A gong sounded the time for the rebuttal round. It was Lincoln’s turn. He was already a head taller than every other man in the crowd, and when he climbed atop the stump he towered over the assemblage like Moses preaching to the Israelites from the mount.
“I have three words for the Democratic nonsense you heard coming out of Mr. Prickett’s Democratic mouth,” began Lincoln in his high-pitched, reedy voice. He paused dramatically.
“You’ll never win,” shouted one voice from the crowd.
“Go to hell,” shouted another.
A ripple of laughter spread through the audience. Men and women tried out three-word put-downs on each other. Lincoln grinned and flapped his long, wing-like arms, gesturing for quiet.
“Pooh … pish … p’shaw,” he said at last.
The Whigs let out a great cheer at this pithy insult. I heard some Democrats grumbling about such nonsense words being the best Lincoln could offer, but by their deflated posture they seemed to concede he had effectively diminished Prickett.
Lincoln proceeded to build a sustained argument against the Democratic positions on the issues of the day and in favor of the Whigs. His principal thrust was one of conviction and constancy. The Whigs, Lincoln argued, had always stood for the policies in the best, long-term interests of the country and would continue to do so, while the views of the Democrats in general, and Prickett in particular, had vacillated wildly based on changing popular sentiment.
At one point in his extended discussion of the charge, Lincoln invoked the Barbary pirates, whose infamous, marauding attacks along the southern coast of the Mediterranean had not long ago been extinguished by the Second Barbary War. “Prickett and the Democrats,” said Lincoln, “have changed their flags as often as a sea-pirate changes his.”
Shouts of protest rang out from Democrats in the audience, but Lincoln met these with a stern shake of his head.
“You have,” he insisted, pointing directly at Prickett, who stood near the front of the crowd with his hands on his hips. “You have. And for the same purpose, too. For both the Democrats and the pirates alike hope by their new flags to decoy the unwary.”
The laughter and great cheers arising from the Whigs in the crowd drowned out the catcalls of the Democrats.
In delivering his oratory, Lincoln’s manner was the same I had witnessed many times in the courtroom. At first his air was modest, almost embarrassed, as he laid out his party’s positions. He stood on the stump uneasily, a little stooped in the shoulders, and his hands played fretfully with the buttons of his coat.
But as he warmed to his subject, he became physically warmer as well. His bearing became more erect and commanding. His voice deepened. His speech became more fluent and his manner easier. From beginning to end he was frequently interrupted by loud bursts of applause.
When Lincoln finished his assault on the Democrats’ most recent set of positions, he paused, and I thought perhaps he was finished. But then he sought out my face in the crowd, and I knew at once what was coming. The lightning rod. We’d discussed this the previous night, and I had encouraged him to use it to conclude with a rhetorical flourish if he believed the crowd was with him.
“I was informed a few days ago,” said Lincoln, “that Mr. Prickett has installed on the very top of the roof of his house a new device. An invention claiming almost magical properties. A metal stick—what some are calling a ‘lightning rod’—purported to be able to absorb the deadly force of the heavens’ electrical bolts and divert them away from the inhabitants of the abode.”
As the crowd began to murmur with skepticism, Lincoln insisted, his large head bobbing with excitement, “Prickett has placed one of these lightning rods atop his house. I swear it is so. I invite all of you to walk over to Mr. Prickett’s house on Jefferson after this afternoon’s festivities have completed and have a look for yourselves.”
All of this was indeed true—and genuinely useful. Lightning storms were a serious threat on the frontier, and the vast prairie encompassing Springfield was especially prone to spawning such calamities. Just the other month, a deadly bolt had struck the house of Mr. Otho Carr in Peoria. The house itself had been little injured, but the bolt had struck down Mrs. Carr and four of her children. Prickett’s rod was the first to appear in Springfield, and if it operated as promised I’d be able to sell every last one I could stock in my store.
