Cleverly, Lincoln showed that Douglas’s complaint about the Republicans’ desire to promote racial mixing was better directed at whites in the South, where the mulatto population of 405,751 dwarfed the mulatto population of the North (56,649). These figures demonstrated that “slavery is the greatest source of amalgamation.” If Douglas were sincere in his desire to prevent racial amalgamation, he should oppose the expansion of the peculiar institution.
Lincoln was especially indignant at the way that Douglas made “a mere wreck—mangled ruin” out of the Declaration of Independence, which “contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere,” by insisting that it “referred to the white race alone, and not to the African.” The authors of that “glorious” document, Lincoln observed, “intended to include all men,” black as well as white, “but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal—equal in ‘certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ” They “did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them.” Rather they “meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.” The Declaration’s statement about equality was intended to be “a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.” Its authors “knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.”
Lincoln chided Douglas for his inconsistent application of the popular sovereignty doctrine. Whereas the Little Giant opposed federal intervention in the Kansas Territory to forbid slavery, he supported federal intervention in the Utah Territory to control Mormon settlers. This double standard “is only additional proof … that that doctrine was a mere deceitful pretense for the benefit of slavery.”
In closing, Lincoln passionately drew a distinction between the two parties: “The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong; and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage ‘a sacred right of self-government.’ ” Economic self-interest helped explain the Democrats’ views, Lincoln argued: “The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle [coin]; and it will be ever hard to find many men who will send a slave to Liberia, and pay his passage while they can send him to a new country, Kansas, for instance, and sell him for fifteen hundred dollars.”143
Curiously, Lincoln dwelt at much greater length on the Supreme Court’s denial of black citizenship than on the overthrow of the Missouri Compromise. Politically, it would have been safer to focus on the latter rather than the former, given the intense Negrophobia of the Illinois electorate. Moreover, he did not attempt to show how the decision might affect Douglas’s popular sovereignty doctrine; that task he postponed for a year. Given the weak reasoning of the court’s majority opinion and concurring opinions, the vigorous dissents of Justices Benjamin R. Curtis and John McLean, and the significance of the slavery issue in American life, Lincoln was justified in maintaining that Dred Scott did not definitively settle the question of slavery in the territories.
The Southern Illinoisan called Lincoln’s speech an “able and masterly refutation of Douglas’ slanders.”144 In the Chicago Tribune, Herndon praised it for containing “no rant—no fustian—no bombast.” Instead, “there was something in it of more force and power than these; the heart felt, and he gave utterance to the heart inspiration, clothed in the eternal maxims of purest reason.”145 Herndon told friends in Massachusetts that “Lincoln ‘bursted Douglas wide open’ as we say [in the] west” with his “gentlemanly—strong—powerful and conclusive speech,” which contrasted sharply with the Little Giant’s “low, gutter, rabble-rousing” effort.146 Gustave Koerner, however, found Lincoln’s remarks “too much on the old conservative order.” Lincoln, he said, was “an excellent man, but no match to such impudent Jesuits & sophists as Douglas.”147
The speech attracted attention outside Illinois. The New York Times ran excerpts, though it incorrectly identified the site where it was given as Indianapolis.148 The New York Tribune published a synopsis submitted by an Illinoisan who declared that “there is not a man in this State whose opinions on political subjects command more universal respect by all classes of men, than his.”149
A striking feature of this speech was Lincoln’s compassionate description of the plight of blacks. Usually he shied away from expressing concern for the suffering of the slaves, probably because Illinois voters would be unresponsive to such antislavery appeals. But when Julian M. Sturtevant commented to him that St. Louis opponents of slavery seemed to care only for the well-being of whites, Lincoln replied: “I must take into account the rights of the poor negro.”150
A Democratic paper, in commenting on Lincoln’s address, sneered at him as a failure in whatever he turned his hand to. He probably would not have disagreed, at least not strenuously. Around that time he wrote a private memo comparing his lack of success with Douglas’s string of accomplishments: “Twenty-two years ago Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation; and is not unknown, even, in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species, might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch’s brow.”151
In 1858, the comparatively obscure Lincoln would challenge the internationally famous Douglas in what became known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates, not the Douglas-Lincoln debates. They would raise Lincoln to national prominence and fatally injure the Little Giant’s chances to win the presidency. In time, most people would remember Douglas only as Lincoln’s debate opponent, while the name of Lincoln would “fill the nation” and reverberate around the world.
