On February 2nd Buchanan sent to Congress his message, transmitting the Lecompton Constitution and urging its approval. As apology for his change of front and excuse for a like change in others he drew a dark picture of the disturbed condition of affairs in the Territory, portraying the Topeka free State enterprise as a vast insurrectionary movement. He told Congress that it was impossible to submit the whole instrument to a vote because the free State faction, who were the majority, would vote against any Constitution, however perfect, except their own. He commended the entire regularity of the Lecompton Convention and the fairness with which the slavery question had been submitted to a vote and urged immediate admission.
When the motion to print and refer to the Committee on Territories was made, Trumbull denounced the message with great energy and at some length. He asked sneeringly what had become of the once celebrated principle of popular sovereignty? The people of Kansas were denied the right of voting on their Constitution at all and the Dred Scott decision had settled that at no stage had the people of a Territory power to interfere with slavery. The whole doctrine, he declared, had been absolutely repudiated.
The message having been referred to the Committee on Territories after six days' debate, on the 18th of February a bill was reported by a majority of the Committee for the admission of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution and Douglas presented a minority report protesting against it. For two weeks he was confined to his room by sickness, but, as the day for the vote was near, notice was given that he would speak on the 22nd of March.
On that day the Senate met at the early hour of ten. Already the galleries were crowded. Long before noon the passages leading to the Chamber were thronged with men and women vainly seeking admission. In a moment of graceful gallantry the Senators admitted the ladies to the floor. Through long hours of debate the crowd waited. The Senate adjourned until seven o'clock, at which time Douglas was to speak. The visitors who were lucky enough to have gained admission waited with patient good humor for the return of the Senators, who at last began to force their way back into the Chamber through the dense throngs.
A little before seven the short figure of Douglas was observed at the door and he was greeted with loud applause from the galleries. The session resumed and he rose to speak. Cheered as he was by the sympathy and admiration of the visitors, it was to him a stern enough hour when he must finally break with his powerful party and battle with his utmost strength against its cherished program. He must attack, not Buchanan, but the organized Democracy, now more powerfully entrenched than ever before. It controlled the President and the Supreme Court and had bent them to its will in this precise quarrel. The Senate was Democratic nearly two to one, and but two of the majority followed him in his revolt. In the House the Democrats had a majority of twenty-five.
Foreseeing the personal consequences of his act, he opened his speech with an elaborate review of his course in Congress in relation to slavery in the Territories, showing that from the beginning he had favored leaving the whole question fairly to the inhabitants. He stood on the principle of the Compromise of 1850 as approved and interpreted by the legislature of Illinois in 1851. That body had declared that the people of a Territory had a right to form such government as they chose. But was the Lecompton Constitution the act and deed of the people of Kansas? Did it embody their will? If not, Congress had no right to impose it on them. Where was the evidence that it did embody their will? By a fraudulent vote on December 12th it was adopted by 5,500 majority. By a fair vote on January 4th it was defeated by 10,000 majority. The election on December 21st was ordered by the Lecompton Convention, deriving its authority from the territorial legislature. The legislature itself ordered the election on January 4th. Granting the argument that the organic act was in effect an enabling act, then the territorial legislature had power to authorize the Lecompton Convention and also to order it work submitted to a vote. The legislature either had the full power of Congress over the subject or it had none.
But, it was claimed, the Constitution would have been voted down if submitted. What right had Congress to force it upon the people? It was a mockery to call it an embodiment of their will and a crime to attempt to enforce it. If it ever became the Constitution of Kansas it would be the act of Congress that made it so and not the decision of the people. That it could be changed thereafter was no apology for this outrage. It was as much a violation of fundamental principle, a violation of popular sovereignty, to force a Constitution on an unwilling people for a day as for a year or for a longer time.
If a few thousand Free Soilers had fabricated a Constitution in this fashion, prohibiting slavery forever, would the gentlemen from the South have submitted to the outrage? They were asked to admit Kansas with a State government brought into existence not only by fraudulent voting but forged returns sustained by perjury.
He paused to comment on certain diatribes in the Washington Union which had denounced him as a renegade, traitor and deserter, and read from its columns an article presenting the extreme claims of the South, arguing that all laws and Constitutions of the free States forbidding slavery were violations of the Federal Constitution, and that the emancipation of slaves in the Northern States was a gross outrage on the rights of property. But this article, he said, was in harmony with the Lecompton Constitution, which declared the right of property in a slave to be higher than Constitutions. This meant that the Constitutions of the free States forbidding slavery were in conflict with the Constitution of the United States and of no validity. Hence slavery had right to exist in all the States. But this was not the authentic Democratic faith, which left the whole question to the option of the several States. If each one took care of its own affairs, minded its own business and let its neighbors alone, there would be peace in the country. Seward had proclaimed a higher law which forbade slavery everywhere. this instrument and the Administration paper proclaimed a higher law which established it in all the States. It was time to quit this folly and yield obedience to the Constitution and laws of the land.
It was the most arrant presumption for the Administration to attempt to make this a party measure. By what right did these accidental and temporary holders of office prescribe party politics? There had been no Convention, not even a caucus, since this question arose. The party was not committed. The President had no right to tell a Senator his duty and command his allegiance. He had no power to prescribe tests. A Senator's first duty was to his State. "If the will of my State is one way and the will of the President is the other, am I to be told that I must obey the Executive and betray my State, or else be branded as a traitor to the party and hunted down by all the newspapers that share the patronage of the Government? And every man who holds a petty office in any part of my State to have the question put to him, 'Are you Douglas' enemy? If not, your head comes off.'"
What despotism on earth could equal this? The obedience of Senators was demanded on this question only. On all else they were free. The President was evidently guided by the old adage that a man needs no friends when he knows he is right and only want his friends to stand by him when he is wrong.
The President regretted that the Constitution was not submitted to the people, although he knew that if it had been submitted it would have been rejected. Hence, he regretted that it had not been rejected. Would he regret that it had not been submitted and rejected if he did not think it was wrong? And yet, he demanded their assistance in forcing it on an unwilling people and threatened vengeance on all who refused.