“But I’ve come to wonder,” continued Lincoln, motioning again for the crowd to settle down, “why it was that Mr. Prickett decided to install this new device. Why is it that my opponent chooses to try to alter the course of Nature, much as he has altered the nature of his political positions with the shifting winds of popular sentiment? While we’ve been alive on this Earth for about the same number of years, I freely concede Mr. Prickett is substantially more practiced than me in the tricks and the trades of the politician.”
Lincoln was in full cry now. “Last night I hit upon the answer and I will share it. It is to my credit and my opponent’s shame. I declare honestly to all of you listening as follows. Hear me out! Live long or die young, I would rather die now than, like Mr. Prickett, change my politics, and simultaneous with the change, receive an office worth three thousand dollars per year, and then … have to erect a lightning rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God.”
This last phrase was said at a shout, and the crowd—Whig and Democrat alike—was sent into a frenzy. The Whigs shouted with joy and derision, clapping each other vigorously on the back. Many blew tin horns or bugles. One of my excited fellows belted me with such enthusiasm that I was sent sprawling and nearly landed face-first on the ground. Meanwhile, the Democrats shouted foul and cried that Lincoln was a blasphemer for claiming the Almighty’s allegiance to his cause. Prickett himself had gone white as a ghost, his pallid color matching his carefully laundered shirt.
The tumult continuing all around, Lincoln stepped down from the stump, his arms raised high above his head in triumph. He was surrounded by a group of jubilant Whigs, who offered their congratulations on his tour de force.
At length, the boiling crowd reduced to a simmer. Stephen Douglas detached himself from a gaggle of Democrats, walked to the front of the arena, and mounted the stump.
“Stand up!” yelled some wag from the audience.
The crowd laughed, and Douglas smiled good-naturedly and bowed.
“My friend Mr. Lincoln—” began Douglas, only to be drowned out by a chorus of Whigs shouting “Huzzah!” and blowing their horns one last time to celebrate the speech of their champion. Douglas waited until they quieted down.
“My friend Mr. Lincoln is never one to let the facts get in the way of a clever argument,” he began again. Douglas’s deep, rumbling voice, studded with hard New England vowels, was an immediate contrast to the high-pitched tone of Lincoln’s, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only man present struck by the incongruity of the deep voice emanating from the little man, while the high-pitched one came from the large man.
“And Mr. Lincoln does like his clever arguments. A lightning rod, eh?” Douglas found Prickett in the front rank of the crowd and pointed at him. “That will teach you to try to protect your wife and little ones, David.” Douglas shook his massive head, a sardonic smile playing on his lips, and then turned serious.
“But those of us who mean to govern, and govern seriously, must do more than stretch for metaphors or cast fishing lines for jokes. We must find the facts and face them. Face them straight up and without flinching.”
Douglas proceeded to lay out the Democrats’ position on the issues of the day with articulateness and fluency. The Little Giant explained where he stood, attacked where he could, and conceded where he must, all the while chopping the air with his arms to emphasize his points. If his speech lacked Lincoln’s homespun charm, it was, I was forced to admit, at least his equal in terms of both rhetorical flair and substance. The Whigs standing near me gradually lost the elation that had filled them at the rousing conclu
sion of Lincoln’s address.
After he had been talking for about an hour, Douglas hopped down from the stump and took a tankard of beer from the cart of the nearest merchant. This he downed in one long swig to the approving shouts of the assembled Democrats. I thought perhaps he was finished, but it turned out he was just getting started.
“The Whigs appear to have anointed Mr. Lincoln their future standard-bearer,” said Douglas after he resumed his position on top of the stump, “and so I think it only fair that I direct a few remarks to the gentleman. To the character of the gentleman, to be precise about my intentions.”
Lincoln was standing next to me and I saw him stiffen. He gazed out at the crowd jostling behind him. I turned toward the clutch of women spectators and saw Miss Owens looking very tense. Mrs. Edwards leaned over, said something into her ear, and patted her on the arm. My sister stood next to them, listening to Douglas with her head half-cocked to the side.
