Stump Speaking—As the American people pushed their way across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the thin edge of advancing civilization was known as the “frontier.” It was made up of courageous spirits who subdued the Indians, drove the French and Spanish from their pathway, slew the wild beasts, felled the forests, built their log cabins, and planted their fields. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett belonged to these hardy people. Cut off from the comforts and privileges which they had enjoyed before migrating to “the West,” these people resorted to various makeshifts to supply their needs. They used Indian moccasins on their feet, and coonskin caps on their heads. Lacking newspapers, they learned the issues of the political campaigns by assembling to hear the candidates who, in turn, mounted the stump of a felled tree in the streets of the frontier town and from that forum addressed the voters. A good “stump speaker” could always attract a crowd, and a wit combat between two speakers representing opposite parties was a real holiday of sport. It is true that the jokes and counter-strokes were often feeble attempts, and sometimes not very far removed from vulgarity; but the stronger the blows the better they were liked, and the more personal, the more enjoyable they were.
The spirit of democracy was strong in these pioneers and made them intensely interested in politics. Their fondness for hearing political speeches, their attendance upon political meetings, their parades, floats, banners, and bands remained even after the first frontier stage of progress had passed and the country was well settled. In Illinois, stump speaking was popular as late as 1858, although the frontier had passed on into Kansas and Nebraska, just ready for statehood.
Political Parties—The slavery question was always a festering thorn in the side of the body politic, frequently poulticed by compromises, but manifesting itself whenever a new national issue arose. The Abolitionists, headed by William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and others, opposed all compromises and stood for the unconditional and immediate emancipation of the slaves. They were bitterly condemned by both the Whig and Democrat parties as wild and dangerous reformers, who were likely to bring about a dissolution of the Union through their agitation. Each party denied any sympathy for or connection with the Abolitionists.
The contention of the Abolitionists that slavery was wrong ethically, made little progress until it became an economic and political matter through the proposed statehood for Kansas and Nebraska. The prairies were not fitted climatically for cotton raising, which made slaveholding profitable; but if two new States came in free, as they must do under the Compromise of 1820,1 they would add four free Senators and many free Congressmen to the Northern strength, thereby further curbing the slaveholding power in national affairs.
The demand of the South for an adjustment led, in 1854, to the substitution for the Missouri Compromise of 1820 of a new remedy (the Kansas-Nebraska measure) which, by permitting the people of the proposed states to determine whether they would be free or slave, was thought to be the very essence of democracy or home rule. As usual, in temporizing with the evil the remedy became worse than the disease.
The Republican Party—This setting aside of the Missouri Compromise for “squatter sovereignty” banded together Northern Whigs and Northern Democrats on an anti-slavery platform; and they speedily formed a new party, calling themselves Republicans. In 1856 the new party had a candidate for the presidency, Fremont, and parties were now known politically as Democrats, Old Line Whigs, and Republicans. The first two refused to recognize the Republican movement as more than a conspiracy or corrupt bargain between leaders to break up the old parties and bring themselves into political power. In the debates it will be noticed that Douglas assails the corrupt bargain between Lincoln, an Old Line Whig, and Trumbull, a Democrat, both of whom deserted the old parties to join the new Republican party.
The Little Giant—Stephen A. Douglas, a Senator from Illinois and a Northern Democrat, was chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories. As such he pushed the Kansas-Nebraska bill of 1854 through both Houses, and incurred the criticism of the free soil advocates of both parties in the North. He said later that he could have traveled from Washington to his home in Chicago, when Congress adjourned, by the light of himself being burned in effigy. For three hours in his home town he tried in vain to get his constituents to listen to his explanations.
Douglas was born in Vermont, migrated to Illinois, and had advanced rapidly through the offices of prosecuting attorney, State legislator, Registrar of Public Lands, candidate for Congress, State Supreme Court Judge, Congressman for two terms, and finally, in 1845, member of the United States Senate. He had served two terms in the Senate, and in 1858 was a candidate for a third election by the State legislature. He had a most winning personality, a fearless spirit, a quick temper, and an unlimited energy of physical force and will power. He was short and heavy in figure, but possessed a far-reaching voice, and early acquired the nickname of “The Little Giant.” In stump speaking he was considered the champion of the Middle West.