"For my part," he continued, * * * "come what may, I intend to vote, speak and act according to my own sense of duty, so long as I hold a seat in this Chamber. * * * I have no professions to make of my fidelity. I have no vindication to make of my course. Let it speak for itself. * * * I intend to perform my duty in accordance with my own convictions. Neither the frowns of power nor the influence of patronage will change my action, nor drive me from my principles. I stand firmly and immovably upon those great principles of self-government and State sovereignty upon which the campaign was fought and won. I stand by the time honored principles of the Democratic party, illustrated by Jefferson and Jackson, those principles of State rights, of State sovereignty, of strict construction, upon which the great Democratic party has ever stood. I will stand by the Constitution of the United States with all its compromises and perform all my obligations under it. I will stand by the American Union as it exists under the Constitution. If standing firmly by my principles I shall be driven into private life, it is a fate that has no terrors for me. * * * If the alternative be private life or servile obedience to the Executive will, I am prepared to retire. Official position has no charm for me when deprived of that freedom of thought and action which becomes a gentleman and a Senator."
When he closed, Toombs rose to reply. The speech was offensively bitter and personal, in one memorable passage of which he announced that the slave States would take care of themselves and were prepared to bid defiance to the North and to the world. Green of Missouri answered in coarser strain, both intimating that Douglas had been guilty of deliberate perfidy in his change of front.
On the 23rd the vote was taken and the bill passed, 33 being for it and 25 against it.
The Administration now declared war on him. The patronage was unsparingly used against his friends and it was better for an applicant for Federal appointment to be accused of any crime than suspected of friendship with Douglas. This separation from his party touched his feelings more deeply than any other event of his life, and we find surprising evidence of his being shaken by deep emotions that seem out of harmony with his robust and unsentimental nature. But when we remember that all his life had been spent in the activities of politics, that his thoughts, sentiments and passions had all been political for twenty years, that the Democratic platform was at once his creed and his philosophy, we can understand something of the choking emotion that threatened to overpower him as he announced that he was thenceforth a rebel and a heretic. After December 9th, the Administration press attacked him bitterly and he found himself everywhere proclaimed a traitor and deserter. He told the Senate that he knew the knife would be put to the throats of his followers. The Administration Senators assailed him. But he was equal to all emergencies and his new position as the recognized leader of the anti-Lecompton revolt gave him the enthusiastic applause of the Northwest.
On March 23rd the bill went to the House. A motion was made to refer it to a special committee. A contest over this motion arose, lasted all night, and degenerated into a general brawl, in which a Member from Pennsylvania knocked down a South Carolina Member, and many others were engaged in fisticuffs. At last a reference was agreed to.
On April 1st, while the House had the bill under consideration, Montgomery of Pennsylvania offered a substitute which had been offered by Crittenden in the Senate and there rejected, providing that the Constitution should be submitted to a vote, and, if adopted, the President should at once proclaim the admission of the State; if rejected, the inhabitants should hold a new Constitutional Convention. This substitute passed the House but was rejected by the Senate. A conference Committee was appointed, which reported the notorious English bill, providing that a generous grant of land should be offered to Kansas, and the people at a special election vote to accept it. If they so voted, they were to be admitted as a State with the Lecompton Constitution. If they rejected the grant, they could not be admitted until they numbered 93,000, which meant indefinite postponement. The bill was merely an offer of a bribe to the people to accept a Constitution which they abhorred. Its form was such that men who still believe it well to maintain the guise of decency could vote for it on the pretence that it was a land grant.
Douglas, who had now tried the thorny path of rebellion, faltered. He was tempted to support the bill and seek reconciliation, but decided to vote against it. It passed the Senate by a majority of nine and the House by a majority of eight. In the following August the proposition was submitted and rejected so decisively that the maddest fanatic must have seen that all hope of making Kansas a slave State was gone forever.
Congress adjourned on June 16th and Douglas, after spending a few days in New York, returned to Chicago. Meanwhile the people of Illinois had awakened to great political activity. On April 21st the regular Democratic Convention was held at Springfield and without opposition passed a resolution endorsing his candidacy for re-election. On June 9th the "Administration Democracy," consisting of the Federal office holders and those democrats who condemned his anti-Lecompton battle, held a Convention at Springfield, the purpose of which was to divide the party and insure his defeat. On the 17th the Republicans held their Convention at Springfield and chose Lincoln as their candidate for United States Senator.
The nomination of Lincoln was not an accident. He was prepared to accept it in a speech that should serve as the text of his campaign and was destined to great fame in after years. Against the resolve of his friends he announced the dangerous doctrine that the Government could not endure permanently half slave and half free. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." He did not expect the Union to be dissolved or the house to fall, but that it would cease to be divided. "Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the establishment of squatter sovereignty was a great step towards the nationalization of slavery. This was followed by the Dred Scott decision forbidding Congress to interfere with it in the Territories. All the legislation of Congress had carefully reserved a place for this expected decision. Douglas had hinted it in the Senate long before it was announced. Pierce and Buchanan had proclaimed it before the Judges. "We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and different place, and by different workmen,—Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance,—and when we see these timbers all joined together and see they exactly make the frame of a house or mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, * * * * * we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck."
He repelled the suggestion made in some quarters that the Republicans ought to cease their fight on Douglas and rally to his support in his contest with the slavery propagandists. He reminded them that the very essence of Republican faith was hostility to slavery, while Douglas frankly declared that he did not care whether it was voted up or voted down. The cause must be entrusted to those whose hearts were in the work and who did care for the result.
On the 9th of July Douglas returned to Chicago and received a royal welcome. A special train loaded with prominent citizens was dispatched to meet him. On his arrival he was greeted with tumultuous applause. He addressed the vast multitude from the balcony of the Tremont House. Thirty thousand people are said to have gathered to hear him. He was profoundly pleased by this splendid ovation so strikingly in contrast with the reception four years before, when his neighbors refused even to hear him in defense of his course. Among the distinguished visitors on the speakers' stand sat Lincoln.
After thanking his audience for the enthusiastic reception, he plunged into the subject then uppermost in the public mind by rehearsing his relation to the whole Kansas problem. He reminded them of his early and consistent devotion to popular sovereignty, which had been so utterly outraged by the Lecompton Constitution. He assured his hearers, however, that his opposition to that Constitution arose from no sentimental morality and bore no relation to the ethics of slavery. He insisted, not that it be good or just, but that it be submitted to a vote of the settlers.
