Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST JOINT DEBATE AT OTTAWA
* * *
Saturday, August 21, 1858
• THE SCENE •
THE FIRST LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE began late. No one was prepared for the crush of humanity that poured into the overwhelmingly Republican village of Ottawa on that searingly hot day, and no one made adequate provisions to control the crowd. The result bordered on chaos, and Lincoln later confided of the "vast concourse of people" that there were "more than could [get] near enough to hear."
A canal town hugging the Fox and Illinois rivers midway between Chicago and Peoria in the northern part of the state, Ottawa could claim a permanent population of at most 7,000. But by debate day, between 10,000 and 20,000 more — estimates varied wildly — arrived in town from all directions to fill Ottawa to overflowing.
"Men, women, and children, old, and young," as one reporter described the arrivals, flooded in on foot, on horseback, in ox-drawn wagons, in fancy carriages, and aboard huge canal boats emblazoned with political banners. A fourteen-car special train hauled in spectators at half fare from Chicago, while eleven extra cars brought another crowd from Peru and La Salle. By early morning, the "great multitude" tramping through the unpaved streets left the town so "shrouded in dust" that the scene looked to one onlooker like "a vast smoke house."
Then at one p.m., a full hour before the speeches were scheduled to begin, the throng began surging into the modest public square, quickly transforming it into "one mass of active life." Most spectators rushed forward to secure good standing room — no chairs had been provided, and onlookers complained bitterly about the "wretched accommodations" — while others brazenly overran the unguarded speakers' platform. As the audience howled with laughter, a few daredevils clambered onto its wooden awning, leaping about recklessly until they came crashing down through the roof and onto the laps of the few startled dignitaries who had finally fought their way to their seats.
Under a scorching summer sun, national flags, patriotic bunting, and motto-bedecked banners fluttered dazzlingly in the hot breeze. Peddlers hawked their goods at every corner, military units drilled solemnly, and musicians strained to make their martial tunes audible over the deafening crowd noise. At regular intervals the overall din was magnified by an explosion of artillery salutes that seemed to make the earth tremble. There were only a few trees in the square to shade the crowd, and tempers flared as hot as the weather: fueled by an abundant supply of liquid refreshment, Democrats fought with Republicans and Republicans argued with Democrats, while overwrought marshals pompously girdled in "partisan" sashes tried vainly to keep order. "Vanity Fair," one journalist on the scene marveled, "never boiled with madder enthusiasm."
Lincoln had arrived earlier in the day aboard a seventeen-car train bulging with supporters. Escorted into town in an evergreen-laden carriage, he was now resting in the mayor's house. Douglas made his entrance in "an elegant carriage drawn by six white horses," at the head of a procession of flag-waving supporters; he was ensconced at the local hotel. Now the candidates at last appeared on the scene, inching their way through blocked sidewalks and toward the stage as the clamor around them intensified feverishly. Cheers echoed through the square as both men ascended the platform. A long half hour behind schedule, the Lincoln-Douglas debates finally got under way at two-thirty p.m.
Douglas was the opening speaker, and he occupied his hour introducing charges with which he would goad his opponent throughout the encounters to come. Lincoln was a dangerous radical. Lincoln had dishonorably opposed the Mexican War as a congressman a decade earlier. Lincoln was conspiring to "abolitionize" the old Whig and Democratic parties. Lincoln's opposition to the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, and its ban on citizenship for blacks, would lead to increased black immigration into Illinois. And Lincoln secretly favored a four-year-old set of radical resolutions adopted in Springfield, which called for repeal of the fugitive slave law, the emancipation of slaves in the nation's capital, and other "Black Republican" goals. Douglas ended his searing attack by posing seven pointed questions to his rival, and he challenged Lincoln to respond to each.
Lincoln's unusual stump style provided the audience with a distinct change of pace. Where Douglas had been angry and bombastic, Lincoln appeared relaxed and jovial. He donned spectacles to read from an old speech, jokingly explaining to the crowd that he was "no longer a young man." He teased that the diminutive Douglas was a "great man" and he but a "small man." And he drew roars of laughter in denying Douglas's libel that he had operated a "grocery," or saloon, as a young man in New Salem, by admitting only that he had once worked at "a little still house up at the head of the hollow." Ignoring Douglas's interrogatories, he switched rhetorical gears to dwell eloquently on the original promise of the Declaration of Independence, and reminded the crowd that his political hero, Henry Clay, a slaveholder, never denied its applicability to blacks as well as whites. Still, Lincoln, who seldom used the word "nigger" publicly, used it twice even in progressive Ottawa, whose congressman, Owen Lovejoy, was on race issues the most advanced officeholder in Illinois. Finally, Lincoln brushed aside Douglas's attack on the radical Springfield resolutions by pointing out that he had not even been in Springfield when they were adopted, and had never authorized support for them.