12
“A House Divided”
Lincoln vs. Douglas
(1857–1858)
Throughout 1857 and the first half of 1858, Lincoln devoted himself to his law practice. When asked to speak publicly on behalf of the Republicans, he replied in May 1858: “It is too early, considering that when I once begin making political speeches I shall have no respite till November. The labor of that I might endure, but I really can not spare the time from my business.”1
Lecture on “Discoveries and Inventions”
He did, however, carve out time to deliver a lecture on “Discoveries and Inventions.” In 1855, Lincoln and some friends, including Henry C. Whitney, had read and discussed historian George Bancroft’s recent oration on “The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race,” which celebrated mankind’s progress in the nineteenth century as “unequaled in its discoveries and its deeds.”2 Lincoln remarked “that he had for some time been contemplating the writing of a lecture on man … from his earliest primeval state to his present high development” and “detailed at length
the views and opinions he designed to incorporate in his lecture.”3
(Mrs. Norman B. Judd provided another version of the lecture’s origin. In 1856, Lincoln told her that one evening he and fellow lawyers on the circuit were discussing the date at which the brass age began. He recalled that Tubal Cain, the son of Lemach, worked in brass and that his brother Jubal made harps and organs. Checking his recollection in the Bible, he ransacked the Old Testament and compiled a list of the discoveries and inventions mentioned there. Shortly afterward, he accepted an invitation to address the Young Men’s Literary Society in Bloomington; he used those Old Testament notes, as well as some research in an encyclopedia, to create his lecture.)
Lincoln’s lecture, “Discoveries and Inventions,” like his 1838 Lyceum address, was ostensibly nonpolitical but in fact contained a thinly disguised put-down of Stephen A. Douglas. At the time, the Little Giant was championing a program of bumptious, expansionistic nationalism known as “Young America,” a title that distinguished it from “old fogy” Whigs and senior Democratic leaders. The term applied to a faction of the Democratic Party eager to revive the jingoistic spirit of Manifest Destiny that had prevailed in the mid-1840s; to promote the expansion of the United States southward and westward; to emulate the contemporary Young Germany and Young Italy movements; to express sympathy for gallant, unsuccessful European revolutionaries, especially the Hungarians, whose bid for independence had been squashed by Russian troops in 1848; and to repudiate the stuffy conservatism of superannuated officeholders like Lewis Cass. Douglas was widely regarded as Young America’s chief spokesman. In his lecture, Lincoln discussed “Young America” as if it were a person—Douglas—rather than a movement or a slogan. “Some think him conceited, and arrogant,” Lincoln remarked, adding that Young America (i.e., Douglas) had reason “to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself.” Lincoln poked fun at Young America for coveting Cuba (a favorite hobby of Douglas’s) and other territory: “He owns a large part of the world, by right of possessing it; and all the rest by right of wanting it, and intending to have it.” Citing a passage from Joseph Addison’s play, Cato, Lincoln playfully remarked: “As Plato had for the immortality of the soul, so Young America has ‘a pleasing hope—a fond desire—a longing after’ ter[r]itory.” Young America also lusted after political office (in Douglas’s case, the presidency): “He has a great passion—a perfect rage—for the ‘new’; particularly new men for office.” Mocking Douglas’s popular sovereignty doctrine as well as his expansionism, Lincoln said: “He is a great friend of humanity; and his desire for land is not selfish, but merely an impulse to extend the area of freedom.” Lincoln alluded to Douglas’s well-known fondness for liquor and cigars: “His horror is for all that is old, particularly ‘Old Fogy’; and if there be any thing old which he can endure, it is only old whiskey and old tobacco.”
Turning from political satire, Lincoln became serious, asserting that “the discovery of America, and the introduction of Patent-laws” ranked among the most significant of all modern developments. He extolled not only patents like the one he himself held but the cast of mind that produced them: “To be fruitful in invention, it is indispensable to have a habit of observation and reflection.” He deemed written language “the great invention of the world” and called printing “the better half of writing.” The ignorance of the Dark Ages he considered “slavery of the mind,” which Gutenberg’s printing press abolished, creating a “habit of freedom of thought.” Such imagery came easily to a man who had emancipated himself from rural ignorance and backwardness through the written and printed word and who strove to end chattel slavery.4
The lecture failed to impress. At Pontiac an auditor reported that “the people generally were disappointed in his lecture as it was on no particular subject and not well connected. He was, I thought, decidedly inferior to many a lecturer I have heard.”5 In Jacksonville, where the audience was small, he refused to accept an honorarium, asking only for enough money to cover expenses. When a mere forty people showed up to hear him in Bloomington, Lincoln canceled the event. Later he referred to this lecture as “rather a poor one.”6
Herndon agreed, calling “Discoveries and Inventions” a “lifeless thing.” He thought that Lincoln, for all his skill as a political speaker, “had not the fire, taste, reading, eloquence, etc., which would make him a lecturer.”7 Although Lincoln did compose a fragment of a talk, probably written in the late 1850s, to be delivered to law students, he never again attempted a formal nonpolitical lecture.
