autumn day on the grounds of Knox College.

  Douglas was physically struggling, his voice hoarse, popping lozenges, wearing an overcoat to guard against the cold, and “very hard to listen to,” according to a spectator. He accused Lincoln, who “has no hope on earth, and has never dreamed that he had a chance of success,” of forging “an unholy and unnatural combination” with the Buchanan administration “to beat a man merely because he has done right.” He accused Lincoln of hypocrisy. “In the extreme Northern part of Illinois he can proclaim as bold and radical Abolitionism as ever Giddings, Lovejoy, or Garrison enunciated, but when he gets down a little further South he claims that he is an old line Whig, (great laughter,) a disciple of Henry Clay, and declares that he still adheres to the old line Whig creed, and has nothing whatever to do with Abolitionism, or negro equality, or negro citizenship. (‘Hurrah for Douglas.’)” He quoted as an accusation from Lincoln’s Chicago speech—“let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior”—but “operating under an alias” in lower Egypt. He quoted the “house divided” speech as an accusation that Lincoln’s “doctrine” would have enabled the slaveholding state to establish slavery “throughout the American continent.”

  Douglas invoked Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, as a slaveholder who was not a hypocrite.

  I tell you that this Chicago doctrine of Lincoln’s—declaring that the negro and the white man are made equal by the Declaration of Independence and by Divine Providence—is a monstrous heresy. The signers of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of the negro when they were writing that document. They referred to white men, to men of European birth and European descent, when they declared the equality of all men. I see a gentleman there in the crowd shaking his head. Let me remind him that when Thomas Jefferson wrote that document, he was the owner, and so continued until his death, of a large number of slaves. Did he intend to say in that Declaration, that his negro slaves, which he held and treated as property, were created his equals by Divine law, and that he was violating the law of God every day of his life by holding them as slaves? . . . I say to you, frankly, that in my opinion, this Government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and was intended to be administered by white men in all time to come.

  Lincoln seized Jefferson from Douglas’s hands to render him in his complexity and in his shadow to diminish Douglas.

  I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience, that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject, he used the strong language that “he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just”; and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson.

  Lincoln dismissed the charge of hypocrisy as misleading sophistry. “Perhaps by taking two parts of the same speech, he could have got up as much of a conflict as the one he has found. I have all the while maintained, that in so far as it should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and black races that should produce a perfect social and political equality, it was an impossibility. This you have seen in my printed speeches, and with it I have said, that in their right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior races are our equals.”

  Then, in one long breath, in a single paragraph Lincoln called slavery “wrong” sixteen times.

  Judge Douglas declares that if any community want slavery they have a right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot logically say that any body has a right to do wrong. He insists that, upon the score of equality, the owners of slaves and owners of pr
operty—of horses and every other sort of property—should be alike and hold them alike in a new Territory. That is perfectly logical, if the two species of property are alike and are equally founded in right. But if you admit that one of them is wrong, you cannot institute any equality between right and wrong. . . . Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the Constitutional obligations which have been thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.

  Douglas rejoindered by repeating his accusation of hypocrisy, protesting that Lincoln was making equality “a moral question” in one place and not another. “I said that I did not care whether they voted slavery up or down, because they had the right to do as they pleased on the question, and therefore my action would not be controlled by any such consideration. (‘That’s the doctrine.’) Why cannot Abraham Lincoln, and the party with which he acts, speak out their principles so that they may be understood? Why do they claim to be one thing in one part of the State and another in the other part?”

  Douglas’s anger grew as he spoke. A number of reporters noted that he foamed at the mouth and shook his fists as he raged that Lincoln was guilty of making false charges. “His grand manner was gone,” said one observer.