He then addressed himself to Lincoln's Springfield speech. He attacked his extreme doctrines with characteristic adroitness. Lincoln's speech was of doubtful prudence as a campaign argument. It really foreboded civil war or a peaceful dissolution of the Union. While this alternative was, perhaps, inevitable, political expediency forbade its avowal. Douglas declared the necessary result of his philosophy to be a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free States against the slave States, to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other should be subdued and all should either become free States or all become slave States. But this was not the true theory of the American Union. The States differed widely in soil, climate, resources, tastes and habits. Their laws and institutions were utterly unlike. New Hampshire's laws were unfit for South Carolina; those of New York were not suited to the Pacific Coast. Uniformity in local and domestic affairs would be destructive of State rights, State sovereignty and personal liberty. Uniformity was the parent of despotism the world over. The only way of attaining Lincoln's proposed uniformity would be to abolish State legislatures, blot out State sovereignty and merge the States into one consolidated empire. But diversity, dissimilarity, variety in all their local and domestic institutions was the great safeguard of their liberties. He insisted on reverently bowing to the Supreme Court as the authoritative expounder of the Constitution, rather than appealing from it to a tumultuous town meeting where constitutional questions arose. The Federal Government was founded on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefits of white men, to be administered by white men in such manner as they should determine. Let each State decide for itself how it would treat the negroes and let its neighbors alone.
"The issues between Mr. Lincoln and myself," he said, "are made up, * * * *. He goes for uniformity in our domestic institutions, for a war of sections, until one or the other shall be subdued. I go for * * * the right of the people to decide for themselves. On the other hand Mr. Lincoln goes for a warfare on the Supreme Court. * * * * I yield obedience to the decisions of that Court. * * * * I am opposed to negro equality. I repeat that this nation is a white people, * * * * a people that have established this Government for themselves and their posterity. * * * * I am opposed to taking any step that recognizes the negro man * * * as the equal of the white man. I am opposed to giving him a voice in the administration of the Government."
The reception was recognized by the politicians of both parties as a great success. It was a brilliant opening of the senatorial campaign. The Republicans were anxious to counteract it. On the following evening Lincoln spoke at the same place. He had a large and enthusiastic audience. But he was not an impromptu orator at all comparable to Douglas. While his carefully prepared Springfield speech was decidedly better than Douglas' dashing address in Chicago, his unprepared speech was by no means equal to it. The marked disparity between the two speeches must have intensified the suspicion among Lincoln's friends that he was no match for his rival on the stump.
On the 16th of July Douglas again spoke to a vast multitude at Bloomington. He made an artful appeal for the Whig vote by a well turned compliment to "Kentucky's great and gallant statesman, John J. Crittenden," who proposed to refer the whole question back to the people of Kansas and thus "showed himself a worthy successor of the immortal Clay." The Republicans had "endorsed the great principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill," they had "come to the Douglas platform in supporting the Crittenden-Montgomery bill." The compromise of 1850 embodied the principle that every people ought to have the privilege of forming and regulating their own institutions to suit themselves. Each State had that right and no reason existed why it should not be extended to the Territories. The Illinois House of Representatives by an almost unanimous vote had asserted that the principle embodied in the measures of 1850 was the birth-right of free men, the gift of heaven, a principle vindicated by our Revolutionary fathers, that no limitation should ever be placed upon it either in the organization of a territorial government or the admission of a State into the Union. In conformity with that principle he had brought in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, for which Lincoln and his friends were seeking his defeat.
"I have known Lincoln well," he said, "for a quarter of a century. I have known him as you all know him, a kind-hearted, amiable gentleman, a right good fellow, a worthy citizen, of eminent ability as a lawyer, and, I have no doubt, sufficient ability to make a good Senator."
He examined Lincoln's "house divided-against-itself" philosophy, pointing out that the house had been divided for nearly seventy years and still stood.
"How is Lincoln, if elected Senator, going to carry out that principle which he says is essential to the existence of this Union; that slavery must be abolished in all the States, or must be established in all? * * * * He invites, by his proposition, a war between Illinois and Kentucky, a war between the free States and the slave States, a war between the North and the South, for the purpose of either exterminating slavery in every Southern State, or planting it in every Northern State. * * * * * What man in Illinois would not lose the last drop if his heart's blood before he would submit to the institution of slavery being forced upon us by the other States against our will? * * * What Southern man would not shed the last drop of his heart's blood to prevent Illinois or any other Northern State from interfering to abolish slavery in his State? * * * * I am opposed to organizing a sectional party which appeals to Northern pride and Northern passion and prejudice against Southern institutions, thus stirring up ill feeling and hot blood between brethren of the same Republic. * * * * How is he to carry out his principles when he gets to the Senate? Does he intend to introduce a bill to abolish slavery in Kentucky? Does he intend to introduce a bill to interfere with slavery in Virginia? How is he to accomplish what he professes must be done to save the Union?
"There would be but one way to carry out his ideas. That would be to establish a consolidated empire as destructive to the liberties of the people and the rights of the citizen as that of Austria or Russia or any other despotism that rests upon the necks of the people * * * *. Who among you expects to live or have his children live until slavery shall be established in Illinois or abolished in South Carolina? * * * * There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished and that is by leaving a State * * * * perfectly free to form and regulate its institutions in its own way. That was the principle upon which this Republic was founded. * * * * Under its operation slavery disappeared from New Hampshire, from Rhode Island, from Connecticut, from New York, from New Jersey, from Pennsylvania, from six of the twelve original slave holding States; and this gradual emancipation went on so long as we in the free states minded our own business and left our neighbors alone, * * * * so long as the free States were content with managing their own affairs and leaving the South perfectly free to do as they pleased. But the moment the North said, 'We are powerful enough to control you of the South,' * * * * that moment the South combined to resist the attack and thus sectional parties were formed and gradual emancipation ceased in all the Northern slave holding States * * *.
"Lincoln makes another issue, * * * * a crusade against the Supreme Court of the United Sates because of its decision in the Dred Scott case. * * * * I have no crusade to preach against that august body. * * * * I receive the decision of the Judges of that Court when pronounced as the final adjudication upon all questions within their jurisdiction. * * * * Unless we respect and bow in deference to the final decisions of the highest judicial tribunal in our country, we are driven at once to anarchy, to violence, to mob law, and there is no security left for our property or our own civil rights. * * * * Are we to appeal from the Supreme Court to a country meeting like this? * * * Does Mr. Lincoln intend to appeal from the decision of the Supreme Court to a Republican caucus or a town meeting? * * * He tells you that he is opposed to the decision in the Dred Scott case. Well, suppose he is; what is he going to do about it? I never got beat in a law suit in my life that I was not opposed to the decision. * * * * This Government is divided into three separate and distinct branches. * * * * Each one is supreme within the circle of its own powers. The functions of Congress are to enact the statutes, the province of the Court is to pronounce upon their validity, and the duty of the Executive is to carry the decision into effect."
