Chapter V: The Lincoln-Douglas Joint Debate (2)

We cannot leave these speeches without a word concerning their literary quality. In them we might have looked for vigor that would be a little uncouth, wit that would be often coarse, a logic generally sound but always clumsy,--in a word, tolerably good substance and very poor form. We are surprised, then, to find many and high excellences in art. As it is with Bacon's essays, so it is with these speeches: the more attentively they are read the more striking appears the closeness of their texture both in logic and in language. Clear thought is accurately expressed. Each sentence has its special errand, and each word its individual importance. There is never either too much or too little. The work is done with clean precision and no waste. Nowhere does one pause to seek a meaning or to recover a connection; and an effort to make out a syllabus shows that the most condensed statement has already been used. There are scintillations of wit and humor, but they are not very numerous. When Lincoln was urged to adopt a more popular style, he replied: "The occasion is too serious; the issues are too grave. I do not seek applause, or to amuse the people, but to convince them." This spirit was upon him from the beginning to the end. Had he been addressing a bench of judges, subject to a close limitation of minutes, he would have won credit by the combined economy and force which were displayed in these harangues to general assemblages. To speak of the lofty tone of these speeches comes dangerously near to the distasteful phraseology of extravagant laudation, than which nothing else can produce upon honest men a worse impression. Yet it is a truth visible to every reader that at the outset Lincoln raised the discussion to a very high plane, and held it there throughout. The truth which he had to sustain was so great that it was perfectly simple, and he had the good sense to utter it with appropriate simplicity. In no speech was there fervor or enthusiasm or rhetoric; he talked to the reason and the conscience of his auditors, not to their passions. Yet the depth of his feeling may be measured by the story that once in the canvass he said to a friend: "Sometimes, in the excitement of speaking, I seem to see the end of slavery. I feel that the time is soon coming when the sun shall shine, the rain fall, on no man who shall go forth to unrequited toil. How this will come, when it will come, by whom it will come, I cannot tell,--but that time will surely come."[87] It is just appreciation, and not extravagance, to say that the cheap and miserable little volume, now out of print, containing in bad newspaper type, "The Lincoln and Douglas Debates,"[88] holds some of the masterpieces of oratory of all ages and nations.

The immediate result of the campaign was the triumph of Douglas, who had certainly made not only a very able and brilliant but a splendidly gallant fight, with Republicans assailing him in front and Administrationists in rear.[89] Lincoln was disappointed. His feelings had been so deeply engaged, he had worked so strenuously, and the result had been so much in doubt, that defeat was trying. But he bore it with his wonted resolute equanimity. He said that he felt "like the boy that stumped his toe,--'it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.'" In fact, there were encouraging elements.[90] The popular vote stood,[91] Republicans, 126,084; Douglas Democrats, 121,940; Lecompton Democrats, 5,091. But the apportionment of districts was such that the legislature contained a majority for Douglas.[92] So the prestige of victory seemed separated from its fruits; for the nation, attentively watching this duel, saw that the new man had convinced upwards of four thousand voters more than had the great leader of the Democracy. Douglas is reported to have said that, during his sixteen years in Congress, he had found no man in the Senate whom he would not rather encounter in debate than Lincoln. If it was true that Lincoln was already dreaming of the presidency, he was a sufficiently shrewd politician to see that his prospects were greatly improved by this campaign. He had worked hard for what he had gained; he had been traveling incessantly to and fro and delivering speeches in unbroken succession during about one hundred of the hot days of the Western summer, and speeches not of a commonplace kind, but which severely taxed the speaker. After all was over, he was asked by the state committee to contribute to the campaign purse! He replied: "I am willing to pay according to my ability, but I am the poorest hand living to get others to pay. _I have been on expense_ so long, without earning anything, that I am absolutely without money now for even household expenses. Still, if you can put in $250 for me,... I will allow it when you and I settle the private matter between us. This, with what I have already paid,... will exceed my subscription of $500. This, too, is exclusive of my ordinary expenses during the campaign, all of which being added to my loss of time and business bears pretty heavily upon one no better off than I am.... You are feeling badly; 'and this, too, shall pass away;' never fear."

