The Life of Stephen A. Douglas Part 8

* * * * * 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 Const.i.tution 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 const.i.tuency.

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 sh.e.l.ls--his Abolition doc.u.ments--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 G.o.d-like Webster in that memorable struggle in which the Whigs and the Democrats united upon a common platform of patriotism and the Const.i.tution. * * * 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 inst.i.tutions 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 Const.i.tution, he who has been called the G.o.d-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 inst.i.tutions. 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 Const.i.tution has made it, and this Republic will endure forever."

On the following day he spoke at Springfield, repeating his Bloomington 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 ent.i.tling it to form a State Const.i.tution. 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 const.i.tutional 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 Const.i.tution 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 Const.i.tution, to make it for themselves and precisely as best suits themselves. That is quixotic. n.o.body is opposing or has opposed the right of the people when they form a Const.i.tution 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 n.o.body on earth opposes? Does he expect to stand up in majestic dignity and go through this apothesis and become a G.o.d in maintaining a principle that neither man nor mouse in all G.o.d's creation opposes? * * * What is there in the opposition of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton Const.i.tution that ent.i.tles him to be considered the only opponent to it, * * * the very quintessence of that opposition? * * *

He in the Senate and his cla.s.s 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 ent.i.tled 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 const.i.tutional 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 pa.s.sion 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 const.i.tutional. The Democratic party revolted against the decision. Jackson himself a.s.serted that he would not hold a national back to be const.i.tutional, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 hara.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sed 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.

Chapter XIV. The Debates with Lincoln.

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 canva.s.s? 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 from Springfield. 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 canva.s.s, 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.