Yet, he said, Lincoln wants to be elected Senator in order to reverse the Dred Scott decision by passing another unconstitutional statute. He can not get rid of the Judges now on the bench until they die. He must first elect a Republican President by Northern votes bound by pledges to appoint none but Republicans to the bench. He must then persuade the Judges to die. The President must pledge his new Judges in advance to decide this slavery question according to the wishes of his party, regardless of the Constitution. What confidence would the people have in a Court thus constituted?—a Court composed of partisan Judges, appointed on political grounds, catechized in advance and pledged in regard to a decision before the argument and without reference to the state of facts? Would such a Court command the respect of the country? Without regard to the Dred Scott decision slavery will go just where the people want it and not one inch further.
"I tell you, my friends, it is impossible under our institutions to force slavery on an unwilling people. If this principle of popular sovereignty * * * be fairly carried out by letting the people decide the question for themselves by a fair vote at a fair election and with honest returns, slavery will never exist one day or one hour in any Territory against the unfriendly legislation of an unfriendly people. I care not how the Dred Scott decision may have settled the abstract question so far as the practical results are concerned. * * * If the people of the Territory want slavery they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws and the necessary police regulations, patrol laws and slave code; if they do not want it they will withhold that legislation and by withholding it slavery is a dead as if prohibited by a constitutional provision. * * * * * They could pass such local laws as would drive slavery out in one day or one hour, if they were opposed to it; and therefore, so far as the question of slavery in the Territory is concerned, so far as the principle of popular sovereignty is concerned in its practical operation, it matters not how the Dred Scott case may be decided. * * * * * Whether slavery shall exist or shall not exist in any State or Territory will depend on whether the people are for or against it; and which ever way they shall decide it will be entirely satisfactory to me."
The Dred Scott case, he continued, decides that negroes are not citizens. But Lincoln insists on conferring on them all the privileges, rights and immunities of citizens. "I believe this Government of ours was founded on the white basis. I believe it was established for white men, of the benefit of white men and their posterity in all time to come. I do not believe that it was the design or intention of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the framers of the Constitution to include negroes as citizens. * * * The position Lincoln has taken on this question not only presents him as claiming for them the right to vote, but their right under the divine law and the Declaration of Independence to be elected to office, to become members of the legislature, to go to Congress, to become Governors or United States Senators, or Judges of the Supreme Court. * * * He would permit them to marry, would he not? And if he gives them that right I suppose he will let them marry whom they please, provided they marry their equals. If the divine law declares that the white man is the equal of the negro woman, that they are on a perfect equality, I suppose he admits the right of the negro woman to marry the white man. * * * I do not believe that the signers of the Declaration had any reference to negroes when they used the expression that all men were created equal. * * * They were speaking only of the white race. * * * Every one of the thirteen colonies was a slave-holding constituency. Did they intend * * * to declare that their own slaves were on an equality with them? What are the negroes' rights and privileges? That is a question which each State and Territory must decide for itself. We have decided that question. We have said that in this State the negro shall not be a slave but that he shall enjoy no political rights; that negro equality shall not exist. * * * For my own part, I do not consider the negro any kin to me nor to any other white man; but I would still carry my humanity and philanthropy to the extent of giving him every privilege and every immunity that he could enjoy consistent with our own good."
Maine allows the negro to vote on an equality with the white man. New York permits him to vote, provided he owns $250 worth of property. In Kentucky they deny the negro all political and civil rights. Each is a sovereign State and has a right to do as it pleases. Let us mind our own business and not interfere with them. Lincoln is not going into Kentucky, but will plant his batteries on this side of the Ohio and throw his bomb shells—his Abolition documents—over the River and will carry on the political warfare and get up strife between the North and South until he elects a sectional President, reduces the South to the condition of dependent colonies, raises the negro to an equality and forces the South to submit to the doctrine that a house divided against itself cannot stand; that the Union divided into half slave States and half free cannot endure; that they must be all free or all slave; and that, as we in the North are in the majority, we will not permit them to be all slave and therefore they in the South must consent to the States being all free.
"These are my views and these are the principles to which I have devoted all my energies since 1850, when I acted side by side with the immortal Clay and the god-like Webster in that memorable struggle in which the Whigs and the Democrats united upon a common platform of patriotism and the Constitution. * * * And when I stood beside the death-bed of Mr. Clay and heard him refer with feelings and emotions of the deepest solicitude to the welfare of the country, and saw that he looked upon the principle embodied in the great Compromise of 1850, the principle of the Nebraska bill, the doctrine of leaving each State and Territory free to decide its institutions for itself, as the only means by which the peace of the country could be preserved and the Union perpetuated. I pledged him on that death-bed of his that so long as I lived my energy should be devoted to the vindication of that principle and of his fame as connected with it. I gave the same pledge to the great expounder of the Constitution, he who has been called the god-like Webster. I looked up to Clay and him as a son would to a father, and I call upon the people of Illinois and the people of the whole Union to bear testimony that never since the sod has been laid upon the graves of these eminent statesmen have I failed on any occasion to vindicate the principle with which the last great crowning acts of their lives were identified. * * * And now my life and energy are devoted to this work as the means of preserving this Union. * * * It can be maintained by preserving the sovereignty of the States, the right of each State and each Territory to settle its domestic concerns for itself and the duty of each to refrain from interfering with the other in any of its local or domestic institutions. Let that be done, and the Union will be perpetuated. Let that be done, and this Republic which began with thirteen States and which now numbers thirty-two, which when it began only extended from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, but now reaches to the Pacific, may yet expand north and south until it covers the whole continent and becomes one vast, ocean-bound Confederacy. * * * * Let us maintain the great principles of popular sovereignty, of State rights and of the Federal Union as the Constitution has made it, and this Republic will endure forever."
On the following day he spoke at Springfield, repeating hisBloomington speech with slight abridgment.