Honest Old Abe—Among those who watched with interest the course of The Little Giant was Abraham Lincoln, a member of the Whig party, who wrote to a friend in 1854 that Douglas’s action might have created an opening for a Whig Senator from Illinois, and “if so, I want the chance of being that man;” but it was thought best to nominate Lyman Trumbull. Four years later Lincoln had the opportunity.
Lincoln started even lower in life than Douglas, and progressed more slowly. He lacked Douglas’s personal magnetism and suffered still more by comparison of appearance. He was tall, ungainly, and careless in his dress. He was also hampered all his life by poverty. On the other hand, he possessed more natural shrewdness than Douglas, and always kept his temper, even under the flings of Douglas. His habits of life were extremely temperate and formed a marked contrast to other men in public life at that time.
Lincoln and Douglas knew each other at the State Capital, and in the Courts where both practiced law. Lincoln had taken little part in politics except to serve a term in Congress, 1847–9. He was a candidate for the Senate in 1854, as has been said, but withdrew in favor of Trumbull. Small wonder that many thought him presumptuous in aspiring to the United States Senate in 1858, and especially when that meant to oppose the great Douglas. The task seemed doubly hard because Lincoln was the candidate of a new party, the Republican or “Black Republican,” as the Democrats dubbed it because of its espousal of the rights of the negro.
Political Conditions—It was customary at that time to hold nominating conventions some months before elections. The State Legislatures elected the United States Senators, and so the choice of members of the Legislature in senatorial election years was a matter of vital importance. Illinois had always been Democratic, and Douglas felt no apprehension in the senatorial election of 1857 except so far as the Kansas-Nebraska turmoil should disturb normal conditions. Late in 1857 some of the residents of the Territory of Kansas had formed, at Lecompton, a pro-slavery constitution for the proposed State. President Buchanan favored the adoption of the “Lecompton Constitution,” but Douglas opposed it on the ground that it was not a fair test of the theory of “squatter sovereignty;” all the people of the Territory had not taken part. The Democratic party in Illinois was therefore in a divided condition, and there might be some shifting to the new Republican party if it came out with a strong Free-Soil platform. The fears of the Democratic party leaders were realized, April 21,1858, when the Democratic State Committee met at Springfield and nominated Douglas on an anti-Lecompton platform, which caused a number of the delegates to “bolt” the convention, and, six weeks later, to hold another convention and nominate another ticket.
Consequently, it was with high hopes that the new Republican party met in convention at Springfield in June, and resolved that Abraham Lincoln was the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas. The speech which Lincoln had prepared for the convention he read from manuscript, a thing which he rarely did, and he also carefully read the proof in the printing office before the speech was published. He was stating the principles of the new party and, as it chanced, of a new era in American politics. Douglas would make every use of the platform, and Lincoln must be careful to see that it was so plain that its statements could not be twisted or misconstrued by the wily debater.
The two strong factors in the campaign were the situation in the Kansas-Nebraska territory, and a recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. This held in the case of Dred Scott,2 a fugitive slave, that no negro slave or his descendant can ever be a citizen of a State, that neither Congress nor a State Legislature can exclude slavery from a State or Territory, and that the decision whether a slave can be held in a free State depends upon the courts of that State. Douglas saw how inconsistent this decision was with his squatter sovereignty theory, and was driven to say that he “cared not whether slavery was voted up or voted down,” provided the people had a fair vote on the question. Lincoln in his speech at the Republican nominating convention seized the opportunity to point out where the development of events had put Douglas. “His friends,’’ he said, “remind us that he is a great man and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But ‘a living dog is better than a dead lion.’ Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work is at least a caged and toothless one.”
In opening the speech, Lincoln used a paraphrase of Mark 3:25 which was prophetic and destined to become immortal, although Douglas later declared it seditious. Lincoln said:
“Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. 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.”