Douglas’s Bid for Republican Support
While devoting himself to law and his lecture, Lincoln also followed closely the high political drama unfolding in Washington, where Douglas had declared war on the Buchanan administration. During the autumn of 1857, pro-slavery Kansans, though a distinct minority of the territory’s population, had managed to dominate the constitutional convention in the town of Lecompton, largely because Free Soilers, regarding the election for delegates as fraudulent, had shunned the polls. When the territory applied for statehood under a pro-slavery constitution passed at Lecompton, Buchanan in a special message on December 8 urged Congress to accept this outcome and admit Kansas, even though most fair-minded observers regarded the constitution as woefully unrepresentative of majority opinion among the settlers. Northerners were outraged by what they considered yet another example of Southerners’ high-handed, arbitrary behavior and contempt for fair play. Douglas, suffering from hurt pride, very fearful that if he supported the Lecompton Constitution he would doom his chances for reelection in 1858, resentful of Buchanan for ignoring his patronage requests, and incensed by the administration’s support for a clear miscarriage of popular sovereignty, immediately denounced the president’s message. “By God sir, I made Mr. James Buchanan, and by God sir, I will unmake him!” he exclaimed. Buchanan warned him to beware of the melancholy fate of senators who had opposed President Andrew Jackson, saying: “Mr. Douglas, I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed.” Douglas replied: “Mr. President, I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead, sir.”8
The Little Giant’s impulsive revolt, an uncharacteristic act for such a pragmatic champion of Democratic unity, cheered his party colleagues back home. “Your position takes the wind clean out of the B[lack] Republican leaders. Their only hope is that you will yet waver,” a constituent wrote.9 Another declared: “You have adopted the only course that could save the Northern Democracy from annihilation at the next election.”10 Even some Illinois Republicans applauded his stand and considered backing him for reelection.
Observing the “ ‘rumpus’ among the democracy over the Kansas constitution,” Lincoln was reminded of a case he had tried involving two contentious old farmers who had come to blows. Lincoln was hired to defend the winner of the fight, who was sued by the loser for assault and battery. When a witness for the plaintiff sought to exaggerate the fight’s importance, Lincoln asked him how much ground the pugilists had covered.
“About an acre, stranger,” replied the witness.
“Well, now, witness,” said Lincoln, “just tell me, wasn’t that just about the smallest crop of a fight off of an acre of ground that ever you heard of?”
“That’s so, stranger; I’ll be gol darned if it wasn’t!”
After this exchange, the jury fined Lincoln’s client 10 cents.11
Lincoln counseled his allies to “stand clear” of the fight, for “both the President and Douglas are wrong,” and Republicans “should not espouse the cause of either, because they may consider the other a little the farther wrong of the two.” He told Lyman Trumbull that Douglas was attempting “to draw off some Republicans on this dodge” and had made “some impression on one or two.”12 Trumbull doubted that the controversy would “amount to much, except perhaps to help us a little with the people.”13
But in fact, Douglas’s rebellion shook the political world. Many Republicans in th
e East regarded his bolt as providential, splitting the Democrats and smoothing the way for a Republican victory in 1860. Douglas met with Horace Greeley, editor of the influential New York Tribune, who believed that the senator might well join the Republican Party. Greeley therefore urged Illinoisans to support the Little Giant’s reelection bid. Lauding Douglas’s “fidelity and courage,” Greeley told his many readers that the senator’s “course has not been merely right—it has been conspicuously, courageously, eminently so.”14 Though privately Greeley called the Little Giant “a low and dangerous demagogue” with “enormous self-conceit,” the Tribune editor was convinced that Douglas could not be beaten.15 Greeley wrote to John O. Johnson, secretary of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee, urging him to back Douglas. Johnson, speaking for a party that had been formed largely to oppose Douglas and his popular sovereignty doctrine, replied that “we shall without a doubt send one of the best republicans, ablest statesmen, and truest men, which can be found in [the] West, to fill the place which Mr Douglas now occupies. On the contrary, if an attempt is made to any extent, to get up sympathy for Mr Douglas, in his present position, it will inevitably result in our defeat.”16
Other leading papers in the East, including the Boston Atlas and Daily Bee, the Albany Evening Journal, the Hartford Courant, as well as the Atlantic Monthly, seconded Greeley’s motion that Republicans support Douglas. “The general recognition of the principle of popular sovereignty is all that is needed to restore peace to the country, and to allay the agitation of the Slavery question,” declared the New York Times.17 The Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican praised Douglas as “the man who leads the battle against the administration and the slave power,” chastised Illinois Republicans for opposing him, and called “ridiculous” the “sensitiveness” and “ill-temper” they displayed in protesting against “eastern politicians” for supporting the senator’s reelection bid. They regarded Lincoln as “a man of less intellectual ability and political power” than Douglas.18 Even the Washington National Era, the antislavery periodical that had first serialized Harriet Beecher Stowe’s bestselling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, endorsed the Little Giant.
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 79