In the evening, Lincoln, who had attended Douglas' Bloomington meeting and accompanied him to Springfield, spoke to a large audience. He twitted him for his noisy, spectacular campaign, "the thunderings of cannon, the marching and music, the fizzle-gigs and fireworks. * * *
"Does Judge Douglas," he asked, "when he says that several of the past years of his life have been devoted to the question of popular sovereignty and that all the remainder of his life shall be devoted to it, mean to say that he has been devoting his life to securing to the people of the territories the right to exclude slavery? * * * He and every one knows that the decision of the Supreme Court, which he approves and makes a special ground of attack upon me for disapproving, forbids the people of a Territory to exclude slavery. This covers the whole ground from the settlement of a Territory till it reaches the degree of maturity entitling it to form a State Constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the Judge is not sustaining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing it. He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of the Territory has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their territorial existence. This being so, the period of time from the first settlement of the Territory till it reaches the point of forming a State Constitution is not the thing that the Judge is fighting for; but, on the contrary, he is fighting for the thing that annihilates and crushes out that same popular sovereignty. * * * He is contending for the right of the people, when they come to make a State Constitution, to make it for themselves and precisely as best suits themselves. That is quixotic. Nobody is opposing or has opposed the right of the people when they form a Constitution to form it for themselves. This being so, what is he going to spend his life for? Is he going to spend it in maintaining a principle that nobody on earth opposes? Does he expect to stand up in majestic dignity and go through this apothesis and become a god in maintaining a principle that neither man nor mouse in all God's creation opposes? * * * What is there in the opposition of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton Constitution that entitles him to be considered the only opponent to it, * * * the very quintessence of that opposition? * * *
He in the Senate and his class of men there formed the number of about twenty. It took one hundred and twenty to defeat the measure. There were six Americans and ninety-four Republicans. Why is it that twenty should be entitled to all the credit for doing that work and the hundred to none? Does he place his superior claim to credit on the ground that he has performed a good act that was never expected of him? Perhaps he places himself somewhat on the ground of the parable of the lost sheep which went astray upon the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep found the one that was lost, there was more rejoicing over the one sheep that was lost and had been found than over the ninety-and-nine in the fold."
In opposing the Dred Scott decision, he said, he was sustained by the authority of Mr. Jefferson, who denounced the doctrine that the Judges were the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions as dangerous and tending to oligarchic despotism and insisted that, while they were as honest as other men, they were not more so, having the common passion for party, for power and the privilege of their crops, and ought not to be trusted with the dangerous power of deciding the great questions of State. The Supreme Court once decided that the national back was constitutional. The Democratic party revolted against the decision. Jackson himself asserted that he would not hold a national back to be constitutional, even though the Court had decided it to be so. The declaration that Congress had not power to establish a bank was contained in every Democratic platform since that time, in defiance of the solemn ruling of the Court. In fact, they had reduced the decision to an absolute nullity. And still Douglas boasted in the very speeches in which he denounced others for opposing the Dred Scott decision that he stood on the Cincinnati platform which repudiated and condemned the old bank decision. He was for Supreme Court decisions when he liked them and against them when he did not like them. Would he not graciously allow the Republicans to do with the Dred Scott decision what they did with the bank decision?
Springfield was Lincoln's home. He knew his audience and met it with confidence. He now felt that he was Douglas' equal in the field in which he had hitherto eclipsed all rivals.
But it was evident that the current was running with Douglas. The great reception at Chicago had been a glorious opening. His journeys through the State were triumphal processions. Special trains, splendidly decorated, were at his service. Military escorts received him with the firing of cannon and the loud music of bands. He commanded and marshaled with the skill of a great artist all the pomp and circumstance of victory. He owned much property in Chicago, which with the growth of the city had greatly increased in value. He mortgaged this for campaign funds, borrowing eighty thousand dollars, a debt that harassed him to the grave. Wealthy friends contributed freely and the campaign was run regardless of expense.
Yet with all these advantages the contest was evidently a hard one. Two years before, the combined Republicans and Whigs of the State outnumbered the Democrats by nearly thirty thousand. The Whig party was breaking up. It was a serious question of practical politics whether they would drift to the Democrats or the Republicans. Illinois comprised two utterly distinct communities. The northern part of the State was settled by people from New England and the Northwest. The Southern part was settled from Kentucky and the other Southern States. The growth of Chicago and the rapid development of the northern counties had made the State extremely doubtful even for Douglas. To any other man his task was hopeless. In the north the anti-slavery sentiment was strong, even to fanaticism, and many of his own supporters prayed fervently for the arrival of the day when slavery would be blotted from existence. In the south, though slavery was prohibited by law, it was cherished in the hearts of the people who remembered with warm affection the old homesteads in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Lincoln had, with more frankness than discretion announced his views on the great question. It was supremely important to compel Douglas to explicitly declare himself, to hold him down to the dangerous issue and force him to speak plainly. Each had the disadvantage of pleasing one section of the State at the cost of offending the other section. But Douglas was further embarrassed by the necessity of avoiding offense to the slave holding States of the South. He was a candidate not only for the Senate, but also for the Presidency.
Chicago, Ill., July 24, 1858. "Hon. S. A. Douglas:
"My dear Sir:—Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you and myself to divide time and address the same audiences the present canvass? Mr. Judd, who will hand you this, is authorized to receive your answer; and, if agreeable to you, to enter into the terms of such an arrangement.
"Your obedient servant,
"A. Lincoln."
This is the note received by Douglas a week after his return fromSpringfield. On the same day he returned the following answer:
"Chicago, Ill., July 24, 1858. "Hon. A. Lincoln:
"Dear Sir:—Your note of this date * * * was handed me by Mr. Judd. * * * I went to Springfield last week for the purpose of conferring with the Democratic State Central Committee upon the mode of conducting the canvass, and with them * * * made a list of appointments covering the entire period until late in October. The people of the several localities have been notified of the times and places of the meetings. * * * I cannot refrain from expressing my surprise, if it was your original intention to invite such an arrangement, that you should have waited until after I had made my appointments, in as much as we were both here in Chicago together for several days after my arrival, and again at Bloomington, Atlanta, Lincoln and Springfield, where it was well known I went for the purpose of consulting with the State Central Committee and agreeing upon the plan of campaign. * * * I will, in order to accommodate you, as far as it is in my power to do so, take the responsibility of making an arrangement with you for a discussion between us at one prominent point in each congressional district in the State, except the Second and Sixth, where we have both spoken and in each of which you had the concluding speech. If agreeable to you, I will indicate the following places as the most suitable in the several congressional districts at which we should speak, to wit: Freeport, Ottawa, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton, Jonesboro and Charleston. * * *
"Very respectfully, your most obedient servant,
"S. A. Douglas."
Lincoln replied:
"Springfield, July 29, 1858.
"Hon. S. A. Douglas:
Dear Sir:—Yours of the 24th in relation to an arrangement to divide time and address the same audiences, is received; and, in apology for not sooner replying, allow me to say that, when I sat by you at dinner yesterday, I was not aware that you had answered my note, nor, certainly, that my own note had been presented to you. An hour after, I saw a copy of your answer in the Chicago Times, and reaching home I found the original awaiting me. * * * As to your surprise that I did not sooner make the proposal to divide time with you, I can only say, I made it as soon as I resolved to make it. I did not know but that such a proposal would come from you; I waited respectfully to see. * * * I agree to an arrangement for us to speak at the seven places you have named and at your own times, provided you name the times at once, so that I, as well as you, can have to myself the time not covered by the arrangement. As to the other details, I wish perfect reciprocity, and no more. I wish as much time as you and that conclusions shall alternate. That is all.