The platform which, with such precision and painstaking, Lincoln had constructed for himself was made by him even more ample and more strong by a few speeches delivered in the interval between the close of this great campaign and his nomination by the Republicans for the presidency. In Ohio an important canvass for the governorship took place, and Douglas went there, and made speeches filled with allusions to Lincoln and the recent Illinois campaign. Even without this provocation Lincoln knew, by keen instinct, that where Douglas was, there he should be also. In no other way had he yet appeared to such advantage as in encountering "the Little Giant." To Ohio, accordingly, he hastened, and spoke at Columbus and at Cincinnati.[93] To the citizens of the latter place he said: "This is the first time in my life that I have appeared before an audience in so great a city as this. I therefore make this appearance under some degree of embarrassment." There was little novelty in substance, but much in treatment. Thus, at Cincinnati, he imagined himself addressing Kentuckians, and showed them that their next nominee for the presidency ought to be his "distinguished friend, Judge Douglas;" for "in all that there is a difference between you and him, I understand he is sincerely for you, and more wisely for you than you are for yourselves." Through him alone pro-slavery men retained any hold upon the free States of the North; and in those States, "in every possible way he can, he constantly moulds the public opinion to your ends." Ingeniously but fairly he sketched Douglas as the most efficient among the pro-slavery leaders. Perhaps the clever and truthful picture may have led Mr. Greeley and some other gentlemen at the East to suspect that they had been inconsiderate in their choice between the Western rivals; and perhaps, also, Lincoln, while addressing imaginary Kentuckians, had before his inner eye some Eastern auditors. For at the time he did not know that his voice would ever be heard at any point nearer to their ears than the hall in which he then stood. Within a few weeks, however, this unlooked-for good fortune befell. In October, 1859, he was invited to speak in the following winter in New York. That the anti-slavery men of that city wished to test him by personal observation signified that his reputation was national, and that the highest aspirations were, therefore, not altogether presumptuous. He accepted gladly, and immediately began to prepare an address which probably cost him more labor than any other speech which he ever made. He found time, however, in December to make a journey through Kansas, where he delivered several speeches, which have not been preserved but are described as "repetitions of those previously made in Illinois." Lamon tells us that the journey was an "ovation," and that "wherever Lincoln went, he was met by vast assemblages of people." The population of this agricultural State was hardly in a condition to furnish "vast assemblages" at numerous points, but doubtless the visitor received gratifying assurance that upon this battle-ground of slavery and anti-slavery the winning party warmly appreciated his advocacy of their cause.

On Saturday, February 25, 1860, Lincoln arrived in New York. On Monday his hosts "found him dressed in a sleek and shining suit of new black, covered with very apparent creases and wrinkles, acquired by being packed too closely and too long in his little valise. He felt uneasy in his new clothes and a strange place." Certainly nothing in his previous experience had prepared him to meet with entire indifference an audience of metropolitan critics; indeed, had the surroundings been more familiar, he had enough at stake to tax his equanimity when William Cullen Bryant introduced him simply as "an eminent citizen of the West, hitherto known to you only by reputation." Probably the first impression made upon those auditors by the ungainly Westerner in his outlandish garb were not the same which they carried home with them a little later. The speech was so condensed that a sketch of it is not possible. Fortunately it had the excellent quality of steadily expanding in interest and improving to the end.

Of the Dred Scott case he cleverly said that the courts had decided it "_in a sort of way_;" but, after all, the decision was "mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact,--the statement in the opinion that 'the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.'"

In closing, he begged the Republicans, in behalf of peace and harmony, to "do nothing through passion and ill-temper;" but he immediately went on to show the antagonism between Republican opinion and Democratic opinion with a distinctness which left no hope of harmony, and very little hope of peace. To satisfy the Southerners, he said, we must "cease to call slavery _wrong_, and join them in calling it _right_. And this must be done thoroughly,--done in _acts_ as well as in _words_.... We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-state Constitutions.... If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot object to its nationality, its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension, its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them?... Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids this ... let us be diverted by no sophistical contrivances, such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule and calling not the sinners but the righteous to repentance."

The next morning the best newspapers gave full reports of the speech, with compliments. The columns of the "Evening Post" were generously declared to be "indefinitely elastic" for such utterances; and the "Tribune" expressed commendation wholly out of accord with the recent notions of its editor. The rough fellow from the crude West had made a powerful impression upon the cultivated gentlemen of the East.