Such was the condition of affairs at the opening of the campaign between Douglas and Lincoln for the senatorship of Illinois in 1858.
The Challenge—Douglas at once gave out a list of his speaking appointments for July, and closing on August 21 at Ottawa. The Republicans also prepared a list of Republican meetings at which Lincoln was scheduled to speak, in some cases coinciding with the Democratic dates and in others following a day later. At the meetings the crowd sometimes called upon Lincoln to reply to Douglas and the Democratic papers complained that Lincoln was showing bad taste in following Douglas about and taking advantage of his large audiences. Douglas devoted a larger part of his time to Trumbull, his co-senator from Illinois, whom he accused of making a compact with Lincoln to dissolve both the old Whig and old Democratic parties and to unite with the Abolitionists in forming the new “Black” Republican party. Trumbull, in turn, charged Douglas with making a corrupt bargain in favoring the repeal of the Missouri Compromise measure.
It appeared as if the campaign would resolve itself into a contest between Douglas and Trumbull, while Lincoln, who was the actual candidate for Douglas’s place, would be lost sight of. Consequently, after consulting his friends, Lincoln wrote to Douglas, July 24, 1858, inquiring whether it would be agreeable “to divide time and address the same audiences in the present canvass.” Douglas replied the same day that his schedule had been made out, that the Democratic candidates for other offices on the State ticket must be given a hearing at his meetings; but that he would arrange seven extra meetings at which he would discuss the issues of the day with Lincoln. He further named the places, one in each of the seven Congressional districts of the State, omitting the Springfield and Chicago districts, in which both had already spoken through Lincoln’s “follow-up” method.
Lincoln accepted the seven places and the following letters closed the arrangements:
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, as stated in my previous letter, was received this morning.
The times and places designated are as follows:
| Ottawa, LaSalle County | August | 21, | 1858. |
| Freeport, Stephenson County | " | 27, | " |
| Jonesboro, Union County | September | 15, | " |
| Charleston, Coles County | " | 18, | " |
| Galesburg, Knox County | October | 7, | " |
| Quincy, Adams County | " | 13, | " |
| Alton, Madison County | " | 15, | " |
I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately open and close the discussion. I will speak at Ottawa for 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 for one hour. We will alternate in like manner in each successive place. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
S. A. DOUGLAS
Hon. A. Lincoln, Springfield, Ill.
Springfield, July 31, 1858.
Hon. S. A. Douglas.
Dear Sir:
Yours of yesterday, naming places, times, and terms, for joint discussions between us, was received this morning. Although, by the terms, as you propose, you take four openings and closings, to my three, I accede, and thus close the arrangement. I direct this to you at Hillsboro and shall try to have both your letter and this appear in the Journal and Register of Monday morning.
Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.
The newspapers of the State approved of this arrangement to “let the people judge for themselves who shall be their choice after a fair hearing of them both in person” and to “submit the whole case to such popular jurors, called together by the joint efforts of the two parties.” The Douglas papers made flings at the egotism and the presumption of the upstart to try to thrust himself upon the public by using the crowds which would come to hear The Little Giant.
The Course of the Debates—The series began August 21 and closed October 15, covering a period of nearly eight weeks. Douglas began immediately an attack on the new Republican party, of which his opponent was one of the founders, and claimed that a bargain had been made between his former fellow Democrat, Judge Trumbull, and Abraham Lincoln, to unite with the Abolitionists in a sectional revolt against slavery; a course which would endanger the Union. He used Lincoln’s “house divided against itself” as proof of this disloyalty. Lincoln denied the charge of Abolitionism and stated in simple language his opinion of the rights of the negro; and then opened up the record of Douglas on the territorial extension of slavery and the Dred Scott case.
It was customary for a debater to ask his opponent a series of questions intended to compromise him or to put him in an embarrassing position. Douglas did this in the very first debate, hoping to set a trap for Lincoln; but in the second debate Lincoln answered these questions and then countered with four sequential questions which some historians think caught Douglas in his own trap.