“Now I freely admit,” continued Douglas, “that I’ve not been a citizen of Illinois for my entire life—”
“There’s still Vermont mud on your boots!” called out one Whig.
Douglas made a show of examining the underside of his boots, one after the other. “Perhaps there is,” he said. “I would not swear an oath against it. But I think each of you can agree Vermont mud is to be much preferred to Illinois horse sh—” The crowd took in its collective breath as Douglas paused before continuing. “Horseshoes,” he finished, with a grin. The Democrats cheered.
“But even during my residency in this state,” Douglas continued, when the noise had died down, “I have learned a few facts about the tall gentleman in the stovepipe hat that give me pause. A few facts about his past. His history. A history he has perhaps tried to dispatch by his move to Springfield several years ago, but a history that remains nonetheless.
“Now, I don’t mean the fact he comes from humble origins. I do as well, and so do many of our new leaders rising here in the West. Such self-reliance is to be celebrated. Not all of us were swaddled by ruffled shirts in our cradles, Prickett,” Douglas added with a grin, unable to resist the dig at his fellow Democrat. Prickett managed a wan smile in return.
“But it is fair, I think, to wonder about the gentleman’s grasp of financial affairs, when I am told reliably that he still carries in his pocket the unpaid notes he incurred by the failure of his store in New Salem. It is no wonder the internal improvements scheme, which he has championed in the legislature, now sits in shambles and ruin. The gentleman purports to tell the people of our state he will be a responsible superintendent of their money, yet he has proven by his actions that he cannot be trusted with his own.”
The swell of the crowd had a different character now. Good-natured call and response had been replaced by unfiltered expressions of condemnation and anger. This type of direct, personal attack on the opposing candidate was unheard of at stump debates. I did not look at Lincoln but saw many in the crowd doing so without pretension.
“And it is fair to wonder,” continued Douglas, jabbing the air for emphasis, “about his judgment of his fellow man, when I understand he has been taken in by a confidence man. Indeed, I understand the gentleman pursued a failed courtship with a lady already betrothed—betrothed to a confidence man gone missing. He aspires for a position where he may direct the affairs of the state, but it is plain he has trouble keeping his own affairs in order.”
The crowd was roiling. This time I did look at Lincoln. His eyes were bulging, his jaw straining, his face burning bright. My own blood was boiling; I felt it pounding in my head. It was far beyond the bounds of fair play to dredge up the memory of Lincoln’s failed romance with Ann Rutledge. If Douglas kept at it, there would be violence. And I would be in the front rank of the advancing army.
Douglas affected not to notice the turmoil caused by his words. “And it is fair to wonder,” he continued, “about his temperance and sobriety, when his own relations are seen by all stumbling about town in the lowest state of—”
That did it. I broke free of the crowd and sprinted toward Douglas. I thought I heard my sister scream my name. In a few long strides I was nearly to him, leaning forward with outstretched arms. I was going to wrap my hands around his thick neck and throttle him. But in the instant before I reached him, it struck me there was one sensation Douglas feared even more than physical pain. Ridicule.
I flew at Douglas, but instead of knocking him over and choking him, at full speed I picked the little man up underneath both armpits. I lifted him off the stump, bearing his considerable weight, and hurtled away with him. One lap around the market house should do it, I thought, and so I raced a broad circle around the structure.
“Let me go!” Douglas screamed as he tried to wriggle out of my grasp.
“No!” I had locked my fingers together around his midsection and had a good hold on him.
“Put me down!”
“Not after what you said about Lincoln.”
“It’s politics!”
“That was personal.”
By now my energy was flagging from carrying such a heavy load, and as I looped around the final corner of the market house and approached the stump again, I slowed. The crowd in front of us was in utter tumult, raging and screaming and shouting. Several fistfights had broken out. I noted, with a cruel satisfaction, that more than a few men were pointing at Douglas in my arms and laughing.