From New York Lincoln went to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. In this last-named State he delivered speeches which are said to have contributed largely to the Republican success in the closely contested election then at hand. In Manchester it was noticed that "he did not abuse the South, the administration, or the Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the exception of a few hits at Douglas's notions."[94]

These speeches of 1858, 1859, and 1860 have a very great value as contributions to history. During that period every dweller in the United States was hotly concerned about this absorbing question of slavery, advancing his own views, weighing or encountering the arguments of others, quarreling, perhaps, with his oldest friends and his nearest kindred,--for about this matter men easily quarreled and rarely compromised. Every man who fancied that he could speak in public got upon some platform in city, town, or village, and secured an audience by his topic if not by his ability; every one who thought that he could write found some way to print what he had to say upon a subject of which readers never tired; and for whatever purpose two or three men were gathered together, they were not likely to separate without a few words about North and South, pro-slavery and anti-slavery. Never was any matter more harried and ransacked by disputation. Now to all the speaking and writing of the Republicans Lincoln's condensed speeches were what a syllabus is to an elaborate discourse, what a lawyer's brief is to his verbal argument. Perhaps they may better be likened to an anti-slavery gospel; as the New Testament is supposed to cover the whole ground of Christian doctrines and Christian ethics, so that theologians and preachers innumerable have only been able to make elaborations or glosses upon the original text, so Lincoln's speeches contain the whole basis of the anti-slavery cause as maintained by the Republican party. They also set forth a considerable part of the Southern position, doubtless as fairly as the machinations of the Devil are set forth in Holy Writ. They only rather gingerly refrain from speaking of the small body of ultra-Abolitionists,--for while Lincoln was far from agreeing with these zealots, he felt that it was undesirable to widen by any excavation upon his side the chasm between them and the Republicans. So the fact is that the whole doctrine of Republicanism, as it existed during the political campaign which resulted in the election of Lincoln, also all the historical facts supporting that doctrine, were clearly and accurately stated in these speeches. Specific points were more elaborated by other persons; but every seed was to be found in this granary.

This being the case, it is worth noticing that both Lincoln and Douglas confined their disputation closely to the slavery question. Disunion and secession were words familiar in every ear, yet Lincoln referred to these things only twice or thrice, and incidentally, while Douglas ignored them. This fact is fraught with meaning. American writers and American readers have always met upon the tacit understanding that the Union was the chief cause of, and the best justification for, the war. An age may come when historians, treating our history as we treat that of Greece, stirred by no emotion at the sight of the "Stars and Stripes," moved by no patriotism at the name of the United States of America, will seek a deeper philosophy to explain this obstinate, bloody, costly struggle. Such writers may say that a rich, civilized multitude of human beings, possessors of the quarter of a continent, believing it best for their interests to set up an independent government for themselves, fell back upon the right of revolution, though they chose not to call it by that name. Now, even if it be possible to go so far as to say that every nation has always a right to preserve by force, if it can, its own integrity, certainly it cannot be stated as a further truth that no portion of a nation can ever be justified in endeavoring to obtain an independent national existence; no citizen of this country can admit this, but must say that such an endeavor is justifiable or not justifiable according as its cause and basis are right or wrong. Far down, then, at the very bottom lay the question whether the Southerners had a sufficient cause upon which to base a revolution. Now this question was hardly conclusively answered by the perfectly true statement that the North had not interfered with Southern rights. Southerners might admit this, and still believe that their welfare could be best subserved by a government wholly their own. So the very bottom question of all still remained: Was the South endeavoring to establish a government of its own for a justifiable reason and a right purpose? Now the avowed purpose was to establish on an enduring foundation a permanent slave empire; and the declared reason was, that slavery was not safe within the Union. Underneath the question of the Union therefore lay, logically, the question of slavery.

Lincoln and the other Republican leaders said that, if slavery extension was prevented, then slavery was in the way of extinction. If the assertion was true, it pretty clearly followed that the South could retain slavery only by independence and a complete imperial control within the limits of its own homogeneous nationality; for undeniably the preponderant Northern mass was becoming firmly resolved that slavery should not be extended, however it might be tolerated within its present limits. So still, by anti-slavery statement itself, the ultimate question was: whether or not the preservation of slavery was a right and sufficient cause or purpose for establishing an independent nationality. Lincoln, therefore, went direct to the logical heart of the contention, when he said that the real dispute was whether slavery was a right thing or a wrong thing. If slavery was a right thing, a Union conducted upon a policy which was believed to doom it to "ultimate extinction" was not a right thing. But if slavery was a wrong thing, a revolution undertaken with the purpose of making it perpetual was also a wrong thing. Therefore, from beginning to end, Lincoln talked about slavery. By so doing he did what he could to give to the war a character far higher even than a war of patriotism, for he extended its meaning far beyond the age and the country of its occurrence, and made of it, not a war for the United States alone, but a war for humanity, a war for ages and peoples yet to come. In like manner, he himself also gained the right to be regarded as much more than a great party leader, even more than a great patriot; for he became a champion of mankind and the defender of the chief right of man. I do not mean to say that he saw these things in this light at the moment, or that he accurately formulated the precise relationship and fundamental significance of all that was then in process of saying and doing. Time must elapse, and distance must enable one to get a comprehensive view, before the philosophy of an era like that of the civil war becomes intelligible. But the philosophy is not the less correct because those who were framing it piece by piece did not at any one moment project before their mental vision the whole in its finished proportions and relationship.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] As an example of Greeley's position, see letter quoted by N. and H. ii. 140, note. The fact that he was strenuously pro-Douglas and anti-Lincoln is well known. Yet afterward he said that it "was hardly in human nature" for Republicans to treat Douglas as a friend. Greeley's _American Conflict_, i. 301.