This second (Freeport) debate is considered the most important of the series. The second question of Lincoln, as to the right of a people of a Territory to exclude slavery before becoming a State, made Douglas reaffirm what he had said “a hundred times from every stump in Illinois.” He had to choose between an affirmative answer, which would please Northern Democrats and gain him the Senatorship, but bar all hopes of the presidency through alienating the South; or returning a negative answer, which would cost him his Northern favor and the Senatorship. Also, an affirmative reply would be wholly at variance with the Dred Scott decision. Nevertheless he answered affirmatively.
It is said that Lincoln saw the result of the affirmative reply which Douglas would probably give and which would cost Lincoln the senatorship, but that he looked forward to the presidential election of 1860, and in his homely vernacular said, “I am after larger game.” Admirers of Douglas doubt this story, and deny that Lincoln drove Douglas into a corner, because Douglas had on several prior occasions declared that the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution.
In the next debate Douglas reiterated his “bargain” claim, and expressed his unconcern whether slavery was “voted up or voted down” in a Territorial legislature. This involved the idea that matters should go on as they had been, but Lincoln showed that Douglas by his own action had made this impossible. Lincoln also exploded Douglas’ theory of squatter sovereignty by saying that it simply amounted to this: “That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.” The compact with Trumbull and many items of local Illinois politics were frequently tossed back and forth between the two. These are omitted from this volume because they had no bearing on the national situation.
At Jonesboro, Douglas took a fling at negroes mingling with whites, and insinuated that Lincoln and the Republicans were in favor of the equality of the two races. To this Lincoln said the final word at Charleston in regard to the possibility of a white man marrying a colored woman.
There were several passages at arms between the debaters, and some crude banter which would scarcely be considered in good taste at present. The least justifiable was Douglas reviving the old falsehood that while in Congress in 1847 Lincoln had voted against sending supplies to our troops fighting in Mexico. Lincoln was manifestly aroused to anger, as his reply shows. But he was even more angered when Douglas poked fun at him about his powers of physical endurance, suggesting that Lincoln was so exhausted at Ottawa that he had to be carried from the platform, when in truth he had been carried away, despite his protests, on the shoulders of his enthusiastic followers.
Douglas frequently lost his temper when interrupted, as he was at Freeport by his hearers who took exception to his constant use of the term “Black” Republican. To his complaint that no Democrat had been vulgar and blackguard enough to interrupt Lincoln while he had the platform, Lincoln replied that while he was speaking he has used no vulgarity or black-guardism toward the Democrats in the crowd.
The Results of the Debates—Extracts from the debates were printed in the leading newspapers from New York to St. Louis. Douglas’s “Freeport doctrine” was strongly denounced by the Southern people. It made him impossible to them as a candidate for the presidency in 1860 and this caused a split in the Democratic party and the election of Lincoln. Lincoln lost the senatorship, as his friends had predicted.3 He borrowed enough money to pay all obligations incurred during the campaign, and expressed himself as satisfied because he had “got a hearing.” Only two debates have come down by name in American history: one is the Hayne-Webster and the other is the Lincoln-Douglas. The former established the standing of the Constitution; the latter paved the way for the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments.
1The Missouri Compromise of 1820 provided that Missouri should come into the Union as a slave State, but that thereafter in the territory acquired by the Louisiana Purchase, slavery should be forever prohibited north of latitude 36° 30', which was the line of the southern boundary of Missouri.
2Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri, a slave State ; his owner took him in 1834 to Illinois, a free State; then, in 1834, to Minnesota, a free Territory. Later his owner took him back to Missouri, when he sued for his freedom, on the ground that he had resided, for a while at least, on free soil. His owner claimed that having been born of slave parentage and never having been set free, he was still a slave, notwithstanding his places of temporary residence. In 1857 the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of the owner.
3Lincoln received a majority of 4,085 in the popular vote. In spite of this, the arrangement of the Legislative districts, together with hold-over Senators, was such that the Democrats secured 14 seats in the Senate to 11 for the Republicans, and 40 in the House to 35 Republicans.