Douglas resumed his fierce attack during his half-hour rejoinder, reminding the crowd that Lincoln had again failed to specifically renounce the controversial Springfield resolutions, and chiding him for refusing to respond to his set of questions. When it was all over, supporters hoisted a surprised Lincoln on their shoulders — in triumph, boasted Republican newspapers later; Democratic journals insisted that the "funeral procession" was organized because Douglas's onslaughts had left Lincoln's "limbs cold" and "his respiratory organs ... obstructed." In the Louisville Journals opinion: "If they had foreseen how he would come out in the debate, they would have borne him off before it commenced."
As the Democratic press saw it, Douglas had "electrified the crowd" at Ottawa, while Lincoln "dodged" and looked "embarrassed." Republican journals, on the other hand, thought Lincoln appeared "high toned" and "powerful," and Douglas "boorish" and "cowardly." From faraway New York, Horace Greeley's New York Tribune cheered that Lincoln had turned the race into nothing less than "a contest for the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of Satan — a contest for advance or retrograde in civilization."
But Lincoln's Republican friends at home privately worried that he had appeared far too defensive at Ottawa, and urged him to be more aggressive at the next debate. Law associate Henry Clay Whitney told the candidate bluntly that he had "dodged on the platform," and pleaded with him not to handle Douglas so "tenderly" next time. "You have got to treat him severely," he advised, "& the sooner you commence the better & easier." A debate eyewitness from nearby Tiskilwa agreed that Lincoln had erred in not answering Douglas's Ottawa interrogatories. "I think that any answer," he wrote sternly, "is better than none." Bluntest of all was the disappointed editor of the pro-Lincoln Chicago Press and Tribune. "For God's sake," pleaded Charles H. Ray, "tell him to 'Charge Chester! Charge!' "
Lincoln himself shrugged off all the criticism, writing in mock relief to a friend: "Douglas and I, for the first time in this canvass, crossed swords here yesterday, the fire flew some, and I am glad to know I am still alive."
The transcripts follow: the pro-Republican Chicago Daily Press and Tribune's for Democrat Douglas's opening speech and rejoinder, the pro-Democratic Chicago Daily Times's for Republican Lincoln's rebuttal.
* * *
MR. DOUGLAS' OPENING SPEECH
At half past two, Mr. Douglas took the front of the platform, amid the cheers of the Hibernians, who had fought their way to the front [such references to the overwhelmingly Democratic Irish, typical in the Republican press of the day, were designed to alarm voters who feared immigration and disliked foreigners — ed.], and said:
MR. DOUGLAS said — Ladies and gentlemen. I appear before you to-day for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind. This vast concourse of people shows the deep feeling which pervades the masses in regard to this question. By an arrangement previously made, we have to-day a joint discussion between Mr. Lincoln and myself as the representatives of the two great political parties in this State and the Union.
Prior to 1854, this country was divided into two great political parties, known as the Whig and Democratic parties — both national and patriotic in their principles — both advocating principles which were universal in their application. An old line Whig could proclaim his principles in Louisiana and in Massachusetts alike. Whig principles were not limited by the Ohio river, nor by the Potomac, nor by the line of the free and the slave States, but applied and were proclaimed wherever the Constitution ruled, or the American flag waved over American soil. [Hear him, and three cheers. — Times] So it was and so it is with the principles of the great Democratic party, which from the days of Jefferson until this period, had proven itself to be the historical party of this nation. While the Whig and the Democratic parties differed in regard to a Bank, and in regard to a Tariff, and in regard to Distribution, and in regard to the Specie Circular [President Jackson's 1836 order that the government accept only specie in public land sales — an effort to arrest speculative fever — ed.], and in regard to the Sub-Treasury, they agreed on the great question that now agitates the Union, known as the Slavery question. I say that Whigs and Democrats agreed on this Slavery question, while they differed on those matters of expediency to which I have referred.
The Whig party and the Democratic party jointly adopted the compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of the solution of the slavery question in all of its forms. Clay was the great leader, with Webster on his right and [Lewis] Cass [senator from Michigan — ed.] on his left, sustained by the patriots in the Whig and Democratic ranks, in devising, and adopting, and enacting the compromise measures of 1850 [an attempted final solution to the sectional crisis, fathered by Henry Clay and championed by Douglas, which its advocates believed would defuse the volatile slavery issue. But more than two thirds of Congress voted against at least some elements of the package, and it managed only to postpone the conflict to come — ed.]. Again, in 1851, in Illinois, the Whig party and the Democratic party united in resolutions endorsing and approving the compromise measures of 1850 as the proper adjustment of this question. In 1852, when the Whig party assembled at Baltimore, for the purpose of nominating its candidate for the Presidency, the first thing it did was to adopt the compromise measures of 1850, in substance and in principle, as the satisfactory adjustment of that question.