[76] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, ii. 567; for sketches of Douglas's position, see Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 141-144; von Holst, _Const. Hist. of U.S._ vi. 280-286; Herndon, 391-395; N. and H. ii. 138-143; Lamon, 390-395; Holland, 158. Crittenden was one of the old Whigs, who now sorely disappointed Lincoln by preferring Douglas. N. and H. ii. 142.

[77] Several months afterward, October 25, 1858, Mr. Seward made the speech at Rochester which contained the famous sentence: "It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation or entirely a free-labor nation." Seward's _Works_, new edition, 1884, iv. 292. But Seward ranked among the extremists and the agitators. See _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 244. After all, the idea had already found expression in the Richmond _Enquirer_, May 6, 1856, quoted by von Hoist, vi. 299, also referred to by Lincoln; see _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 262.

[78] Letter to Hon. Geo. Robertson, N. and H. i. 392; and see Lamon, 398; also see remarks of von Holst, vi. 277.

[79] _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 93. W.P. Fessenden, "who," says Mr. Blaine, "always spoke with precision and never with passion," expressed his opinion that if Fremont had been elected instead of Buchanan, that decision would never have been given. _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 133.

[80] Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Roger B. Taney, James Buchanan.

[81] _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 198. At Chicago he said that he would vote for the prohibition of slavery in a new Territory "in spite of the Dred Scott decision." _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 20; and see the rest of his speech on the same page. The Illinois Republican Convention, June 16. 1858, expressed "condemnation of the principles and tendencies of the extra-judicial opinions of a majority of the judges," as putting forth a "political heresy." Holland, 159.

Years ago Salmon P. Chase had dared to say that, if the courts would not overthrow the pro-slavery construction of the Constitution, the people would do so, even if it should be "necessary to overthrow the courts also." Warden's _Life of Chase_, 313.

[82] For Lincoln's explanation of his position concerning the Dred Scott decision, see _Lincoln and Douglas Deb._ 20.

[83] A nickname for the southern part of Illinois.

[84] Henry Wilson has made his criticism in the words that "some of his [Lincoln's] assertions and admissions were both unsatisfactory and offensive to anti-slavery men; betrayed too much of the spirit of caste and prejudice against color, and sound harshly dissonant by the side of the Proclamation of Emancipation and the grand utterances of his later state papers." _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, ii. 576.

[85] Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 145

[86] N. and H. ii. 159, 160, 163; Arnold, 151; Lamon, 415, 416, and see 406; Holland, 189; Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, ii. 576; Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 148.

[87] Arnold, 144. This writer speaks with discriminating praise concerning Lincoln's oratory, p. 139. It is an illustration of Lincoln's habit of adopting for permanent use any expression that pleased him, that this same phrase had been used by him in a speech made two years before this time. Holland, 151.

[88] Published in Columbus, in 1860, for campaign purposes, from copies furnished by Lincoln; see his letter to Central Exec. Comm., December 19, 1859, on fly-leaf.

[89] Many tributes have been paid to Douglas by writers who oppose his opinions; _e.g._, Arnold says: "There is, on the whole, hardly any greater personal triumph in the history of American politics than his reëlection," pp. 149, 150; Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, i. 149.

[90] See Lincoln's letter to Judd, quoted N. and H. ii. 167; also _Ibid._ 169.

[91] Raymond, 76.

[92] The Senate showed 14 Democrats, 11 Republicans; the House, 40 Democrats, 35 Republicans.

[93] In September, 1859. These are included in the volume of _The Lincoln and Douglas Debates_, printed at Columbus, 1860.

[94] _The Mirror_, quoted by Lamon, 442.