"Your obedient servant,
"A. Lincoln."
On the next day Douglas wrote:
"Bement, Piatt Co., Ill., July 30, 1858.
"Dear Sir:—Your letter, dated yesterday, accepting my proposition for a joint discussion at one prominent point in each congressional district * * * was received this morning. The times and places designated are as follows:
Ottawa, La Salle County ……… August 21, 1858.Freeport, Stephenson County ….. August 27, 1858.Jonesboro, Union County …… September 15, 1858.Charleston, Coles County ….. September 18, 1858.Galesburgh, Knox County ……… October 7, 1858.Quincy, Adams County ……….. October 13, 1858.Alton, Madison County ………. October 15, 1858.
"I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately open and close the discussion. I will speak at Ottawa one hour, you can reply, occupying an hour and a half, and I will then follow for half an hour. At Freeport, you shall open the discussion and speak one hour; I will follow for an hour and a half, and you can then reply for half an hour. We will alternate in like manner in each successive place.
"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"S. A. Douglas."
To which Lincoln replied:
"Springfield, July 31, 1858.
"Hon. S. A. Douglas:
"Dear Sir:—Yours of yesterday, naming places, time and terms for joint discussions, between us, was received this morning. Although by the terms as you propose, you take four openings and closes to my three, I accede, and thus close the arrangement. * * *
"Your obedient servant,
"A. Lincoln."
Now that Lincoln has become idealized and is safely classed with the great men of all ages, his modest challenge seems like a condescension of the immortal President to his rival. It then seemed an act of temerity bordering on madness. Lincoln's friends thought it rash. Douglas' friends had no hope that his adversary would be so easily delivered into his hands.
Yet Lincoln was not a despised antagonist. He was the most prominent Republican in Illinois. But Douglas was the recognized head of a great national party, the giant of the Senate, the most resourceful American statesman then living. Through years of desperate battling he had successfully repelled the assaults of Seward, Sumner and Chase. He had more recently encountered with equal ease all the Southern Senators. It seemed a simple task to meet this humble Western lawyer and make his friends ashamed of their senatorial candidate. Douglas did not share the pleasant illusion of his friends. Before leaving Washington, when he heard that Lincoln was nominated, he said to Forney:
"I shall have my hands full. He is a strong man of his party,—full of wit, facts, dates,—and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as his is shrewd; and if I beat him my victory will be hardly won."
Lincoln was burning with jealousy. He believed himself to be Douglas' full equal in mental endowment. Fortune, he thought, with a tinge of bitterness, had dealt with them most unequally, clothing his rival with the glory of a world-renowned statesman, and leaving him to waste his powers on the obscure quarrels of litigious clients in a small town. He yearned for the opportunity to measure himself with the great Senator on a conspicuous stage.
This series of debates was a rare piece of strategy on Lincoln's part. Douglas had so long been wrapped in his senatorial toga that his greatness had become exaggerated to the popular mind of Illinois; while Lincoln had been a plain, modest lawyer, moving among the people in the daily round of routine life. The dogmatic statement of the great Senator carried more weight than the profoundest argument of the clearest demonstration of the country lawyer. But these debates brought them to a common level. They measured their intellectual strength in the presence of the people, with all official trappings laid aside; and while no one could well be disappointed in Douglas' strength, the whole country was amazed at the unexpected power of Lincoln.
There were disadvantages to Douglas in this mode of combat. He must sacrifice the glamour of senatorial dignity and enter the arena on equal footing with his antagonist. He was a brilliant debater. "In the whole field of American politics no man has equaled him in the expedients and strategy of debate. * * * He was tireless, ubiquitous, unseizable. It would have been as easy to hold a globule of mercury under the finger's tip as to fasten him to a point he desired to evade. * * * In spirit he was alert, combative, aggressive; in manner patronizing and arrogant by turns." But he had to meet in argument a man of imperturbably temper, who had thought deeply on the great questions of the time, who by unerring instinct could lay his finger on every flaw in his chain of reasoning, could rise to heights of eloquence beyond the reach of his unimaginative mind and pour out streams of quaint humor that must have filled him with despair.
So great was the interest of the people in this extraordinary contest that it was found impossible to hold the meetings in halls. They were held during the warm autumn days in the open air, where the crowds, numbering from five to twenty thousand, struggled to get within range of the speakers' voices.
It would be difficult to conceive a more picturesque contest than that now waged by these politicians as they strove for the mastery, and the enormous crowds of friends and sympathizers listened with intense interest to the weighty arguments, or shouted applause when their favorite scored a point. The audiences, consisting largely of farmers, who had made long journeys in wagons and lived in tents or camped out in the open air while awaiting the great event, were in stern earnest, despite their holiday appearance, and listened with thoughtful faces and troubled hearts as the grave theme was discussed which had distracted the country for years.
And the orators, who were unconsciously playing a great role on the historic stage, were surely among the most interesting products of modern times. Lincoln's lank, ungainly figure, nearly six and a half feet tall, clad in loose fitting clothes, contrasted oddly with the short, stout figure of Douglas, barely five feet in height, trimly and rather sprucely dressed. The sad, calm face o Lincoln, his humble and unheroic bearing, were in marked contrast with the finely chiseled, powerful, defiant face and magnificent Napoleonic head surmounting the short, thick neck of Douglas, who strode with kingly air before he admiring throngs. The manner of Douglas was so masterful and strong that a wavering audience must have been swept away by it. His finely modulated voice reached with ease to the utmost limits of the crowds as he thundered out his decisive arguments or condescended to compliment his aspiring rival; while Lincoln manifestly labored to so pitch his unmusical voice that the distant listeners could hear, and was never betrayed into a single gracious compliment to the distinguished Senator whose seat he aspired to fill. And the contestants, however great their posthumous fame, were as yet merely ambitious politicians, supremely interested in winning the splendid prize. To Lincoln the possibility of a seat in the Senate was stimulus enough. Douglas was in mid career, assured of the Presidency in the near future, but compelled at all hazards to hold the ground already won. His commanding eminence attracted universal attention to the contest. He must not only win, but bear himself throughout with the air of an assured conqueror.