At that moment Douglas bit down, hard, on my thumb. I screamed in pain and dropped him. Blood gushed from my hand and I fell to my knees.
Before I knew it, twin phalanxes of Whigs and Democrats poured toward me. The Whigs shouted my name jubilantly and pounded me on the back. The Democrats arrived with equal frenzy but considerably less friendship. One of them carried a metal beer tankard in his hand. And I noticed, much too late, that it was arcing toward my head.
CHAPTER 23
When I began to wake, the world was dark. As I lay in a semiconscious state, I realized gradually that I was in my own bed. I used my left hand to feel its mate and discovered a heavy bandage wrapped around my injured thumb. At least it was still attached. Slowly, I began to push myself up into a sitting position.
“He’s awake!” came my sister’s voice.
In an instant, Martha and Lincoln were above me. Martha was holding a flickering candle in her hand.
“Did we win?” I asked weakly.
“You behaved very badly,” said my sister. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you conscious again, but still—you behaved very badly.”
“He behaved like a loyal friend,” said Lincoln, “though perhaps some perspective was called for.”
“I didn’t have a plan for what to do after I’d completed our loop,” I said. “And I didn’t think about Douglas’s teeth. Or about his confederates.”
“That lack of foresight is the one thing I fault you for,” said Lincoln with a lopsided grin. “Anyone who’s witnessed any Western fighting—and I know you’ve seen your share—should have realized a well-timed and well-executed thumb bite is the one surefire way to make your opponent lose his grip.”
I laughed.
“It’s not funny,” protested my sister. “You could have gotten seriously hurt. And Stephen … Stephen didn’t deserve that.”
“What he said was outrageous,” I said. I tried sitting up completely, but a sharp pain flashed through my head and I lowered myself down again.
“I deserved every word,” Lincoln said quietly.
“No, you didn’t!” I shouted, feeling indignant enough for the both of us.
“Yes, I did,” replied Lincoln. I could see in the candlelight that the skin around his eyes was drawn tight. “Every word he said was true. Or close enough, anyway. I’m not sure which of us was most humiliated by today, but it wasn’t Douglas.” He paused. “If it wasn’t so near election day I’d withdraw from my race.”
“You cannot be serious! You can’t let that little man intimidate you.”
&
nbsp; Lincoln sighed. “The thing is, he spoke a truth. I have been running from certain aspects of my past. I suppose the long view is that Douglas did me a favor. From now on I needn’t worry, for I have nothing left to hide.”
“But … but…” I was flummoxed.
“Lie still, Joshua,” commanded Martha. “You’re not well. You need to rest. Deserving or not, Stephen shouldn’t have bitten you. You’re lucky you still have your thumb.”
I put my head back on my pillow and took several slow breaths. “I’ll go back to sleep,” I said, “once both of you finally admit I’ve been right about Douglas all along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Douglas is the one who’s been tormenting Lincoln. Following us on our walk, writing threatening notes, authoring the S.G. letters for the newspaper. What more proof do we need than the debate today? Which, more than likely, means he’s the one who killed Early. Everyone in town saw today he’s capable of violence. And now, to top it all off, he’s prosecuting Truett. Which means he’s in charge of trying to put an innocent man in jail to cover up his own crime.”
My words hung in the air. Both Martha and Lincoln were silent. I’d made the accusation out of anger, but as I played it back in my head it seemed pretty convincing.
It was Martha who spoke first.
“You’re wrong! Surely you’re wrong.” She turned to Lincoln, pleading. “Tell him he’s wrong.”
The flame of Martha’s candle cast Lincoln’s lantern jaw in sharp relief. His gray eyes were deep in thought. “Why don’t you go talk to him,” he said at last. “Tomorrow, assuming you feel better. You owe him an apology anyway.”
“He owes me one,” I protested, raising my bandaged hand with difficulty.
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