[Here a number of persons began to applaud, when one strong- voiced applauder, with more enthusiasm than the rest, prolonged the strain until it ended in a melancholy howl, which produced great laughter. — Tribune; Here the speaker was interrupted by loud and long continued applause. — Times]
Mr. Douglas continued. My friends, silence is more acceptable to me in the discussion of this question than applause. I desire to address myself to your judgment — to your understanding — to your consciences — and not to your passions. I was saying, when the Democratic Convention assembled at Baltimore, in 1852, for the purpose of nominating a candidate to the Presidency, they also adopted the Compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of Democratic action. Thus you see that up to 1853–4, the Whig party and the Democratic party both stood on the same platform in regard to the Slavery question which now agitates the country. That platform was the right of the people of each State and of each Territory to decide their local and domestic institutions for themselves, subject only to the Federal Constitution.
At the session of 1853–4, I introduced into the Senate of the United States a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that principle, which had been adopted in the Compromise measures of 1850, approved by the Whig party and the Democratic party and the Democratic party in Illinois in 1831, and endorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic party in the national Conventions of 1852. In order that there might be no misunderstanding in regard to the principle involved in the Kansas and Nebraska bill, I put forth the true intent and meaning of the act in these words: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, not to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Federal Constitution."
Thus you see that up to 1854, when the Kansas and Nebraska bill [whose "popular sovereignty" provisions had aroused Lincoln to re- enter politics — ed.] was brought into Congress for the purpose of carrying out the principles which, up to that time, both parties had endorsed and approved, there had been no division in this country in regard to that principle, except the opposition of the Abolitionists. In the Illinois Legislature, in the House of Representatives, upon the resolution asserting that principle, every Whig and every Democrat in the House voted for that principle. Only four men voted against it, and those four men were Old Line Abolitionists. [Cheers. — Times] In 1854, Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Mr. [Lyman] Trumbull [U.S. senator and 1858 Lincoln supporter — ed.] entered into an arrangement one with the other, and each with their respective friends, to dissolve the old Whig party on the one hand, and to dissolve the old Democratic party on the other hand, and convert the members of both parties into an Abolitionist party under the name [and disguise — Times] of the Republican party. [Applauses and hisses. — Tribune; Laughter and cheers, hurrah for Douglas. — Times] The terms of that arrangement between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Trumbull have been published to the world by Mr. Lincoln's special friend, Mr. James H. Matheney [the best man at Lincoln's 1842 wedding — ed.], which was that Mr. Lincoln was to have Gen. [James] Shields' [longtime Lincoln foe and Democratic U.S. senator unseated by Trumbull — ed.] place — then about to become vacant in the United States Senate — and Mr. Trumbull was to have my place. [Great laughter. — Times] Mr. Lincoln went to work industriously to abolitionize the old Whig party all over the State, pretending that he was as good a Whig as he ever was. [Laughter. — Times] Trumbull went to work in his part of the State, down in Egypt [southern Illinois — ed.], preaching Abolitionism in a milder and a lighter form, and of not quite as dark a color, but yet trying to abolitionize the Democratic party and bring the old Democrats handcuffed, bound hand and foot into the Abolition camp. ["Good," "hurrah for Douglas" and cheers. — Times]
In pursuance of that arrangement, the parties met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed their new platform. Mr. Lincoln was to bring into the Abolition camp the old line Whigs, and transfer them over to [Joshua R.] Giddings [abolitionist congressman from Ohio — ed.] and [Salmon P.] Chase [antislavery former senator from, then governor of Ohio, later Lincoln's treasury secretary — ed.], Frederick] Douglass [the country's best-known black leader — ed.], [Owen] Lovejoy [Republican congressman and ardent Lincoln booster; he sat on the speakers' platform during this debate — ed.] and [John F.] Farnsworth [congressman from Chicago — ed.], who were then ready to receive and christen them into Abolitionists. [Laughter and Cheers. — Times] They laid down on that occasion a platform for this new Republican party, which was to be constructed out of the old Whig party and the old Democratic party, by abolitionizing both and transferring them to abolitionism. I have the resolutions of that Convention, which was the first Mass State Convention ever held in Illinois by the Republican party. I now hold them in my hand, and will read a part of the resolutions and cause the others to be printed. Here is one of the resolutions and the most material one of this Abolition platform, under the new name of Republicanism:
2. Resolved, That the times imperatively demand the reorganization of parties, and repudiating all previous party attachments, names and predilections, we unite ourselves together in defense of the liberty and constitution of the country, and will hereafter co-operate as the Republican party, pledged to the accomplishment of the following purposes: to bring the administration of the government back to the control of first principles; to restore Nebraska and Kansas to the position of free territories; that, as the constitution of the United States vests in the States, and not in Congress, the power to legislate for the extradition of fugitives from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive slave law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all the territories over which the general government has exclusive jurisdiction; and to resist the acquirements of any more territories unless the practice of slavery therein forever shall have been prohibited.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Lincoln-Douglas Debates"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Fordham University Press.
Excerpted by permission of Fordham University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