With all their disparity of rank and fame, they were not badly matched, and all the substantial advantages of the situation lay with Lincoln. The greatness of Douglas' fame excited sympathy for his rival. Success in the contest would give power and prestige to Lincoln, and even defeat would not be humiliating. Douglas could not expect much glory even from victory. Though he crushed his opponent in argument, he must still measure himself with the Douglas of the Senate and not fall below his own standard. In his contest for the Senate, he must remember the Presidency and shape his arguments for a larger audience than that addressed by Lincoln.
During the period of the debates both were actively engaged in the State campaign, addressing one or two audiences daily, so arranging their routes as to meet at the appointed times and places. On August 21st, in presence of a vast multitude, Douglas opened the first debate at Ottawa.
"Prior to 1854," he said, "this country was divided into two great political parties, known as the Whig and Democratic parties. Both were national and patriotic. * * * Whig principles had no boundary sectional line, * * * but applied and were proclaimed wherever the Constitution ruled or the American flag waved over American soil. So it was, and so it is, with the great Democratic party, which from the days of Jefferson to this period has proven itself to be the historic party of this Nation. * * * The Whig party and the Democratic party jointly adopted the Compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of a proper and just solution of this slavery question in all its forms. Clay was the great leader, with Webster on his right and Cass on his left, and sustained by the patriots in the Whig and Democratic ranks. * * * * In 1851 the Whig party and the Democratic party united in Illinois in approving the principles of the Compromise measures of 1850. * * * In 1852 the Whig party in Convention at Baltimore declared the Compromise measures of 1850 a suitable adjustment of that question. * * * * The Democratic Convention assembled in Baltimore the same year and adopted the Compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of Democratic action. * * * They both stood on the same platform with regard to the slavery question. That platform was the right of the people of each State and Territory to decide their local and domestic institutions for themselves, subject only to the Federal Constitution.
"In 1854 I introduced into the Senate a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that principle which had been adopted in the Compromise measures of 1850, and indorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic party in National Convention in 1852. * * * Thus you see that up to 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska bill was brought into Congress for the purpose of carrying out the principles which both parties up to that time had indorsed and approved, there was no division of opinion in this country in regard to that principle, except the opposition of the Abolitionists. In the House of Representatives of Illinois upon a resolution asserting that principle every Whig and every Democrat voted in the affirmative."
In 1854 Lincoln, the leader of the Whigs, and Trumbull, one of the Democratic chiefs, entered into an arrangement to dissolve the old Whig and Democratic parties and to unite the members of both into the Abolition party under the name and guise of a Republican party. The terms were that Lincoln should have Shield's place in the Senate, then about to become vacant, and that Trumbull should have Douglas' seat when his term expired. Lincoln went to work to Abolitionize the old Whig party, pretending that he was as good a Whig as ever, and Trumbull began preaching Abolitionism in milder and lighter form, hoping to Abolitionize the Democratic party. The party met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed its platform. This document christened the coalition the Republican party. It pledged the party to bring the administration of the Government back to the control of first principles; to restore Kansas and Nebraska to the position of free Territories; to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it existed; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude it from all the Territories and resist the acquirement of more unless it should be prohibited therein. He asked Lincoln to answer whether he stood pledged to each article in that creed and would carry it out.
"I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions in order that when I trot him down to lower Egypt (Southern Illinois) I may put the same questions to him. My principles are the same everywhere. I can proclaim them alike in the North and the South, the East and the West. My principles will apply wherever the Constitution prevails and the American flag waves. I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln's principles will bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro. I put these questions to him to-day distinctly and ask an answer. I have a right to an answer, for I quote from the platform of the Republican party, made by himself and others at the time that party was formed and bargain made by Lincoln to dissolve and kill the old Whig party and transfer its members, bound hand and foot to the Abolition party. * * * I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to Lincoln. I have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery keeper in the town of Salem. * * * I made as good a school teacher as I could and, when a cabinet maker, I made a good bedstead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else. * * * Lincoln was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a foot race, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper, could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together, and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse race or a fist fight excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody."
After Lincoln and Trumbull had formed their combination to Abolitionize the old parties and put themselves into the Senate, he said, Trumbull broke faith by demanding Shield's place for himself when it fell vacant and leaving Lincoln to fight for Douglas' seat two years later. Trumbull was stumping the State for Lincoln in order to quiet him. Lincoln was opposed to the Dred Scott decision and would not submit to it because it deprived the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship.
"Do you desire," he asked, "to * * * allow the free negroes to flow in and cover your prairies with black settlements? Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony, in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois to become citizens and voters on an equality with yourselves? * * * Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition orators who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal, and then asks, 'How can you deprive the negro of that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence awards him?'" * * *
"Now I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended the negro to be the equal of the white man. If he did he has been a long time demonstrating the fact. For thousands of years the negro has been a race upon the earth and during all that time, in all latitudes and climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to the race which he there met. He belongs to an inferior race and must always occupy an inferior position. The question, what rights and privileges shall be conferred on the negro, is one which each State and Territory must decide for itself. This doctrine of Mr. Lincoln, of uniformity among the institutions of the different States, is a new doctrine, never dreamed of by Washington, Madison or the founders of this Government. Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party set themselves up as wiser than these men who made this Government which has flourished for seventy years under the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing the right of each state to do as it pleased. Under that principle we have grown from a nation of three or four millions to a nation of about thirty millions of people; we have crossed the Allegheny Mountains and filled up the whole Northwest, turning the prairie into a garden and building up churches and schools, thus spreading civilization and Christianity where before there was nothing but savage barbarism.
"Under that principle we have become, from a feeble nation, the most powerful on the face of the earth; and if we only adhere to that principle, we can go forward increasing in territory, in power, in strength and in glory, until the Republic of America shall be the North Star that shall guide the friends of freedom throughout the civilized world. * * * I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall."
When the applause subsided, Lincoln rose to reply. Addressing himself first to the personal matters contained in Douglas' speech, he denied the charge of a secret bargain between himself and Trumbull dividing the two seats in the Senate between them. "All I have to say upon that subject is, that I think no man—not even Judge Douglas—can prove it, because it is not true." He denied utterly that he had anything to do with the Republican platform drafted by the party leaders in 1854, having refused to meet with the committee or take any part in the organization.
"I have no means," he said, " of totally disproving such charges as this. I cannot prove a negative; but have a right to say that, when he makes an affirmative charge, he must offer some proof of its truth. Douglas' argument about 'perfect social and political equality with the negro' is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon the subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgement will forever forbid their living together upon a footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I agree with Judge Douglas that the negro is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color—perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man. * * *
"In the history of our Government this institution of slavery has always been an apple of discord and an element of division in the house. I have a right to say that in regard to this question the Union is a house divided against itself. The public mind did formerly rest in the belief that slavery was in the course of ultimate extinction. But lately Douglas and those acting with him have placed it on a new basis which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. * * * * I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.
"Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison paced it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis would be passed and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years, if it should live so long, in the States where it exists; yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races. * * * Popular sovereignty as now applied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have slavery if they want it, but does not allow them not to have it if they do not want it. * * * As I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from holding them. * * *
"The Nebraska bill contains this clause: 'It being the true intent and meaning of this bill not to legislate slavery into any Territory or STATE.' I have always been puzzled to know what business the word State had in that connection. Judge Douglas knows. He put it there. * * * What was it placed there for? After seeing the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people cannot exclude slavery from a Territory, if another Dred Scott decision shall come holding that they cannot exclude it from a State, we shall discover that when the word was originally put there it was in view of something that was to come in due time, we shall see that it was the other half of something.
"I ask the attention of the people here assembled to the course that Judge Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of making slavery national. In the first place what is necessary to make slavery national? Not war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets, and, with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into Illinois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going over there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that Congress nor the territorial legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in the whole thing is done. * * * Let us consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end. What influence is he exerting on public sentiment? With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes possible or impossible to be executed. * * *
"Judge Douglas is a man of vast influence. Consider the attitude he occupies at the head of a large party. This man sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a Territory from excluding slavery, and he does so not because it is right in itself, but because it has been decided by the Court; and, being decided by the Court, he is, and you are, bound to take it in your political action as law. * * * You will bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision commits him to the next one just as firmly as to this. The next decision, as much as this, will be a 'Thus saith the Lord.' It is nothing that I point out to him that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force of decisions. It is nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe. He claims now to stand on the Cincinnati platform which affirms that Congress cannot charter a national bank, in the teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a bank. And I remind him of another piece of history on the question of respect for judicial decisions belonging to a time when the large party to which Judge Douglas belongs were displeased with a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois, because they had decided that a Governor could not remove a Secretary of State. I know that he will not deny that he was then in favor of overslaughing that decision by the mode of adding five new Judges, so as to vote down the four older ones. Not only so, but it ended in the Judge's sitting down on that very bench as one of the five new Judges to break down the four old ones.
"Now, when the Judge tells me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members of a Court will have to catechized beforehand upon some subject, I say, 'You know, Judge; you have tried it.' When he says a Court of this kind will lose the confidence of all men, will be prostituted and disgraced by such a proceeding, I say, 'You know best, Judge; you have been through the mill.' But I cannot shake Judge Douglas' teeth loose from the Dred Scott decision. Like some obstinate animal that will hang on, when he has once got his teeth fixed, you may cut off a leg, or you may tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold. He hangs to the last to the Dred Scott decision. These things show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he adheres to this decision and for which he will adhere to all other decisions of the same Court. * * * When he invites any people willing to have slavery to establish it, he is blowing out the moral lights around us. When he says he cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up—that is the sacred right of self-government—he is, in my judgement, penetrating the human soul and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty. * * *
"And now I will only say that when, by all these means and appliances, he shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to an exact accordance with his own; when these vast assemblages shall echo back all these sentiments; when they shall come to repeat his views and to avow his principles and to say all that he says on these mighty questions, then it needs only the formality of a second Dred Scott decision, which he endorses in advance, to make slavery alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."
Douglas, in his brief reply, reminded the audience that Lincoln had not frankly answered the question put in his opening speech; whether he approved of each article of the Republican resolutions adopted in Springfield in October, 1854. Lincoln's only answer had been that he was not present and had nothing to do with drafting the resolutions. "But this denial is a miserable quibble to avoid the main issue, which is that this Republican platform declares in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law. His reply to all these questions is 'I was not on the Committee at the time; I was up in Tazewell County trying a case.' I put to him the question whether, if the people of the Territory, when they had sufficient population to make a State, should form their Constitution recognizing slavery, he would vote for or against its admission? He is a candidate for the United States Senate and it is possible that, if he should be elected, he would have to vote directly on that question. He dodges it also under the cover that he was not on the Committee. * * * He knows I will trot him down to Egypt. I intend to make him answer there. * * * The Convention to which I have been alluding pledges itself to exclude slavery from all the Territories. * * * I want to know whether he approves that provision. * * * I want to know whether he will resist the acquirement of any more territory, unless slavery therein shall be prohibited. These are practical questions, based upon the fundamental principles of the black Republican party; and I want to know whether he is the first, last and only choice of a party with whom he does not agree in principle.
"He does not deny but that that principle was unanimously adopted by the Republican party; and now I want to know whether that party is unanimously in favor of a man who does not adopt that creed and agree with them in their principles; I want to know whether the man who does not agree with them and who is afraid to avow his differences is the first, last and only choice of the party. * * * The party stands pledged that they will never support Lincoln until he has pledged himself to that platform; but he cannot devise his answer. He has not made up his mind whether he will or not. * * * I have not brought a charge of moral turpitude against him. When he brings one against me, instead of disproving it I will say that it is a lie and let him prove it if he can. * * *
"Mr. Lincoln has not character enough for integrity and truth merely on his own ipse dixit to arraign President Buchanan, President Pierce and nine Judges of the Supreme Court, not one of whom would be complimented by being put on an equality with him. There is an unpardonable presumption in any man putting himself up before thousands of people and pretending that his ipse dixit, without proof, without fact and without truth, is enough to bring down and destroy the purest and best of living men. * * * The word 'State' as well as 'Territory' was put into the Nebraska bill to knock in the head this Abolition doctrine that there will be no more slave States even if the people want them. * * * The people of Missouri formed a Constitution as a slave State and asked admission into the Union; but the Free Soil party of the North, being in a majority, refused to admit her because she had slavery as one of her institutions. Hence, the first slavery agitation arouse upon a State and not upon a Territory. * * * The whole Abolition agitation arose on that doctrine of prohibiting a State from coming in with slavery or not as it pleased, and that same doctrine is here in this Republican platform of 1854."
The peculiar difficult of meeting Douglas in argument before a popular audience is here exhibited in its most perfect form. The persuasive force of his last proposition lay in a most ingenious play on the words "State" and "Territory." Although the people of Missouri had formed a State Constitution, they did not become a State until Congress approved it and formally admitted them. During the entire period of dispute they continued a Territory. Douglas' argument assumes that they became a State on forming a Constitution.